Something for everyone to consider, but especially liberals like me: if you want to live in anything like a truly free society, you must tolerate hatred. If some AR-15 toting bearded militia hillbilly from Idaho says he hates fags or Mexicans, you have to let him. After all, who are you to tell anyone how to feel? In fact, who is anyone to tell anyone else how to feel? Unless you think we should be living in an Orwellian dystopia in which a government or church tells everyone (including you, of course) how to think and feel, you just have to accept that many or even most of the people in our country have ugly feelings, sometimes about you. The only thing a free society can do about hatred is try to project the lives and property of the innocent.
I have nothing against genuine attempts to enlighten the closed-minded, but so often those attempts are just hatred from the other side. Much of the time it seems to me that the oppressed enjoy and nurture their role as victims. It gives meaning to their otherwise empty lives, and that meaning is almost certainly as destructive as the bigotry they claim to despise.
- Liberals, conservatives don’t want to “ruin our country.”
- Conservatives, liberals don’t want to “ruin our country.”
- Most people on both sides of the political spectrum want our country to be great. They just have very different views of what that greatness should be, and how to achieve it.
- It’s unlikely any of you really hate Barack Obama or George Bush or any other president, because quite honestly, there is little chance you know all that much about them. Did you read the legislation they passed? Sit in on their meetings? Work in their offices when they were campaigning? Or did you just feel a rush of blood to your head when Fox news read you some poll results or when you heard the chant of “four more years!!!” and saw the banners flying?
- Accept the fact that if you live in a democratic society, sometimes you will lose.
- Lead by example; anything else is hypocrisy.
“There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless.” –Full Metal Jacket