Barry Goldwater famously said in accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination:<\/p>\n
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have finally come to the realization why neither part of this quote is true. Extremism raises peoples’ emotions.\u00a0 Uncontrolled emotions make it hard for people to make rational decisions.\u00a0 Most of the time, we want people to make rational decisions.<\/p>\n
At least this is my rationalization to justify my emotional dislike of this famous quote.<\/p>\n
Thinking about the current Health Care debate, getting people all riled up\u00a0 (or however they get riled up) is not helping them to discover what the health care reform really is.\u00a0 Most of the people who are against it would actually benefit greatly from it.\u00a0 Apart from the individuals, the economy and the country as a whole would benefit.<\/p>\n
In this case moderation may be the best approach for calming the situation down. What good does it do when the proponents call the opponents names and get just as emotional? How is that\u00a0 going to make the opponents feel that the outcomes they\u00a0 worry about will be averted by changes the proponents will make?\u00a0 Each side might as well be shouting, “Is anyone listening to me?”<\/p>\n
The answer ought to be an obvious, “Yes we are listening to you.\u00a0 Now let me explain what we have done in response to your concerns.\u00a0 Then tell me if this gets to the essence of your worry.”<\/p>\n
It does no good for either side to explain when people on the other side are not listening. Maybe neither side is able to listen to what they hear because their emotions are too strong a filter between their ears and the rational thinking part of their brains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barry Goldwater famously said in accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination: I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue! I have finally come to the realization why neither part of this quote is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2044"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2048,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions\/2048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}