P.S.: I often feel "moderate rage." Any moderate should be able to recognize this -- when I hear or read some demagogue of the left or right making huge, sweeping arguments that boil all the complexity of life into a simple, catchy, wrong conclusion, I just want to grab the author by the neck and give him or her a shake.

A further fact about American-style moderation: It's what makes this country great. All around this great nation, we have a defense against idealogues, demagogues, idealists and snake-oil salesmen of many stripes. They come into town with the blogs and their talk shows, spouting off the latest party line like they invented it, and we moderates have an ancient and glorious defense:

"Hey buddy, what's the big idea?"

Yes, this is the ultimate, zen-like wisdom of the Moderate. Big Ideas kill people and destroy nations. Communism was a Big Idea. Fascism was a Big Idea. Wahhabism and Salafism are Big Ideas.

If I had been alive in the '60s, when the Left was having its heyday, I'm sure I would have been instinctively grumpy at the pogressive, hippie scum. They had way too many Big Ideas, and I have no doubt that my moderate tendencies would have forced me to lean rightward for the entire decade. Now the Right is rolling in its own triumphalism, and they're absolutely full of Big Ideas. Any moderate worthy of the label distrusts these movements and views them with a fishy eye.

So, as part of Moderate Rage Week, we ought to look at the blatant partisanship and polarized dialogues of the Backroom, and say with one voice, "What's the big idea?"