Extreme moderation

This was an idea in words I played around with decades ago and rather than it fading away, it’s been reinforced and further reinforced.  Another way to put it is a chap is asked about his political stance.

“Moderation,” he replies, “extremely so.”

Still doesn’t convey it, not fully.  The idea is he holds what are or once were, fairly conventional notions of God, family, job, home, family, friendships, bonhomie and conviviality, working hard, earning, putting aside a nest egg, nothing held to the point of fanaticism, fairly easygoing on such things.

But … the moment these are attacked, in an organised way, with a view to destroying them, he becomes ‘radical’, meaning ‘back to the roots’.  In short, he holds moderate views … extremely strongly, plus his once reasonable tone and even his language become more and more extreme in now having to defend moderate positions.

Thus:

Andrew Devine is a seemingly conventional chap who chooses a fairly centrist blog to write his centrist view on.  He’s done the same thing … become polarised, is taking increasingly radical view of it all in opposition to true fanatical, insane extremism on the far left.

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/im-coming-out-as-a-far-right-extremist/

What’s sad is that many of those who might have been called left-liberal or that wishy-washy oxymoron “democratic socialist” or even LibDem in the UK are dragged ever leftward and never forget the Latin for that is “sinister”.

Andrew writes:

However, over the past decade or so, the predominantly left-leaning media and their woke activist allies are constantly warning us of the ever increasing threat from the ‘far right’. This baffled me until I realised they were actually talking about me and lots of other ordinary people, or ‘deplorables’ as Hillary Clinton would call us. The terms ‘far right’ and ‘fascism’ no longer mean what they once did, having been completely reinvented by those who champion both globalism and woke progressivism. You can be deemed far right or fascist for holding certain political or social views that almost everyone apart from a small number on the outer fringes of the political spectrum held until relatively recently.

Yes.  If you examine my political views point by point … small govt, low tax, strong national defence, family, home, job/career, men being men, women being women and so on … which of these are in any way extreme?

Yet I’m divisive and unpleasant.  How?  For vehemently and scathingly holding to these positions.  Interesting.  Same goes for many of our mates and mate-esses.  To the increasingly far left sweeping all formerly left of centre towards them like a giant vacuum cleaner, we deplorables are far right maniacs.