If you knew me well you might say "cockeyed pessimist", only that is not ultimately true, because it would mean taking a fixed view of human nature as irredeemably BAD. And that belief I must leave to people who like to call themselves "conservative" but can conserve nothing good, only destroy, because they're hoist of their own radically pessimistic petard. Victims of their own negativity and set on dragging everyone else down to their own wretched level.

For the rest, any mature observer knows that, unless we're saints, our motivations and political attitudes will inevitably be mixed... and there may be a dose of Robespierre in every reactionary and of the reactionary in every would-be progressive. We're piebald. And a little dose of humility and self-awareness would do no one any harm...

I'm tempted by the label "radical" (radical, from Latin radix = a root) because it is not intrinsically possible to associate the search for the roots of truth with any extreme view...