Moderates Keep Fighting & Don't Look for the Easy Way Out, with Aurelian Craiutu

The Long Game

Aurelian Craiutu is the author of Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals.

Craiutu is the chair of Indiana University's political science department. He is reclaiming a word and idea — moderation — that is typically despised and criticized as weak and cowardly. This is a misunderstanding of what moderation is, he insists.

Moderation is not for the weak or the indecisive, Craiutu says. Instead, it is a fighting creed which requires courage, strength, and savvy. It's not for everyone, he says. In other words, the implication is that some people don't have what it takes to be a moderate, because it's much easier to be a radical, or a purist, or an ideologue.

"Maintaining our civilization is an endless and complex task," (23) Craiutu writes.

Moderates do not look for silver bullets to perform this task. They recognize that it is an ongoing, never-fully-solved challenge. And they have a "willingness to exist inside open-ended situations that do not come full circle and cannot be unequivocally settled" (72).

In other words, moderates are fighters who aren't looking for an easy way out or for a vacation from the ongoing and ever present task of maintaining an open and free society.