In just the past 24 hours, members of the extreme left demonstarted yet again how they just fail to grasp simple concepts.  This is not due to a lack of intelligence, but the trait that has condemned them to the minority party status, arrogance.

In one instance, a member of the extreme left accused the right of hijacking the center.  Hijacking it?  Check me if I am wrong, but the last armed insurrection in America occured 140 years ago.  No one Hijacked anything.  What did happen is that many members of the left moved farther left and created a vacuum in the middle.

This vacuum was filled with moderates, yet being so far on the extreme left, they figured the right had hijacked it. 

There are loons on both extremes, and they represent perhaps 20% (each) of the electorate.  The remaining 60% are clustered around the center, some left and some right.  That is a given.  But the problem comes in where the leadership of the party resides.  In the case of the right, they 'hijacked' the center.  Which is a compliment in a very big way.  It means the right is closer to the ideals of most of that 60% of the population than the left.  For the left leadership has jumped in with the loons of their fringe.

So in the Orwellian world of the left, hijacking does not mean an armed take over.  It means that you claimed something that was abandoned.  Those who yell Hijack are simply scared and angry.  Scared that they have been marginalized.  And in that they are right.  Angry because they could not move the center closer to them.

And that brings up point number 2. The extreme left's contention that the right has moved the center to the right.  This is so ridiculous and stupid, I was actually astounded to see it stated by a member of the extreme left!

One man, or even one party cannot move the center!  The center is not an object to possess.  It is the middle between the 2 extremes.  It is a place that can only move if the POPULATION as a whole moves, and we have seen no evidence of that.  The extreme left is about as extreme as you can get, and I have not seen any movement lefter for them.

As is the extreme right.  It is as right as you can get it.  So that leaves the middle 60% of the population.  Did they move (note, I did not say the center cant move, just that no single party can move it, remember?) to the right thus dragging the center with them?

Attitudes and (the lefts first love) polls do not show any movement.  Some swaying, based upon an issue du jour always occurs, but that is all it is.  Just swaying.  And what sways in one direction will then sway back.  And indeed, there has not been any appreciable movement in either direction.

But yet they claim the right moved the center.  No, again their arrogance is betraying them.  For the only movement has been in the leadership of the respective parties. 

For indeed, much to the chagrin and hate of the extreme left, Bush did grab the center.  NCLB and Medicaid drugs are not right issues, but center issues and he has taken them as his own.  The right did not move the center, the right leadership moved to the center.

And the left?  How did the right manage to coop the center?  With happy acquiense from the left leadership, who instead of contending for the center, gladly gave it up and moved further left.

No one party can move the center.  It can only be moved by the will of the people and that is not going to happen anytime in the near future.  But leaders can move themselves, and in the last few years, with the passing of Bill Clinton, the left has happily conceded the center to the right leadership.

No one moved or hijacked the center.  But the right's leadership did lay claim to it when the left's leadership went off the deep end.