# Has political radicalism to deal with problems ever worked out **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 1, 2018, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867 "2018-11-01T22:36:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/21 "2018-11-02T14:43:07Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Radical ideas can work, but you need to have radical people implementing them. . Sorry, meant rational people – you need to have rational people implementing them. Note to self: never post after the second glass, and never post before the second cup. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/22 "2018-11-02T14:50:11Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > You guys were _hugely_ fortunate that the hero of your revolution stepped down voluntarily, establishing a civilized procedure for the peaceful transfer of power. Personally, I think that alone might be the single most important element of your republic’s longevity, as opposed to what happened in, say, France at around the same time. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/23 "2018-11-02T15:17:10Z")
The OP pointing to the German response to the 1930’s great depression as negative radicalism, brought to mind the US’s response to the Great Depression via FDR which was also very radical and not at all gradual, yet basically turned out OK. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/24 "2018-11-02T15:25:26Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/25 "2018-11-02T15:30:07Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Was the American Revolution political radicalism? > > I think it was viewed as such at the time. I think it has generally been successful. Look were that got us? Folks in tricorn hats emblazoned with MAGA. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/26 "2018-11-02T15:41:09Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Extreme radicals frequently serve a useful role. They make the less extreme radicals look like staid gradualists. > > Martin Luther King Jr. and SCLC needed folks like Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers. Without the scary guys carrying guns as a backdrop, MLK et al. would have been (more easily) portrayed as violent thugs just trying to start trouble. With those guys, MLK was able to position himself as the lone voice of reason and conciliation. But in actuality, he was a radical. He actually railed against the “moderate” position. > > Radicals also wake up the moderates and inspire them to do what they can for the cause. Take the radical John Brown. The fact a white man (multiple white men) would willingly die for the abolitionist cause signaled to otherwise indifferent white folks that something majorly fucked up was going on below the Mason Dixon line. Both horrible examples. Working without the Black Panthers and Malcom X King and the civil rights leaders were able to get the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act passed. Then the Black Panthers were created and other radical organizations and they were able to get Nixon elected twice and almost nothing else. John Brown made the Civil War more likely and peaceful emancipation less likely by getting the abolitionist viewpoint associated with traitors who wanted to murder white families in their homes. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/27 "2018-11-02T15:47:46Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Look were that got us? > > Folks in tricorn hats emblazoned with MAGA. I did say “generally.” I should have added “until recently.” ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/28 "2018-11-02T15:54:46Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > The OP pointing to the German response to the 1930’s great depression as negative radicalism, brought to mind the US’s response to the Great Depression via FDR which was also very radical and not at all gradual, yet basically turned out OK. I think the thread is devolving a bit from the “political” part of the radicalism. What politically radical thing has ever worked? The civil war might be one if you don’t consider that basically a super majority of those here wanted it. (not much politically radical about that unless you consider GB to the be the central government with its central ideas stemming from there.) FDR, again, not much politically radical about that either. Maybe we need some examples of political radicalism, and then branch from there. Or a graph of what is mainstream vs what is radical, politically. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/29 "2018-11-02T16:00:05Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Thats valid, but I’m not sure if that counts as radicalism (however that term is subjective). Not so much because I have an inherit bias being from the US to see the revolution in positive terms. I guess to me radicalism means doing really extreme things and/or supporting a very extreme ideology as a solution to widespread, serious problems. If rebelling against your monarch, and his decrees, and raising an army to resist them with violence doesn’t count as “extreme” I am not sure what does. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/30 "2018-11-02T16:01:18Z")
I would probably list the election of Trump as radical. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/31 "2018-11-02T16:06:31Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > There is an good case to be made that the American Revolution was a war of one landowning class against another, not all that radical in fact. > ? If you define radical as “can’t involve the land owning class” then basically none of the “radical” historical events could be described as such, except for the odd peasant or slave revolt here and there (and even those typically involved some leaders from the land owning classes). Even the Haitian revolution involved some important land-owning freedmen on the revolutionary side (though it was never as simple as two sides, except for at the end when Napoleon decided to invade and reimpose slavery) ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/32 "2018-11-02T16:20:27Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > :dubious: > > By the time of the civil war in America the rest of the world was already moving to make slavery an extreme ideology. (Some nations like Britain had banned slavery earlier, but still continued with it on some of the colonies and traded with them for awhile, still the main idea was that slavery was on the way out by the time of the civil war) That of course is the nature of radical beliefs. What is a crazy fringe radical belief one day, is a blindingly obvious fact of life, upheld by conservatives as traditional principle to be preserved the next. This is doubly so during a time of war or revolution (it is very common that someone goes being a fringe radical, to centrist, to reactionary conservative without altering their beliefs on iota) Abolition was absolutely a radical belief, and support for slavery was the mainstream. Over time that changed, but that doesn’t make abolitionism any less of a radical belief for most of its history. Universal suffrage (even universal male suffrage) is definitely the same. That was absolutely a completely crazy loony out-there ultra-radical fringe belief, until it happened. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/33 "2018-11-02T16:24:14Z")
