During a conversation with my wife the other day, I put a new twist on an old saying.

• If you are under twenty and you are not a liberal;
  You have no heart.
• If you are over forty and you are not a conservative;
  You have no brain.

I would postulate the following;

• If you are over sixty and you are not a moderate;
  You have no common sense.

Too many of the problems we have today are the results of extremism and lack of compromise.  The move to the left over the past decade has been aided by the refusal of those on the right to accept even the most modest of compromises. The extreme positions of the various groups makes it even worse.

People, it is time to grow up!

Here is an example;

Our extreme positions related to Cuba and North Korea have accomplished nothing except guarantee that the common people of those nations continue to suffer.  Meanwhile, our “archenemies” Vietnam and China are treated as friends and their people are gaining more freedom as a result. If we could begin to compromise with Cuba and North Korea in the same way, maybe a couple of decades down the road things might change.  We’ve had this stalemate for over 50 years!  It only took Vietnam a little over thirty years to “wake up and smell the coffee”.

Extremism; whether related to foreign relations or the war on drugs, has been shown to be fruitless.  Maybe it is time for us to “wake up and smell the coffee”.