Friday, July 10, 2009

Tolerance Encourages

I have little tolerance for the people who are on the opposite ideological spectrum from me when they debate me.  It is not that I do not enjoy friendly debate from time to time, but I often find the “debates” degenerating into pathetic squabbling and name-calling.  As such, I will find myself engaging in Conan the Barbarian-style debate because:
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.*
When I am insulted or accused of things I never did, I will quickly get very mean and in your face.  I guess that is the curse of civilized society: we often find ourselves relying on mutual respect in order to facilitate civilized discourse.  The opposite is often the rule, rather than the exception.
In the United States of America, we have take uncivilized discourse to a higher level.  These days, the DAM (Democrat Attack Machine) will take you to court in order to slander your name until you submit to them.  You cannot strike them physically, because that would be considered assault.  I remember one of my Spanish teachers in high school telling about El Cid, who tore the beard of a rival off due to baseless accusations.
Unfortunately, Western culture has degenerated to the point where confrontation is considered taboo.  We are supposed to turn the other cheek and walk away.  I find this notion to be sickening.  When I first read Wild at Heart, I found his description of Jesus, who drove out businesses from the temple in Jerusalem, to be more confrontational then you would expect given the current crop of Christians we see today.
Dave Ramsey has often advised listeners with legal troubles to find a lawyer with the ferocity of a bulldog.  He has stated, in no uncertain terms, that anyone who sues him frivolously will be relentlessly crushed.  He certainly has the means to do so as well.
Emotion is a tool.  When you are in control of it, you can always use it to your advantage.  When you get in people’s faces, you will get results, especially in this society.  I am often regarded as emotionless and cold by my wife, which is not true at all.  I experience emotions like everyone else, I simply choose to not let them get the better of me.  I do not always succeed, as my wife could attest to, but by and large I have great capacity for self-control in this area.
I am not saying that you should always be confrontational to get your way.  Certainly, you should behave yourself when other people around you behave.  But when you are mistreated or wronged, you need to get in their face.  You will know when people are being intentionally malicious by the look of their face and by the sound of their voice.
All that being said, I would like to say that the people of the Democratic Underground, Huffington Post, and all those other liberal blogs sites where people comment frequently are jerks, buttholes, and scumbags.  They deserve no respect from any conservative, nor do they deserve the benefit of the doubt.  They should not be debated, merely talked down to and berated for their irrationality.  If you think it is OK to tell a 12 year old to die because he views homosexuality as immoral, then you need shut up.  There is no point in debating someone like that and there is no point in allowing to have a forum to speak in.
So do everything you can to stop irrational idiots from speaking.  You will be preserving civilization if you do.  But if civilization falls, those people will be the first to be killed because, after all, they think they can be impolite without having their skulls split.
*from “The Tower of the Elephant” by Robert E. Howard.