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April 11, 1988

On Being Middle of the Road (1988)

Passionate Moderation
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Moderation (1988)

The following Citation comes from an article by Judge Learned Hand, published by the Massachusetts Bar Association in 1942.... This much I think I do know — that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish. What is the spirit of moderation? It is a temper which does not press a partisan advantage to its bitter end, which can understand and respect the other side, which feels a unity between all citizens -­real and not the factitious product of propaganda — which recognizes their common fate and their common aspirations -­in a word, which has faith in the sacredness of the individual. If you asked me how such a temper and such a faith are bred and fostered, I cannot answer. They are the last flowers of civilization, delicate and easily overrun by the weeds of our sinful human nature; we may even now be witnessing their uprooting and disappearance until in the progress of the ages their seeds can once more find some friendly soil. But I am satisfied that they must have the vigor within themselves to withstand the winds and weather of an indifferent and ruthless world; and that it is idle to seek shelter for them in a courtroom. Men must take that temper and that faith with them into the field, into the market place, into the factory, into the council-rooms, into their homes; they cannot be imposed; they must be lived.
Passionate Moderation

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On Tolerance (1988)

Set this in a broader philosophical perspective: The conflict between the demand of free will on the one hand and the demands of socialization on the other. Insofar as the individual is concerned, without free will there is no Torah, and the halakha regards coercive behavior as a denial of freedom. On the other hand, there can be no community without accepted norms of conduct, and the community must socialize individuals into accepting its basic principles both of theory and practice.If we go too far in the direction of freedom, we have destroyed society. If we tip the balance to society and community, we have robbed the individual of his freedom.Hence, what is necessary is an ongoing dialectic between both extremes, such that the basic integrity of a human being is preserved, allowing him to express his freedom, and provision is made for the orderly continuity of the society.Refer to the Gemora (Shabbat 88) that the Torah was not normative as long as it was forced upon us, and did not become authoritative until it was reaccepted in the days of Mordechai and Esther.
Passionate Moderation

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The Middle Ground (1992)

What Maimonides said about the "middle way," is as relative today as it ever was, both in its original form and in its various other manifestations. The easiest thing is to go off to one of the extremes. The end of the spectrum, or towards the end of the spectrum, is where "nature" itself causes us to drift. Rarely does such drifting take us to a clearly defined middle of the road; that requires logical and thought-through steering. While it is true that some people will choose the path of moderation because they are afraid to make a choice — as between either of the two extremes — it is more often true that going to the extremes is a case of simple intellectual and existential weariness. It is simply too tiring and too demanding to fashion a way that preserves the basic integrity of ideals and yet is capable of being implemented in the rough and tumble of reality. The extremes offer tidiness at the expense of realism. They pick out one ideal, with all its meretricious appeal, and have little concern for how subsidiary ideals will be accommodated, or even how this ideal will be made to conform with reality or even marginally change that reality to conform to the ideal.
Passionate Moderation