When I was doing National Service I had to have a knee reconstruct and as I lay there in a Brisbane hospital I saw a multitude of servicemen, looking totally bewildered, having come back from Vietnam to have their bodies patched up.
The public didn't recognise their services because the public knew they shouldn't have been there in the first place.
But the public voted for the govt that sent them there.
I don't like those who prance about practicing Jingoism, thinking Australians can do no wrong and attempt to justify their behaviour and actions with any manner of codswallop.
We haven't progressed from those days, we still follow along those advising (telling) us how to wipe our backsides.
Moderate? what on earth is that?
I tell it the way I see it and I still see the same attitude as was present 50 years ago.
Oh sure, society has become politically correct so as to cast a veil over our true selves but the nature never changes, just the titles and names.
We don't back the underdog as was often claimed, we back the perceived winner and when the winner is the other side it's because we were short changed.
No one likes a liar, one who deceives and misrepresents the truth and its no wonder depression is on the rise.
No one knows what to believe any more, which in turn produces more confused individuals.
You want a productive society?
Stop the deceit.

Indy,

Don't give me that, you were eligible to joint the Australian Army between the ages of 17 and 35, back in your day any physically fit meat head like yourself could join up, what, you didn't try once in 18 years? Fair dinkum, I'm not talking about national service, but volunteering! YOU were a shirker! Now in your decrepit years of life, YOU still want others to do the fighting for you! YOU are not a patriot, Un-Australian, a fifth-columnist, no doubt one of the Kudos Kid's COMMUNISTS!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

The Overton Window seems to be used by Communists to pull the acceptable dialogue to the "Left" in order to manipulate the electorate. This enables the shutting down of important issues such as immigration. One way to address this distortion of the market of ideas is to name it and compare it to communism.

Moderate? The articles below may provide some hints- probably also distorted- but hopefully it might help moderates. It's like the stock market in a sense there is a difference between the percieved price and a price based on fundamentals. So what are the political fundamentals?

Some talk Left/ Right, some a two dimensional spectrum (Political Compass), others multi-dimensional space. All of these are an attempt to define politics. Trying to compress a multi-dimensional problem into a one-dimensional Left-Right space you lose and distort the information. Another way to look at politics is through it's historical development. Another way is mapping based on particular beliefs. Many have said that communism essentially originated with the French "Terror" Revolution- this is also where the Left-Right concept appears to have originated. One unfortunate thing about the one-dimensional model is that it maps traditionalism as far-right rather than a different dimension. As they say in the Army the map is not the terrain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum
This article is a fair attempt at presenting the concepts of simple vs complex dimensional models of politics. But no one really knows what is the best model and all of them probably distort politics to a degree. But I have to think a multi-dimensional model maps the data better.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/moderates-who-are-they-and-what-do-they-want/370904/
"It often seems there’s no center in American politics anymore. Increasingly polarized camps on the right and left hold diametrically opposed, irreconcilable views on seemingly every issue.
And yet more than a third of American voters call themselves neither liberal or conservative but moderate, indicating a substantial chunk of dissenters from the left-right paradigm. Are they just confused? Are they closet ideologues with strongly partisan opinions but a distaste for labels? Are they politically disconnected? What, in short, is their deal?"

http://theconversation.com/what-is-a-moderate-politician-four-key-tests-122079
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_moderate
http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2020/10/rise-traditionalists-how-mystical-doctrine-reshaping-right

One problem with moderates is that they seem to start with the Overton Window even if they don't know it- and the Overton Window is already a corrupted view of the theoretical political space in a number of ways. They seem to believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Moderates won't put themselves in the middle they'll put themselves where the balance of the noise is- and some are noisier than others. There is an economic principle "The Efficient Market Hypothesis" that says that agents within the economy will act in the interest of themselves to maximize their economic benefit- it doesn't work- and it doesn't in politics either- probably because people usually follow what other people do without considering their own circumstances. What probably works better is understanding the basic principles of the domain of knowledge and testing your understanding and predictive ability by experiment.

Sadly many people don't get what they want in finances and politics because because they don't understand what they want. They don't understand the principles of the subject matter. They don't match their strategy to their understanding. They don't do a debrief after the event. They don't engage in positive feedback. They haven't quantified their goals. etc.

In a sense people often become resigned, depressed and nihilistic- not like our grandparents who took responsibility for their own circumstances and invested in every day improvements everyday.

True it isn't easy when the government is the enemy. The people need to govern themselves.

“ True it isn't easy when the government is the enemy. The people need to govern themselves”. CM.

That personal freedom would be exampled on the Australian Aboriginal firm cultural attachments to deification of nature, with its timeless cyclical beliefs.
They had really little to worry about given that level of trust.
There is good reason for loss of direction and high suicide rates in that group which Western conquest stripped them of.

I think a more interesting analysis of suicide rates and its reasons, should include that particular fact of native cultures pre Western history which at roughly four thousand years is by comparison, in its infancy.

My belief on this subject does not include the comparison in suicide death rates carved up between left and right adherents.
There are much deeper meanings behind the apparent malaise of despair among youth than left and right of politics.

Despair seems to be related to a loss of purpose and meaning. When the children don't feel safe and parents can't provide them with a sense of purpose and meaning to transcend the difficulties of adolescence. In a sense the woke/ communist/ counter culture crisis in western culture has an impact on western children. Parochial church communities provide a buffer culture to mitigate against childhood depression- missing in liberal democracy.