Rush Limbaugh and Molly Ivins represent certainty taken to the extreme. They are so sure about their grasp on the truth that they feel comfortable deriding and ridiculing those who have not achieved their level of enlightenment. But, among those who will go to extremes to prove how right they are, they are pikers. They pale in comparison to the people who shoot doctors who perform abortions, the people who chain black men to the back end of pickup trucks and drag them to death and the people who blow up federal courthouses. And even those folks don't hold a candle to the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Idi Amin.
Extremism is a product of certainty engorged by hubris.
But the level of extremism in a society gives us some general idea about the level of certainty as well. I expect presidential candidates and their ardent supporters to be adamant that their way is the right way. And so, while I am tired of hearing them drone on in their certainty, I understand the rules. It's difficult to say. Therein lies one big problem with certainty.