‘The truth lies somewhere in the middle’ is a phrase often used by centrists and political bystanders who are privileged enough to afford to not care; it is a deceptively intuitive statement that insists that the ‘correct’ option is always a compromise between two sides—an assumption that is too simple to be anything but false.

Not choosing a side is not just intellectually lazy—it is a luxury. To afford to meet every political question with a shrug and a weak plea for compromise, you must be separated from the consequences of the answer. The person who does not fear deportation can afford to call for ‘compassionate immigration reform.’ The person whose rights are not up for debate can afford to ask both sides to be more civil.

This is the unspoken foundation of the centrist worldview: it is the alignment for those that can afford to lose the argument. When your life, your body, and your identity are not the subject debated, it is easy to frame your detachment for wisdom.

The centrist presents themself as a pragmatic peacemaker that can see both sides: they plead for civility and insist that the political spectrum has a reasonable middle ground. This stance, however, is built completely on a logical fallacy called the Argument to Moderation.

This fallacy, similar to the centrist, incorrectly assumes that the most logical choice between two extremes is in the middle. Of course, this argument is not always wrong: it holds strong in the shallow waters of low-stakes disagreements. David Bryden on Academy 4SC presents a great example. On a playground, when two children both want to play with the same ball, the middle ground (splitting the recess period in half and taking turns) is the fairest outcome.

But as the stakes rise, this logic collapses. Move from the playground to the classroom. One student wants to include a passage from a religious text in a presentation while the other finds the passage deeply offensive to their identity. A moderate solution would be to include the passage but add a disclaimer. Is that fair? Perhaps, but it still causes harm. The waters are murkier, and the midpoint no longer feels completely just.

Scale it further. Imagine a town meeting where one group of residents demand the removal of a Confederate statue from town square, arguing that it glorifies the fight to keep people enslaved. Another group asserts that it should remain since it honors their southern heritage. The centrist position here would be to keep the statue, but add a plaque about the history of slavery. To the descendants of enslaved people, this is not a compromise: it is tangible evidence that their pain is worth less than the comfort of those that wish to preserve it. The middle ground becomes a monument to ongoing harm.

Now, apply the logic to the unthinkable. In 1942, a Jewish family hiding is discovered. One neighbor argues that they should be handed over to the Nazis immediately while the other argues that they should be protected. What is the moderate position here? To turn in only half of the family? To hide them, but charge them rent? To report them, but put in a good word with the Gestapo? The suggestion is obscene—no compromise exists between salvation and annihilation.

This is why the civility of the centrist is so often a shield for the oppressor. When the states are life or death, no one would ask the family in the attic to use a more measured tone when discussing their raptors. But somehow, when the subject shifts to police brutality, queer rights, or housing discrimination, the demand for civility magically reappears.

The marginalized are told to wait, to be patient, to phrase their suffering in a language that does not offend those who caused it. The centrist is in the perfect position to serve as a translator, taking the pain of the oppressed and filtering it into something more palatable. And, in doing so, it reveals the true hierarchy of the centrist worldview: the feeling of the powerful will always be protected, even if it means asking the powerless to suffer in silence.

This is another danger in the centrist’s insistence on the middle ground: it allows the entire political spectrum to shift. When one side moves aggressively towards authoritarianism, bigotry, or cruelty, the center does not hold—it moves with them. What was once considered the fringe becomes the new numeral, and the centuries, desperate to appear reasonable, redefines their position. Suddenly, the formerly unthinkable is worth discussing.

In this way, the centrist acts as a conveyor belt for radicalism. By insisting that the truth is in the middle, they normalize the extreme and legitimize the illegitimate. They treat the defense of human rights and the assault of them as valid options deserving of equal consideration.

The Argument of Moderation holds only so long as the issue is trivial—the moment that the question touches upon human dignity, the middle ground ceases to be a place of reason. At its core, the centrist’s goal of satisfying both sides is impossible when one side’s policy platform is the subjugation of another: you cannot please a white supremacist without compromising the humanity of a person of color, and you cannot appease a homophobe without endangering queer people. Nothing can pacify those on one end of the spectrum without dehumanizing those on the other.

Even as rights and lives are stripped away, the centrist stands in the comfortable middle searching for a reasonable compromise between existence and erasure. In a fight between those who want to preserve human rights and those who want to dismantle them, there is no center. Neutrality in the face of oppression is not neutrality at all—it is endorsement by inaction.