Listen to the hatred you are preaching.
Listen to your refusal to acknowledge any views but your own even if what you champion just might be based on false premises. Or don’t you think that even possible?
And far from just not accepting any other view, no, you ridicule and demonize both the opinions and those that hold them.
And while you do so, you and all like you who call yourselves patriots: maybe you should read what the real patriots thought and wrote or shall we ignore them too?
Listen to you threatening Orrin Hatch of Utah. Orrin Hatch, who is conservative to his very bone marrow. Yet you threaten him publicly with a primary challenge because, listen to yourselves, because he was friendly with Ted Kennedy. Friendship in your eyes has become a character fault. Shame on you.
Listen to more than half of those at a political forum in Iowa agreeing, that your, yes, your President is a Muslim. Half of the people at a meeting in Iowa. You don’t want to hear that the fact that he is not a Muslim is irrelevant, do you? Colin Powell told us that even if he was; so what? In case you have forgotten it’s called Freedom of Religion and it is in the First Amendment which ranks it even ahead of your likely right to bear arms.
That annoying First Amendment is also what allowed Hatch and Kennedy to be friends and to speak civilly. It’s called Free Speech and if you disdain that you fall into the realm of the black shirts in the 30’s or the not so fictional Orwellian world of 1984.
Those amendments; the Constitution; the Federalist Papers: that is what the patriots gave us. The also gave us the concept of tolerance.
You see, the thing you cannot stomach is tolerance. I challenge you to look up the word. Never mind, I will do it for you: tolerance is being fair, objective and understanding of those whose views differ from yours.
How hard is that? So hard that your children will grow up as bigoted and closed minded as you are? So hard that you would rather destroy the very fabric of this nation than to allow a single voice of dissent? Is that what you want?
Don’t like what someone is saying? Simple, shout them down; don’t like a political point? Simple, call them un-American; don’t like immigrants? Simple, build walls and shut the borders and while you are at it arm yourselves just in case.
Have friends with other views? You can’t even consider that can you? They could not by your definition be friends.
Think about that. Do you really want everyone to think the way you do? Is that what our God-given ability to reason and debate, to use our intellect and will has come to?
Ever even consider in the quiet of your own mind that even just one of your opinions might be in error? Be honest, at least honest to yourself.
Because if you say no to that question, then you consider yourself omniscient, and as best as I know, that term only applies to a single entity: the Deity.
But you probably don’t believe that definition either, do you?
Thomas Ignatius Hayes, Jr.
St Petersburg FL
10 February 2011
