Free Radicals – No I’m not advocating for the release of bomb tossing murderous radicals, just musing about words and how they are employed.
Words like radical and anarchist are so commonplace in the day to day now I think for many people they take on a singular negative implication, and it’s gotten to the point if you express a dissatisfaction with any aspect of the status quo you will be viewed through the radical/anarchist prism.
The United States was founded on the precept of anarchy, a revolt against English rule – the Boston Tea party qualified as an act of anarchy – but depending on which side of the fence you were on as is always the case.
For the British it was radical anarchists running amuck, for those wanting sovereignty it was about the intrinsic right of all men to be free and an act of “patriotism” to their newly founded country.
The Civil Rights movement was led by “radicals” seen as “anarchists” intent on dethroning the powers and social structures that existed.
Martin Luther King Jr. was characterized as the boogey man, and to the horror of many a black bogey man – yet in the aftermath the movement is viewed as positive change, a justice arrived at long withheld, and MLK an iconic figure.
Mohandas K. Ghandi was seen in the same light, so was Nelson Mandela, now both honored and revered.
The point is people shouldn’t be eager to apply labels, they should instead research the issues and arrive at a reasoned conclusion.
Had they of done so during the McCarthy era that fool would have been sent packing the first time he opened his mouth, there would have been no internment camps for the Japanese during WW2, and we as a people might have been dealt with differently.
Suffragettes were roundly viewed in much the same manner, now people shake their heads at a history that would deny anyone the right to vote based on gender or ethnicity.
By and large the nations are monitored with a suspicious eye, those doing the monitoring ignoring the history and the same desires we have as a people led to the formation of this country.
Somehow it’s all different, that depending on which side of the fence you’re on thing – a mindset that denies the very documents drawn up to support the quest for sovereignty the U.S. was founded on.
In the end I suppose that is to be expected, it is the way of the entrenched, the result of a genocidal approach and policy in this hemisphere unrivaled anywhere else.
The term free radical as employed in the FRTA (free radical theory of aging) is about the process of aging and way above my pay scale, but people should be free to express “radical” viewpoints, free to think and desire without being labeled.
There are of course limits, but the larger issue is the limits are being geometrically increased to intrude upon even the most fundamental of human rights – and people need to be “radical” enough to speak out against this and engaged enough to once having cast their ballot to hold the elected to account.
