The Hippie Professor

This country is in very very very serious trouble.

Wow – I can hear the cheers already going up from the back of the room…. So let’s try this one….

Barak Obama is not the cause of that trouble….

Hmmm…. Still some cheers – but now there are some boos and hisses mixed in too….

Ok… I can take that because….

George Bush was not and is not the cause of that trouble either……

Let’s quickly run through the whole list….

Not Joe Biden, not Dick Cheney, not Nancy Pelosi, not Harry Reid, not Eric Cantor, not Chuck Grassley…..

OK – it is going to take a long time to name every politician – Republican and Democrat and Independent and Socialist and Libertarian and right and left and middle…. So let’s just say it isn’t any of them!

So – who is it?

(cue drumroll……)

It is you and me – the American people….

That’s right, we, the American people, are the cause of the trouble….

Huh?  Why?

Because we have lost the ability to trust each other.

There is no clearer example than the current controversy surrounding Obama’s address to our children.  Seriously, it is an exceptionally sorry state of affairs when a significant portion of the populace does not trust the President enough to let children listen to him.

Why is there this mistrust?  I have been listening – I have heard the worries – expressed by angry bloggers and screaming “tea partiers” and sobbing mothers…  Apparently there is a belief out there that Obama is involved in some nefarious plot to indoctrinate children and create a dictatorship and form some sort of “Obama Youth” modeled after Hitler youth.

Seriously – this is crazy.  How have we reached this point?

Part of the reason is that we are no longer able to distinguish ideas from motives.  When people express ideas with which we disagree we seldom directly address their ideas – instead we engage in ad hominem attack – we attack the person and not the idea.

When Obama voices an idea people find troubling, they don’t attack the idea itself  – they attack Obama the person – calling him a socialist or a Nazi or a communist or a dictator-in-waiting.  Obama isn’t any of these things – and calling him names does nothing to advance the conversation.

My side is just as guilty – I myself have been guilty.  When someone on the right expresses a rational idea we are all too quick to call them a nutcase or a wingnut or a corporate tool.  George W. Bush certainly took a lot of ad hominem hits from my side. Ad hominem is a just as bad a strategy from the left as it is from the right.  We should address the idea they are expressing and not attack the person.

How have we gotten to this point?  I have my theories – but that is a topic for a future blog.

How do we get out of this mess we will find ourselves in?

It is not going to be easy – but here is my suggestion.

Let us pledge to engage in free and rational discussion about ideas.  Let us take extra care not to sink into meaningless ad hominem attacks.

Let us freely question the ideas of the opposition.

Let us not question their motives.

Lets start with some very basic stuff.  I would ask those of you on the right to trust Barak Obama’s motives.  In particular I would ask you to accept the following:

Barak Obama is the legally and constitutionally elected President of the United States.  He was born in Hawaii and is just as much an American as any of the rest of us.

Barak Obama swore an oath of office which reads, in part, that he will to the best of his ability “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He takes that oath seriously and is in fact attempting as best be knows to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.

Barak Obama is at heart a good person with good intentions.  He is not motivated to become some kind of tyrannical dictator nor will he act in any other way to subvert the constitution.  He is not some sort of evil-nazi-dictator-in-waitng.

Barak Obama is a liberal Democrat.  As such he believes that the government should have a larger role than it now does.  He believes in achieving these goals through the democratic process.  You have every right to disagree with his political views.  I would ask that you would refrain from attacking his character.

I am asking those on the right to accept the above statements as a way of establishing some basic trust and as a way of beginning to move forward with rational debate.

What am I offering in return?  Well – you tell me – what sort of trust would you like from me?  I know people on the right feel attacked – personally attacked – by those of us on the left.  How would you like to have me act instead?  How can I extend to you the trust that I am seeking from your side?

I certainly can offer the following:  I will make every attempt to avoid ad hominem attack.  When I disagree with an idea, I will vigorously debate the issue but I will not attack the motives of the person.

We must establish a basic common denominator of trust.

Without that, we all have lost.

Tags: communist, conservative, democrat, liberal, nazi, Obama, political, republican, socialist, trust, wordpress-political-blogs

This entry was posted on September 6, 2009 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.