The word "radical" comes from the Latin radix, radicis from which we also get radish and radius.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

— Henry David Thoreau

... it is best that the truth be fully stated and clearly recognized. He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it. This is not radicalism in the bad sense which so many attach to the word. This is conservatism in the true sense.

Henry George:  The Land Question (1881)

"Make no small plans: they have no magic to stir men's blood," quoth Daniel Burnham. ...  Let's rephrase Burnham in the affirmative: "Make big plans: they have magic to stir people's blood." Big Plans imply Grand Visions. Henry George had few peers at stirring his hearers' blood, and agreed.

"If you would move men, to what shall you appeal? Not their pockets, but their patriotism; not selfishness, but sympathy. Self-interest is a mechanical force, but in loyalty to higher impulses men will give even life."

Big Plans and Grand Visions inspire small ones. They also help orient and coordinate them. They help us divide the major from the minor, to direct our work most efficiently.

— Mason Gaffney,  Property Tax: Biases and Reforms

Henry George: The Wages of Labor

The Socialists seek the assumption by the State of capital (in which they vaguely and erroneously include land), or, more properly speaking, of large capitals, and State management and direction of at least the larger operations of industry. In this way they hope to abolish interest, which they regard as a wrong and an evil; to do away with the gains of exchangers, speculators, contractors, and middlemen, which they regard as waste; to do away with the wage system and secure general cooperation; and to prevent competition, which they deem the fundamental cause of the impoverishment of labor. The more moderate of them, without going so far, go in the same direction, and seek some remedy or palliation of the worst forms of poverty by Government regulation.

The essential character of Socialism is that it looks to the extension of the functions of the State for the remedy of social evils; that it would substitute regulation and direction for competition, and control by organised society for the free play of individual desire and effort.

Its advocates generally teach the preposterous and degrading doctrine that slavery was the first condition of labor. It assumes that the tendency of wages to a minimum is the natural law, and seeks to abolish wages; it assumes that the natural result of competition is to grind down workers, and seeks to abolish competition by restrictions, prohibitions, and extensions of governing power. Thus, mistaking effects for causes, and childishly blaming the state for hitting it, it wastes strength in striving for remedies that when not worse are futile. ...  read the whole article

Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)

BUT it seems to us the vice of Socialism in all its degrees is its want of radicalism, of going to the root. . .. It assumes that the tendency of wages to a minimum is the natural law, and seeks to abolish wages; it assumes that the natural result of competition is to grind down workers, and seeks to abolish competition by restrictions, prohibitions, and extensions of governing power. Thus mistaking effects for causes, and childishly blaming the stone for hitting it, it wastes strength in striving for remedies that when not worse are futile. Associated though it is in many places with democratic aspiration, yet its essence is the same delusion to which the Children of Israel yielded when, against the protest of their prophet, they insisted on a king; the delusion that has everywhere corrupted democracies and enthroned monarchs — that power over the people can be used for the benefit of the people; that there may be devised machinery that through human agencies will secure for the management of individual affairs more wisdom and more virtue than the people themselves possess.  — The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII 

 

... go to "Gems from George"