America is i child f revolution Focus 71 It has been said that we study history to escape it; but often we are ind to the eternally repeating cycles and fall victim to them. Such is e case when one draws parallels between the Revolutionary Era and day. When the early Patriots declared that they wanted no part of the iglish Establishment, they were treading on dangerous ground. They vocated philosophies that had previously been the exclusive property either lunatics or Utopian dreamers. But suddenly it was proposed in :ms not to be misunderstood: Men ought to be free, equal in matters opportunity and these goals were to be accepted in totality and hieved at whatever cost. But those early Patriots were condemned by the Tories who thought pity revolutionaries ought to be hanged, by the gentle persuaders 10 were sympathetic to freedom but unwilling to pay the price of erty and applauded only by those who realized that either a mplete break was to be realized or the Experiment was to fail and its vocates were to be executed. Those who spoke those heady words and penned those thoughts ire Radicals; to advocate a complete break from England for purposes independance, to stage a Boston Massacre where the population nted and pelted the British troops with harsh words and stones and ire subsequently killed, and to straw-man George III as a tyrant of speakable atrocities were acts only to be attempted by men who dized that freedom was to be had perhaps only at the cost of violent lions. In case there are those who view that period as one of quaint counters and faint-hearted protests, let there be no mistake: It was a volution, complete with guerilla warefare, underground presses and lical democratic libertarians advocating rebellion against the English tablishment and hopefully seeking to set up a system that would Iress the wrongs that prompted the Revolution. But, largely due to the work of the Founding Fathers to embody ny of those heady ideas in a constitutional form to guarantee that rernment aid and not hinder man's freedom, those truly radical and olutionary thoughts and men have become the property of those o would have us maintain what is, under the false illusion that the jam has been reached. They could not be more wrong. It is somewhat incongrous to rship the radicals of our past and subsequently condemn those who rocate much the same ideas today. It seems to some that the radical vocation of human liberty was fine in the 18th Century but a ivement to be shunned today, viewed with suspicion, dealt with shly and dismissed as rhetoric of the lunatic fringe or of the olutionarily subversive. Such thinking is nonsense. We did not create Utopia in those early its; we only tried for it. The early documents were not perfect, nor re they intended to be: Ergo the amendment process. But there is a nmon belief today that the struggle for freedom is over, that we have ieved that Dream. Not so. f we condemn those genuine radicals and revolutionaries-purposely pring the perennial charlatans who exploit unfortunate situations-n situations-n we will have obeyed the historical imperative and sealed our fate. rhe Declaration stated in certain terms that when a long series of ses occurred, and when the normal processes of change were Itructed, it is the rights of the people-indeed the obligation-to alter ibolish that government. Let us hope that we have sufficient youth ealize that constant, unceasing change in national government is the rdian of liberty. If we forget that little truism, then abolishment of form of government will inevitably occur and that would be a