Moderacy in the Defence of Liberty is No Vice

When American Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican nomination for President in 1964, he uttered words that have been repeated often by conservative thinkers wanting to follow in his footsteps.

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Goldwater would go on to lose the 1964 Presidential election to Lyndon B Johnson, partially as a result of the infamous "Daisy" TV spot which even Johnson admitted may have been excessive, but made the point he felt needed to be made about Goldwater.

That point is rather simple: that extremism does not guarantee the survival of liberty. Rather, extremism can only ensure its destruction.

Goldwater had famously remarked that he believed a nuclear weapon was a weapon unlike any other. There were few ways to interpret Goldwater's remarks other than to agree that he must have thought the use of nuclear weapons to be perfectly permissible -- and who other than someone with incredibly extreme views would believe this?

Yet the geo-political climate of the Cold War also speaks for itself, as does the nuclear balance of power of the time. If Goldwater as President had used nuclear weapons the Soviet Union would almost certainly retaliate against not only the United States, but against all of its allies as well, including (but certainly not limited to) Britain, France and Canada.

What would have emerged in the wake of Goldwater's use of nuclear arms -- presumptively launched in the defense of liberty -- would instead have been its destruction in every sense of the word.

The speech in which Goldwater spoke these famous words contained several other sentences which could be treated as a defense of extremism. Most of it leads to dangerous conclusions, although not all of it.

"Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."

Tolerance for tyranny, of course, also spells the end of liberty.

One should be reminded of a poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller, a German evangelical pastor who, although initially a supporter of Adolph Hitler, turned away from the National Socialist Party in the face of its extremism.

He wrote:

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out."

Niemoller's poem reminds us of a famous remark by Edmund Burke: "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".

Although Niemoller opposed the Weimar Republic and supported right-wing opponents of the regime, he couldn't have imagined what was coming when he supported Hitler's ascension to the office of Chancellor. He believed Hitler's ascension woud bring a German revival.

Instead, in the Nazi's racially-charged fascism, he recognized the looming destruction of Germany. And for a time, this was true. The war that Hitler launched decimated German industry, ravaged its population, and split the country in half for the better part of 50 years.

Niemoller opposed the Aryan Paragraph which restricted citizenship in Germany to members of the Aryan race. In response to it, he formed the Confessing Church, a demonination which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches, and joined a group of German clergy who opposed the Paragraph as in violation of the Christian virtue of charity.

For his troubles, Niemoller was treated as many critics of the German state were: he was arrested on July 1, 1937.

If Niemoller had opposed the Nazi regime sooner, it's hard to say what success he could have had on his own. But it's undeniable that Niemoller was one of literally thousands of Germans who could have stopped Adolph Hitler if they had recognized the danger of extremism soon enough.

For a time, Niemoller tolerated tyranny. In time, he paid with his own freedom. It was merely by his own integrity that he salvaged his conscience.

"Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

The crux of this statement is that one must actually be pursuing justice. Indeed, this can often be difficult to determine.

When the Girondins and Jacobins struggled over control of the French state during the reign of terror, each side believed it was fighting "enemies of the revolution".

An unknown number of French -- estimated ranging from 16,000 to 40,000 -- were subjected to the tender mercies of the "national razor", also known as the Guillotine. Through the Committee for Public Safety and the Revolutionary Tribunal, revolutionaries denounced their political opponents and sent them to the guillotine for beheading.

The most famous practitioner of terror during this period was Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore de Robespierre, who dominated that committee.

Many innocent men met their deaths at the guillotine under the tribunal's decree. Certainly, many members of the committee must have known full well that they were using the revolutionary state organs to murder for their own benefit. Others must have believed they were executing dangerous reactionaries and dispensing justice.

In the end, the Terror finally turned on itself. Following the Thermidorian Reaction, Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just were executed at the hands of their own machinations.

Just as Martin Niemoller's tolerance in the face of tyranny threatened to destroy him, Robespierre's and Saint-Just's extremism consumed them.

The lesson is as simple as it is evident: just as timidity is a danger to the timid, extremism is a danger to the extremist.

"Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue."

When sir Winston Churchill reassumed his role as First Lord of the Admiralty upon the British Declaration of war on Nazi Germany, he already knew that reckless decisions could have disastrous consequences.

During the First World War, Churchill planned British landings on Gallipoli. What unfolded there was an unmitigated military disaster.

Nonetheless, Churchill made other decisions with a great deal more deliberation -- including making the decision to convert the British Navy from coal-fuelled steamers into diesel-fuelled vessels.

When Germany began to rearm, Churchill damned the consequences as criticized Neville Chamberlain as fiercely as he thought necessary for his appeasement of Nazi Germany. He was effectively exiled from the ranks of the Tories. He was overlooked when Chamberlain appointed a new Minister for Coordination of Defense in 1936.

Even after war was declared, Chamberlain continued to be all too timid in the face of Hitler's aggression. Churchill recommended that Britain move to pre-emptively occupy Norwegian iron-ore resources at Navik, and iron mines in Kiruna, Sweden. Chamberlain rejected the idea, and Nazi Germany instead invaded and occupied Norway and Sweden.

In time, Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister. Being one of the only Tories who could command near-unanimous support of all the parties in the House of Commons, Churchill was asked to take over. He agreed.

He carefully navigated Britain's course through the war, even allying with the Soviet Union in order to free Europe from the Nazi's grip of tyranny. There is, however, a caveat to be found.

While Europe was eventually freed from Nazi domination, Eastern Europe fell under the domination of Soviet tyranny, left to the tender mercies of Joseph Stalin, the man who had engineered the notorious Holodomor which wiped out millions of Ukranians.

To continue fighting the war against the Soviets was clearly an option for nobody involved. But to allow the Soviet Union to decide the course of Eastern Europe for nearly fifty years after the war's end had its own disastrous consequences -- both in terms of the Cold War and its various satellite conflicts, and the direct consequences for the people of countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

But the moderate course Churchill plotted as Prime Minister of Britain ensured a stable and free country for the people of Britain ever since the end of the war -- even if Britons rejected Churchill's leadership in the next election.

These historical lessons carry an important moral: extremism is the enemy of liberty.

Extremism doesn't preserve liberty, nor can it enhance it, or even tolerate it. Extremism destroys liberty, and must be opposed in all corners, and at all costs.

That is the lesson that Canadians must remind themselves of this Canada Day and every Canada Day -- Canada has enjoyed a history largely free of extremism. It's enabled Canadians to remain free.

Anyone who would threaten that delicate balance of moderacy must be opposed, no matter what.

Liberty must be continually vindicated through the defeat of extremism.