Two Sides of the Political Coin: Presidential Candidates Ron Paul and Mike Gravel

When pundits look at American politics, they often use smart aleck remarks and facial gestures to get their points across. Most of them are transparent in their left or right point of view. I would suppose that many try to have a balanced approach to our political landscape. But, is this what America really wants?

Let's look at one of the best ways that Americans decide what might be best for America by looking at one extreme to the left, and one extreme to the right. Ron Paul and Mike Gravel.

Anyone who witnessed the recent Republican and Democratic presidential debates had to see the extreme ideals of Ron Paul and Mike Gravel in all its transparency. Mike Gravel, many said, provided comic relief to the Democratic debates, while Ron Paul's ideology is seen as so libertarian that not even those who call themselves libertarian won't agree with him.

However, these two candidates provide one of the tools that is unsurpassed in American politics. That is a total extreme viewpoint that highlights and brings to task those candidates who are talking out of both sides of their mouths. It forces Americans to clarify where they really stand, and enables more diplomatic candidates to courageously step forward with a stance that they may not have taken before.

In America, change has always taken place when extreme movements display what is the most atrocious component of an issue. The civil rights movement brought into America's living rooms the ungodly treatment of African-Americans in the streets of the south. The woman's movement gave voice to the clear facts that women in America did not have the basic rights that all human beings should have. Women burned their bras in the sixties and change took place. Extreme, you betcha!

Our young people of the sixties marched on Washington, turned college campuses into bedlam, and fought their parents because the Vietnam War should not, and could not be tolerated. Things changed, because America took to the streets. And people died, not only in war, but here too, to force change by showing extreme action in the face of wrong.