Legal Commentary

I'd like to invite you all to join my so-far unsuccessful campaign against the use of the term "extremist," when used as a term of opprobrium. The term, so used, is the epitome of a "weasel word" -- a word that allows its users to conceal their need to define their moral terms and thereby (like the lithe little predator that gives its name to the phrase) slip past their opponents' defenses.

The problem with the term is that it subtly substitutes intensity for direction, inviting the audience to believe that the moral failing of the "extremist" is in the intensity with which he or she holds a belief and not the belief itself. Take the all-too common phrase (it got 126,000 results on a Google search), "Muslim extremist." The phrase as used makes it seem as if the problem with someone who commits violent acts in the name of Islam is that their beliefs or actions are simply taken "to extremes" -- as if a moderate amount of violence, religious intolerance, anti-semitism, censorship, or oppression of women would be acceptable. But moderation in vice is still vice: Someone who (for instance) violates others' rights to physical safety does not become acceptable because he or she does so with moderation -- say, by tripping them in dark alleys or tying their shoelaces together rather than setting off car bombs. Likewise, extremism in virtue does not thereby become less virtuous: No one disapproved of Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer because they took altruism to extremes.

Why the prevalence of the term when it manifestly is so inadequate for the purposes with which it is used? Here's a hypothesis: It allows the user to avoid having to take a moral position on the substantive merits of an issue, substituting instead a bland call for moderation. In this respect, "extremist" is the cousin of equally obnoxious adjective, "progressive" -- a term that also uses an empty spatial metaphor to avoid definition of aims. To say that one is "progressive" or pursues "progress" is to say exactly nothing while appearing to take a stand. (Towards what are you trying to progress? A disease can be "progressive": Absent a definition and justification of goals, pursuit of "progress" -- that is, forward motion -- is not pursuit of any definite goal whatsoever).

Likewise, attacking a person or movement because they are "outside the mainstream" or "extremist" is a weaselly evasion of the duty to take a stand. Explain why "the mainstream" is beneficial or the poles on the spectrum are undesirable.

In sum, I exhort you all to join me in ferreting out these insufferable weasel words. When it comes to linguistic precision (or animal metaphors, for that matter), there is nothing wrong with going to extremes.