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I... at no point said that I default to the centre of the Overton Window on any issue, or that centrists should do that? Dynomight actually made a case for moderation as the best way to achieve change - he makes the argument, I think correctly, that gay marriage won via moderation, not via radicalism.
As it happens, I oppose gay marriage, which the last I checked puts me way outside the Overton Window. Moderation or centrism in the sense in which I am identifying with it is not a list of policy positions, or a reflexive determination to always adopt the position exactly halfway between the Republican and Democratic platforms. It is a dispositional skepticism of passion politics and radicalism, a deliberate openness to the possibility of being persuaded by people on either team, and an attitude of caution and intellectual humility.
What does it mean to be a moderate and oppose gay marriage? It means that I think it's bad policy, but also that I think that, say, the postliberal Caesarist types are dangerous rogues. Or to pick something coded the other side of politics, it's the same way I can support, say, universal health care, but think that the democratic socialists are a bunch of ineffective muppets high on their own supply. It means a distinction between the policies I envision happening in an ideal world, and the practical ways in which I approach doing politics.
I will be honest I then have no idea what you mean by moderate.
The post liberal caeser types by your definition of moderate I believe they are moderate. Vance has said he wouldn’t have counted the 2020 vote and wants to dismantle the beaucracy. You know from his background that he’s well thought out both camps. It is in his lived experience from where he grew up to having had very leftist friends at Yale. Which is far different that some who grew up on the UES and went to Yale law. He has clearly been a card carrying member of both tribes.
The fact you used the Caeserist types those are probably the most moderate because those tend to be some of the most well read people on the political map. Who have read and thought about everything.
I don’t think the conventional definition of radical versus moderate is unrelated to political positions.
I feel like most people would consider Peter Thiel, Yarvin, Hanania as radical right, but they all feel like moderates to me by the way you define moderate. I use the word grey tribe for these types.
Without more knowledge on your beliefs you sound like a radical right grey triber based on being anti-gay marriage.
Well, as I've commented before, I understand myself to be Blue Tribe in the original sense of the term - recall that per the original 'Outgroup' post, there were explicitly Blue Tribe Republicans and Red Tribe Democrats. (Though I am not American.) I tend to think of the colour tribes as being about manner or about social milieu more than they are about explicit religious beliefs. I know I'm not Red Tribe because I grew up thinking of the kinds of people who owned guns and drove pick-up trucks and did blue-collar work and lacked university degrees and went to evangelical churches as gross low-status people that would be embarrassed to be confused with. I'm pretty sure I'm not Grey Tribe because I think the whole Silicon Valley technologist/rationalist mentality is gross. I may be a political defector from the Blue Tribe, but they're my native tongue, as it were.
Anyway, maybe it would help if I say that I think of moderation as something more procedural, rather than a substantive political position? Defined purely in terms of substance, the centre or moderate position is, as you say, a constantly shifting target which it would be absurd to invest in. Procedurally, however, I would say moderation is characterised by a willingness to listen and make deals with any of the major camps in the political landscape, while being reluctant to fully identify with any of those camps.
By the Caesarists, I'm thinking of people like the self-identified postliberals - they tend to be big fans of Orban, and supportive of some kind of strongman politics, where a visionary leader is necessary to reorder the state and effect a top-down transformation of society along more virtuous lines. Think of Patrick Deneen's aristopopulism ("Aristotelian ends by Machiavellian means"), or Vermeule's authoritarianism, or the "We need our own Putin" sentiment that was heard in 2016. Wolfean yearning for a 'Christian prince' is another version of the same idea, with the main difference being presenting itself as Protestant rather than Catholic. As a moderate, I am dispositionally skeptical of any political project that starts with the idea that we just need to get our guy into power and then crush our enemies. This is as true for the right-authoritarian-populists as it is for the left-authoritarian-populists.
Personally, my preferred politics is more the idea that virtue, community-building, pro-social behaviour, etc., are embedded in customs and the unspoken, unwritten rules of local community life more than they are in legal codes, and there's something inherently dangerous in the yearning for a powerful centralised authority that will authoritatively enforce our moral vision on all. I think we need is closer to the project Deneen sketches at the end of Why Liberalism Failed (i.e. small, local self-governing communities, rooted in the concrete realities of their lives), rather than the strongman fantasies of Regime Change. To that end what I favour is a limited, constrained central government that focuses, rather than on setting the conditions for the good life itself, making possible (but not mandatory) the kind of organic civic renewal that I hope for. Think more distributist-libertarian, on the political spectrum.
I think this probably sits well with a kind of old-fashioned liberal ethic, but it means that I take liberalism per se to be necessary but not sufficient for a healthy polity.
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