A fierce partisan of moderation.

last updated 8 January 2015

Canada

Stephen Lautens

I am your typical Canadian radical, said Stephen Lautens in The Calgary Sun. “I’m passionate about my beliefs and I’ll defend them to the end.” But as a Canadian, my passion is for “being moderate.” Moderation in all things really is a radical position in today’s world, where so many people believe they have a monopoly on the truth. And it’s not easy to be moderate. “It takes real effort to try to understand the world in all its complexities and see it in other than black and white.” Extremists are always proposing sweeping solutions for society’s problems—a flat tax, say, or a change of regime. “Moderates are never certain, and know there are no quick fixes.” We support the troops, but we question whether to deploy them in places where the enemy is ill-defined, such as Afghanistan or Iraq. We believe in dialogue and negotiation, but we recognize that you can’t bargain with terrorists. “Live and let live” is our “non-battle cry.” It can be hard, when global problems seem so intractable, to resist the temptation to start shrieking. But we radicals will struggle to remain “fiercely moderate—no matter how nuts the world gets.”