Sunday, April 15, 2012

Just the Crazy Ones

"Political statuses and pictures rarely change someone's mind: often, all they accomplish is hurt. Amendment One is an important issue, but voting for it doesn't make you less intelligent, and voting against it doesn't make you less Christian. Don't get me wrong: it's fine to have an opinion. But there are ways to state it that don't harm others. 'Reckless words pierce like a sword.'" - my friend Sam's Facebook status

I follow a page on Facebook called "Being Liberal." They sometimes post political cartoons that make me laugh.

They also do a lot of Republican-bashing. This bothers me. Sure, some conservatives are self-righteous, hypocritical, and annoying. But so are some liberals. It's one thing to point out "Look, what you're saying here doesn't really match up with what you're saying over here," but it's quite another to openly disparage an entire political party just because some of its members are being dumb.

There's a lot of talk about making people be more tolerant and accepting of beliefs and lifestyle choices different from their own. Well...it works both ways, people.

I mean, with things like racism, too bad. Racial political and social equality is a thing that does and should exist. Segregation = not okay. End of story. But some beliefs are just based on what they believe the role of government should be in society, and that's a matter of opinion. I can think you're wrong. I can be infuriated by your opinion. I can think you're absolutely freaking insane. But that doesn't give me the right to be rude to you.

Let's take the insurance-covering-birth-control debate as an example. The people who want to limit access to it truly believe that using it is wrong. They aren't out on a vendetta against women. They're trying to make sure people do what they believe are good things. So even if I think they're dead wrong, and that even if they were right it isn't the government's place to be regulating something like that, I still need to understand that and treat them with the proper amount of respect.

"100 Things You Can Say To Irritate a Republican" is not terribly funny. "Math even conservatives can understand" is just offensive.

And okay, sometimes I do laugh at this type of joke. But as someone in my book club said, "We don't mean all conservative Christians. Just the crazy ones." Yeah...still feels wrong to me.

4 comments:

  1. So much agreeing is happening right now. I enjoy this post very much. Tolerance is what keeps us human and stops us from trying to take away other people's humanity. Even when people say or believe things that are "just plain wrong" like racism and sexism and homophobia and any other philosophy that dehumanizes a group of people, tolerance is the only viable response. People who act on those beliefs should be prosecuted and held responsible; and we should try to inform those people in the hopes of opening their minds to different types of people, but the fact that people think and feel hateful or hurtful things doesn't mean they aren't people anymore or that we get to adopt the philosophies we are objecting to in the first place just to "punish wrongdoers". Then we just get an endless cycle of perpetually enraged squids and there are never any snuggles.

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  2. Here's the thing, and I get where you're coming from, but, especially in the birth control debate, there is, to a certain extent, an actual vendetta against women. Topeka Kansas has legalized wife beating, we are forcing procedures on women, clearly something is going on. And sexism does exist, so it is possible that republican legislatures do have a problem with women's rights(based off of what they say and what they believe)

    Also, hypothetical question, is it okay to make fun of members of the Nazi party? Because then we are denigrating those we disagree with but, they do/did terrible things.

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  3. In addition, about Amendment One, to vote for it is to vote to disenfranchise a minority group for no reason other than your personal dislike of them. This, I hope we can all agree here, is an immoral action. Thus, to vote for Amendment one would make you either immoral or stupid(in that you could not recognize the action as an immoral one.) So, philosophically/logically speaking to call supporters either bigoted or stupid(while not polite or a good idea to foster conversation) would be accurate. Now, I'm not saying that you should, but I'm saying that....no, I'm saying that calling ardent supporters of Amendment One bigots is perfectly fine. We, as a society, should have no Patience for hatred and those who hope to move it into law must be stopped immediately or they will take root.

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  4. re: birth control
    Fair enough.

    Hypothetical question: mocking is different from saying they do/did terrible things and holding that against them. There are more polite and constructive ways of going about it.

    Amendment One:
    No but see I agree with you that it's immoral, but the point is that they don't see it that way- they see it as just trying to keep people from doing bad things. Obviously we think that's dead wrong, and maybe also think people are stupid for doing it, but even if we call them out on it, mocking an entire political party because of this is still mean. Especially since when, as my friend said, not all Republicans support it.

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