All radicals want immediate change at society’s foundation, but the less extreme among them do not insist on violence as the necessary vehicle by which to bring about social transformation. Indeed, one group of radicals, the pacifists, completely reject violence as a means to achieve justice. …show more content…
Martin Luther King Jr., and labor leader Cesar Chavez. Each leader organized great movements demanding immediate and profound change, yet each refused to use violence to reach his goals, even after he had suffered violence at the hands of supporters of the status quo. Even though not all radicals are violent and not all revolutions provoke conflict, radicals tend to be received by their adversaries with inordinately severe reactions. Owing a great debt to the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), contemporary radicals make the establishment terribly uncomfortable. Extreme leftists challenge the most cherished values and assumptions of society. They reject the institutions of the establishment, calling for a more humane, egalitarian, and idealistic social and political system. In fact, they demand a society which many of us desire in the ideal but which, for practical reasons or for reasons of expedience or lack of commitment, we have been unable or perhaps unwilling to create. Put differently, the radical causes us to wonder if indeed we did not fail—if we settled for a less than perfect world because it was more convenient. Thus, the idealism of