Reply #12: If you want to understand, sometimes you must examine

[The Straight Story]

To the right, we are the wackos.

Example: Death penatly bad, abortion good. Killing animals bad (a wing of the left in Peta), killing an unborn child good.

To them, we represent not a progressive movement but a regressive one to a time when mankind let his feelings rule.

God and religion were/are seen as practical advice from a higher power and the road we are on is one which will lead to a tyranny of world wide proportions and destroy america and our freedoms.

The left is seen as the party that will fight for gays, abortion, animal rights, and so on , and at the same time condemn as wrong and evil a small town that wants to put a nativity scene which they have been putting up for 70 years. How does this play out with the average american who votes? Don't kill the poor chicken, abortion is a right and your tax dollars should support it, but don't you dare mention the word god in school.

This is how the right sees us. My sister is a home schooling fundie (and I love her dearly always) but she voted for *. She thinks the rethugs could do better herself, but the left she sees as wanting to destroy all things which she held as a tradition and harmless. Why would they do that she asks?

If a town is mostly muslim and wants to celebrate ramadan, that is their perogative. But she grew up in an era where a nativity scene was a symbol of the christmas holiday - and when she sees her traditions attacked as evil while abortion is seen as a right to end life she gets pretty upset.

Sure we may all disagree with that logic, but this is why there is an US vs THEM. Abortion is legal, gays can get domestic partner benefits, just let our little town keep it's 'christmas' (an evil horrid word to some) celebration and nativity scene. Nope, sorry.

We are seeking, as the left, to overturn over a century of tradition while interjecting things like gay rights, abortion, animal rights, et al all at the same time. We are looking to overturn an entire generation of things where people did not see a problem with something and tell them they are wrong and we know best.

WE are the FUNDIES. We are seeking to tell others what is right and wrong. We are preaching. We are evangelizing. We are condeming those who do not believe as we do. And we marvel at the right and wonder why they don't see things the way we do???

Red state Vs. Blue state here, boycott the evil red, we are superior in our views - they say we go to hell for ours and we say they are idiots and evil/wrong for theirs. They don't listen to our views, we ridicule theirs. We have a belief and ideal, so do they. We see them as wanting to run us off into camps and they see us as wanting to do the same.

Who is right? What is right? We make the right an enemy and try hard to find all we can to back up our claims while ignoring that which does not (and we will believe there is nothing that cannot back us up).

Is this progressive? Is looking for the bad in people, trying to find only the worst in a set progressive? Many on the right from the salvation army on have done a lot to help others. But we shun that, we reject it because it did not follow our beliefs to the hilt. There is no good in those we disagree with.

To me that is not progressive. The right has done good, it has done bad - not that we can ever agree on what that means. Instead of dividing maybe we should work on uniting on things where we do agree.

Let me give an example. A christian right winger gets elected to congress. He/She feels that as a society we should help the poor. They use their belief to introduce legislation to help others. We object because their 'beliefs' go against seperation of church and state. Now I am not saying this did happen, but I can see the left screaming about it *if* they mentioned their beliefs.

But are we not all carriers of a belief? We all have them, we all use them in out decision making, and we all believe a little differently than others. We here on DU are bridged by some common beliefs. Strip away the term 'religion' and replace it with 'belief system'. Then you, and I, are looking for the government to implement a system we believe (a term of faith) to be the best.


My whole point really is - we need to work with all humans in the US to secure a life which we all want. one in which we are free. In freedom there will be some things we do not like. In the 1800's there were several communes over the US that sprang up and had their own sets of laws and values, localized areas where people were free to live as they saw fit. There was a larger group, the US, which people lived in but the idea was that the federal government stayed out of your local community. Want gay marriage, communism, socialism, fundie life, that was cool - you were free to join or leave such a community. Where is that freedom now? If fundies want to make a town and collect taxes, and have a nativity scene we see that as a national issue. Why? Why should we try to make others live like we do??

The biggest problem, to me, is that the federal government has grown in power - and the larger they grow the less rights the whole has. Is that really a way to get diversity and freedom? Such things are relative terms based on the community.

WHY make everyone like what we want to be??? Is that not like * and co. wanting Iraq and such to be like they want them to be?

Seperate the powers. Make the feds less powerful. They should not be able to tell San Fran what they can do with respect to gay marriage, and they should not tell the amish what they can do in their area.

Freedom means there will be areas where you do not agree with how others live their lives, but with with freedom - real freedom as a base - you can choose to leave areas and move to those which share your beliefs.

We don't need a civil war. We need to return power and freedom to the people and move it away from the few at capital hill and the presidency. Keep a common bond where taxes are used to provide for the defense of our freedoms from those that would attack us, break down the corporate giants who use federal laws, work together - right and left, to move power out of the hands of the few and into the many at their local level.

Freedom is not given by law, but taken by it. When we imbue the few at a national level with power we erase the power of the people at the local level to have a say in how they live their lives. The left and right want the same thing - freedom. But we cannot get that when we give those in power at a national level more say in how we live.

Just my $1.00 worth of rambling :)