Extremism in the defense of extremism is a vice
: Oliver Willis responds to my post on extremism saying, rightly, that he has moderate opinions and he’s tired of being called an extremist for them. Right. I add in his comments:
Oliver:
The people branding you extremists for having a legitimate political opinion and taking part in the necessary national debate on issues are the extremists themselves. That’s what I’m trying to say: It’s time we turn the tables (or mirrors) and brand the extremists as extremists when they oversimplify and label and, more than anything else, demonize. The evil person is, thank God (and take that literally) rare; the incompetent is not so rare. I don’t agree with or like George Bush or plan to vote for him yet to watch him being labeled — by “my side” — as the devil himself is, at the very least, unhelpful to democracy and to “our side.” So it’s time we repudiate them. You and I agree about some things and disagree about some things but we respect each other and our opinions and we discuss them here and openly. That’s the way a democracy is supposed to work; that’s the only away it CAN work. When the extremists try to divide us and throw us into one corner or the other, we need to fight back and tell them we’re not the extremists, they are.
