Elaboration on Moderation

Jon Schaff has a post on moderation today at South Dakota Politics, a blog I enjoy and read daily. And while he disagrees with something I said on moderation, we are perhaps closer in agreement than it might seem on the surface.

I agree with what Mr. Schaff says, in that you can have too much of just about anything. And almost any behavior can be taken to excess. You might even say the Greatest Commandment could, in a sense, be taken to extreme.

For instance, Jesus said the greatest commandment was to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Yet some in the ministry might take this to mean they should work so hard that their families are neglected. This isn't what Jesus meant, either. There has to be a certain balance, one that balances all the positive priorities without creating a safe harbor for the bad things. That is perhaps the greatest single challenge for human beings.

Often times it's difficult to explain something without going into a soliloquy, so we rely on shorter terms that we hope will get our point across without making the reader feel like he's fallen into "War and Peace." That's where my statements about moderation fell short.

The kind of moderation I find disgusting is the kind that is so lauded these days: the kind that calls for compromise of important principles.

Of course, in the world of politics you can seldom get everything you want the first time around. Sometimes you have to give a little to win a little.

But when you so water down your stand on an issue that in the end you gain nothing but the facade of victory, then you've not only failed to advance your cause, but you've become a laughing stock before your enemies. They know you're a pathetic pushover that they can throw a bone to and you'll act like you're happy.

That's the kind of "moderation" and "compromise" that cost the Republicans control of Congress last month. For the past several years, they have given in to cries from the Democrats and their propaganda arm in the media for "moderation" and "bipartisanship."

It was made even more pathetic because they were--ostensibly--in charge! They haven't acted like leaders since some time in 1995. They've been unable to achieve a Federal Marriage Amendment, permanent tax cuts, or even meaningful border control. They've been too worried about looking like nice guys to a media that will never like them--ever.

Bush made the same mistake from Day One when he came to the White House. That "new tone" business might have worked back in Texas, where Democrats were a little more reasonable, but it was dangerously naive to believe that national Democrats were ever going to play nice. The best you could hope for from them was that they might smile and shake your hand...before stabbing you in the back. Just as they've done to Bush over and over and over.

Hopefully that makes my position on "moderation" a bit more clear, and why I have such complete disgust for it.

Because moderation in the strictest sense isn't what is being called for today; instead, it's the kind that sacrifices core principle on the altar of looking like a nice guy.