The Radicalist

Our country was once a radical country, jumping to seemingly insane actions to protest taxes, injustices. America was seen as a crazy country, not a lazy country. And there was a very simple reason for that. We started out as people with a pioneering spirit, people who were willing to travel across the Atlantic into an unknown world full of dangerous Natives for a better chance at life.

Now I'm not going to say that we should go back to being a 100% agricultural country, we'd fall apart in the face of the first warring country that came our way. But radical measures have to be taken, and that's not working because of one single thing:
Political parties.
Yes, I'm talking about the system that our country has been run on for over 200 years. My suggestion is that radical. And there's very simple evidence for that radicalism.
No nondemocratic or republican candidate has been elected president since Zachary Taylor, the Twelfth President of the United States of America. The Thirteenth, Millard Fillmore, was not elected, he was Taylor's Vice President when Taylor died.
Our country is famous, historically, not today, for rejecting the old system, ditching it to go a new way that might work better.

Becoming our own individual colonies.

Abolishing slavery (which wasn't very new, we were actually behind other countries, but it was radical).
Clinging to the old system is what I stand most firmly against. To illustrate, this test was conducted (by people I don't like because of the way they treat monkeys) on monkeys:
They put one of those shock collars on the monkey and put him/her in front of a lever. If the monkey doesn't pull the lever, a large shock will come in. If he does, a smaller shock will come in the place of the larger. As he/she continues to pull the lever, the charge builds and builds until it's worse than what he/she would have felt by not pulling it. He/she keeps pulling it because of how it worked before. The monkey clings to the old system, even though it doesn't work.

Now, I am not an evolutionist. I do not believe that we were once monkeys (or shared a common ancestor with monkeys). However, humans do the same thing. And people who challenge the old system (like congressmen who are running on the fact that they're "just like you guys") then get bought into it because that's where the power is, because the old system has been digging its trenches for years and the challenger is given a huge bribe. But the old system will tumble eventually. The Old World will lose its colonies on the New World. When we first broke off of Britain, we were as helpless as a newborn babe. If a bunch of radicals hadn't gone off and made a Constitution, Britain probably would have been able to get us back into their empire with a simple trade embargo.

Would we have permanently abolished slavery if not for Radicals? Not until machines rendered slavery obsolete. The group called the Radical Republicans pushed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments through Congress, ending slavery, giving African Americans the right to vote, and promising citizenship to all humans born in the US (except the people who were here before us, they had no claim to the continent at the time) respectively. A huge step towards perfection, which is what we should strive for at all times. And it was radical. Insane. The Thirteenth Amendment disabled the most profitable organization in the country. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth hurt the power of big businesses, since the common worker they were victimizing (usually immigrants or African Americans) suddenly got the vote next generation around (it was one generation later, under Teddy Roosevelt, that the big businesses really started to lose power before getting it again by having everything made in China).

Our government is run by big businesses, which is why radicalism is gone. Radicalism doesn't sit well with people who are profiting under the current system. In this instance, that's big businesses and our two biggest parties. Radicalism is for the common man who doesn't have a future if he sits still and clings to the old system. So if you're a common man, or stand for common men, or don't want someone who will just keep everything the way it is in office, vote third party next election. Maybe (s)he'll be defeated. Probably (s)he'll be defeated. But what's the point of electing or reelecting unless you stand for something?