Except Moderate Heroism is basically always assuming the middle position to be correct, or some position in between the two usually held by people on opposing sides.
For example: In Nazi Germany the Nazis wanted to kill all Jews. Most of the resistance opposed were against killing Jews. So let's take the Moderate Hero position and only kill some Jews, or perhaps only deport instead of killing Jews. That's a good example of a middle ground fallacy position at work, which I doubt Gustaf would defend as reasonable. Another example includes the debate over slavery in the 19th century, abolitionists wanted to abolish slavery entirely, most from the Confederacy wanted to keep it exactly as is, many politicians took very Moderate Hero-esque positions such as merely banning slavery in new territories or restricting the slave trade somehow but allowing slavery to remain legal, which I doubt Gustaf would argue is a pretty reasonable position or anything besides total abolition.
Some Jews probably did deserve to be killed because they were murderers. And you can always move the extreme to be something else. Not if you oppose the death penalty.
Let's define it as "All Jews are bad people" or "No Jews are bad people". Clearly the truth lies in the middle. "The state should have all power" "the state should have no power" again the truth, to most people, would be in the middle. All black people should be slaves versus all white people should be slaves. It depends on where you put the extremes.
What you are doing here is making the extremes rather ridiculous positions that no one really holds though.
What bothers me with this obsession is that it isn't as much of a problem as the opposite fallacy. The extremist position is almost always wrong and people take those positions for the strangest reasons, while the non-extremist position is almost always right and usually based on actually understanding the issue and all its nuances. Yet people on here spend endless amount of times ridiculing the latter while praising the former (as long as it isn't the opposite extreme, of course, which is also bad).
Every time someone on this site says something like "I don't think we should spend all of the federal revenue on pencils, although they government needs to have a few" everyone is OMG!1! moderate hero idiot!!1!
It's kind of stupid to me. Most issues are sufficiently complex that a completely black-and-white approach to them is just silly.
I don't recall anyone mocking anyone over a statement like the pencils one.
If you call, the term was created in regards to benconstine's ridiculous triangulation. Also based on the way that some here had a ridiculous worship of certain politicians for being "moderates" regardless of what their actual positions were. See the people who loved Joe Lieberman despite supposedly opposing the Iraq War because he wasn't an "extremist" like Lamont, when in fact their actual views were probably far closer to Lamont. Also see the people here with such a hard-on for Mark Kirk, when he's really just a typical Republican who breaks the party line on abortion and some other rather meaningless wedge issue items. Or the people here who have basically admitted that they don't really have a problem with gay marriage but they oppose it and support civil unions just because that is the "moderate" position (there is at least one person who openly admitted to voting for Prop 8 for that reason alone.) If that isn't the middle ground fallacy I don't what is.
For a great real life application of this, note what Tweed said when he stated ben likely wouldn't have support the Civil Rights Movement and would've supported some Moderate Hero-esque gradual integration "compromise" or something. I don't think anyone today would argue that is a reasonable position. Just like the "reasonable" positions during the era of slavery and how complete abolitionism was considered extremist, yet today almost everyone would argue nothing other than complete abolitionism is a moral position.
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