At last!

After all these years, I know where I am on the political

spectrum.

I guess I grew up

politically naive. When I was a kid, you were a Democrat

or you were a Republican. In Pennsylvania, I think you

had to "register" as one or the other -

unlike here, where you participate in the primary of your

choice, but are not "registered" as anything.

Life was simpler then. You

liked coffee or you liked tea. You liked Chevies or

Fords. The Phillies or the Pirates. You preferred Crosby

over Sinatra, or Autry over Rogers. No one ever liked

both - you had to choose. I had two parents, one of

each gender, and one of each political party. Even though

my favorite parent was Daddy the Democrat, he did not

quite approve of FDR, and Mom the Republican couldn't

stand him. FDR, I mean.

When I came of age and

registered to vote for the first time in New Jersey, I

identified with the Republicans. And so when we moved to

Fayette County, Ga. in 1971, I asked for the Republican

ballot in my first primary here - and discovered I

had effectively disenfranchised myself. Every elected

office in Fayette County was held by a Democrat, and most

of the posts up for election or re-election were

unchallenged by Republicans.

You may be sure that the

next time there was a primary, I picked up a Democratic

ballot. It was enough to make a political naif

schizophrenic.

Since the world has turned

upside down and labels like "Democrat" and

"Republican" don't mean much any more, a couple

of formerly European terms have come into vogue in this

country. "Conservative" and "liberal"

may be well-defined terms in the lexicon of some, but

they merely confuse me even more.

Honestly, I don't mean to

sound disingenuous here, but words are my tools and my

toys, and I know that in the hands of some - was it

the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland? - they

mean just what their speaker wants them to mean. So, to

the impartial dictionary I repair, where I find that the

first three (of nine) definitions for

"conservative" are these: Conserving or tending

to conserve, tending to preserve established traditions

or institutions and to resist or oppose changes in these,

and characteristic of a conservative - a circular

definition if I've ever seen one.

Well, there I am, a

conservative. No one conserves more than I do - you

should see the stack of paper next to my printer, every

single sheet of it already used on one side - and if

you don't believe I tend to preserve established

traditions, just ask members of our church's Worship and

Music Committee what happens when someone mentions

contemporary worship styles.

To be fair, let's check

"liberal:" Giving freely, generous, plentiful,

ample, abundant, not restricted to the literal meaning,

not strict, tolerant of views differing from one's own,

broad-minded.

Now what do I do? C'est

moi! These definitions are exactly my own view of myself

(except that I may not be very broad-minded about some

issues).

Really, how can anyone

choose among these benign characteristics? I'm an

environmentalist, so of course I conserve. I love

tradition, and have to be careful I don't hold to the old

in exclusion of the new, frequently reminding myself that

Beethoven was once considered harsh and modern. And I

like to think that I am open-handed and generous, not

very strict, and very tolerant of the beliefs of others.

The Internet to the rescue!

A friend who knows I wrestle with this conundrum pointed

me to a Web site that provides an interactive test to

determine exactly where one does stand on the political

spectrum, and how one's position compares with the

leading presidential candidates. Check GoVote.com,

keeping in mind that, with the California primary

looming, this site gets a lot of hits these days and may

respond slowly.

Questions are grouped under

individual rights, domestic and economic issues, defense

and international concerns - the whole gamut. Not

only did it score my position, but compared me with

Bradley, Bush, Gore and McLain, and they with each other.

And it turns out I voted for exactly the right man,

according to my own philosophy.

But best of all, the quiz

gave me an identity, a label I can wear with pride. Turns

out I'm a Centrist (Do you capitalize Centrist as you do

Democrat, or is it lower case like conservative?).

Centrists stand for... I don't know what Centrists stand

for. Not much I guess.

I think you get to be a

centrist by marking mid-way the five choices that range

from "support strongly" through "no

opinion" to "oppose strongly."

On global warming, human

rights abuses and gun laws I have strong opinions. But

capital punishment? I've always prayed I'd never be a

juror on a capital crime. Abortion? I regularly thank God

I've never had to make that decision for anyone.

On second thought, maybe

centrist gets a small "c." Like wishy-washy

gets a small "w."

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