Moderate virtue?

They call you an extremist if you want integration now — which is the only morally defensible position.  To advise moderation is like going to a stickup man and saying to him, ‘Don’t use a gun.  That’s violent.  Why not be a pickpocket instead?  A moderate is a moral pickpocket.

Branch Rickey (09/22/1957) quoted in Roger Kahn, Rickey and Robinson 171 (2014).

This reminds me of the Goldwater slogan “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”  (1964 speech).  I suppose that few would support both men’s views.

Both Rickey and Goldwater are smuggling in their certainty about justice and injustice.  Which, if they are right . . . .