The various demands of the labor movements of the 19th and 20th century were considered extreme. People trying to organize labor were jailed for subversive activities, battles were fought between strikers and police, in some instances the government even used military forces. The movement towards universal suffrage in Europe was fueled, not by the elites sincere belief that it was the right thing to do. Sure, some of them considered it correct in principle, but they thought it was too radical to introduce immediately and the chief driving force behind not postponing both voters right and right for laborers was a fear of bloody revolution. I mean, you can just define anything that lead to good outcomes today as “not political radicalism”, but you won’t be considered much fun at parties. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/34 "2018-11-02T16:26:59Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > :dubious: > > By the time of the civil war in America the rest of the world was already moving to make slavery an extreme ideology. (Some nations like Britain had banned slavery earlier, but still continued with it on some of the colonies and traded with them for awhile, still the main idea was that slavery was on the way out by the time of the civil war) Even beyond that: the Confederate philosophers considered chattel slavery among the finest of human institutions and envisioned a utopian slave-holding empire stretching across North and South America. They were delusional idiots, and to claim that the Civil War wasn’t spurred on by extreme ideology is ahistorical. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/35 "2018-11-02T16:29:06Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > I would probably list the election of Trump as radical. No “probably” about it – it precipitated the deterioration of political discourse, the debasement of the Office of the Presidency, and the normalization of lying as the primary means of presidential communication. It’s absolutely unprecedented. But the premise of the OP is that such radical developments don’t lead to good outcomes, and in this case the outcomes will be about as good as a bull in a china shop trailing a loose cannon. However, there are examples of radical reforms that worked. The great post-war social reforms following World War II in Britain sought to address many of the great social issues in a series of radical post-war transformations, and among other things created, pretty much from ground zero, the highly successful National Health System. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/36 "2018-11-02T16:39:33Z")
So yeah the abolition movement absolutely counts as political radicalism that worked out eventually. Plenty of people proposed various incremental political solutions, while the radical part of the movement said only the extreme solution of complete immediate abolition, was acceptable and were willing to take extreme illegal actions to further their cause. Ultimately (after a civil war) their political radicalism prevailed, and immediate emancipation occurred. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/37 "2018-11-02T16:49:33Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > No “probably” about it – it precipitated the deterioration of political discourse, the debasement of the Office of the Presidency, and the normalization of lying as the primary means of presidential communication. It’s absolutely unprecedented. But the premise of the OP is that such radical developments don’t lead to good outcomes, and in this case the outcomes will be about as good as a bull in a china shop trailing a loose cannon. > > However, there are examples of radical reforms that worked. The great post-war social reforms following World War II in Britain sought to address many of the great social issues in a series of radical post-war transformations, and among other things created, pretty much from ground zero, the highly successful National Health System. Even though I don’t disagree with much of that, the reason I would list it as radical was mainly because we elected a non-politician to the office. Really unprecedented. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/38 "2018-11-02T19:51:01Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > Even though I don’t disagree with much of that, the reason I would list it as radical was mainly because we elected a non-politician to the office. Really unprecedented. Well, if he’d been a general first… ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2018, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/39 "2018-11-03T01:39:23Z")
I would possibly say that the Cromwell faction in the English Civil War was pretty radical for the time (some sub-factions, like the Levelers, more than others) and that the eventual outcome was pretty positive at least as far as establishing the Parliamentarian system of government there. But I’m far from an expert… ---
**Author:** ![Textual\_Innuendo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/898d66/32.png) [@Textual\_Innuendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Textual_Innuendo)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2018, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867/40 "2018-11-03T01:42:50Z")
Didn’t the IRA basically win? They raised hell for years, and got a voice in government, less gerrymandering, and legislation that if a majority vote yes, they’ll join the Republic, then settled down. Didn’t Osama basically win? He took the strongest nation on earth and with a single attack, sent us into a spiral of reactionary, spastic, fear-driven legislation formalizing a police state (Patriot Act), a whole new massive governmental agency devoted to spying, stealing from, and harassing citizens while performing bullshit security theater (Homeland Security, the TSA), and a craven, fear-mongering mindset that has led to militarizing local police forces and ever-greater trillions wasted on the (already largest and strongest in the world by far) military? Fear still drives huge chunks of our media and electorate too, and you can bet it helped put Trump in office. I would call that unbelievable, too-good-to-be-true success for Osama and the forces that hated our country. **naita** also made great points on significant labor reform being a radical success story. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-political-radicalism-to-deal-with-problems-ever-worked-out/823867.md?page=3)