RYANDAYTHOMPSON

One-offs from a Christian eclectic. I'll try not to offend you but, sometimes, it just happens.

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I Am the Liberal Radical

Outside of our REI there are often people doing street fundraising for various causes. “Would you like to protect our forests?”  “Hi! I’m from Planned Parenthood.”  “Can you spare a moment for our wilderness?”  And so on.

I used to respond to these people with the vitriol of the angry right-winger that I was.  That was a day when I referred to them as “Crazy Liberal Radicals.”

Today, as I exited REI, a fellow stopped me saying, “Would you like to protect our rivers?”  I said, “Tell me how you’re going to protect our rivers?”  He replied, “Corporations are dumping waste into our waterways and polluting our environment.  We intend to lobby and convince congress to use the EPA to block these corporations from doing this.”

This is generally viewed in our society as the “liberal” thing to say and do.

What happened next was eye-opening to me.  I said, in more less precise wording, “I agree with you that the corporations are evil.  I agree that what they are doing environmentally is wasteful and wrong.  However, the EPA is corrupt.  Congress is corrupt.  The state is corrupt.  You cannot possibly hope to do good using congress to block the corporations because congress and the corporations are indissolubly linked.  You cannot damn one and attempt to use the other.  You must do away with both of them.  If you wish to protect our rivers, you must abolish the state entirely which will, in turn, abolish corporate elitism and statist market monopolization.  This abolition will free the market, free the people, and free us morally.  Plutocratic oligarchs will cease polluting our rivers if they do not exist.”

Their open-mouthed stares of amazement caught me off guard.

As I walked away from the conversation I realized some things.

I used to abhor these people because they talked about the EPA and “saving the environment,” and, “equal rights,” and so on.  I was right-wing, of course I abhorred them.  Their color of coercion (blue vs. my red) was against my color of coercion.  Their team was the rival to my team.  But I’m not on a team anymore.  The stunned responses of these “liberal radicals,” shocked me.  And I suddenly saw something more clearly than I ever have before.

I am the Liberal Radical.

Notes

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