As I get older [even if not wiser--Ed.], I find that I tolerate willful stupidity less and less. Disagree with me all you want--that's fine. Just have GOOD reasons for doing so. Don't just parrot mindless crap that is idiotic on its face. There's no room for discussion or finding genuine solutions to our problems in that approach.
For example, don't say you support the GOP because its members appoint judges who will "apply" the law, not "create" law (unlike those nasty Democrats). News flash: if all that judges did was apply law, we'd have no need for them. The entire judicial branch of government would serve no purpose and thus would not exist. The fact is, all judges interpret the law. It's what the judicial branch was designed to do. The ONLY time such interpretation becomes impermissible "judicial activism" is when you disagree with the judges' conclusion in a particular case. Say you support the GOP's judicial nominees because you like their brand of "activism," but don't pretend that they aren't activist. They are.
And don't say that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow "un-American." No one party has a monopoly on all the good people or ideas. Demonizing those who disagree with you is not a valid argument. It's a cheap shot, and a lie to boot. It is easier than trying to come up with facts and figures that support your position on any given issue, but this stuff isn't supposed to be easy. The Founders wanted us to use our brains and to make rational decisions about the issues of the day. That's why the Constitution set up our system the way it did.
Don't say that all Democrats want to do is take YOUR money and give it to people who don't deserve it. That is untrue on its face. No one likes taxes, but rational people understand that taxes are a necessary evil if we are to live in a civilized society. Government exists to do the things we cannot do for ourselves, like national defense, building and maintaining infrastructure, and yes, even certain social programs--because without them, the costs to everyone in society would be higher than they are with those programs. Think of it as preventive medicine. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes [no liberal, he--Ed.] so cogently noted, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
Besides, the entire "redistribution of wealth" argument is specious on its face. Under the past eight years of the Dubya administration, we've seen the greatest redistribution of wealth from those who can least afford it TO those who least need it that has ever occurred in all of recorded history. The rich got much richer; the rest of us got screwed. The Democrats just want to return us to some sort of fiscal sanity. Besides, we need to pay down the record-shattering deficits that the Dubya administration has stuck us with. Even John McCain said that we can't keep putting off paying the bills till some future generation. The longer we wait, the more painful it's going to be. For the sake of our progeny and our country, we have to start paying down the deficit now. And if we ask a bit more from those who have the most, so what? They've received greater benefits than the rest of us; fairness dictates that they pay their fair share of the costs.
Remember: government is necessary. When you put people in charge of running the government who do not believe in government, you get lousy government. Hence the FEMA debacle in "responding" to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, amongst other ineptitudes. It's almost as if the Dubya administration deliberately screwed up as many things as possible to make us all give up on government--to force us back into a 19th century, pre-Civil War size federal government. Unfortunately, it's not the 19th century. It's the 21st century. The world has changed, drastically. Going backwards is impossible. You don't like it? Move somewhere else. That's what you tell people who disagree with you to do, isn't it?
Yes, the last three sentences violated my "make a rational argument" ground rule. But how better to get the point across that not making rational arguments serves no good purpose? My argument preceding those last three sentences was rational, which leads to the next lesson (and which is a riff on the "no one party holds a monopoly on all the good people or ideas"): don't reject something 100% when it's not 100% bad. One example: I know people who have decided that FactCheck.org is totally useless because they disagreed with one posting about one issue. That's a massive over-reaction. FactCheck.org is a non-profit, non-affiliated web site, and it trashes all lies from every side that it is asked to check. It is not a partisan site. So people who reject it out of hand are reacting in a knee-jerk fashion based on their own proclivities and prejudices. They are not addressing the subject rationally.
Riff #2: no matter how much you want to, you are not going to shoehorn the world into looking like something of which you approve. The world is what it is. Most of it couldn't give a rat's ass about what Americans want it to do or how Americans want it to behave. We cannot bully anybody. We can, by restoring America's moral authority, become a voice of reason and persuasion in the world. When we lead by example, the world (by and large) will follow. When we try to bully the world into doing as we say, especially when it's not as we ourselves do, we get precisely nowhere. The past eight years provide ample examples of the folly of trying to bully the world--or worse yet, of interpreting the world through the lenses of our own prejudices. Remember: the only people who were surprised that the Iraqis didn't 100% welcome us as liberators were the members of the Dubya administration and its "true believers" among the vox populi.
And stop calling people who disagree with you about abortion "baby killers." Despite what you would like to think, NO ONE likes abortion. But facts are facts. Abortion existed when it was illegal. Make it illegal again, it will still exist. Rich women will still be able to afford to go where they can have them done safely. But those without such material resources will be forced back into the filth of the back alleys, where the dangers are much higher. The social costs are enormous, and are not just fiscal. As Prohibition proved, you can't legislate morality. Outlawing abortion won't make abortion go away; it will just cause the most damage to those parts of society who can afford it and survive it the least. Far better to make abortion "safe, legal, and RARE." Oh, but that would also require comprehensive contraception education, and you don't want that, either, do you?
The world is often cruel that way. We don't get to choose exactly what we want. We must pick from an imperfect list of incomplete options. Please do not try to twist Sarah Palin's teen-aged daughter's pregnancy into support for your position. Yes, her family and the baby's father are doing the right thing--but they can afford to. The lesson is not that the girl should carry the pregnancy to term in any event. The lesson is that the pregnancy should not have happened. Unlike the "just say "No!" anti-drugs campaign, telling teens to just say "No!" to sex isn't going to work. No one has a biological imperative to do drugs; sex, on the other hand, is an almost overwhelming biological urge as youth mature into child-bearing physical (if not mental) maturity. Therefore, if saying "No!" doesn't work and abortions are unacceptable, contraception education becomes the only available choice. Outlawing abortion is not going to change anything for the better, not in the real world.
Besides, the GOP had innumerable chances to pass legislation overturning Roe v. Wade during the first six years of the Dubya administration, when it controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Note that the GOP did precisely NOTHING. The GOP doesn't want to overturn Roe v. Wade; it wants to keep it to use as a wedge issue to peel off certain Democrats from their own natural party affiliation--many conservative Catholics, for example, who otherwise would stand with Democrats on issues such as civil rights and social justice, have voted Republican in the past 30 years because of the abortion issue. Thank goodness, if the report I heard on NPR this morning is true, that they are finally learning that abortion alone is not the basis of a conscientious vote.
If you make a rational argument in support of your stand on an issue, I'll respect it, and listen to it, and I will consider it. I may even change my mind based on what you tell me. But give me the courtesy of the same care and attention to what I say in support of my stand on any particular issue. THAT's what our system is all about, and that's why the American Constitution is unique in the history of the world. Don't dumb down. Smarten up!
Then again, as the late, great, lamented Jeff MacNelly once noted, "If you're going to put up with freedom of speech, you have to put up with a lot of dumbness of speech." He was a wiser man with a cooler head than mine.
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