When I was a much younger man and had figured out far more about the world than I know now, there was an old Republican saying that appealed to me: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Some of you may remember the source. It’s a condensed version of a very similar line from Barry Goldwater’s 1964 convention speech in Daly City, Calif., a moment when an ideological revolution captured the Republican Party.
I grew up a Reagan Republican, and many of us traced our movement’s origin to Goldwater’s nomination. Yes, he got trounced by Lyndon Johnson. Yes, he was harsher than Reagan. His libertarianism was just too hard-edged. But something about the zeal in those words spoke to me.
After all, when you’re absolutely certain that you’re right — that the policies you advance will defend liberty and defend justice, then isn’t zealotry called for? Wouldn’t it be a horrifying shame if, for example, injustice metastasized across the United States because we lacked conviction?
Astute readers have already identified a number of problems. Why are you so certain that your policies will advance liberty and justice? The world is complex. What makes you think you’ve figured it out? And if you’re wrong, isn’t your zealotry actually destructive?
Worst of all, when you’re convinced that you’re righteous — and you are surrounded by fellow zealots — it is easy to see yourself and your allies as inherently virtuous and your opponents (no matter how much they may profess good intentions) as fundamentally corrupt, perhaps even evil.
Tweak the saying, and its current application becomes clear. Extremism, the left might say, in the pursuit of universal health care is no vice; moderation in opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza is no virtue. Or, from the right, extremism in defense of the border is no vice; moderation in opposition to abortion is no virtue.
This brings me to three of my least favorite politicians: Donald Trump, Ken Paxton and Graham Platner. Why have so many people so vigorously supported such deeply flawed men? Why are their supporters so loyal, so vociferous, even after scandal after scandal?
And why are their supporters often such raging hypocrites — gleefully pointing out the sins and flaws in others while ignoring or rationalizing their own candidate’s profound faults?
I’m gobsmacked that so many Democrats stood by Graham Platner as long as they did — and a few people are still resentful about his fall. Rarely do you see a man wave more red flags, but Democrats stood by him through the revelation of what sure looked like a Nazi tattoo, a sexting scandal, horrible online posts and an assault allegation from a former girlfriend.
In the face of equivalent misconduct by a Republican, there is no doubt in my mind that my Democratic friends would have seen such a person as yet further proof that Republicans had abandoned decency, embraced corruption and decided to win at all costs.
But at least there was finally a line Democrats would not cross — when Jenny Racicot courageously came forward with her horrific rape allegation, the party said enough. It spoke with one voice, and Platner stepped aside.
But what is the Republican excuse? My entire adult life Republicans have claimed that they take sexual assault seriously, but they also want due process, whenever possible. They don’t want to see trial-by-media or trial-by-mob. That’s a sound, defensible position — one that I share.
But President Trump was found liable by a jury of his peers of sex abuse (and this is after many, many other claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault), and yet Republican devotion to Trump only intensified, just as it intensified as criminal indictment after criminal indictment was filed against him.
In some ways, Republican devotion to the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, is even more troubling. Their enthusiastic support for a corrupt adulterer (Texas Republicans voted for him in the Senate primary runoff over the scandal-free John Cornyn by a staggering 28 points) tells us that the moral compromise of Trump’s supporters isn’t confined to the president. There is an expanding acceptance of corrupt politicians — so long as they fight.
When extremism is a virtue and moderation is a vice, then roughness is part of the appeal. The respectability of the alternatives (Cornyn has occasionally compromised with Democrats!) indicates weakness and weakness alone.
I saw it when MAGA men actually seemed to admire Trump for allegedly having sex with Stormy Daniels. Mitt Romney was never that virile, but Trump? To quote an elder of my old church, “He’s an alley cat.” Again, that’s an elder in a church, not a groyper or member of the Proud Boys.
Perhaps the perfect representation of this line of thought on the Democratic side came from a journalist named Ken Klippenstein. Writing in defense of Platner after his sexting scandal was exposed, Klippenstein said, “People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly.”
“I call them smoothgroins,” Klippenstein said, “real-life barbie dolls with smooth plastic where a sexual organ should be.”
All too many people are getting the virtue equation exactly backward. They are labeling a person as good or bad based on their ideology — their position in the culture wars, whether they love or hate billionaires, or any other political fight — far more than their actions.
Or to put it another way, your ideology (or your theology for that matter) is your character.
So, if you’re on the left, if you check every box on wanting to secure women’s reproductive rights, support universal health care, and end American support for Israeli military actions in Gaza and beyond, then you’re a good person. And if information later emerges that you’ve sexted women who aren’t your wife or put Nazi symbols on your body, well even the best people go through hard times. We all make mistakes.
Conversely, on the right, if you check every box on opposing “wokeness,” securing the border, deporting immigrants, and first and foremost supporting Trump, then you’re MAGA’s version of a good person. And if you’ve had a few affairs or perhaps enriched yourself in public office? Well, Jesus is still on your side: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
But if you have the wrong ideas? God help you, you horrible troll. Why do they even let you vote?
You see this in what is, quite frankly, the weird Republican fury at Paxton’s Democratic opponent, James Talarico. They disagree with his theology, so he’s a heretic, and heretics are evil.
One question about that: Is apostasy better?
Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son and the head of Samaritan’s Purse, a huge Christian charity, called Talarico “wicked.” But Paxton acts as if his own faith isn’t real — isn’t that wicked? Yet hundreds of thousands of Texas Christians would crawl over broken glass to support him at the polls.
While I very much disagree with Talarico’s theology, I also know that theology is far more contestable than virtue. After all, who among us can truly know the mind and heart of God?
Theology should be a place of maximum humility. If the meaning of Scripture is so plain, why are there so many different strands of historic Christianity? Aren’t we told explicitly in Scripture, by the Apostle Paul no less, that we “see through a glass, darkly,” that we lack full knowledge and understanding of God?
So what can we do? We can tell the truth. We can choose not to cheat on our wives and husbands. We can treat people with decency. We can possess the humility to know that we don’t, in fact, have all the answers to securing liberty and justice in the United States, or anywhere else.
In truth, neither our ideology nor our theology makes us good or decent or worthy of any kind of position of responsibility or trust. It’s not that ideology and theology are meaningless. Both matter a great deal. But they do not define us. They do not make us good, and — in the absence of malice — they do not make us evil.
This shouldn’t be a hard concept for Christians in particular to understand. In the Book of James it says that even demons believe in God — and shudder. Paul wrote that even the most miraculous works are meaningless in the absence of love: “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
In fact, far from hindering the pursuit of justice, truth and humility facilitate it. If I could sit down and talk with my younger self, my first three words might be, “You’re an idiot.” No, that’s uncharitable. How about this instead, “Your heart might be in the right place, but you think you know more than you do.”
And how did I come to that realization? When by God’s grace I finally gained enough humility to actually listen to other people. Our truthfulness, our kindness, our humility — each of these virtues makes us accessible, teachable and accountable. They also make us more competent, more persuasive and ultimately more effective.
It’s imperative that we amend Goldwater’s slogan. One can and should pursue liberty and justice with courage and conviction, but we can also recognize that humility in defense of liberty is no vice, and cruelty in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
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