I believe in moderation. In this day and age, it is not easy to believe in moderation. Almost no one accepts the idea of moderation. Like compromise, it's out of style. If you don't look carefully, it's easy for people of moderation to look unprincipled to ideological purists. But we have a principle all right---we believe in moderation.

I rarely believe that if a little is good, a lot is better. I will admit that I have sometimes had trouble with moderation when it comes to chocolate but my more moderate self considers that trouble a sin. I am not wishy-washy or a flip-flopper. I truly believe in a middle.

I recognize that there are people, whom my father describes as baloney slicers, that are enough to make any lawyer, even me, run for the slippery slope argument. There are people who slice one slice then another then another and before you know it they've eaten it all. But you can still hold to moderation with most of them---as longas you keep measuring your share of the baloney.

In recent years, I seem constitutionally unable to see the world in black and white. The most important thing in my life tends to be people and people are never black and white. Those you least expect it from have been known to offer comfort. Imprisoned clients have been known to send carefully drawn get-well cards if I have apologized based on illness for tardiness in answering letters. Delusional clients have been known to pat my hand and tell me not to be so frustrated by the courts. I've even seen snarling teens stand up and offer an old woman a seat on the subway (back when I still lived in New York.)

I also don't see most ideas in black and white. I've known compassionate conservatives although I don't perceive our current president to be one. I've known liberals who love mankind and hate people. A political conservative in my office often is confused because he does not believe that my politics and my personal choices match all that well. He just doesn't understand. To believe there is personal choice is not to say that fairly traditional choices cannot work reasonably well for me.

The worst thing about believing in moderation apparently is that it tends to accompany a belief in compromise. I don't know when or where compromise became a dirty word but being on a school board taught me that actually running things requires an ability to compromise. If you only know what you can concede, you really don't know your argument very well and you probably are running on fear. Fear can destruct but it rarely builds.

And so I recommend moderation---but only in moderation.

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