4/9/05
Something makes a Radical radical. I haven’t quite identified that certain attribute or detriment to the radical character yet. As I keep seeing more and more injustice and abuse of power, starving, crippled, homeless misery of billions of people around the planet, I get angry and agitated and feel the need to do something about all of it, or at least some of it.
I have discovered that it is a whisper from the soul that stirs me; that silent surge of emotion that creates a tear, or angers me enough to swear at the television news commentator or videotaped sound bites by George W. or Tom Delay, Bill Frist , John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and virtually every American politician. I think Radicals are born not made. I think a Radical has always been radical in his world view. He or she cannot accept things that aren’t just, or are hurtful to man or beast. A Radical can be stupid or smart, organized or disorganized, focused or unfocused. I once thought that most Radicals were violent, but I later learned that very few of the most effective radicals were violent, and actually promoted non violence.
I believe that all people are born Radicals, men and women refusing to bend to the will of nature, or suffer the indignity of physical and mental torture. A Radical is anyone who will fight back against anything that they deem is a wrong against them or others. I think as radically as everyone else does. I weigh my options, or interests and my willingness to become more radical. Will I go to the courts, will I write letters, or will I storm the capital buildings? I am trying to decide just how radically radical I really am. So far I think I’m like everyone else who is just waiting for their soul’s whisper to turn into a shout and a scream until we can no longer sit still, and the scale of weights is breaking under the weight of injustice, and the foul stench of corporate and government corruption and incompetence becomes too foul to tolerate any more.
“If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say break the law. Let your life be counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.
L.A. Steel
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