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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a theory of fanaticism (or extremism, or zealotry) through a critique of political moderation. It argues that contemporary democratic theory is ill equipped to understand extremism because it is too committed to political moderation to understand the essentially Manichean, friends/enemies worldview of the zealot. The paper uses Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism in order to explain the essential moderation of liberal democratic theory. Through a critique of Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson's Democracy and Disagreement, it shows how deliberative democratic theory is essentially a theory of political moderation that fails to address fanaticism. Through a critique of the work of Chantal Mouffe, it then argues that agonal democratic theory has similarly sidestepped the problem of irreconcilable conflict in politics, resulting in a tacit acceptance of political moderation and leading agonal democrats to commit the very same "evasion of the political" that they criticize deliberative models for. I conclude by using the work of the radical abolitionist orator and philosopher Wendell Phillips to outline the features of a political theory of fanaticism. Similar to Schmitt but unlike contemporary democratic theory, Phillips's philosophy rests on a friends/enemies duality that enables him to recognize and critique the limits of political moderation. Unlike Schmitt, however, Phillips demonstrates that such a politics can be used for democratic rather than authoritarian ends. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the possibility of zealotry to be a mode of political action after the 9/11 incident as it is progressively regarded as a threat to democracy. As an effect, political analysts are predicting that zealotry might make a similar contribution to democratic theory and practice in the post-9/11 era. Thus, the state should create stable contingency plan with the use of extremist methods to develop a democratic conception of zealotry.