There is No "Center" Between Facts and Lies

Or as Jim Hightower puts it: There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

It matters that conservatives have been proven wrong about the relationship between deficits and inflation. It matters that conservatives have been proven wrong about climate change. It matters that countries with single-payer healthcare have better care at lower cost. It matters that treating minorities as human beings with equal rights does not cause society to fall apart. It matters that supply side economic theory has been proven to be a disaster. It matters that record corporate profits and low effective tax rates are accompanying high unemployment, killing all conservative claims about economic realities in any fair debate. It matters that blue states tend to be socially and economically happier than red ones. It matters that countries with decent gun control laws have far lower rates of gun violence and murder in general. It matters that imposing austerity during a recession only deepens the economic doldrums while increasing the debt, and that this fact has been proven out in recent years. It matters that income inequality is damaging to a country's economic future, and that retirement programs for the elderly can easily be paid for by taking what amounts to pocket change in taxes from the wealthiest Americans. These aren't matters of opinion to be gauged on the sliding scale. These are matters of fact.

It also helps that by and large, progressive policies are much more popular than conservative ones. That's a fact as well.

These things matter. Facts are important. Without a grounding in fact, all politics looks like a battle of the center against the extremes of both sides. But that's an incredibly lazy and ignorant way to look at the world.

 In other words, "centrists" are pussies who can't commit.