To the editor:

After listening to and viewing some of the verbiage coming from some portions of the political spectrum during the past two years,

I have come to the conclusion that my personal position on the spectrum is that of radical moderate.

Over the years, I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats and once for an independent. I have always been nervous about extremists. Their statements today scare me just as they did in the 1960s and early ’70s. The difference between today’s extremists and those of the late ’60s is that these are on the right and they have even more media access.

Extremists on the far right and on the far left propose agendas that brook no compromise. Both extremes claim an exclusive vision into a world they envision as the perfect one. Personal freedoms, except for the true believers, cannot exist.

For example, the far left claimed to champion the “people” using terms such as “power to the people.” Those who claimed the power determined just who the “people” were.

When Lenin proclaimed the Soviet Union in 1917, he claimed that “democratic centralism” would be established to develop the rule by the few for the good of the many, whether or not the many agreed.

The far right claims that they are the voice of the people, referring to this voice as the political mainstream. These individuals say that they speak for a higher power and can proclaim what this higher power wants, which appears to be a theocratic state governed by those who apparently believe they represent he/she.

Further, the far rightists also seem to believe that a particular ethnicity and/or skin tone provides a right to claim superiority as a right to govern in the name of the mainstream.

Just as with the far leftists, these believers in ethnic and religious superiority exist in many nations and societies around the world.

Small minorities speak as though the legitimacy of their beliefs gives them the right to speak for the rest of us. It doesn’t. In the United States, at least, we have the right and the obligation to believe as we wish, and to choose the leaders we want.

We ought to be able to expect that facts prevail when confronted with political choices. Both political extremes use innuendo and lies to promote their ideologies. When sensible and moderate folks choose who governs, they expect those who do so to represent them fairly and honestly, not on the basis of half-truths and lies representing an authoritarian ideology and some human-invented religious orthodoxy.

As a radical moderate, I wish for, and expect, open and honest debate and open and honest decision-making, sometimes in the spirit of compromise, resulting in policies that provide for the best possible outcomes for all of us, the people, the mainstream.

George H. Westergaard

Clinton