Looking to the middle
Political extremism hurts our nation as we look for answers on the edges
- posted: 03 July 2007
- scrollopinion@byui.edu
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas saw his government fall apart two weeks ago. The delicate balance that Abbas had achieved between his Fatah party and the opposition Hamas party disintegrated in one bloody week.
Now, Palestine is split, with Abbas’ emergency government controlling the West Bank and Hamas militants in power in Gaza. The reasons for the coup are varied and complex. But at the root of it all lies a tradition of extremism.
“Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills and a conviction that there are identifiable villains [behind] it all,” said social activist John W. Gardner.
We’re familiar with the term “extremism” when it involves Middle Eastern groups like Fatah and Hamas. Most of us wouldn’t hesitate to call Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr extremists. But what about those closer to home?
Independence Day has always been an opportunity to celebrate what makes our country great. But it also gives us an opportunity to evaluate our nation’s well-being. Is extremism creeping into our society?
Again, it’s easy for us to call people like Timothy McVeigh and Cho Seung-Hui extremists, because it removes them from us. It gives us a distance from which we can consider the horrible things they’ve done.
But the fact is that they were a part of us. They were children and students and employees just like the rest of us. They became killers gradually.
As Gardner said, their extremism began with an overly simplified view of the world and the belief that certain people were responsible for its problems. The logical conclusion of such a mindset? Just get rid of those responsible, and the world will be a better place.
Fortunately, extremist ideas do not always lead to the type of violence we saw from these men in Oklahoma City and Blacksburg, Va. In fact, they rarely do. But collectively, those ideas can do even greater harm.“Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills and a conviction that there are identifiable villains [behind] it all,” said social activist John W. Gardner.
You don’t hear of many Germans in the 1930s blowing up Jewish synagogues or slaughtering Jews in the schools. Instead, one extreme party came to power, a party that gave a simple diagnosis of their society’s problems and identified the villains behind the problems. A collective extremism turned into the Holocaust, perhaps the saddest chapter in Western history.
The reason we revisit the horror of the Holocaust is to remind us of the great evil that an extremist mindset can bring about.
Many would say that extremism isn’t a problem in America today. They would say that we’re a moderate society, well-governed and well-behaved.
But aren’t we guilty, just a little bit, of simplifying our nation’s problems and pegging them on certain people or groups of people?
How many of us think we can fix the problem of illegal immigration by just building a wall and kicking out all the illegals?
How many Democrats think all Republicans are greedy, blood-thirsty villains? How many conservatives think all liberals are anarchist punks?
This political divisiveness is what leads to the type of extremism that Palestine is dealing with. The truth is, the problems we face as a nation are complex. They can’t be solved by simplifying them and naming one group of people the villains.
The solutions we all seek are like the juicy Fourth-of-July slices of watermelon many will enjoy this week. The tastiest, most fulfilling part of the watermelon is in the ripe, red middle, not in the hard, green rind.
So it is with the truth; it is not on the edges of the issue, where many look so intently. The answers to complex issues are not simple absolutes.
Rather, the truth and the answers are somewhere in the middle, where we’ll have to come together to find them. 
