Liberals, conservatives, listen up: This is what 'moderate' means

On a personal level, I've always preferred to call myself a political "centrist" because the label "moderate" implies that a person believes all issues can be solved through compromise and watered-down solutions. 
For too many Americans, the term moderate implies a fence-sitter who only seeks peace among the partisans.

New York Times photo

But David Brooks of the New York Times has a fantastic column that all the "fringies" in America -- left or right -- should read. Brooks, one of the most thoughtful moderates in the media, explains plainly that moderates are those who do not march in lock-step to any ideology on any given issue.

I've always found it odd and a bit disturbing that liberals and conservatives cannot conceive of the idea that a person could have liberal leanings on some issues and conservative leanings on others.
Brooks puts into perspective that moderates, when seeking solutions to the nation's problems, tend to pick and choose from various categories rather than being strapped in by dogma.
They also recognize that situations must dictate what works, not a myopic view of history.

Here's a portion of what Brooks wrote:

"Americans have prospered over the centuries because we've kept a rough balance between things like individual opportunity and social cohesion, local rights and federal power. At any moment, new historical circumstances, like industrialization or globalization, might upset the balance. But the political system gradually finds a new equilibrium.

"The moderate creates her policy agenda by looking to her specific circumstances and seeing which things are being driven out of proportion at the current moment. This idea - that you base your agenda on your specific situation - may seem obvious, but immoderate people often know what their solutions are before they define the problems.

"For a certain sort of conservative, tax cuts and smaller government are always the answer, no matter what the situation. For a certain sort of liberal, tax increases for the rich and more government programs are always the answer.

"The moderate does not believe that there are policies that are permanently right. Situations matter most. Tax cuts might be right one decade but wrong the next. Tighter regulations might be right one decade, but if sclerosis sets in then deregulation might be in order."