Word: centrist
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Liberal internationalism stands for both. To be sure, it is not the only centrist alternative. Another option is to stand for neither or, more precisely, for as little involvement in either as Government can manage. That is the party of small government. Its creed is civilized restraint, and its constituency the brand of Tory that Americans call "moderate Republican" and the British call...
There is a third centrist alternative. It rejects all the foregoing categories. It is aggressively nonideological, neither pro-nor antidefense, welfare or anything else. It seeks only programs that work: weapons, cars, food programs that are lean, clean and mean. It wants guns that shoot straight; it is not terribly concerned what they shoot at. Most of the world calls these people technocrats; in America nowadays they are called neoliberals...
...varieties of centrist experience, the liberal internationalist is the most significant, and not only because of its pedigree and former dominance. Most centrism is negative: afflicted by on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand passivity that searches constantly for the lowest common denominator, that seeks the neutrality of the center as a refuge from the passion of the extremes. Liberal internationalism is a passion for democratic principles, and for bold interventionist Government to carry them out. It is a standing challenge, a rebuke, to the rigidities and timidities of the newly dominant right and left. That is perhaps...
...great democracies cannot long tolerate such a void. In stable polities the most powerful forces, those that make for stability in the first place are centripetal. When the major parties pull apart, the political system, abhorring a vacuum, throws up a centrist alternative. In Britain, when the Tories' heart went hard and Labor's head went soft, a Social Democratic Party was born and quickly achieved remarkable strength. The S.D.P., however, had the advantage of being able to coalesce around the nidus of a small, old, still breathing third party, the Liberals. The U.S. is less hospitable...
...celebrating citizens jammed the streets of Caracas last week, the results of Venezuela's sixth free presidential election in 25 years overwhelmingly confirmed that the ele gant presidential residence, La Casona, would be getting a new tenant. By a thumping 8-to-5 margin, voters had ousted the centrist Social Christian Party in favor of the country's strongest grass roots political force, the center-left Action Democratica under its amiable, soft-spoken leader, Jaime Lusinchi, 59. Said an exuberant Lusinchi after the vote...