Thursday, April 16, 2009

Who are the Radicals?

Who are the Radicals?

You can not possibly be radical if you are conservative. Those two words are antonyms. "Radical" is a word defined as favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order. Conservative means seeking a return to a former social or political situation.

George Orwell foresaw this in "1984." The dominant culture, seeking ever more power, turns the meaning of words on their head to confuse people. Radicals seek to institute new policy in the face of popular opposition. Conservatives seek a return to "the good old days." These terms, conservative and liberal, right and left, have lost much of their meaning. I am a liberal, since I long for a return of our personal freedoms, but I do not long for a return to yesterday, I am progressive, in that I wish to move society forward to a better reality. I am not a "Progressive," since I am not a fascist, meaning a refutation of the constitution. I am conservative in that I believe that humans need rules, and the constitution is our rule book.

People that believe they can control the temperature of the planet, think it is OK to cut open an unborn baby's head and suck out its brains, think that spending trillions of dollars we don't have on things we don't need is sound financial policy, think marriage between same sexes is identical to marriage between one man and one woman, want to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, think drug cartels are buying machine guns and rocket launchers at gun shows, are calling conservatives radical extremists? We truly are in Alice's Wonderland.