Reply #4: Hey, ya know,

[WilliamPitt]

Nixon created the EPA, so go figure. ;)

If we cannot find a way to respect those with opposing beliefs, especially if they are able to defend and explain the basis for those beliefs, we might as well give the whole thing up. The single best human being I have ever known, my grandfather, was a full-bore rock-ribbed conservative Catholic who still despised FDR fifty years after the man had died, and had more than a little bit of Jeffersonian "avoid entangling alliances" isolationism running through his veins.

In the early 1970s, he wrote and delivered a speech denouncing abortion that has since become one of the bedrock documents of the movement's ideology. The only Democrat he ever voted for was Kennedy. He was aide to Admiral Husband Kimmell, the fleet commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated, broken and destroyed oiver the attack. My grandfather represented him at the inquest, and spent the next 60+ years of his life working to clear Kimmell's name and have his rank restored. Three weeks before he died, my grandfather convinced Senator Kennedy to attach an amendment to the 2000 budget officially clearing Kimmell of blame and restoring his rank. When he passed, that amendment and the pen Clinton signed it with were on his mantle.

He was anti-choice, very GOP, entirely conservative, and fairly isolationist to boot...and I was never once able to even put a dent in his reasoning and defenses for these beliefs. His ideology was entirely seamless, and I have always respected a person who is able to do that because of him. He was the smartest, most moral, most loyal, most reliable, and funniest man I have ever known.

So. Disagreement is good. Sometimes. :)