Rally To Restore Sanity's Roots: "You Never See Moderates Take To The Streets" (VIDEO)

WATCH Stewart In 2005: 'You Never See Moderates Take To The Streets'

For the next couple of weeks, we'll be celebrating the upcoming Rally To Restore Sanity/March To Keep Fear Alive by highlighting the ways The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have long advocated for reasonableness. You're invited to take part! Remember a "moment of sanity" that was dear to you? Send me an email and tell me about it!

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Reader Joshua Feldman sends along a reminder of this April 13, 2005 interview between Jon Stewart and John P. Avlon, author of Independent Nation, which called for the return of a dynamic form of centrism (not, I gather, to be confused with the bipartisanship-sauce junkies that currently huddle together inside the Beltway). Did the interview leave an impression on Stewart? Well, for one thing, he does refers to Avlon's book as his "raison d'etre." And Avlon compliments The Daily Show as an institution that resists extremes.

I am wary of discussions like this, because they often stray into moments of false equivalency. But you'll want to stick around to hear Stewart joke, for the first time, about the idea of a protest, populated by reasonable people: "You never see moderates say, 'Let's take to the streets and shout, be reasonable!'" To Stewart's mind, it was difficult to rally people around that sort of "passion." I guess he's going to find out whether it can be done first hand.

WATCH:

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