It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.and yet I'm afraid that a lot of us cheered at this sentiment because we wanted to use it as a weapon against those other folks. What the fuck, guys? Tea Partiers aren't our enemies, they're our countrymen (assuming you're American), no matter how dumb or ugly they are or how much they want to claim that we aren't their countrymen. The Tea Partiers are, to a large extent, a result of the continually fragmenting and polarized nature of politics in the US, aided by 24-hour news networks, the increasing of niche preaching-to-the-choir reading that the internet facilitates, and the fear and uncertainty that always comes when a people are progressing. If our reaction to a bunch of our countrymen saying dumb shit we disagree with is to point at them and laugh, or to dismiss them as evil and idiotic, we are participating in the degradation of the public rhetoric that creates the Tea Parties in the first place. I know this is some hackneyed shit. Love your enemies, blah blah blah. But vilifying and distancing yourself from everyone with whom you disagree, even with whom you violently disagree, doesn't help. And, to be honest, I have to respect St. Alia a fuckton for hanging around MetaFilter when we treat her this way so often, because, despite her disagreement with the vast majority here, she's not disengaging from those with whom she disagrees.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
In the end -- In the end -- In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?
"This is problematic. This also manifests itself in people who've been "raised" on the Internet when you meet them in person. Now, this isn't true for everybody who wastes time on message boards, but there're absolutely some people who in person feel like they're just spewing forum comments. Conversing with them is like wading into a pool of Internet jokes and memes and insults and it's really not pleasant. But it's a reasonable simulation of how conversations online work, where you don't have half of the elements of realpeopletalking."Susan Herring writes a really great article that addresses some of adults' (mis)conceptions about youth 'raised' on the internet: Questioning the generational divide: Technological exoticism and adult construction of online youth identity. (PDF) A quote from the article: "Perhaps more surprising, many of what we consider new technologies (instant messaging, blogs, chat rooms, email, cell phones, search engines, etc.) are "transparent" to young users37—they do not consider them to be technologies, except in the broadest sense. In a recent survey, U.S. undergraduates defined technology as new or customizable; for example, a cell phone with standard features is not technology, but a cell phone with new features is.38 For something to be "technology," in other words, it should be novel, challenging, and fun, not merely useful. (Analogously, in my generation, washing machines and telephones were not considered technology, but anything to do with computers was.)" In the article, she also puts forth a good argument that the 'youth raised on the internet' is yet to come, the reasons why, and where the youth are now.
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason....Basically, I think the best tact in a political discussion with a religious person is not to argue against their faith directly, but only to argue that faith isn't enough.
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We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.
Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion.
But it's fair to say that if any of us saw a twenty-first century Abraham raising the knife on the roof of his apartment building, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know, be it common laws or basic reason.
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posted by roll truck roll at 9:19 PM on April 13, 2010 [12 favorites]