The 2010 election season promises to be one of the most polarizing elections in modern history. This is most evident in Delaware, where anti-masturbation candidate Christine O'Donnell faces off against Chris "bearded Marxist" Coons. When O'Donnell was selected to be the Republican nominee on Sept. 14, reactions across the nation varied from Karl Rove's annoyance at another extremist candidate to Democrats renewing their calls that the Tea Party is too far right and unrepresentative of America. Indeed, this has been a standard label of political figures and groups throughout this election. President Obama is "too liberal" and the Tea Party movement is "too conservative."
The cry for moderation has been echoed throughout America. Yet the general feeling is that the politicians and the media are not listening. Mark McKinnon, a political strategist under President George W. Bush, was quoted in The Los Angeles Times saying, "Middle America is being ignored by Washington and the media. Centrists are desperate for a voice today." One only has to turn on the television and watch a little of MSNBC or Fox News to find that partisans are taking over and that moderates are in short supply.
But no one is asking about what exactly being too partisan or too extreme means. At first glance, it seems fairly simple: Being extreme means being much more left or right on the political spectrum than the majority of Americans. Thus, it is bad to be extremist because extremism is not reflective of the majority's view. There are several problems with this line of thought.
First, if nothing else, the tag of extremist has little real meaning. Any political figure who is disliked is immediately decried as an extremist. This is best seen with the Tea Party, which often receives the extremist label. The "Contract from America" calls for, among other things, the constitutionality of new laws, a balanced federal budget and simplifying the tax systems. Calling these stances "extremist" is questionable. Even though the Tea Party is comprised mainly of Republicans, something tells me that Democrats and independents do not exactly want unconstitutional laws, unbalanced budgets or a complex tax system.
Second, there is the problem of the gray fallacy or the argument to moderation. This classical logical fallacy holds that arguments lying somewhere between two polar opposites must be true. This is simply flawed logic. Just because a claim is extreme does not mean that it is false, and just because a claim is moderate does not mean it is true. Sadly, this fallacy is far too often used as a supposedly legitimate argument in today's political atmosphere.
The platform of the Tea Party, Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future," and many more ideas and policies are dismissed as extremist without much in-depth analysis. This is not to say that O'Donnell's anti-masturbation view is not a bit nutty, but should not society at least examine the idea instead of just laughing at it? We should remember John Stuart Mill's argument for the freedom of expression here, that silencing an opinion would deprive the human race of "the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." Dismissing an argument as extremist and leaving it at that is in no way better than simply silencing that opinion.
Finally, we neglect our own history when disregarding extremist views. We seem to have forgotten that our great founding fathers such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were extremists. Letting the people decide their own affairs and government? What a preposterous idea.
The greatest changes in our history have all received the label of extremist in their own periods. The abolition movement, the women's suffrage movement and the civil rights movement were all considered extreme. I certainly hope that no one would take the middle ground in any of these arguments today. To our modern eyes, these changes seem so absolute, so natural, that we forget that they were born out of "extremist" ideas.
The ideas that have defined America for each era of history were all once labeled as extreme but now seem moderate. Is extremism merely a reflection of change, whereas moderation is reflection of the status quo? If so, do we still want to be moderates?
George Wang is a Viewpoint columnist for The Cavalier Daily.
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