Friday I had the unfortunate experience of facing the ugly side of liberalism. When you see the ugly side you will notice some familiar traits. Beliefs will be very strongly held. Opinions will be very poorly informed. And you will swear you have seen it before. You have. You have seen it in the ugly side of conservatism. It is the feature of conservatism that makes people like me all too eager to discount the entire philosophy.
I probably might find conservatives who would disagree with me, but I think one of the defining features of our current political landscape is the recent dominance of ugly siders in conservative discourse (in such venues as talk radio). Hopefully, we are beginning to see some backlash from that. My hope is that as liberals see more success at the polls they don't also see an opportunity show their ugly side.
I blew it on Friday. I let my desire not to talk to a ridiculous person overcome my desire to keep the average person from deciding liberals might actually be as bad as Rush Limbaugh says. If presented with the opportunity again, I hope I remember that the right thing to do is inform the ugly side liberal that the only thing they are doing is creating more conservatives.
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4 comments:
So no detail on what the encounter actually consisted of with the ugly liberal?
Sorry, no. It's work related, which falls squarely into the realm of stuff I'm not going to share with the world (i.e. the one or two people I don't personally know who ever venture through).
What you call "ugly liberals" and what I call "unthinking liberals" are individauls we have to suffer at times.
When my wife and I moved to Kansas City from the East Coast in 2004, we had a caricatured view of the Midwest. We were fearful about living in "Red America" -- that we were going to be the only liberals in a sea of right-wingers. Our plan was to find the few liberal enclaves that must exist (even in a place like this!) and develop our social circle from that. So, we plunged into Drinking Liberally meetings, Democratic Party meetups, and Kerry campaign events; and were quickly turned off by the preponderance of what you call "ugly liberals." Exact mirror images of Rush Limabugh; holding the gut-reaction, left-wing line on all issues; no actual critical thought applied; comments like "Let's all go and pee on Reagan's grave."; etc...
We have discovered that it's much more important to seek out people who stay informed, think for themselves, and can carry on an intelligent conversation than just those who share our political leanings.
I completely agree coug.
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