[harrumph]

>I have political opinions also.

Good for you. The thing is, it's not a matter of opinion: radical left ideas do, in fact, improve the society and do, in fact, become mainstream.

>Incremental changes work. Radicals causing destruction very seldom do.

The only thing Rosa Parks destroyed was the unchallenged idea that she was rightfully subject to lesser treatment. What she did was not incremental in the slightest, though, so, lame centrist chiding that would have her act "incrementally" is at best meaningless and at worst openly supportive of the unjust status quo of the time.

[mythrwy]

Claiming your opinion is absolute fact doesn't make it so.

There are plenty of counterexamples but again, not worth debating.

Rosa Parks all great and good. Not really that radical. Burning ghettos a decade later did what exactly? What we get from that? The ghettos are still there.

"meaningless", "openly supportive".

Like many of your stripe you appear to want to mostly be combative and argue and sling accusations. It's counterproductive and if I weren't in a shitty mood myself from too much time in Vim wouldn't even engage.

You can't burn everything to the ground for every perceived slight. Makes nothing better. Fortunately most people in modern society recognize this. Communism failed and will continue to fail indefinitely (at least until strong AI comes about). Better ideas don't always come from the left. Sorry.

Both sides have their share of dumb ideas. The progressive timeline in which I speculate you think you are participating, "taking up the mantel" as it were is mostly bullshit. Not that respect for basic human freedoms and respect for others and basic human decency is bullshit. But all too often leftists have forgotten about that part.

Oh, not a "rightist" in case you misunderstand.

[harrumph]

> Claiming your opinion is absolute fact doesn't make it so.

Sorry, it's not an opinion: the examples given in the first paragraph of the article are nothing but left radical ideas that became mainstream. Don't mistake plain, historical, uncontroversial fact for opinion. They are left radical ideas that, like others of their kind, became mainstream and made the society fairer and better. It seems you don't want to admit it -- probably because it would interrupt your pose of above-it-all detachment -- but the good thing is because we have a shared history, you don't actually have to admit it. It's true anyway.

[mythrwy]

You may think what you are saying is "true" but I challenge you to find counterexamples yourself. I believe you will find plenty which negate what you are saying. It's too simple of a narrative and lacks real world nuance.

Also perhaps think about what being a "radical" entails.

In short, don't be exactly what the studies in the parent article found.

[harrumph]

> I believe you will find plenty which negate what you are saying.

No, there are no serious counterexamples to the claim "allowing women the vote improved society and made it fairer", nor to "ending official, normalized white supremacy improved society and made it fairer." These outcomes were mainstreamed only after appearing as left radical ideas, a plain fact that weak, doltish centrists don't wish to admit, believing as they do in "incrementalism" and "nuance", which in the context of historic change served only as codewords for "abetting and protecting the status quo, no matter how unjust".

[mythrwy]

Where did women's suffrage first appear in the US? Was it "radical" action that caused it? (hint, Utah and Wyoming, two very very non leftist places and nearly 50 years before national suffrage in 1920).

Where did you get this idea that all beneficial to human rights came from the radical left? Sociology 101 at Big State U?

You think Pol Pot was beneficial for human freedoms? You think he did so much good in the world? Where does he fit on your progressive timeline march towards an enlightened future?

Honestly what you have is very similar to religion. Tone same as an unreasonable Jihadist convinced if everyone would just accept Islam world would be oh so great and by whatever means necessary.

But, I've been 25-30 years in the past similar to where you are now. Heard the same claptrap in college. Thought similar things. A few decades of observation on the real world results of leftist policies and honest self reflection led me to acquire a bit more nuanced view of the world. But, I get it.

However I'd urge a bit more examination of any non thinking absolutist ideology. They are forms of self imposed mental illness really and don't make things better nor make one happy. Not a criticism. Just a suggestion because I want to help and make things better :)

[harrumph]

You are unsurprisingly incorrect on the history. I say unsurprising, because history is a humanities study, and HN is home to many who are effectively humanities-illiterate, and who tend to mistake a well-rounded education with their own abilities to operate and occasionally build technology.

Agitation for women's rights, including suffrage, first appeared formally in the US east in the 1840s. Suffrage was radicalism of a historic part with abolitionism, a radicalism over which a giant and entirely justified civil war would be fought and won by the emancipators in twenty or so years. Emancipation is the central theme of radical left thought, and here is no exception; while capitalism and imperialism went effectively unexamined theoretically until Marx in about the same decade, there is no left radical idea before or after that fails to hew to emancipatory ideals in the US.

Speaking of failure, it appears as if you've failed to "observe the real world" of historic occurrence, and have done so in pursuit of an ideology -- a weak, vacuous, change-nothing, injustice-friendly centrist ideology. I suggest you heed your own advice.

To review: left radical ideas become mainstream and improve the society when they do. The chief opponent of this mainstreaming is not the radical right, but rather the enormous, cowardly middle, whose political emptiness has always been the greatest friend and enabler to those who enslave us.