Dangerous minds

People who are determined to fight for what they think is right, is God’s will, or is demanded by justice are deluded fools, however brilliant they may be.

Fools who think they are or will be admired, if not by their contemporaries then by future generations - or maybe by God, or the Buddha, or Jesus.

The most dangerous and even mad thing about them is their determination to stand up for what they believe and change the world.

One thinks of Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung, Mohammed, or Martin Luther.

Or Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, or Lenin.

I remember the radicals who led the demonstrations of the 60s.

They were just such crackpots then, and many of them are still crackpots, though some have switched from one madness to another.

Some of them robbed banks and even killed people to end capitalism and bring down Amerikkka.

Others were lesser criminals, but still criminals.

And all were heroes in their own minds like Stalin, who was also a bank robber, and the Italian Red Brigades, or the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Once I asked a kid working part time at a Pathfinder bookstore whether he was a student.

He took immediate offense, said he was not, and insisted heatedly and in all seriousness, “I am a professional revolutionary.”

I am pleased and, I confess, even relieved - very relieved - to report that his revolution has not happened.

Nor any other more earth-shaking, in America, within my life time, than the civil rights and sexual revolutions.

And even their tremors continue, menacingly.