Moderation in all things is our deliverance from the strife and upheaval of extremism. The Aristotelian means recognizes that wisdom and truth are more chiaroscuro than prime colors. Drawing lines are the heartland of civilized law. It can be said without exaggeration that civilization was born when the first human reflected, “I could be wrong. I need to entertain alternative views.”

Thomas Jefferson underscored in his first inaugural address, “All too will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”

Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater stumbled in thundering, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution began the Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s self-coronation. The moderate American alternative gave birth to the United States Constitution and the Statue of Liberty. Extremism in the defense of liberty prompted then-Sen. Goldwater to oppose the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which emancipated Blacks from a century of Jim Crow earmarked by lynchings and the dastardly murder of Emmett Till.

Yet extremism on both the left and right flourishes, tending to shipwreck moderation. Poet William Butler Yeats versified, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” The media fuels extremism by courting guests eager for gladiatorial combat that makes for wonderful ratings. Balanced commentary is shunned as lacking verbal pyrotechnics. President Donald Trump was right in stating, “This is going to be great television,” regarding his White House jousting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The extreme Right conceives any criticism of American history as treason — even acknowledging the horrors of slavery, the extermination of Native Americans, or female disenfranchisement until the 19th Amendment. Extreme rightists have defended slavery by arguing it cultivated skills that could be turned to personal benefit. But if slavery were so advantageous, why did whites fiercely resist slavery for themselves to enjoy its putative advantages? The extreme Right embraces the “great replacement” theory, which postulates white supremacy indistinguishable from Adolf Hitler’s master race. The violent Jan. 6 violent attack on the U.S. Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power in accord with the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act was an attempted reprise of South Carolina’s firing on Fort Sumter, which triggered the Civil War.

The extreme Left preaches that because the United States is imperfect, it is entirely evil — that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. Their cures are vastly worse than the disease: defunding the police; disparaging merit-based enrollments or employment; sclerotic government substitutions for private enterprise; and lighting a match to the U.S. Constitution, a masterful blueprint for limited, balanced government that William Gladstone praised as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” The extreme Left salutes sacrificing the good on the altar of the perfect.

Benjamin Franklin displayed the ideal of moderation and anti-zealotry at the constitutional convention. The grand statesman is worth quoting at length to teach a standard of self-doubting that should be inculcated in every home or classroom:

“I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present, but Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For having lived long, I have experienced many Instances of being oblig’d, by better Information or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own Judgment and to pay more Respect to the Judgment of others. Most Men indeed as well as most Sects in Religion, think themselves in Possession of all Truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far Error. (Sir Richard) Steele, a Protestant, in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only Difference between our two Churches in their Opinions of the Certainty of their Doctrine, is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the Wrong.”

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