The Virtue of Being Moderate

Being moderate is truly a wonderful thing, and a surprisingly easy one. To be a moderate all you really need to do is take a look at your principles, and subtract half of them. Congratulations, now you're officially a moderate. Repeat as many times as needed.

When in doubt the safest thing to do is be a moderate. Not the safest thing to do if you want to change anyone's mind, or win an election or accomplish anything useful. But the safest thing possible if your greatest fear in life is taking a position on something, or being accused of being an extremist.

To be a moderate means to always be vigilantly on watch against anyone you generally agree with expressing an opinion that is less moderate than yours. The danger of that is clear. As a moderate you can't risk being associated with extremists, not without denouncing them in all public forums, and making it clear that these people do not represent you.

The issue isn't a matter of scale, it's a matter of degree. Pete and Ted both live in Yorksville. Pete and Ted both agree that raccoons are a serious problem. Pete wants to increase garbage pickups to twice a day. Ted will not hold with his extreme twice a day garbage pickup views, and insists that legitimate citizens of Yorksville who understand the raccoon problem do not wish to be misrepresented by any association with the likes of Pete. Ted will write two editorials denouncing Pete, to every one editorial he writes complaining about the raccoon problem. Ted is of course a moderate.

Moderates are very useful when ordering lunch, mainly because they'll have what you're having, only less of it, and not so extreme on the ketchup. They're very useless when it comes to everything else. Pick a moderate in an election, and you better hope that he can juggle, because otherwise your side is in trouble.

The great thing about a moderate is that he can see the point of view of every opposing side, but the people who agree with him and think he doesn't go nearly far enough. This makes him a fantastic diplomat for the other side, whatever the other side may be.

Moderates aren't necessarily cowards. They're just people who decided that the world would be a much nicer place if people didn't feel too strongly about things. Moderates are naturally very suspicious of things other people are enthusiastic about.

The only form of extremism that moderates support is to get extremely worked up about extremism. Even talk about extremism upsets moderates a great deal. A sentence such as Goldwater's famous, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue" is about the worst thing you can say to a moderate. It would be far better for you to walk up to him and call his mother a shrew, his father an elephant, his wife a hippo, and his children misbegotten mistakes, than to suggest to him that moderation is ever unjustified and extremism ever justified.

The moderate dwells in the Zen-like calm that can only be achieved by the inhaled odor of a fresh print copy of the New York Times, a Starbucks cup of coffee, and the knowledge that your opinions could not possibly offend anyone who matters.

To be a moderate is to live with the serene confidence that your house may be on fire, your children may have been carted off, your wife is nowhere to be found, and your government has been changed from a Democracy to a Cannibolacracy, but you won't make the mistake of those who fools who will get upset about such a thing.

The only thing the moderate truly fears is to encounter a man or woman whose opinions are even more moderate than his. To that end the moderate embraces the protective camouflage of blandness, and puts forward no opinion that he is not prepared to further water down and dilute on careful examination.

It might be the extremists who change the world, but it is the moderates who step in when all the changing is done, and instantly pass 300 regulations on how high a picket fence may be built, how many permits must be applied for in order to modify said picket fence, and the approved shades and colors which a picket fence may be painted.

The extremists may make the revolutions, but the moderates make them livable. Thomas Jefferson wanted a revolution every generation, but James Madison talked him down to a millennium. Bush started out as an extremist proclaiming "Either you're with us or with the terrorists." By the end however he had become a proper moderate watering it down to, "Either you're with us, or with the terrorists, or you're undecided, or you're a terrorist willing to talk about being with us, or you're confused about the whole process and need some time to sort it all out."

Why be a moderate? There are few things as thrilling and exciting as getting up in the morning, taking a look in the mirror and realizing you're a moderate. To know that your beliefs are as watered down as they can possibly be without being confused with mush always brings a rush of blue blood to the noggin. And when heated words are being flung around like darts at a pub, and there's the possibility that something new and unexpected might happen, it is the noble duty of the moderate to step in, water things down and announce that the way forward will be to think less, believe less and do less. All hail the moderates.