I tried to make a point earlier and did so rather poorly [View All]

I also was unavoidably interrupted right after posting so I couldn't engage in discussion with many of you. I'm probably on "Ignore" with a whole bunch of you now, but here goes anyway . . .

my previous post: another leftofthedial cat flame

My point was not to flame cats. I've now been living with a cat in the house for about a year and have grown tolerant of the little bugger, if not actually sort of grudgingly fond of him.

My point also was not to defend sexism and misogyny. I adore women. If it weren't for women, I'd have long ago offed myself.

My point is that we, as a culture--liberals, conservatives, DUers, Freepers, neocons, Greens, Dems, repukes, religiously insane nut jobs, atheists . . . ALL of us--seem to have lost the ability to live and let live.

It is not enough anymore to simply believe what we believe, state it, discuss it, defend it and promote it. We feel we have to attack anything that offends us and call into question its very right to exist. We see something we find offensive--we immediately call the mods or hit alert or start complaining to all our allies that the evil thing must be expunged.

Attempting to proscribe speech, and therefore ideas, by drawing boundaries around anything that is subjectively offensive is a bad idea and antithetical to progressivism. There is no telling where good new ideas might come from--perhaps even from what we perceive at the moment to be a cesspool.

I think we should be far more tolerant and more focused on the evil that is consuming the planet, instead of lesser things that merely offend us.