This election cycle, in debates and in the media, has been filled with accusations and claims that some candidates, primarily Senator Bernie Sanders, are “radical” or “revolutionary.” During the last Democratic debate, the now-dropped-out Pete Buttigieg spoke about his fears that the election would come down to “Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s and Bernie Sanders with the revolutionary politics of the 1960s.” This received both applause and boos, but his campaign quickly began to distance itself from the comment. Why? Because that same “revolutionary politics of the 1960s” brought us the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other protections for black and minority voters.
“Radical” is not a dirty word. Radicals with a revolutionary fervor fought for the abolition of slavery. Radicals fought for civil rights and for democracy for as long as this country has been around. When coal-mine owners left their workers in miserable conditions with detestable wages in Harlan County, it was not the “Both Sides Are Right Agreement” in Harlan County, it was the Harlan County War and it was revolutionary for unions and working people around the country. Every major change that we take for granted in this country, that we teach kids to revere as landmarks to human progress, is the result of radical people and movements. From Frederick Douglass and John Brown, to Theodore Roosevelt and Harriet Tubman, radicalism can be a force for overwhelming good.
That is not to say that every radical movement is good; the atrocities committed by the likes of Pol Pot in Cambodia and Mao Zedong in China are in every way reprehensible, but at the same time, Sanders’ plan to expand medical care to all Americans is not in anyway comparable to Joseph Stalin’s starving of the Ukrainians in Holodomor, nor is an attempt to get away from fossil fuels in any way comparable to the horrifying events that led to the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany before World War II, as MSNBC host Chris Matthews so eloquently noted of Sanders’ sweeping victory in Nevada.
As John F. Kennedy once prophetically declared, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” It is time for us, as Americans, to think critically about the issues at hand and the possible solutions to them that each candidate brings to the table. Most importantly, we need to forget the name-calling and divisiveness in the Democratic Party if we are ever going to defeat Donald Trump. Remember to #VoteBlueNoMatterWho. Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
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