The Practicality Of Idealism

"You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea."
Medgar Evers

"Oh, you're just an idealist." I hear that said to me all the time in the dismissive tone of that of an adult informing an ignorant child. They sigh impatiently with my alleged lack of understanding of how the world works. I'm chasing the end of the rainbow and fanciful dreams having nothing to do with reality, my detractors contend. Smug and superior, they deem my words to be wishful thinking and wholly irrelevant.

See the morons I have to put up with??

If nothing else, you might want to make sure the world you defend as "realistic" is not freaking dying in the first place! Who the hell calls dying realistic? Go off on your own planet and die, I plan to live. It's the definition of living that needs to be redefined. Two bulbs are planted yet only one sprouts to be a beautiful flower. I ask you, which one is living and which one merely exists? And what is the point of merely existing? What bee lands on the flower that never blooms?

"The gifts of God should be enjoyed by all citizens."

Medgar Evers understood this. One of the pioneers of civil rights, he started his activism in the early 50's organizing boycotts ("Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom." I still want that bumper sticker!) and legally challenging segregation at the University of Mississippi. Although not the most famous of activists, none were braver. The choice he made was to sprout to his full potential. Was he an idealist? Was he a fool?

Medgar Evers was also a husband and a father with three children. Did he not also have a duty to them? Did he have the right to put his life on the line and abandon his family? Sure, we need civil rights, but what of the rights of those who depended on him? You can't change the world, it's hopelessly bent out of shape. People are the way people are. Why get killed over it?

"I'm looking to be shot any time I step out of my car . . . If I die, it will be in a good cause. I've been fighting for America just as much as the soldiers in Vietnam."

On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers was assassinated. But he did not die. His body passed away as all bodies do but having chosen life, his life is everlasting. The measure of any man is not whether he saves the world, but if the world is a better place for his having been here. The job of every soul is to find salvation. It matters not if no man or every man joins you. There is no choice but to choose life, no flower has the right to expect life without sprouting. That is reality.

So it's funny now - in the name of life - the coward has been crowned king and rights are considered optional to living. It's not safe to sprout, say those who seek to curb freedom. The false hope is to stay buried in the ground, never exposing yourself to danger. And yet the irony is you also never expose yourself to life - or even the possibility of it. America has receded into cowardice: the cowardice of war, the cowardice of mistrust and the cowardice of moving to the back of the bus all over again.

Medgar Evers took care of his family better than any man who refused his rights as a human being.

"I don't know if I'm going to heaven or to hell, but I'm going from Jackson."

Would you accept this if you
thought it would prevent a war?

Evil, but its very nature, is a form of self-destruction - of insanity. To believe in "necessary insanity" is the height of folly. Our wars are not preserving liberty, but destroying it. Our greed is not preserving our way of life, but eroding it. Rejecting the values of freedom will not make us safe, but rather endanger each and every life. I don't care about the ways of a dying world, I care about the ways of life.

Don't talk to me about reality - about arming yourself to the teeth, never leaving the house and placing yourself in chains in the hopes you can do the same to those who transgress in your eyes. That is certain death; futureless. I can't help what others may choose and no bullet can save a soul, but I'm not going to live like a dog. And I can't conceive of any terrorist more dangerous than someone who chooses to do so. To give up our freedoms is to create a 9/11 every single day.

Want to make the world a safer place? Shine the beacon of freedom to every corner of the world.
________________________________________