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This blog originally posted Monday, August 07, 2006

Current mood: indescribable Category: News and Politics

Sitting here listing to a really bad instrumental rendition of 'Hey Jude' on XM. The Beatles were cutting edge at one time, but now they are just muzak. Do you ever wonder why we have to rely on labels so much? Liberal, Democrat, Conservative, Republican... Yeah, I understand that we need to have some agreed upon classifications for communication, but these things take on a life of their own after awhile.For example, do I have to be a democrat to care about social issues? If I am worried about what we are doing to the environment, does that make me left-wing? Does concern for immigrants and the issues of immigration make me a liberal? I think that the deficit spending situation that happens in congress is bad thing. Does that make me a republican? I believe in a free-market economy for jobs. Am I a conservative? I own guns does that make me right-wing? I decry the moral shift in our country that has directly affected our children and I happen to be Christian. Does that mean that I am a fundamentalist? I am all of these things and more and I don't particularly want to be defined solely by any of them. Can't I be free-thinking, intelligent, and have opinions without having my entire outlook defined by someone elses broad definition that may include my one little opinion? I have even noticed that the label tends to be put on by someone who thinks another way. In fact, there seems to be a dearth of intelligent disagreement in the market place. Words like 'narrow-minded', 'feminist', and 'fundamentalist', 'liberal', 'racist' and many others are bandied about as insults when someone doesn't agree with you. For the record, if a person holds an opinion and can intelligently discuss both sides of an issue, can acknowledge the other side as having merit, and can logically explain why they hold the opposing viewpoint - then I can have respect for them although I may not agree with them. Is it too much to ask for the same respect? Is it too weird to think that a person might hold views that fall into more than one broad camp? I have to stop now, they are playing a really bad muzak version of 'Only You.' I really don't like this station.