{"id":61379,"date":"2018-08-27T17:25:14","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T23:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/beset-by-extremism-in-our-national-politics-colorado-knows-what-to-do\/"},"modified":"2018-08-27T23:25:14","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T23:25:14","slug":"beset-by-extremism-in-our-national-politics-colorado-knows-what-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/beset-by-extremism-in-our-national-politics-colorado-knows-what-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Beset by extremism in our national politics, Colorado knows what to do"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(AP
(AP Photo\/David Zalubowski) Gov. John Hickenlooper asks a question of his staff before delivering his final State of the State address to a joint assembly in Denver.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hickenlooper, meanwhile, actually gets things done, even in the last months of his administration \u2013 and with little fanfare, as he did recently by pushing ahead to address the hazards posed by the state\u2019s abandoned oil and gas wells.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know what the likely outcome is of the race to replace him, or even where our support will lie when it comes time to make our endorsement, but we do know now that we are faced with two candidates who have a significant partisan and ideological divide. And that worries us because we are certain the state\u2019s future lies somewhere down the road between them.<\/p>\n

Being a purple state is no longer some quirk or artifact. It has become a state of being and one we are in no hurry to abate. It works for Colorado. It helps us arrive at livable compromises on issues such as drilling and taxes. We are blessed to be able to go to the state ballot and tinker.<\/p>\n

But to stay purple, we have to see that while neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are unique or irreplaceable, we also need both striving for the right as they see the right. That\u2019s their job.<\/p>\n

It is not necessarily the job of the voters, however. We owe blind allegiance to nothing but the common good. We choose candidates and leaders, not parties.<\/p>\n

Our values and ideals could never reside in one party. They\u2019re within us.<\/p>\n

This is \u2013 we freely admit \u2013 a moderate stance. And moderate should not be a dirty word in a nation beset by extremism.<\/p>\n

The other day, an acquaintance upbraided us, asking, \u201cWould you have advocated for moderation in addressing slavery?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln, our greatest president, was a moderate. The fire-eaters of the South thought he was a zealot, but the leading abolitionists of his day reviled him, and routinely abused him in their correspondence for being cautious, weak and immoral.<\/p>\n

But who best addressed slavery? When has moderation ever failed us? And when has extremism not ended in tears before supper?<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation,\u201d the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison said in 1831. \u201cTell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; \u2013 but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, our Colorado house is not on fire, and our brothers and sisters are not enslaved. Compromise ensures that.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtremism in defense of liberty is no vice,\u201d Barry Goldwater said in 1964, when he accepted the Republican nomination for president \u2013 and then lost in a landslide, partly because not enough Americans believed liberty was so imperiled.<\/p>\n

So it is for Coloradans today. Like Gov. Hickenlooper, we aim to keep it that way by the simplest expedient: being strong, centered and calm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(AP Photo\/David Zalubowski) Gov. John Hickenlooper asks a question of his staff before delivering his final State of the State address to a joint assembly in Denver.du1-i-syn Hickenlooper, meanwhile, actually gets things done, even in the last months of his administration \u2013 and with little fanfare, as he did recently by pushing ahead to address […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-61379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61379"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=61379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}