One of the things that has long annoyed me about political coverage in the traditional media is the careless, unsophisticated way that journalists – and many pundits who appear as guests on news shows – classify people according to their political views.

To hear the likes of CNN tell it, every American stands somewhere on a left-to-right line (or vice versa) with extremists on the ends and the rest in between, in the “center.”

I have no doubt that most readers of this column have heard this metaphor at some point. The three labels typically associated with this linear political metaphor are liberal, conservative, and moderate. The former two happen to refer to particular ideologies, which are associated with specific policy directions based on deeply-held values.

But the word “moderate,” on the other hand, is empty. It is one of the most pointless and annoying labels ever invented, used to describe people whose views are collectively unknown. What does it mean to be a “moderate?” To be reasonable? Calm and cool-headed? Unbiased? Balanced?

Those are about the only attributes I’ve heard consistently applied to that label, and their attachment to the word “moderate” implies that liberals and conservatives are not open-minded people, which isn’t true.

“Moderate” can’t mean anything else because there is no consistency to what so-called “moderates” believe. Think about it.

“Moderate” has been used at times as a synonym for “average American,” but that’s just another meaningless phrase. Public opinion researchers have attempted to create a definition by conducting polls that seek to identify what the “average American” believes. But there is no such person. The “average American” is a product of number-crunching. As linguistics professor George Lakoff has quipped, trying to find an “average American” is like trying to find a family with 2.3 kids. Such a family only exists on paper.

The linear model I’ve just critiqued is just too simplistic to serve as a metaphor that faithfully represents Americans’ political views.

So what’s a better one? Try this: Picture a Venn diagram, with the two circles in the diagram (one blue and one red) closely overlapping each other. The slices that don’t overlap represent the staunchest liberals and conservatives; the purple area in between represents the biconceptuals.

Biconceptuals are people who use both the liberal and conservative moral systems in different areas of their political thinking. To identify different groups of biconceptuals, we could carve up the purple area of the Venn diagram into very fine, very thin slices, ascribing different names to each.

For example, one slice might be civil libertarians, people who are principally concerned with protecting the freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights. Another might be conservationists: conservative hunters and fishers who, like the most ardent liberal environmentalists, want to protect our wild places for future generations.

Biconceptualism happens to be a useful concept because it respects the complexity of American political thought. It’s not an empty label.

But our political views are shaped by more than just ideology. For example, consider means and ends. Ever wonder why anarchists organize? Their goal is a world with no government and no central authority at all. So why are they disciplined in pursuit of that goal, forming teams and choosing leaders? It’s because their means are different than their ends. A liberal or conservative might be an idealist, pragmatist, or militant depending on what means they believe in to achieve their ends.

There are still other scales.

For example, speed and amount of change. A real liberal or conservative extremist might be defined as somebody who wants to radically implement a great deal of change very fast, while an incrementalist might be defined as somebody who wants to implement change gradually and carefully. And of course, it is possible to be in favor of adopting big changes slowly or pushing forward rapidly with small changes. Democracies tend to be deliberative by nature, so our legislative process is more compatible with incrementalism.

It’s time we discarded that tired old linear myth and recognized that American political thought is much richer and more intricate than we’ve been led to believe. Doing so could strengthen both the quality and the quantity of our discourse, giving us an opportunity to realize what we have in common.