MISUNDERSTANDING ME
It is with dismay that I have been the cause and site of some very vitriolic and prejudicial comments by people who apparently misread what I write here. Both from the left and right, liberal and conservative, the misreading of my blog posts is alarming. While I welcome your right to express your opinion [AS IT RELATES TO THIS BLOG], I sincerely wish the hate words and misrepresentations would stop. Showing friends and people who know me well the comments here brings them to smile and then wonder where all the wrong assumptions come from and are stated so shamefully. In an effort to remind readers here that there is a more civilized manner to civilized speech and expression, I am posting some quotes. I hope both left-wingers and right-wingers read and process them.
"Most ignorance is vincible ignorance: we don't know because we don't want to know." -Aldous Huxley
"Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance." -Robert Quillen
"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." -William G. McAdoo
"Given a thimbleful of facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub." -Gordon W. Allmport
"Well-adjusted people may get caught up in the tangle of social forces that makes them goose-step their way toward such abominations as the calculated execution of six million Jews ... It may be comforting to believe that the horrors of World War II were the work of a dozen or so insane men, but it is a dangerous belief, one that may give us a false sense of security." -Molly Harrower
"I am convinced that when the intellectual history of our times comes to be written, the idea of race, both the popular and the taxonomic, will be viewed for what it is: a confused and dangerous idea which happened to fit the social requirements of a thoroughly exploitive period in the development of Western man." -Ashley Montagu
"The purest races now in existence are the Pygmies, the Hottentots, and the Australian aborigines ... The ancient Greeks ... who were the most civilized, were also the most mixed." -Bertrand Russell
"Who would be cleared by their [un-American] Committees? Not Washington, who was a rebel. Not Jefferson, who wrote that all men are created equal and whose motto was 'rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God' ... Not Lincoln, who admonished us to have malice toward none, charity for all; or Wilson, who warned that our flag was 'a flag of liberty of opinion as well as of political liberty'; or Justice Holmes, who said that our Constitution is an experiment [and] that 'we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death.' " -Henry Steele Commager
"Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals." -G. K. Chesterton [Amen!]
"A conservative is like a player trying to steal second base while keeping his foot on first." -Laurence J. Peter
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -William James
Now each of you will claim that I show from these quotes my political philosophy. Of course all sides believe they see certain critters under every rock. So be it. I cannot convince people who refuse to open their minds. But I gave it a shot. Now please take this and try to be more tolerant in your comments. It would be appreciated. I am not the horrible tyrant nor the great seer; I am just a guy who honestly wants the world to be a better place for his grandchildren and all of humankind.
"I am a man; nothing human is alien to me." -Terence
