To my liberal friends (and by extension their compatriots),
I know that I normally write to my fellow conservatives, and I know that this may strike you as odd that I would write this to you, but believe it or not, I do have a purpose in doing so.
I find that generally, my friends on the right understand full well what it is that the liberal bloc in our country wants, perhaps because they are so vocal and forthright about it, but I also find that my more liberal friends take their opinions for granted and assume that they are the basis from which everyone works. This, I believe, is why there is so much shock, anger, and hurt when they find out that someone from the right doesn't agree with them. So I thought I would attempt to connect some of the dots in order to hopefully reduce the barriers to conversation, dialog, and compromise.
I want to paint a world picture for you. I am specifically attempting to induce an emotional response, and you WON'T like it, but it is critical for you to feel it in order to make my overall point understandable:
Imagine...
A world where everyone in school is forced to pray to Jesus at the start of the day.
Where they are forced to say the pledge of allegiance or be sent home.
Where they are taught from the Bible as part of their curriculum.
Where people who aren't doing any type of work receive no benefits of any kind.
Where minimum wage is abolished.
Where people are expected to rise or fall on nothing but their own merit.
Where unions and "community" blocs are banned.
Where individualism is the rule of the day and not societialism.
Where people who break the law are punished fairly, but harshly.
Where only people who can contribute something meaningful to society are allowed to immigrate.
Where monetary policy is set in such a way that everyone pays the same percentage of taxes regardless of their ability to pay it.
Where only men and women may have a relationship and gender is defined SOLELY by the genetalia between your legs AT BIRTH.
I could go on, but I doubt there's a need. That queasy feeling in your stomach? That streak of anger running up your spine? That feeling of being ready to fight to prevent a world like that from coming to pass?
That is what those on the right feel EVERYTIME you start talking about "America" as you see it, or as you want it. No, I'm not kidding. No, that's not a joke. No, I'm not exaggerating. This is how you make them feel, and this is why you are so shocked, you ASSUME that they see right and wrong the same way you do (and that your view is right and there's is wrong), so you get upset when they're rejecting what is "right," while never even stopping to consider your premise and if they are even starting from the same premise you are.
All those things you see as right? They literally see them as EVIL. Just as you see their beliefs as evil, they see the same in return. Yet what fascinates me is that by in large, the right can accept that you don't share the same basis for objective morality, most of the left can't or won't.
Until you can put yourself in the shoes of someone who sees everything you love and hold as right and true to be EVIL, you cannot understand the person you're arguing with, and you cannot understand your own bias (no one every TRULY does). Not that everyone on the right understands, or that everyone on the left doesn't, we're painting with too big of a brush here to deal with almost any specific cases, these are generalities, and should be seen as such.
Yet, we can only speak from experience, and mine has been that when I'm watching an exchange between the two extremes, or am having one of my own, those on the right always start with the assumption that the person on the left disagrees with them fundamentally and argues from that perspective. The one arguing from the left assumes the, "natural correctness," of their argument, and tends to believe that the person on the right knows it, but just refuses to accept it.
I'm trying to tell you that this is not, in fact, the case. They don't KNOW that what you believe is right and they're just denying it, they believe that what you call "right" is EVIL and they're arguing against it because they completely disagree with you, not because they're struggling to come to acceptance.
That is why we must be able to find compromises that will allow everyone to live together, or return to a Federalist style government. You're not asking them to accept what is correct against their own desires, you are asking them to embrace EVIL and to call it good, and the same goes in reverse. You don't just disagree on how to handle things, you don't even just disagree on right and wrong, you fundamentally disagree on good and evil, and if we can't compromise with each other then we're sunk.
Since Bill Clinton's Presidency, and honestly since the 1960s, we've been sliding towards the world that the left calls good, just, and right. However, in the eyes of the right, we've been sliding into an amoral abyss of evil, selfishness, and wrong. Can you be surprised that the reaction to Obama's presidency has been as strong as it has?
If you really understand the above principle, you wouldn't be. Just as I'm not shocked by his behavior/policies while in office, he TRULY BELIEVED that what he was doing was not just right, it was not only just, but it was fundamentally GOOD. The other sides sees it 180° from him, so there shouldn't be a surprise that they will react just as vigorously against what they see as wrong, should there?
I'm not trying to castigate you. I'm not even trying to convince you. I'm just trying to reason with you and cut away all of the emotive clutter. Until we can meet on a level of rationality and objectivity, this cycle of the political pendulum will continue and we will continue to just swing wider and wider from each other.
A Supreme Court nominee shouldn't matter, as long as they are only determining the legality of a law passed and not attempting to write laws themselves. They were our last bastion of objectivity. The last anchor set into the deep rock of the law. Now, by legislating from the bench, they've become just as petulant as the political sea itself upon which they ride. Another tool with which one side can force others to cede to their version of right or wrong, good or evil.
If we want to save our union, it's time to live and let live. Let states pass their own laws and let people move to states that agree with their beliefs. It worked for hundreds of years, and in just five decades, we've screwed it all up by trying to force others to do what we want. Well, you then can't be surprised when they do the same to you; unless you believe that you're right, and they're just denying it, then you get angry because you believe that they're denying the truth right in front of them, but they aren't, they have a different truth. That shouldn't be hard for the side that believes in Moral Relativism, yet it tends to be.
The right screamed for years, please don't, if you do this to us it can be done back to you. Now it is, and you're losing your minds. Why? Because you believe your cause to be GOOD and theirs' to be evil. Never stopping to ponder the possibility that they feel the exact same in return.
That is why the fighting will not stop unless compromise is reached. We either agree to live and let live, or we go our separate ways and force ourselves to live and let live. But there really isn't a different option, because no one is changing their minds.
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