On What Constitutes “Extreme”

I, along with many other pro-life advocates, was overjoyed to hear of the new law in the state of Texas that will effectually reduce the number of abortions in the state tremendously. Likewise, I was not exactly shocked to hear that the president, along with many others of his ilk, have recoiled at the decision. Mr. Biden even went so far as to call the new law “extreme”. This adjective used to modify a law that should have been enacted decades ago is misapplied. If I were to spend all of my time correcting the serpentine rhetoric that oozes out of Washington day after day, I would never leave my desk. But, the president’s use of “extreme” has, in the parlance of a bygone era, stuck in my craw. In response, I would like to give just a few contemporary examples that are correctly modified with the word “extreme”.

It is extreme that in America one in five pregnancies that don’t end in miscarriage are aborted. It is an extreme absurdity that we have laws that protect people who are destroying a fifth of our future population. It is an extreme mark against the so-called progressive left that they support a system that makes legal the fact that thousands more black babies are aborted in New York City than are born.

It is an extreme measure that instead of waiting until all of our countrymen and allies had made it safely out of Afghanistan, our president decided to stand by an arbitrary date of exit. It is an extreme dishonor that those who have lived under the freedom our fighting men brought to their country – including minorities like my Christian brothers and sisters – have been left to the merciless madness of the Taliban by feckless politicians, most of whom did nothing to free them in the first place.

It is an extreme departure from reason that teaches our children that the world is divided into the oppressor and the oppressed, the difference being whatever those who identify as oppressed claim it to be. Is it not extreme that critical race theory would have little white boys see themselves as villains because of the color of their skin – lads who have yet to grow their first chest hair are saddled with hundreds of years of guilt they did nothing to accumulate, and God-willing, will do nothing to perpetuate? This same extreme theory would teach young black men and women that the difficulties in their lives have nothing to do with their own choices, and thus there is nothing they can do about them; instead of encouraging them to be the upright men and women they can and should be, CRT teaches them that no matter how high they rise, they will always be victims of “systemic racism”.

It is an extreme disappointment that a free nation would allow itself to be bullied into silence by people who can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman. It is an extreme incongruity with most of our storied past that in our day to teach your son to be a chivalrous gentleman and your daughter to be a noble lady is seen by many as “abusive” and “toxic”; instead, we should leave their moral education to whom? the state? May it never be!

No, Mr. Biden, there are many things in our benighted nation that might accurately be modified by the word extreme, but a law passed to save the lives of beautiful babies made in the image of God their Creator – that is not extreme. Perhaps, the words you were looking for were “right”, “decent”, and “just”?

2 thoughts on “On What Constitutes “Extreme”

  1. Ben Burgher

    Well said!!
    C.S. Lewis in “Screwtape Letters” addresses the word ‘extreme’…….. I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the “Cause” is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-rightousness of a secret society or a clique. The Church herself is, of course, heavily defended and we have never yet quite succeeded in giving her all the characteristics of a faction…..

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