Extremism is defined by wikipedia as"a term used to describe the actions or ideologies of individuals or groups outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards."
Everyone from President Bush (in the days immediately following 9/11), to the imam behind the World Trade Center mosque/cultural center, have told us our problem is not with Islam, but with Islamic extremists. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf expanded the problem when he explained it, saying that extremists from all religions are the problem, and religious moderates just need to come together.
But labeling "extremism" as the problem is a slippery slope. Our society speaks of common moral standards, but rejects the idea that there is a knowable, reasonable and ultimately true ethical norm that we should look to in forming our morality. Morality is what a society actually does; ethics is what a society should do, and with our loving embrace of post-modernism our society essentially turns to its own morality for its morality. If you think this sounds like nonsense, it is; it is a logical absurdity to say that nothing is absolutely true ethically.
The real problem is, if we have nothing to look at but our own morality, and we reject all ethical norms, then anyone who even suggests there is an ethical norm can now be labeled as an extremist. If in church I preach the final authority of the Bible, I am a religious extremist. If in government I preach the authority of the Constitution as it written by the Founders, I am a political extremist. And since we have labeled extremism the problem, I am only safe so long as I never stand up for anything and say "this is truth; we should do this for this reason."
This really defines much of our lives as Americans. We have become a nation where our highest virtue is expressed in the phrase "live and let live." Very few are threatened by Christianity, if all we make it as the church is a feel-good social experience we have on Sunday (Wednesday is also largely permissible). But if we dare to say "as we study Creation we hear the spoken Word of God; here in the Bible we read the written Word of God; here in the person of Jesus Christ we see the incarnate Word of God," we have committed that gravest of cultural sins, extremism. We have said that something is absolutely true - and in a nation of people striving to be seen as caring, knowing and tolerant, we find that this rigid stance on our part cannot be tolerated.
And isn't that intolerance, in the end, just a tad bit extreme?
