Opposing The World

THE WROLD ADVANCES, said Goethe, only because of those who oppose it. Those who oppose the status quo to a sufficient degree we call "radicals", a term which in our contemporary times we associate negatively. A radical is something negative, someone who will not cooperate, with wild ideas which do harm to social stability. But they shouldn't be so considered. Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the "founding fathers' were nothing but radicals. All of them wrestled with their consciences, their values, their beliefs before choosing a radical course. They were loyal citizens of Great Britain. It was only under the most extreme circumstances, and with the greatest reluctance, that they became traitors to their government, revolutionaries, radicals. Jefferson was quite conservative in 1773. By 1774, he had split with the establishment, and become a revolutionary. Benjamin Franklin was perhaps the most reluctant of all to revolt, having spent his first seventy years as a loyal British subject, extremely patriotic to the crown. George Washington was an obedient officer in the Virginia militia, an appendage of the British army, and he served under British officers, faithfully. The fact that as an American he was passed over for promotion by the British may have influenced him to join the rebellion. I have none of the greatness of these people, but I have their same revolutionary spirit. As a child in the nineteen sixties, I wanted to protest the Viet Nam war, like I saw the hippies doing on television. I secretly admired the long haired young hippies on college campuses, with their No More War signs and chants. I thought the war was useless, and even as a child could see its tragic futility, by watching the nightly news. My parents would have none of it. I was eleven years old. Nearly all middle class white people, including my family, considered it unpatriotic to protest, and they also considered Martin Luther King a troublemaker for protesting his station in American society. Among whites, King was no hero, but a troublemaker, ungrateful to his country for his good fortune of being a second class black man. In 1776, about half the American colonists despised Jefferson and his radical ilk, and as many as two hundred thousand Americans, loyal to England, got aboard ships and sailed for England, or other destinations away from America. Martin Luther King was murdered for his radical ideas of racial equality. The Viet Nam protestors were reviled by mainstream patriotic Americans for having the audacity to disagree with national policy, and to not support an American war... We now see that in every case, from Jefferson to King to the hippies, the radicals were in the right, they fought for truth against a society which embraced falsehood, and, at length, they prevailed. During the twenty two years he lived in New Jersey, albert Einstein, a radical, encouraged all young men everywhere to refuse military service. He was not popular among conservative Christians, this Jew with the long hair, radical political notions, and weird scientific theories. It is the protesters I admire, because it is they who ultimately challenge the world, change the status quo, and improve the world. The world advances only because of those who oppose it.