Toleration may be the key.

[Pepperbelly]

Our party is the party of tolerance. The gop is not. We preach tolerating all people. The gop insists that there are some who should not be tolerated.

Perhaps it is this clash of value that needs exploration. Perhaps this is the root where out efforts should be concentrated. Which position is morally and ethically superior?

Of course, I think it is ours. And I believe, from any perspective one wishes to argue the matter, our side is superior. In fact, there position may well be indefensible when it is put in this light. We are the party of "do your own thing." The gops say it. I say it. Hell, I am PLEASED with it. We are the party of allowing people to be the way they are.

I think we can take this on directly and appeal to some of our better natures. They are the party of stoning, we are the party of "he who is without sin ..."

[OneBlueSky]

1. I just posted this on another thread . . .

let's be careful who we demonize . . .

the Christian right is no more monolithic than the secular left . . . there's a vast difference between Christian Reconstructionists/Dominionists who want to stone me and others to death and your run-of-the-mill evangelicals whose main concerns are what they see as "family values" . . . in fact, the disparity between these groups is pretty vast, and may be something that can be exploited to help split the Bush-supporting Christian right . . . by pointing out and attacking the positions of the ultra-extremists, we may be able to awaken some of the others a bit and maybe even cause them to re-think their support of BushCo . . . just a thought . . .

[puddycat]

6. the problem is that evangelicals are blind to what the dangers are

I know some--they are not dominionists, but at the same time they believe with all their heart * is a good man. They are completely blind. I'm afraid by the time they wake up, it will be too late.

[chookie]

7. Interesting

That is very valuable information.

Although I know there is a certain percentage of Americans who are totally wacko, I still cling to the notion that most are decent.

I think the decent ones were mislead. Simply laying out the facts didn't register with them.

When I was out canvassing, and I would meet an undecided who basically thought Bush was a monster but could not bring themselves to vote for pro-choice Kerry, I would say, please promise me, if you must vote for Bush because of abortion, to actively oppose those policies of Bush's that you abhor if he is elected again. I pray that they will.

[deminflorida]

2. The Angels of our Better Nature....

is what keeps me around the Democratic Party.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. I like your last line.... but their's is the party of bombing too... which

has led to the creation of sites such as this one... imagine if there was a television channel that managed to bring sites such as this one into every American's home... imagine if out of the several hundred sites that hit you right between the eyes... only 50 or so came into the living rooms of middle America.... wouldn't it be grand... the scales would be hitting the collective living room carpets...


www.costofwar.com
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953

www.iraqbodycount.net
“Change the channel”
- Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt's advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops.

[Shoeempress]

4. I believe the fundies are a lost cause to us, we need to bring in the

Undecideds and we have done a rotten job of convincing them. Much of it has to do with our belief that people will correctly interpret facts. We are wrong. Check out this website, it's "our" think tank. They can help us re-frame issues and win. But everyone must do their part to help change the debate.
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/

[chookie]

5. I think we're not as tolerant as you claim

Democrats were pretty intolerant of the policy of torture at Abu Ghraib and were repulsed by Charles Grainer and Lynndie England.

On the other hand, Republicans were very tolerant of the policy of torture at Abu Ghraib, and thought Charles Grainer and Lynndie England were totally cool.

Democrats are also very dogmatic in their intolerance of leaders who deceive their people and start wars on false pretext and then wage them with utter incompetence.

Republicans embrace leaders who deceive their people and start wars on false pretext and then wage them with utter incompetence.

So get off your high horse, Mr/Miss Self-Righteous Elitist Smartypants! It's DemoncRats who are intolerant -- not ReGODlicans.
/sarcasm off

[cali]

8. Reminds me of this

from an essay entitled Tolerance by E.M. Forester;

Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had very bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things. No one has ever written an ode to tolerance, or raised a statue to her. Yet this is the quality which will be most needed after the war. This is the sound state of mind which we are looking for. This is the the only force which will enable different races and classes and interests to settle downtogether to the work of reconstruction.

The world is very full of people- appallingly full; it has never been so full before, and they are all tumbling over each other. Most of these people one doesn't know and some of them one doesn't like; doesn't like the colour of their skins, say, or the shapes of their noses, or the way they blow them or don't blow them, or the way they talk, or their smell, or their clothes, or their fondess for jazz or thier dislike of jazz and so on. Well, what is one to do? There are tow solutions. One of them is the Nazi solution. If you don't like people, kill them, banish them, segregate them, and then strut up and down proclaiming that you are the salt of the earth. The other way is much less thrilling, but it is on the whole the way of democracies, and I prefer it. If you don't like people, put up with them as wll as you can. Don't try to love them: You can't, you'll only strain yourself. But try to tolerate them. On the basis of that tolerance a civilised future may be be built.

For what it will most need is the negative virtues: not being huffy, touchy, irritable, revengeful. I have lost all faith in positive militant ideals; they can so seldom be carried out without thousand sof human beings getting maimed and killed and imprisoned. Phrases like "I will pruge this nation," or "I will clean up this city," terrify and disgust me........

Forester wrote this looking forward to a post war world. He wrote
an incredibly powerful essay entitled "What I believe" in 1939 where he talked about facing oppression and hate.

Regards,
cali, humor challenged as always.

[Pepperbelly]

9. Excellent quotation. nt