WHY NOT MODERATION?: Letters to Young Radicals, using Rilke's model to equally good effect

WHY NOT MODERATION?: Letters to Young Radicals
AURELIAN CRAIUTU
Cambridge University Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$24.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Moderation is often presented as a simple virtue for lukewarm and indecisive minds, searching for a fuzzy center between the extremes. Not surprisingly, many politicians do not want to be labelled 'moderates' for fear of losing elections.

Why Not Moderation? challenges this conventional image and shows that moderation is a complex virtue with a rich tradition and unexplored radical sides. Through a series of imaginary letters between a passionate moderate and two young radicals, the book outlines the distinctive political vision undergirding moderation and makes a case for why we need this virtue today in America. Drawing on clearly written and compelling sources, Craiutu offers an opportunity to rethink moderation and participate in the important public debate on what kind of society we want to live in. His book reminds us that we cannot afford to bargain away the liberal civilization and open society we have inherited from our forefathers.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: In our time of polarization and extremism, being "moderate" is seen as synonymous with being indecisive, wishy-washy, uncommitted or non-committal; likely to be an untrustyworthy ally against the Hated "Them." I'm guilty of seeing the moderate in this light myownself, so I get it. I chose to read this political version of Letters to a Young Poet for that reason.

It begins by outlining moderation as a state or condition of its own, not merely something that is not radical. Like its cousin "liberalism" that shares it desuetude, moderation is a central virtue of inclusivity. Author Aurelian makes the point in his tendentious letters to the imaginary young radicals that the society within which they exercise freedom of conscience safely was founded on principle of moderating passions through discussion.

Civil discourse is both senses of civil before it can be effective. In advocating for the benefits of moderation, Author Aurelian offers competing conflation/separation paradigms when each suits his purpose; he seems to conflate throughut the existence of moderation with the ability to compromise and creates straw men to suit the needs of the moment in his argument. I say this not because I disagree, but because I know some academic or another is going to point out the "structural deficiency" of the technique. That might well be relevant when a book is written for a panel of dissertation judges. This is much more a book meant to reach the recent graduate from either secondary (better) or college (good) education. I doubt it will do much to persuade radicalized people. It is a psychic vaccine against the seductive allure of being Right that is so extremely addictive.

I'd encourage my readers to think about gifting this book to grands/niblings/young people between sixteen and twenty-four or so. We need, as a society as well as in our office as Old Authority Figures, to damp down the terrible destructive misuse of young people's passionate feelings. Providing them with an alternative that is not the squishy bland tedious thing they're taught it is, we stand a chance of keeping the best of our present society.

When the alternative is clashing authoritarianisms, the urgency becomes clear to y'all...or so I hope, since it only just happened to me.