Competition in Politics hurts Everyone
DISCLAIMER: This isn’t really a Church/State post, but since I focus on political topics I thought I’d throw these two cents in.
I read Addictinginfo.org somewhat regularly. He’s wildly liberal but his blog is very effective in bringing relevant issues to attention and being provocative about it. But… this post is one of the reasons why I shy away from the “liberal” and “conservative” labels. Labels polarize and “otherize” discourse. Mr. Foster, in this article, is giving all “liberals” a heads-up on who the most dangerous “conservatives” are currently. I’ll admit, the majority of the people on his list are folks who I most often earnestly disagree with. But they are not “dangerous”! They are public servants (ideally). I don’t necessarily like their ideas, but they want a better America, they want things to go well for all of us (ideally). If that’s the case, then I want to engage with them and their constituents and see if we can come up with some good ideas on how to fix stuff.
For me, this “otherizing” destroys public discourse and turns society into a public policy football game. It’s “civil” for now, but so was discourse surrounding slavery… until it wasn’t! “Northerner”, “Southerner”, “Liberal”, “Conservative”, “Creationist”, “Evolutionarian”… these labels don’t mean anything, they are just used as insults, or to lump a person’s idea into a category that deserves disdain.
I want to be part of society that talks about education, environment, jobs, foreign policy, all as ideas needing big solutions. Destroy rhetoric wherever you see it friends, it’s tearing us apart!
(don’t you think?)
