I am often asked about why I am so “extreme.” People often will say to me that I make some very good points and have some good ideas but that I take them too far, that I am too radical, and as result turn off people who would otherwise be aroused by and interested in what I might have to say. These people often wonder why I don’t moderate myself more and be open to compromising on my goals, giving up some lesser goals in order to achieve a more immediate victory. The automatic assumption seems to be that abandoning principle and moral in order to achieve some political victory is what matters and is the measure of success.
There is a proverb about compromises that runs something like: “The sign of a good compromise is that neither party is happy in the end.” The saying is true, but not because the way it is meant. This saying is usually invoked to promote the idea that good compromises force those involved to give up all superfluous stuff to get only what they need. Anyone who has ever studied the way Congress passes pork laden Christmas Tree bills left and right knows this argument is nonsense. The reason no one is happy is because at the end of the day they sacrificed their morals and the only people who prospered are the politicians, who then use that anger to further gather political support and win elections. The invention of social media has made this inescapable for anyone online, which is a big reason why there seems to be so much anger everywhere you look these days.
So, consider all you’ve betrayed and all you’ve lost and all the promises never fulfilled and let me ask you a question: What has compromise, ever gotten us? History provides the answer and it is worse than, “Nothing.”
A Short History of American Compromise and Race
Lets go back to the very start of the American government. The Articles of Confederation (pg. 1367) are often looked down upon by modern nationalists who treat the Articles as an attempt to create a national government which was too weak to be effective. This is a fundamental understanding which miscolors their understanding of the Articles, which were more akin to a treaty between the thirteen free and independent American nations that outlined how they would interact with one another and aid one another in a perpetual alliance with the Congress acting as the functionary body through which the states would interact. For this purpose the Articles performed magnificently. The Articles also provided another great service to humanity. Under the Articles the Northwest Territory, formerly British lands accorded to the new States at the conclusion of the Revolution in the Treaty of Paris, was settled and provided a path to statehood. Likewise, under the Article slavery was outlawed in the Territory and any future states formed from it. So, you might ask, how did slavery end up in these territories and states anyway? Compromise.
Specifically, the compromises that formed the basis for the United States Constitution. In order for the nationalists who wanted to form a true centralized government and turn the thirteen independent American states into appendages of said central government, they had to do something to entice the Southern states into surrendering their independence and supporting the U.S. Constitution. That enticement? The nationalization of slavery. Of the eleven different clauses in the Constitution which could effect slavery, ten of them strengthened the slave states, gave them more power, and expanded their wealth. The only one that had any negative effect on slavery, the promise that after 20 years the new national government could outlaw the slave trade, was a lame duck restriction altogether as by 1787 the state of Virginia already raised and sold more slaves natively than it got from importation. So the restriction or even elimination of the slave trade wouldn’t have dealt any significant blow to the slave states at all. The slave states succeeded in also getting the Fugitive Slave Clause written into the Constitution, which made it a federal crime for slaves to attempt the escape slavery, required the other states to return escaped slaves to their slave masters, and ultimately made anyone helping escaped slaves guilty of a federal crime. This meant, among other things, that any state that passed laws limiting or eliminating slavery in its bounds still had to protect the slaves of any slavemonger from anywhere else, allowing the slave masters to force their sickening practices upon all other states and territories. Liberty was a felony. With the Constitution the nationalists compromised and gained the Southern states in exchange for the rape, torture, robbery, extortion, humiliation, and murder of tens of millions of people.
Then of course there are all the other compromises inbetween The Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise if 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, for example, all of which allowed for the expansion of slavery across the nation and generated such hatred among all people that in a very short time they were willing to murder each other by the millions. Again and again compromise was heralded as having held the Union together. And it surely did, at the costs of an ocean of blood beaten from black slaves, on a foundation of the crushed, mangled, and broken bodies of black men, women, and children destroyed by the slave system, and with the utter dehumanization of black people in the eyes of most Americans which was accomplished by perpetuating a system of racist thought that is still poisoning American society today. Then of course there was the war. All other civilizations on the planet eventually eliminated slavery peacefully. Americans slaughtered each other with a million dead in the war directly, tens of thousands more from problems caused by the war, and the destruction of whole section of the North American continent.
Let’s hear it for compromise.
