Many years ago, when Chile was deep into one of Latin America’s most profound conflicts between democracy and communism, I became friends with — and was filled with admiration for — a Belgian Jesuit priest, Father Roger Vekemans.

His brilliance was making citizens out of the masses of poor Chileans who had, until then, played no real part in their own lives and country, and it was a wondrous thing to see.

In the beginning, I thought of him as a kind of radical of the left. But his passionate attachment was to the Christian Democrats, not the Marxists or the Castroites, so that didn’t fit. Later in our lives, he provided me with words that would come to define my own social beliefs, as well as his.

“No fight against the right has driven me to the left, and no fight against the left will drive me to the right,” he wrote me in a letter that I, the Baptist Sunday school girl, prize to this day. “Once and for all, I have chosen the extreme center and, whatever storm is coming, I shall stand fast at any price. It is not a matter of balance; it is a matter of conviction.

“I am aware that the center is not holding. Still I will keep on fighting. I am responsible for my fight, not for the outcome!”

Recently, I wondered why, after the blessed peace bestowed upon us by a gracious deity after the surcease of the noise from both political conventions, this old quote should keep repeating itself in my head. But then I realized I was searching for my friend’s precious “extreme center” in our political parlance this summer.

The center, for instance, would have spoken of ugly, broken bridges, of roads that feel like amusement park rides, of rivers filled with trash and detritus; the center would have focused seriously on our $19 trillion national debt and offered ways to pay it off; the center would have soberly studied our rotting city centers and how to revive them.

I suppose I am mimicking many of Father Roger’s highly successful programs organizing the poor in Chile when I suggest, as have many others, that we could form FDR-style organizations for all those lost and often violent inner-city young men to work in our national parks and on social projects. Others here in America keep bringing up the idea that all young Americans should give one or two years of service to their country, which might truly help to unite us.

And then, of course, there is the hysterical zest on the part of too many of our “thinkers” in the Pentagon, think-tanks and lobbies to wage “permanent war” — from the days of Vietnam in the 1960s through Iraq and Afghanistan today (and Libya, Syria, Somalia, etc.).

This is the single most important element in our foreign and domestic policies today because everything else — the health of our families, the security of the nation and our financial stability — depends upon it. So does the respect or non-respect of the rest of the world toward America; and so does the possibility of peace in the world, which of course is direly threatened if Leader America is out there thrashing about in other countries like a drunken sailor.

And yet, outside of occasional momentary mentions, none of these topics came up seriously either in Philadelphia or Cleveland, with either of the blond candidates.

The Democratic jamboree, under Hillary Clinton’s eternal good-spiritedness, nevertheless reminded one of a Methodist meeting hall. While the Republican convention, with the dark, dour, demeaning, dishonest Donald, certainly trumped the Democrats for depressing you.

So, none of my good Jesuit friend’s “extreme center.” Only do-gooders on one end and do-badders on the other, neither having the mustard or the moxie to pull this great but needy nation up by its bootstraps and set it back on its feet again.

The center is not very sexy, that’s certainly true. But it is centrist governments and ideas that work — and the extremes at both ends usually end up in tragedy, hopelessness or both.

Would you rather live in Costa Rica or Brazil? Oman or Syria? Singapore or Burma? Just look at Father Vekemans’ Chile: Today, having thrown the two extremes where they belong, Chile is one of the most prosperous countries on earth.

The extreme center: Oh, I’m mad about you!

© 2016, Universal