Both the left and the right of politics in this nation are a blend of ideological and strategic, but seem to avoid becoming radical. We currently have an administration, both ideological and strategic, that has shed nearly all the values of democracy in an effort to make the trains run on time, but have lost the heart of America in this country and the mantle of leadership of the free world. We have a left wing of progressives who have latched on to specific human rights issues, but will not talk meaningfully about the nuanced issues even when it is clear they have lost their power and majority. Finally we have a new concentration of wealth that is happy to fund the extreme ends of both those forces, right and left, but not fund the risk of radical creative energy necessary to find solutions to the widening divisions. 

Radical and extreme are two different words with profoundly different meanings. In this age of illiteracy we seem to have lost the distinction.  Extreme and extremism are what we have today and those forces are destroying us. At both far ends of extremism’s shallow pool you check your heart and mind at the door and join the cult. From there comes the violence.  Radical is what this country’s flawed but courageous founders were.  Radical means sending your roots, thoughts and feelings down deep, like the radish, to find the truth of a given situation.  The major religions talk about radical love, and not extreme love.  Nonviolence is is an example of a radical solution requiring both profound thought and feeling, deeply engaged to manage the power of the stance of nonviolence. The most radical political stance in history is democracy itself.  We once had a democracy but now we have the sheering fabric of a society divided in their mutual extremism.

Modest Proposal For Good

Strategy is always an incomplete focus that pierces and softens opposition, but in human and national affairs, on its own, cannot win the day.  Ideology is the mind’s armchair.  You can sit and repeat in the comfortable folds of your concluded thoughts and not worry about the progress or regress in your situation. Radical is what can save the day because radical requires behavior that is creative and dynamic.  Extremism in strategy or ideology are both forms of passiveness that lead to eventual violence. Radicalism can be powerful, dynamic and nonviolent.  Our Constitution is a radical document and for that reason is being crucified by the current administration.  For the sake of our nation, subordinate all political issues to the saving of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the virtues of a true democracy.  For the Progressives, if we lose those driving wheel pieces of our government permanently, what we knew of our country is gone.  For the the Conservatives, if we lose the radical parts of this national experience of democracy, there will be nothing left worth conserving. To both sides, wherever you see violence, death and mayhem  you see another idiot lost in extremism. Fixing this well armed, explosive nation must be done nonviolently with leadership committed to good. That would be good.