Every newspaper tells us that the Left thinks this and the Right thinks that, but much more rarely do we read of what the Centre thinks. I have often been asked to explain why we talk of Left and Right and it is therefore perhaps useful to start by explain that in our Assemblée Nationale the Chairman looks out on a semi-circle of Députés who are seated with the most revolutionary parties sitting to the left as he looks towards them and the most conservative sitting to right, those in between belonging to less extreme parties, generally described as centre-left, centre-right or centrist.
As a boy I was always being told that "Politics is the art of the possible" and from this I drew the conclusion that, as with every human creation, every party's policy on any matter was fallible and therefore subject to change when it failed to effect whatever may have been its aim. Far from making me disinterested in politics, this makes it a source of nearly endless fascination, since each of us can often see well in advance the flaw in what is put forward by one or more parties as the answer to many of our ills.
Usually, in a healthy democracy where there is a free exchange of views, this gives some idea of what differentiates the candidates in any election. This is why I, as an outsider, fail to understand the need for the two leading candidates in the USA presidential contest to rush to adopt any position proclaimed by the other. The most revolting example of this was when Senator McCain grovelled before the AIPAC followed by Senator Obama, both of whom promised the sun and the moon to the Zionists regardless of the harm which they would thereby do to the interests of the USA. If they are to be believed, which I, for one, hope they are not, it will not matter which is elected in November to take over the presidency next January, since both will continue to give unwavering support to oppression, ethnic cleansing and murder of the indigenous people of the Holy Land.
To us Europeans both main USA parties can be described as Right-wing, as being in favour of ensuring that all the established holders of wealth and power in the land should keep their excessive advantages over the majority of people. In other parts of the world we see the supposedly opposite extreme whereby those who claim to be Left-wing wish to deprive the well-off of their wealth, but rarely do they wish to distribute this wealth more broadly, and when we look back at most revolutions the result is no more than that the poor and needy merely exchange one master for another. Every so often, we see a leader come forward who tries to break this mould by acting in favour of genuine redistribution of wealth and power, but it is much more common to see a ruler, such as Robert Mugabe, who, under the cloak of righting wrongs of the past and reducing the gaps between the rich and the poor, takes land and/or other property from one group (in his case the 'white' farmers) to give it to his followers, known as the 'war veterans' (best known for their tendency towards torturing and massacring their 'black' opponents, as they did in 1980 and are again doing at the present time).
Such events have given me a deep distrust of all extremists, and this lack of trust leads me to try my hardest to remain open to argument on any aspect of policy. Here we call this being a Centrist, since we do not recognise ourselves as belonging either to the Right or to the Left.
My attitude led me recently to write that, although I consider it necessary to keep capitalism under strict democratic control (a concept which seems to be rejected outright by both principal parties in the USA), I can see the benefit that small capitalism can bring to enable the poorest to climb out of the most crushing forms of poverty, and I cite the examples of credit unions and other means of providing small-scale finance to start useful businesses and also of mutualist banks. On the other hand, I see no excuse to seize assets being used properly by their present holders with no other aim than to bring the wealthiest down to the level of the poorest and create a new class of rulers. Surely the better solution, where it is possible, is to increase the wealth of the poor and needy to bring their standard of living up to a decent level, since the poor remain left behind in poverty where there is no more than one of these changes of masters.
A good example of what can be done to even out the advantages of all classes of the population is to ensure proper health care for all, and this is officially supported by all politicians in most European countries, however badly many of them may organise this. It is fair to say that such provision of health care is considered to be the sign of a civilised state by most of our politicians, and we hear with horror of the need to be exceptionally well covered by insurance before venturing into parts of the world bereft of such protection assumed by us to be normal, and we are all warned of the dangers of visiting the USA. Over here, we see this as being outside party politics, and the party political arguments all relate to the manner in which the care should be organised and administered.
Extremists, whether they claim to be of the Right or the Left, also have the very unpleasant habit of trying to stifle all comment (and above all criticism) on their rule and on their policies. We see this all the time whenever we dare to speak out for justice on behalf of the oppressed and the persecuted, whoever they may be. The great German Protestant Pastor, Martin Niemoeller put this very well when he wrote that, if we do not speak out when the oppressor comes for the Jews, because we are not Jews, then the Trades Unionists, because we are not Trades Unionists, then other groups to which we do not belong, because we do not so belong, there will be nobody left to speak out for us when they come for us.
I believe that it is essential to remain free to criticise both the Right and the Left and to work always for whatever will work practically to improve life not only for ourselves but also, and above all, for the most needy. I disapprove of both the rule of the corporate bosses created by unbridled capitalism, who aim above all to maintain their established power, and that of Stalinist or Maoist revolutionaries who are inspired essentially by envy of the rich and powerful, and wish more to destroy rather than to improve. It is far better to work towards a peaceful redistribution of excess wealth and power to save as many as possible from the worst aspects of poverty, rather than to steal from those who are not necessarily over-wealthy.
Left and Right both inspire in me such distrust that I find myself bound to remain in the Centre.
© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com
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