[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.

[mythrwy]

So the first states to grant women's suffrage were?

And this was a result somehow of political radicalism?

This is your own example BTW that you have gone on and on about "women's suffrage".

You think somehow I didn't sit in many humanities classes and thus am not "educated" after run down I gave you in last post? Cmmon my friend.

You could lose the hostile revolution tone. It isn't actually cool outside of a few college campuses, and truth be told, it isn't really cool there either.

Thread is getting too skinny so you can have last post. I'll read it but am out.

[eesmith]

Given your extensive humanities classes, perhaps you can tell us about the role of Hamilton Wilcox, a New York suffragist, in advocating for Utah as an experiment for granting suffrage to woman, and the special role that polygamy played in that issue.

While you're at it, could you describe how Colorado and Idaho - two of the first states to allow women to vote - could be described as "very very non leftist places" and yet had strong support for the left-wing People's Party, aka, The Populists. The Populists helped push for woman's suffrage in those states. For example, Governor Davis H. Waite of Colorado, who campaigned for the right of women to vote in Colorado, was a Populist. And Colorado and Idaho supported Weaver (a Populist) in 1892.

It's almost like those states were leftist places.

Oh, but you're out of oumfph, so I guess I'll have the last word by responding to your questions:

1) The first states to grant women suffrage included Utah, Colorado, and Idaho.

2) It was a result of political radicalism. a) For Utah, most of the US was against polygamy and giving women the right to vote was considered a way to kill off polygamy. It backfired. (Some suffragettes were against granting women in Utah the right to vote until polygamy was outlawed, so it's confusing.)

b) For Colorado, the national suffragette organizations sent people to the state to organize, and the movement was explicitly connected to the economic issues facing male working-class voters. The example at https://blog.elevationscu.com/womens-suffrage-colorado/ is "The merciless power of the plutocracy that crushes you crushes us also".

This was effective because the working class people in those states were left-wing, starting unions, etc.

See, I paid attention in high school when we studied the populist movement, so I knew the west was pretty leftist in the late 1800s. I didn't just sit there like you apparently did.