Then there is the Compromise of 1877. The 1876 election put the Democrats within one electoral vote of winning the Presidency for the first time postbellum and the Republicans were desperate to hold power at all costs. So, they cut a deal early in 1877. In exchange for conceding the election in some contested states to the Republicans the Democrats were promised that the new Republican President would withdraw all federal troops from Southern states and end Reconstruction. This would allow the Democrats to take full political control over the Southern states once more, disenfranchise black voters, and assert white supremacy through the power of law. And that is exactly what happened. The era of Jim Crow was born and legally enforced racial segregation became the norm with America becoming a de facto apartheid state. For nearly a century black men , women, and children would be stripped of even basic human rights, exposed to horrific violence, dehumanizing racism, and laws that trapped most of them in servile work and poverty with the ultimate goal being to limit or eliminate the ability of black people (and other minorities) to have children and prosper in society. And why? Because in 1877 the nationalists wanted to avoid another secession crisis so much that they didn’t care who they destroyed in order to preserve the nation and their power.
The 20th century was full of compromises between the political parties for the “good of the nation.” Trying to list all the tragedies and disasters perpetuated upon American society under the guise of bipartisan compromise would be exhausting and impossible for the space I have here. Instead, given the nation furor of the recent election and the apparent victory of Joe Biden, I will enumerate a few he has been a part of and how they have devastated the black community.
First off, along with the support of segregationist Strom Thurmond, Joe Biden helped to author and get passed the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act. This program gave the federal government nearly limitless power to seize -that is take and keep, aka steal- the private property of citizens accused of even minor drug crimes. From the very start it began destroying the lives of primarily minority peoples, as in the example of Thomas Lopes. Lopes was living with his parents because he was struggling with severe emotional and mental disabilities. Eventually he was caught growing a single marijuana plant in the backyard of their family home, a plant which his parents didn’t want to cut down because he threatened to commit suicide if they did so. Eventually he was caught, arrested and received a court order to see a psychologist, which actually helped him put his life together. But then the police showed up. You see, the statute of limitations for civil asset forfeiture was five years and it had only been four. So years after the event, after Thomas and his family were doing a lot better, after they had put the entire affair behind them and he had served his time, the cops appeared and announced that because they had the legal right to seize any property connected to drug crimes that they were taken the Lopes home, and there was nothing they could do about it. Today the police steal more from the public every year than thieves do. And it hurts minorities most of all with as much as 85% of everything seized coming from black and Hispanic communities. All thanks to bipartisan political compromise.
Then there is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that Biden wrote and which passed Congress with support from both parties as they crafted a compromise bill that would help the federal government “get tough on crime.” As the Center for American Progress notes, “[t]he crime bill’s Federal Death Penalty Act permitted the use of the death penalty for 60 new federal offenses, including certain drug offences not related to a homicide. In the five years following the bill’s passage, 74 percent of defendants with death penalty recommendations from federal prosecutors were people of color. Notably, 44 percent were black and 21 percent were Hispanic.” The bill’s use of mandatory sentences led to a large increase in the mass incarceration of black peoples and Latinos and has led to people receiving decades long sentences, even life sentences, for as petty crimes as stealing change from a car. The law even made it possible to try children as young as 13 as if they were fully grown adults. Today black male boys are five times as likely to end up in jail as compared to white male teens despite there being no significant difference in the rates at which black and white male teens commit crimes.
And those are but two examples. I have even talked about Joe Biden’s ties to the PATRIOT Act, a bipartisan compromise for “national security” that “authorized” the expansive programs the US and British government uses to spy on, record, monitor, and track their own citizens with almost no restrictions.
You ever notice how most compromises seem to boil down to the public compromising its liberty so politicians can increase their power?
The Better Way
Now, lets answer our question from before. What has compromise gotten us? The results of compromise after compromise for “the common good” has been nothing more than slavery, violence, robbery, torture, murder, lynching, poverty, destroyed families, stolen property, crippled communities, segregation, racism, hatred, ignorance, and oppression for hundreds of millions of people over the span of two and a half centuries. And that is just talking about black Americans. I haven’t even touched on the effects on women, Native Americans, homosexuals, and religious minorities such as Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Latter-day Saints. The history I’ve recounted here should be enough to challenge the idea that compromising your morality and values for some imagined political victory is not only foolish, but down right destructive to society as a whole. But when you account for all the other examples it becomes crystal clear that compromise is really just about abandoning morality and basic human values and ethics in order to pass laws that benefit those in power at the cost of the suffering, terror, and blood of millions and millions and millions of peoples. Instead of calling it what it is -cowardice, greed, and evil – it is recast as a virtue – compromise – in order to portray it as a victory to the unwary, ignorant, and deceived.
