You're speaking from an ideal version of centrism that rarely matches how it works in reality. You present it as a noble, thankless path walked only by principled thinkers who rise above tribalism. But that picture falls apart when you look at how centrism functions in practice and history. First, the idea that centrism is the "hard" or "unpopular" position sounds good, but it isn't true. It's easy in a different way. It's comfortable because it lets people avoid the risk of being wrong. It creates the illusion of neutrality without having to confront hard ethical choices. Saying "both sides are bad" sounds balanced, but it often masks either fear of conflict or a lack of conviction. As Nathan J. Robinson once put it, “Centrism is appealing because it requires no principles. All it requires is a willingness to position oneself exactly halfway between whatever the two loudest voices in the room are saying.” You said centrists believe you don't get to control how others live their lives. That sounds like a libertarian catchphrase, not a political principle. Politics is always about shaping society. Whether it's through taxes, laws, education, or healthcare, every policy choice affects how people live. Refusing to take a position is still a choice. And if you're not shaping the system, you're letting others shape it for you.
Historically, centrism has been more of an anchor than a compass. It’s not what pushes society forward. The civil rights movement, women/man’s suffrage, labor rights, and decolonization all came from people who were considered extreme in their time. Centrists usually joined the conversation late, once the moral cost of staying out became too obvious to ignore. They don’t lead progress. They follow it reluctantly. Martin Luther King Jr. saw this clearly. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he wrote: “The white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice, prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” He wasn’t warning about radicals. He was warning about centrists who delayed justice in the name of balance. You mentioned negotiation. Sure, compromise can be useful, but only when both sides are arguing in good faith and share a baseline of truth and human decency. When one side wants to strip rights or spread disinformation, meeting in the middle just means giving half of what should never be given at all. At that point, centrism turns into appeasement. Not wisdom, not balance, just delay at best, complicity at worst.
Umair Haque also once said, “Centrists never seem to grasp that by refusing to take sides in moral battles, they’re effectively taking the side of whoever holds the most power.” Neutrality becomes a shield for status quo violence. And about revolutions. You're right, they can go wrong. But revolutions don’t come out of nowhere. They're the result of prolonged injustice, often sustained by centrist inaction. You can't act shocked by the fire if you've spent years ignoring the smoke. Centrism may feel like the mature stance, but in many cases, it just serves to maintain the comfort of those who already benefit from the system. It avoids hard moral commitments, delays necessary change, and shelters itself in the false safety of being above the fray. But being above the fray doesn’t mean you're not involved. It just means you're letting others decide what comes next.
