What is Walking Back to Center?

For a while now I have been trying to think of a way to encourage people I know on both sides of the political spectrum to look at what the other side has to say in a reasonable and logical way. Without getting to deep into political theory, I feel that our nation has always worked best when the differing faction within our government operates near the center of every political axis both liberal and conservative both socialism and libertarianism and I want to try and advance this idea a bit myself and that is the goal of walking back to center.

In my time as a citizen of the United States of America, I have had the opportunity to see our government work well and work badly. I have seen our nation climb out of the depression of the seventies into the boom of the nineties, the housing bubble of the early 2000's and most recently a nearly catastrophic depression which we are slowly making our way out of. I have seen my country go to war several times and have seen the safety net for the poor and disabled grow and shrink. In that time I have given a lot of thought to what my political views are and what I believe the role of government should be. While at the moment I share a lot more in common with the liberal side of things, I also value conservative ideals as well, so I guess this makes me a moderate.

We moderates get a lot of flak for being wishy washy and this is quite simply a lot of BS. Moderate political belief's are not about being wishy washy, it's about being willing to look at what everyone has to say and actually listening to what is really being said, then making a decision based on facts instead of hyperbole and knee jerk low effort thinking. In short being a moderate means taking the middle road because it benefits the most people instead of clinging to an idealism that only benefits a select few.

Does this mean I think everyone should ditch their party and become moderates? Absolutely not, if this happened our nation would fall into mediocrity faster than it already is. We need people who are passionate about all sides of the political spectrum or there won't be any advance or change and that is a bad thing. What I do want is for people to stop pointing their finger at the "other side" and instead actually give thought to what is being said and then making an informed decision. Basically I want us all to start walking back to center a bit more often.