Extremists

The current two-party system in the United States works for the following reason. One group wants to implement changes and the other group wants to prevent unnecessary changes. Therefore, every issue brought forth needs to stand the test of scrutiny before it is implemented into law. Conservatives can sometimes be persuaded that an issue has merit and will vote to change the law. Liberals can be persuaded that a law that was passed has outlived its usefulness, or had unintended consequences and will vote to repeal the law. This works well as long as everyone in the system is willing to listen to the other side.

However, there are people in the population with narrow vision. They can only see one way to do things and they will not be persuaded no matter what the other side says. These are the extremists. There are extremists on both the right and the left. By right we mean conservative and left we mean liberal in the current nomenclature.

Extremists on the left believe that the population’s problems stem from the privileged group. They are the “haves” and they prevent the “have-nots” from attaining a meaningful life. Karl Marx and other philosophers wrote that the working class majority needed to rise up against the ruling class wealthy and redistribute the wealth and create a fair system where everyone could live a meaningful life. This happened around the world in Russia, Cuba, China and other places. Of course what seemed to be obvious on paper didn’t pan out in real life, because the laziness of human nature needs motivation to be productive. So, the Socialist and communist extremists are most likely regrouping and evaluating the situation. However, other extremist groups on the left are fighting for other issues important to the left. For example, eco-terrorists believe that the environment is being destroyed so fast that democracy will never be able to repair the damage because it is to slow. Human rights extremists believe that free trade is exploiting people in less prosperous countries and lowering wages in the wealthy countries. On the left, most extremists pick a cause and fight for that cause with blinders on. Even the broad socialist cause had as a goal the equalization of wealth. However, at the farthest end of the spectrum is the anarchist that wants to destroy all rule of law and change everything.

Extremists on the right have the opposite problem. They don’t want anything to change, or more likely they want to put things back to the way they used to be. Of course, the way things used to be is in the eye of the beholder. Like extremists on the left, extremists on the right usually find something that has changed and focus their energy on changing it back to the way it was. There is no compromise and they don’t listen to the other side. For example, the right to life group believes that abortion is wrong and there is no other option. Abortion was illegal in before the 1960s in most places and they want to turn the clock back. Some people in this movement feel so strongly about it that they went out and bombed abortion clinics and shot doctors. Another example of this extremist behavior is the white-power group. This group believes that the white group has a birthright to a bright future in America. They may find themselves in many cases worse off than their parents were at their age. This could be because of the lack of high paying factory jobs in our current economy. But, these white groups focus on immigrants who they believe have come into the country and taken their predestined jobs from them. These groups focus on the hatred of foreigners and often results in violence against immigrant groups. Since there are laws restricting what these groups can do they begin to also focus their hatred on the government as well. And the farthest end of the spectrum is the group or individual that believes that the government is preventing him from living his life the way it was intended and therefore the government should be destroyed. So, the most extreme position of both groups is the same – Anarchy.