I can't stand people on The FAR CENTER. If you're "centrist" on every issue you are just a fence riding wimp, or you simply don't care, or you somehow think you're above the fray.
Although I would generally consider myself a centrist in many countries as I'd fall between both the major parties on a lot of issues. In the UK for instance.
Universal healthcare would have me to the left of the Democrats in the US.
This is another fair point.
I can think of three distinct meanings of "centrist" here:
1. People who hold inconsistent views and support a mix of far-left and far-right policies.
2. What you're referring to, and what I call "bothsidesists." People who think that the truth is necessarily near the halfway point of any popular controversy or think that it's necessarily wrong to consistently agree with one "side" over another regardless of the content of individual arguments.
3. Empirically minded pragmatists, who don't expect huge change and think of the way forward as hard-fought, small changes rather than a remaking of society.
I'm a centrist in that third sense. I support capitalism, not because I think any other system is evil, but because it's what's been shown to best to improve the lives of people, though it has significant holes that necessitate things like regulations, a safety net, and policy directed at increasing opportunity for the non-rich. I think single-payer would be a good system to start from scratch with, but I'm very pessimistic about it working politically in America, and I think the effort to get it has been an obstacle to making smaller reforms (which the ACA finally did). Etc.
