It's one thing to change something and quite another to attain power.
It would be good if you'd tease this thinking out into a diary when you have the time and the inclination.
Basically, if you want to attain power in a modern democracy you'll be most successful by adopting positions which fall more or less on the median of voters' opinions. On the other hand, if you want to influence discourse you will have to adopt an extreme opinion. The more extreme, the smaller the size of your immediate sympathetic audience, but the larger the strength and clarity of your message. There's likely to be an optimum balance somewhere. You are most likely to have an impact on actually changing things if you are centrist enough to be in a group that actually attains power and you have some influence within that. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
