In the Secularism class today, I asked students what they think a "moderate" is. I was troubled by a batch of papers in which they had responded to the argument that most religious people are "religious moderates" rather than "extremists" (in Jeffrey Stout's presidential address at AAR last year, "The folly of secularism") by dismissing or ignoring it. As far as they're concerned (I generalize), there is no such thing as a religious moderate - religion is by nature extreme and uncompromising. Unless, a few conceded, it's people who abjure "organized religion" altogether and accept that everything is subjective anyway.
It was an interesting discussion. I started by asking who uses the term "moderates" - well, it turns out moderates do. "Extremists" don't, but then they don't call themselves "extremists" either. What do they call themselves, and the others? The class was stumped, so I proposed purist, fundamentalist, radical on the one hand, and wishy-washy, fence sitter, compromiser, sell-out and hypocrite on the other - and for certain religious types, prideful, taking into your hands what is God's. But really, I was a bit stumped by my own question! How disturbing (but revealing) to realize that we have no safe words for discussing all this.
Next I asked what made a moderate moderate: was it a virtue, a temperament, a political commitment, a way of holding beliefs? The answer I wanted was that it was a virtue (and I proceeded to tell them about Aristotle's idea of virtue as the mean between extremes), but the one I got was that moderates don't want to stand out, don't want to disagree with people, don't want to take sides, are undecided, don't really care. Is there anything positive we can say about a moderate, I asked, any way to describe it in positive terms? The best I got was open-minded, but when I asked what that meant and why one should be open-minded, blanks again.
It was time for a lesson in democracy! We'd talked about temporary coalitions last week, so we already had in play a picture in which people aren't fixed in one spot, but move back and forth in response to the call of their own community of conviction and the needs of the larger community. One student had asked how one could compromise in some cases (even if it is the only way to effect any of the changes one thinks important) without losing sight of one's principles: on what basis did one decide when and how far to move towards coalition? In some cases one's principles might furnish that basis, but not in most, so the compromising must be coming from somewhere else. Once again, the "extremist" position paradoxically came out looking principled and true, courageous and decisive.
With Aristotle's help I tried to argue (trying to convince myself as well) that the better model is of an ethical and political life in which one is always having to balance concerns, always seeking the mean between extremes, always acting in a particular complicated case which requires judgment. From that perspective, it is courageous and decisive to find the mean, and lazy and indecisive (and politically irresponsible) not to.
I could have invoked the cardinal virtues here - fortitude, temperance, justice and prudence - but we were running out of time. So I returned to the question of what makes moderates moderate. Why should they be open to work with those of other views? Is it only for reasons of political expediency? Or is it because of a sense of humility about one's own views - I may be wrong - or a commitment to recognizing the other as a member of the same moral community who cannot be ignored, whom one is not battling over power but pledged to find a way of living with?
I mentioned but didn't dwell on the possibility that many people might have religious reasons for these commitments - that one's religious principles might well push you to seek common ground, listen to the other, try to work for a more perfect union; but that's for another day. We all agreed that this didn't sound like American democracy today (though of course Obama sounds like this sometimes), and I think at least some in the class saw how sad that is, saw that it perhaps need not be that way.
