my moderate manifesto

I don't know who originally said it, but a phrase that I've heard countless times throughout my life is that, "If you're not liberal when you're young, you're heartless; and if you're not conservative when you're old, you're stupid." I think the staying power of this statement is that whoever its said to is offended by it on at least some level and they want to pay it forward. Everybody wants to, depending on their position, deny that one half or the other of that aphorism is false. I, however, want to reject both.

The great American philosopher William James once said,

"Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying every one we meet under some general head. As these heads usually suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or the other, the life of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and complaints of being misunderstood."

So it is in the political arena. Everything must be "liberal" or "conservative." The polarization of the two supposed schools of thought has caused them to both become caricatures of themselves, fooling people into believing that to have any kind of conviction one must be an extremist of one sort or another. However, the average American who isn't going through his proverbial college hippie phase or into his crotchety, old-man conservative phase, fancies himself to be moderate. The most common type of moderate is what I like to call a "patchwork moderate." That is to say that he may be more liberal here and more conservative there, but generally not aligned with one side or the other. Though, however moderate they are in private, or in conversation with friends and family, in public, one is constantly pressured to take a side.

As a result, there is nowhere for a moderate to lay his head if he refuses to play the extremism game in public. This becomes even more obvious if one moves from one part of the country to another. When I lived back in Washington state, I felt like I was several steps to the right of Darth Vader, but upon moving to Utah, I feel like a bleeding-heart hippie. Personally, I see the Constitution to be the middle of the road and anything more or less than it to be "left" or "right."

I have never thought of myself as a liberal, but at the same time, I'm finding it almost impossible to designate myself as a conservative because both labels are becoming increasingly heaped with connotative baggage I'm just not willing to tote. The general approach of the two camps has come to be thus:

• Conservatism: The answer to our problems is to go back to the way things used to be. Changes and new ideas are dangerous and not to be trusted.
• Liberalism: The answer to our problems is to stop using our brains and start "feeling" everything. Any new idea is good as long as it's new and hip.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, there are exceptions. You consider yourself one of the above and don't appreciate the generalization, blah, blah, blah. That's fine for you, but I for one don't want to be associated with either. The conservatives look at certain period in history with rose-tinted glasses, and liberals don't look at history at all. The conservatives are too scared of change and liberals are too reckless with it. They both seem to have abandoned logic and reason.

Politics in general is a collection of viewpoints on varying topics, but we're forced to treat it as a series of oaths one must swear to their respective school of thought. I refuse to play that game, and I at least attempt to take each issue on its own terms, irrespective of the arbitrary "liberalism" or "conservatism" supposedly inherent in my decision. In that sense, I'm a moderate, because my decisions don't stem from a desire to demonstrate how far toward one or the other I lean. I know I'm not as hip as my college peers who go to protests or have stylish campaign logos emblazoned across the rear bumper of their cars, but I believe what I believe, and know what I know, and I act on it, no matter whose path that puts me in... or whether or not they think it's cool.