open minded

Maybe some of my posts are to negative, maybe i should be more careful to attack ideas and not people, maybe I’m not open minded enough. Ill give you negative, the whole Katrina disaster put me in a rather negative mood. Did I go to far, yeah probably should I have gone farther, maybe. Basically the same answer to the next part about attacking ideas not people. I did do a bit of name calling in the "ill become a republican" post. I didn’t call anyone in particular any names, which I guess would make it stereotyping or bigotry so maybe its worst to make fun of a whole organization than an individual. But the not open minded bit has me stumped. I like to think of myself as fairly open-minded. I will listen to any reasonable debate; I really enjoy a good debate. I don’t claim to be great at it, but its fun anyway. I tried to have open debates on a blog called sandy's spot. It started off well but I just got angry when people would keep saying that the war in Iraq is stopping terrorism but couldn’t say how. yes they damaged some terrorist organizations but there is the very real possibility that it has created many more terrorists. Its odd how people can be so angry about 9/11 that they want to kill every Arab and yet cant understand that bombing a sovereign nation will make people want to kill us in return. They kept saying that that’s not how it works and yet the people saying it are perfect examples that it is true. I try to be open-minded; I try to listen to what conservatives have to say. I just find that I very quickly see some motive behind their views that I disagree with. I see people who want to push religion into government. This is Un-American and wrong; putting one religion into government hinders the rights of all other religions. My view on this is quite easily defended by the constitution, which is why I view the opposition as Un-American. The conservatives, who claim the moral high ground, then speak of assassinations and god’s wraith against the sinners. I’m not quite sure how someone can be a conservative Christian. If you’re trying to follow the ways of Jesus than how can you be a conservative? That’s equivalent to being a follower of Gandhi but supporting apartheid. If Jesus was here today which side do you really think he would be on? Which of his virtues do you think would be most important to him today? Would the fact that he might have been anti-gay really outweigh his belief in helping those less fortunate? Would he support our imperialistic armies? Was Jesus a conservative in his own time? Was his goal to maintain the status quo? Short answer; NO! I am not a religious man and I've never read the entire bible, if I were going to truly study the bible I would want to learn Hebrew first so I didn’t have to read a translation, well it still would have been rewritten many times over the years so I still wouldn’t take any of it as literal word for word accounts of what happened. But at least in Hebrew you don’t lose the connotation of words in a language which is very different than our own.
Well this has gotten off subject. I try to see the other side, I realize that most people either want to help others or are simply indifferent of other peoples plight. I am sure that there are very few if any people out there who want to harm others for no reason. But there are plenty of people who will allow others to starve to death if it is beneficial to themselves. When I try to look through the eyes of a conservative Christian I get confused, I know that most of the values are to come from the bible and that they want to do good for the world. Then I hear about cutting funding from third world nations that have overpopulation because the country promotes safe sex. The conservatives would rather have a child starve to death than allow people to use condoms. Because having sex for reasons other than procreation is murder. I cannot accept this logic. I see where it comes from but I simply cannot agree with it. But sitting by idle and watching a generation of children grow up with no hope, no food, no education, no water, no medical attention, and no way to improve their lives, well that’s just rugged individualism. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps and make something of yourself, oh wait they cant afford shoes.
I keep falling into the trap of negativity. I am trying to be as open as possible but once I realize the persons motive I cannot ignore that. When I see the peace activists and the environmentalist I see people more courageous than I trying to stop a war or stop loggers from cutting down ancient trees. The environmentalist in particular I have a hard time seeing a malicious motive. Many things motivate the anti-war protesters but I have a hard time believing that greed is one of them. There is no money to be made in stopping a war, or at least not much. I’m sure there are a few people who make money from protesting, Michael Moore comes to mind. Sustaining a war on the other hand creates billions of dollars of profit. Halliburton comes to mind on this one. Want to compare profits of Halliburton CEO's with the profits of Micheal Moore ?

Maybe Halliburton compared to MoveOn.org or the ACLU? Ok that’s not really fair one is a corporation the others are not. This started with a concern that I was not open minded about the issues. I would love to hear a convincing argument to back up the basic morals of the conservative Christians. If you can sum up how the right wing is going to make this a better country then please leave me a message or a link. I would love to read it.
I will try to keep an open mind; I try to listen to several sides of an issue before I decide where I stand. I probably do get stuck in my views once I decide on an issue. I will have to actively work at keeping my mind open even after I have a stance on an issue. I try to listen to the conservative side and I am constantly told to have faith, well I don’t. Faith is something I lack I need at least some level of evidence. Logic is something I do have, and I have a hard time suspending that in order to understand other points of view. I am close-minded when it comes to ideas that don’t follow common sense and rely on faith instead. I will not listen to an argument that cannot be backed up with at least logic if not evidence. This I do not feel bad about and I’m not going to apologize for not listening to arguments not grounded in evidence or at least common sense. To tell me that I must have faith in order to understand is to say that you can’t prove your own point. I haven’t even gotten into the whole intelligent design bullshit. That’s for a latter post.

Well I’ll try to keep an open mind, I have to thank my big sister for pointing out that I was beginning to sound like someone I don’t want to sound like. I also have to point out that these posts are usually just me spouting off about something I saw on the net that pissed me off. Some article gets me riled up and then I have to write a few lines about it which then spirals out of control until I am just angry at the whole political system. Not always exactly how I feel about each issue. There are also the times when I lean farther to the left then I am actually inclined then I have some room to compromise when I get in a debate about it. I want to rip the whole system down and start fresh. A full on revolution is what this country needs. Go back to the constitution and the bill of rights and start over. I think this is a great country and I think that there are some great ideas in those old documents, we just need to clean out all of the greed and corruption that has been infecting the system for the last 200 years.