According to the dictionary, “extremism” describes actions or ideologies outside the political center of society. Thus, your view of an extremist depends upon your view of where the political center is.
“Political center” has nothing to do with theory. The Liberals such as Bill Maher would have you believe they are centrists. But then you count them and find that the hard left is no more than 20% of society, and probably not even close to that, you have to decide if you believe that the “political center” is the philosophy of the majority of the people.
Thus if you tally up the numbers of the hard left, left, center, right and hard right, you will come to an understanding that anyone representing the views of the majority in the middle cannot be considered extreme.
Yet the Leftist media is continually pouring out invective about the extremists on the right.
Here are the beliefs that they consider to be “extreme:”
- freedom
- rule of law
- individual responsibility
- private sector as the engine of wealth creation
- rewards for succeeding at taking a risk
- private property
- merit-based advancement
- moral principals
I submit that these are the core philosophies of the political center, not extremists.
In the place of these core philosophies the real extremists have substituted what is really the extreme:
- government control of every aspect of like
- any rule is accepted in a particular circumstance if it advances the agenda for control
- irresponsibility of the clients of the state
- government decides winners and losers
- wealth redistribution
- confiscation of property
- advancement based on loyalty to the state
- government by authority
So in reality, you have the hard left extremists accusing the center of being extreme. Just because they are loud and determined to impose their philosophy on us all, does not make them the center.