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Are moderates extinct

I've often said that "conservative" and "liberal" are not opposites. The opposite of "conservative" is "progressive" and the opposite of "liberal" is "authoritarian". These definitions never seem to gain much traction though.
 
I've often said that "conservative" and "liberal" are not opposites. The opposite of "conservative" is "progressive" and the opposite of "liberal" is "authoritarian". These definitions never seem to gain much traction though.
I like this arrangement. For most of recent history the Right has been conservative, but it really doesn't have to be. But the association is so strong we tend to use the terms interchangeably. To add to the confusion Left, Right, Progressive, Communist are also names of particular social movements in recent history.
 
I've often said that "conservative" and "liberal" are not opposites. The opposite of "conservative" is "progressive" and the opposite of "liberal" is "authoritarian". These definitions never seem to gain much traction though.
That seems more useful to me, the problems is that we USians have tended to mixed up liberal and progressive. And of course there's a whole bunch of issues that everyone assumes go together that don't really. The original progressive movement in the US was full of racist, misogynists and what not. Fred Phelps of gods hates fags fame was a civil rights lawyer, basically anti-racist and anti-gay. Those are extreme examples of course.

On the OP, I think most people are moderates but since most of us just mark the name of the candidate with the right letter by their name, it makes it seem like at least America is more extreme than it actually is. That and those of that comment on the internet about politics are generally more extreme than those that don't. Years ago there was a study of twitter that showed the vast majority of political content came from a tiny fraction of the twitter users.
 
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