I turn on news, or tennis, or golf, or whatever is watched at home for my patients and it quite often calms them better than any medication I can provide. They are comforted by the various personalities confirming their beliefs. A doctor I know said, he likes to go to the Methodist church every Sunday to be surrounded by “like minds”. It is comforting. My friend feels the same way about the Catholic church. We form ourselves into groups of like minds and label ourselves as conservatives or liberals or Methodists or Catholics. We like to be around people who think like we think. Otherwise, you feel like a freak who doesn’t belong anywhere. We think thoughts and find people who agree with our thoughts and we hang out.
My conservative friends have labeled me a liberal and my liberal friends seem to agree with me pretty often, I guess that makes me a liberal. I wanted to know what that was so I looked it up. Now, when you go to wikipedia.org, and search conservatism they have Liberal conservatism, Conservative liberalism, Libertarian conservatism, Fiscal conservatism, Green conservatism, Cultural conservatism, and Religious conservatism. It all seems to have something to do with the Protestant reformation around 1789 and the political balancing of social harmony and common good. (I used the term “common good” to a physician friend of mine once and he said that was another word for socialism.)
What I got from all of it was –> Conservatives strongly support the right of property, respect for authority and religious values. As a homeowner, I’m all over the right of property. However, I often think that those with authority abuse their power and religion is too often used to achieve said power. The subsequent abuse of authority and religion is not always so good for us out here in the “common good.”
Understanding “like minds” is important. Learning from the mistakes of history is important. Free-thinking is important. Freedom of religion is important. When too many like minds get together and blindly oppose contrary information than you have “mob rule”. When you look up liberalism in Wikipedia, you’ll find the 17th century again and some names like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin and John Adams. You’ll also find George Washington argued that a strong federal government was necessary to prevent mob rule. (AKA: town hall meetings where folks show up with guns) . It is hard to define liberalism in one sentence; it would seem intellectual liberty, including freedom of conscience, and economic liberty, the right to have and use property, and religious freedom are in the forefront. I like all those things so yeah, I guess I’m a liberal.
I had a Facebook member accuse me of being French when I stated that no one should show up at wars. Accused me of being French? What does that mean? I guess the French don’t like war either. Are there groups of like minds that like war?
We all need to be careful that our innate desire to seek out like minds doesn’t lead us into blind opposition. Blind opposition is dangerous and gets people killed and countries bombed and religions hated. TV is for entertainment; it isn’t really a good source for facts, although, it is a great source for blind opposition. Churches and news stations can be comforting and entertaining. Leave it at that.
Tags: democracy, news, opinions, politics, religion
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under hate, politics, why do you let things bother you.
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