I recently came across the following words from Howard Zinn. He is considered by many to be the greatest American historian of the 20th century. He wrote "The People's History of the U.S." and died a few years ago. As we head into an unpredictable future for our country and the world, near the end of 2016, I find the following words of his instructive. In my opinion, a good definition of the word "radical," which he uses, is "return to the root." The liberal attempts to reform things in America have not worked. We continue to wage war abroad, have the most imprisoned population in the world, and twice as many guns as the next country per capita, which is Yemen.
As the old sayings go, the chickens come home to roost, what goes around comes around, you reap what you sow, karma. Add it up. The signs are abundant. As Zinn says, "something fundamental (is) wrong in this country." That does not mean that he and those of us who agree with him do not love the truly democratic values of this country, such as freedom, liberty, and democracy. But it does mean that we need more radical understandings and actions as things evolve.
Shepherd
"Living in fear of living free, is not living"
*"From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country - not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the
introduction of a new kind of society - cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian."
*
Howard Zinn, from his 1994 memoir, "You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train"