Please be mindful that there are many different views on the forums. The only thing we all agree on is the AR-10 is an awesome rifle!

YOU SHOULD LISTEN....

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13 years 5 months ago - 13 years 5 months ago #7911 by crux
Replied by crux on topic Re: YOU SHOULD LISTEN....

JSteinhoff wrote: I will support anyone who is willing to roll up their sleeves, drop the destructive rhetoric, and get things done. I think america is at it's best when we ALL work together, for our common good. America has it's own dark historical chapters, we have not always been at our best.
...

I think it is fair to say that we all love our country, AR-10's, and no unwarranted gun restrictions! That's always a good starting point!

If you ever want to bounce a thought past a moderate, please do.

Regards,
JS


So I think JS has an important point here. There's a great deal of money made in making camps of enemies. MSNBC and FOX are great examples. We don't make any progress however when we attack individuals or create groups of individuals to find automatic animosity with.

I once had great success with the leader of a "ban guns" campaign after a long talk about what was really important. She didn't really want everyone to be without guns so much as just keep guns from falling into the wrong hands. I showed her I cared about what her concerns were, and reached out to her to share other perspectives she seemed not to know about, even though she was completely against (at the time) what I believed in. She eventually adopted her organization to support stiffer penalties for gun criminals, with a nod to legitimate purposes for arms. I feel mighty proud about that.

I'm pretty sure she'd have only become more radical if I had called her a gun grabbing commie.

Something to think about.
Last edit: 13 years 5 months ago by crux.

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13 years 5 months ago #7917 by jtallen83
Replied by jtallen83 on topic Re: YOU SHOULD LISTEN....
I understand your point. I do beleive that in debate the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.But when it comes to governing always trying to find the middle has gotten us in this mess. For at least the last 40 years the feds have tried there best to make everyone happy, the result, most are pissed off.
There can be no compromise between the two sides batteling today. We are either going to be a socialist country or a free country in the end. It is time to stand and be counted, not compromise your values for the sake of a little harmony.
If you can't tell I'm a Ron Paul supporter, he is disliked by both right and left and has the same platform he did when he ran in '88. He will not compromise his smaller government values!

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13 years 5 months ago #7923 by crux
Replied by crux on topic Re: YOU SHOULD LISTEN....
I think my key point is that we need to focus on arguing the ideas and policies, not personalities. The inquisition of Joe The Plummer is an example. He got Obama to admit to a wealth redistributionist character. Who Joe was is irrelevant, only Obama's socialist ideals are at issue, but national media attacked Joe relentlessly as though who he was or what is background was mattered.

Further, is it Obama I oppose? No, its his socialist ideals and derived policies I take issue with, like the "conspiracy to commit exchange fraud" that was the GM bail out which defrauded investors with valid claims against GM and handed the value they had rights to over to unions. Can you get more socialist? I'm not moderate about my opposition to the disrespect of rule of law and property rights that action represented.

But I place the evil in the policies and actions not the individual. My oposition to Obama and many democrats is due to the collectivist anti-liberty policies, not because they are Obama or Democrats.

Individuals are more complex than labels allow for, and basing opposition on labels as opposed to individual values, policies and ideals, while convenient, leads to misundrstanding and destruction of potential areas of common ground.

Of course common groound and compromise can't simply be "you give up and give us what we want" as had been the case with firearms rights since the 60s. Most "compromises" were false compromises that were really surrenders (until Heller really).

Sure there is no common ground between the policy of disarming citizens to reduce their threat to attempts to impose tyranny, and the policy of maintaining an armed populace as a safegard to domestic security and the rule of constitutional law, but if we only choose to see people as representing only one policy or the other and holding sinister motives, we miss the chance to discuss values and ideals and look for compromises that might be more subtle than the debates handed to us by demagogs. In the case of my example, a lady was recruited to the cause of arms abolition because of her concerns, but honest dialog and genuine reguard for her as a fellow citizen and her concerns allowed her to listen to other ideas that could address her concerns without violating peoples rights (which she hadn't realized she was advocating).

I just suggest we try to look at people as our fellows first, and then consider why and how they endorse a policy and wha we might be able to share with them to find a common ground. We often won't find one, but reducing someone to a category like "teabagger" for instance precludes rational discussion and any possibility of finding a mutually satisfactory solution that might actually make things better.

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13 years 5 months ago #7925 by JSteinhoff
Replied by JSteinhoff on topic Re: YOU SHOULD LISTEN....
To jtallen83,

"When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say".

Abraham Lincoln

I do not quote from the great minds of world history to be cute, clever, or appear to be intellectually superior. Their collective genius is the legacy
they have left for future generations, to find common ground, to inspire us.

Lincoln, arguably our greatest president, was a master at making friends of his adversaries through the power of his eloquent debate.

I agree with you that the truth usually lies in the middle, but I would argue
that a no compromise position will not lead us there.

I do believe that we the people, all of us, have allowed extremist's from both sides of the political spectrum, to hijack and distort the truth.

Each election cycle, the majority of Americans complain loud and clear that they are fed up with the negative sound bits and dogma, from both sides.

But it continues to poison our national debate, and real change for our collective good is not happening, and we are angry and frustrated.

No one here is suggesting that you, or anyone, surrender or compromise your
core values. It's really, I think, a question of how we proceed forward with
the debate.

Therefore, I for one, will be looking for a Lincoln this coming election, not a Nugent. Of course I won't find him, he belongs to the ages. But I will look for and support those who promote his leadership qualities.

One last quote, if you please,

" Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed".
Abraham Lincoln

My intent all along has been, in some small, modest measure, to draw the conversation
away from the extreme. Also, to see if a moderate voice can co-exist within this
wide range of strong and differing convictions. I think, yes!

Time for me, now, to step back and listen.

Regards,

JS

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