Tolerance – Live and Let Live

Do you remember the saying “live and let live”? It was a great motto of the 70’s and for everyone who embraced their right to just float around, doing or not doing anything they wanted with anyone they wanted… all the while wanting everyone to be accepted for being them self and still (somehow) taking care of their own basic needs and not relying on society to take care of them (they relied on each other).

Remember that?

I always thought free-thinkers like that were liberals. I didn’t necessarily think that was a bad thing but never really thought much about it either. Although I never spent much time thinking about it, I felt it was their right to feel whatever they wanted. Now many of those same individuals have spent a great deal of their lives making their children feel the same way… “live and let live”.

Sounds wonderful to me. As a matter of fact, I have taught my son that he can be anything he wants and that so long as he gets there honestly, I will always be proud of his achievements. He also knows how to be tolerant of others… but not because I forced it down his throat (not like so many liberals do today). The tolerance he learned was a simple lesson in how to win and lose without making everyone around you feel horrible. You don’t spend your time whining and crying when you lose… you don’t accuse others of cheating or playing an unfair game just because you lost. You don’t spend your time rubbing someone else’s face in the dirt if you win… you don’t destroy their self worth by pointing at them and laughing.

That’s it… to me that lesson teaches all the tolerance a person really needs. If you know how to win and how to lose, you will have accomplished something so many others have not. You will feel joy for those who have done something great even if you have not and you will still feel pride in yourself when you accomplish something and not make everyone around you feel miserable.

… but back to the “live and let live” individuals. It has taken me a long time to realize that many of them have hidden motives behind this freedom of thought ideal. I always thought they included everyone in that motto. Unfortunately, many of them have now moved on into political footholds in our society… politicians, journalists, educators… so many of them have slipped into these once inspiring and proud rolls of our society.

And some of them are frauds… they either didn’t participate in the “live and let live” movement or they just went along for the ride seeing a much bigger way of using the motto for a different agenda.

Now we have the “live and let live so long as it’s the right way” groups and individuals. They want freedoms but primarily for those people who, in their eyes, deserve certain freedoms. They want these freedoms GRANTED to those who follow the special rules they have created. They want freedoms withheld from anyone who disagrees with them and has the audacity to speak up and say something about it. They want all of us to do exactly what they want us to do so they can claim victory over an invisible foe that only they can see.

All the while, they forget that other countries and groups with their own hidden agenda are watching them and amusing themselves of the ignorance that they are enforcing. Not only do they hope everyone will run around with these ideals, they want to then take them and crush them into non-existence. Do you think Islam really loves the fact Obama is in power? Do you think they agree with any of his personal or political points of view? No… what they believe in is the fact that if they can get a very liberal president into power, then they can eventually control him or control the society he creates while in office. It could be they take full advantage next year or they could be patient and wait to see if he gets elected to a second term.

RADARSITE’s: That Other War: Revisited (broken link)

What have we learned about ourselves from this recent fateful presidential election? We learned that a majority of Americans have bought into the concept that America is the problem with the world. We have learned that if we attempt to protect ourselves or fight back against our enemies we will be condemned by the world as aggressors. We have learned that it is our inherent bigotry and racism that is the fundamental cause of the dangerous instability in this world. We have learned that the only way to combat this growing menace to world peace is to ’embrace the other’ and elect a man of color — regardless of his qualifications or character — in order to make a statement to the world that we recognize our national historical guilt and that we are willing, no, determined, to change. To accomodate the world, we will change what it means to be an American. We will be less concerned with our American exceptionalism and more concerned with the needs of the world we live in. We have been guilty of gross arrogance and monumental hubris, and we are willing to make amends.

We have also learned that, for the majority of Americans, the fact that our enemies have not broken down our doors and attacked us in our homes for seven years now proves that they are no longer there. Or if they are there, that they no longer pose the threat to our existence that we once thought they did. 49% of Americans polled during this past election thought that the most serious issue facing this nation was the economy. The next most pertinent issue was terrorism, which was ranked at an inconsequential 9%. Now, the question is this. Does the existential threat to our nation diminish in direct relation to our acknowledgement of it? Have our sworn enemies become less dangerous to us because we refuse to look at them?

They know that a liberal society is much easier to defeat than a conservative society… conservatives will stand up for the rights of liberals while liberals will simply let conservatives drown.

But the terrorists WILL attack. It could be they attack us the same way they did on September 11, 2001 (there have been no successful attacks since then) or they could just continue to attack us through our youth by spending years indoctrinating our children while they are in grade school all the way up to our young adults in American colleges who show intolerance and hatred for others who do not agree with them. (broken link)

“Why do you call me a racist when you don’t even know me?” she screamed. Made no difference. Grossmann was felled by the largest of the four. She hit her head on the brick wall, and staggered back to her dorm. The other three black women at the beating chucked at this dark manifestation of partisan evil. They walked away laughing, offering no help to their victim. The banality of evil had asserted itself. And at four-to-one, it was also a cowardly act of mindless violence which, presumably, the four thought “normal.”

Although I have taught my son tolerance indirectly through how to win and how to lose… I feel that tolerance as our society teaches us is a joke. So many liberals preach tolerance of others who are different and yet they do nothing when students in our colleges are singled out and beaten for being conservative. It’s a joke! It has nothing to do with tolerance and “live and let live”. It has everything to do with dictatorship.