General Jackassery

I can respect both sides of the argument that rages today on just about everyone’s blog, and I can actually understand many of the reasons that both sides have for their respective arguments. What I can’t understand and really have a hard time tolerating is the lack of respect that we have for each other.

The United States is run on a majority rules system. However, it was not intended to be the majority craps on minority because we can system. I keep seeing a mentality that if you’re not on my side then you’re an idiot and I wonder how people think that attitude is productive. I wonder what gives people the right to say, “If you don’t like it you can move to Canada!” We are all Americans and this country belongs to ALL of us!

Like it or not, if you can convince enough people that you’re right then your idea will pass and the opposite holds true. Therefore if one party fails to win an election the blame lies on that party for failing to convince enough people that they are right. The work remains for them to continue to try to convince people to believe in them and to vote for them. That in mind, alienating them by calling them names out of frustration hardly seems productive.

I will reiterate the fact that I now firmly believe our country went to war with Iraq for the wrong reasons, but I remain hopeful that in time something good can be achieved. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” comes to mind and forces me to believe that we ALL must come together to convince our people, our governments, and our President that we should do what is right to secure and make safe the citizens and country of Iraq. We must do this for the Iraqi people, for the American people and for the rest of the world.

Many people agree that we went to war in Iraq for the wrong reasons. Many people believe that this administration (really we as a country because we as country elected this administration) bit off more than we can chew and many people throughout the world believe that we will fail. This is precisely why we MUST succeed! We must succeed because failure would be devastating to our country, failure would (as Osama says) expose the soft underbelly of what was once a great nation, and failure would take away what little credibility we still have in the world.

Alienating those who oppose us is a sure way to fail in all that we as a country must do. On the other hand, working with them to understand where the misunderstandings and disagreements are and repairing them will be the road to achievement far greater than our country has ever seen in the past. We set aside our differences to become the United States of America 200 plus years ago. We set aside our differences in both World Wars to do great things. Today we must set aside our differences again.