Just look at the last election and all the people who feel so smug and self-righteous about voting to replace an orange, racist, authoritarian, warmongering rapist with … a white, racist, authoritarian, warmongering rapist. Congratulations, you sold your integrity and your Self, along with the rights, liberty, and prosperity, if not the very lives of millions of people for a compromise, the lesser of the evils, and got exactly what in return? Nothing. You traded one pig for another, a Cheeto Mussolini for an El Caudillo Joe, and that is declared a victory. Good job?
Well, I’m tired of pigs. I’m tired of evil. I’m tired of trading my birthright of liberty for a mess of rotten porridge. We’ve tried it all and all it has gotten us is this and we’ve all had enough of it. Instead of being fools and traitors – and how can you ever have anything else when you betray your morality and integrity for victory? – it is time we do something meaningful; something powerful, something radical. Stop compromising. Stop buying the hype and propaganda. Stop trading your away humanity and the liberty, safety, and prosperity of others in the name of the political empires of the world.
Do something “crazy” and demand that those in authority respect and protect not only your life, liberty, and property but the life, liberty, and property of every person under their stewardship with the promise that if those in authority don’t then you will remove them. Then do it if they don’t. This last thing is not so hard to do. The only difference between Joe Biden or Donald Trump and any other two bit nutjob rant on the street is that you’ve been mentally conditioned from birth to believe there is a difference, so you obey the crazy guy in the fancy office and dismiss the crazy guy on the street corner. Since your obedience is the only thing that gives them power then once you remove it they will not be able to do anything. Refuse to compromise, refuse to surrender what you know is right, just, and true for the sake of political expediency or such red herrings as national unity (people always fighting with each other over power and position are never unified no matter what the politicians say.)
Things like countries and governments are tools whose functions are to preserve our liberty so that we can seek the kind of life we think will bring us joy, so that we can pursue happiness. When countries and governments stop providing that function, when they violate our rights, they’re useless – like screwdrivers with their tips broken off. Instead of trying to make the broken tool work throw it away. You don’t set a screwdriver up on a stand and pledge your allegiance and obedience to it. You don’t kill for it. You don’t die for it. You don’t sacrifice your children’s lives for it. Doing so would be insane. The same is true of governments. That this is a radical notion is the most mind-boggling thing that I have yet to ever wrap my head around.
When Barry Goldwater was running for President he gave a speech (actually written by his libertarian speechwriter Karl Hess) that contained a statement that was incredibly truthful and insightful:
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. …And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Over time this been boiled down to any even more powerful dictum:
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.
We’ve seen what compromise gets you. It is time to try something different. Choose humanity. Choose morality. Choose liberty. Choose to be a radical. Let them call you crazy. Let them call you an extremist. They’re too busy trying to pretend the shadows on the wall are real that they don’t see the shackles around their ankles. The truth is that in an unjust world, demanding justice will always be radical. In a corrupt world, demanding righteousness will always get you labelled an extremist. Insulting and demeaning you is how your detractors manage to drug their own consciences and seek to justify their own quisling lives. But the reality is simple. Just as you do not compromise with cancer, taking most of it but leaving a little, you do not compromise with error and evil – you obliterate them. If you want a better world you cannot get there by sacrificing the very goals, ideals, morals, and principles that would define such a place. You cannot get there through compromise. You can only get there by refusing to settle for anything less. As American author J. Michael Straczynski put it:
Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world – ‘No, YOU move.’
So, why do I refuse to compromise, to give way, to sacrifice my principles for the “greater good” – really for the good of those in power? Why am I a radical? Of course no one ever asks the question of why is it that holding to your values and refusing to compromise with what you know to be evil is considered so radical as opposed to simply what is expected of a decent human being. It seems to me that being willing to compromise what you know to be right in order to gain political victory is what should be considered a radical departure from basic humanity. Truth demands our highest allegiance and nothing should move us from it.
Ultimately, the answer to the question of why are you so radical is very simple. Because there is no other way. The people will never be ready if you continually excuse them from having to be so. Society will never develop to where it needs to be in order to be free and prosperous if it is never called to do so by those who have already found those blessings of liberty for themselves. People will never know they need not be terrified of losing their shackles if no one ever shows them the jubilation of liberation. The people will ever be blind unless those with vision show them the better tomorrow. I am a radical because this is the way to manifest the better future that we all wish existed and nothing less will suffice.