the avoidance of excess or extremes, esp. in one's behavior or political opinions.
"he urged the police to show moderation"
Aristotle said, "Moderation in all things" and even wrote a book
detailing multiple situations to which is can be applied. On the
surface, moderation seems to be a wise and prudent approach to take with
many things from diet to politics. Still, Americans seem to find it a
very difficult thing to practice.
Yet . . .
"A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation."
-Moliere
"Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody."
-Mark Twain
"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."
-Oscar Wilde
"Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."
-Saint Augustine
. . . They overheard you
Just the other day
A simple word
About the
way we get along
If only I were sure
Of the semantics
Having doubts
'cause I'm
One hopeless romantic
Could it be
You're slipping away
from me
What will I do
If what I'm thinking is true
And you want to
be
Really free of me
I won't last very long
Very far from your heart
And this third-hand intelligence
Might be the way that it starts.
Heard
somebody say
They thought they saw you
Walking in their way
You were not
alone
They said he didn't look like
Thinking to myself
Must be
mistaken
Try not to believe
but still badly shaken
Why would you
Deceive me in things you do
So many years
Sharing our laughter and
tears
Lasted very long
Maybe I was wrong
Not to ask you
Why you
feel
We've drifted apart
And this third-hand intelligence
Might be the
way that it starts
Are my sources reliable
Wait and
see
Wait and see
Is my psyche too pliable
It could be
It could
be
If somebody said
The sky was falling
Soon
we'll all be dead
Have to quit our stalling
Try to be prepared
Would you believe it's true
Or would you question
All the things you do
And change your direction
From spinning round
When it hits the ground
That's just not true
Any believers are few
When you've seen it all
It could never fall
Any more than
I think you could
Tear us apart
And
this third-hand intelligence
Might be the way that it starts
. . . or the late Christopher Hitchens who I liked to refer to as 'our modern-day' H.L. Mencken. . .
(from 1999's No One Left To Lie To; The Values of the Worst Family by Christopher Hitchens where he is quoting his contribution to the Los Angeles Times in January of 1998)
Montesquieu remarked that if a great city or a great state should fall as the result of a apparent "accident," then there would be a general reason why it required only an accident to make it fall. This may appear to be a tautology, but it actually holds up very well as a means of analyzing what we lazily refer to as a "sex scandal."
If a rust-free zipper were enough on its own to cripple a politician, then quite clearly Bill Clinton would be remembered, if at all, as a mediocre Governor of the Great State of Arkansas. It is therefore silly to describe the present unseemly furor as a prurient outburst over one man's apparently self-destructive sexual compulsions.
Until recently, this same man was fairly successfully fighting a delaying action against two long-standing complaints. The first was that he had imported unsavory practitioners like the disgraced Webster Hubbell. The second was that he viewed stray women employees as spoils along the trail. . .
. . . Had Clinton begun by saying: "Yes, I did love Gennifer, but that's my business," many of us would have rejoiced and defended him. Instead, he disowned and insulted her and said he'd been innocent of that adultery, and treated the voters as if they were saps. Having apparently put Ms. Lewinsky into the quick-fix world of Jordan and Morris, he is in no position to claim that it's a private emotional matter, and has no right to confuse his business with that of the country's. Which is why he has a scandal on "his" hands, and is also why we need feel no pang when he falsely claims that the press and public are wasting his valuable time, when the truth is exactly the other way about."
The Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories have never been convincingly refuted.
Ted Kennedy's episode with Mary Jo Kopechne was never satisfactorily explained.
People actually praised Richard Nixon upon his death in spite of his suspicions, grudges, lies, deceit, vulgarity, mean-spiritedness and paranoia.
Mother Theresa is internationally revered even though her positions were ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms.
Ronald Reagan is viewed as a hero even though he single-handedly sought to destroy the credibility of the United Nations,
spat in the face of international law, and brought misery and suffering
to the oppressed working class across the world.
George H. W. Bush is deemed an innocent incompetent notwithstanding his incomplete triumph in the first Gulf War or the broken promise ("read my lips: no new taxes") which came to embody his Republican Party's unwavering commitment to perpetual tax cuts and staggering debt. Instead, Poppy's legacy can be summed up in three words he introduced to enable Republicans and their conservative amen corner to brush off charges of their own corruption and law-breaking: "criminalization of politics." From Iran-Contra, Plamegate and Tom Delay to the U.S. attorneys purge and his son's regime of detainee torture, 41's criminalizing politics defense has been part of the GOP scandal playbook ever since.
The events of 9-11-2001 have never been fully investigated to the point that the 9-11 Commission's conclusions appear to be a coverup.
Barack Obama ran for president of the U.S. on the premise of change but has, in reality, changed very little of what the prior administration hath wrought.
