I weep for humanity.

POSTED BY: Wulfenstar
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 16:47
VIEWED: 4763
PAGE 4 of 6

NIKI2

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 5:29 PM

Weird. Because you suggested it, Nick, I read the whole article. It seemed to me a reasoned personal account, a relating of her past experience and a question she was asking herself about how her daughter's political beliefs would be formed and how she would feel if they ended up the opposite of hers. Nothing more. If someone thinking person on the right were to pen exactly the same thing from THEIR perspective, I would find it just as valid.

I don't get at all why it would make anyone "weep for humanity" OR how on earth someone could go from that to "ward of the state and never know freedom". Neither statement has the slightest logic to it.

I certainly agree with Sig that " God forbid my daughter should become like the mean-spirited, greedy, hate-filled bastards we see here." "HERE" is the operant term to me, because I have to believe there are people on the right out there who could write just the same sort of thoughtful article.

How on earth does

Quote:

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How about I post a retort,

but its a picture of Obama, or Pelosi, with crosshairs on the sweetspot?

Have its underscore say "I want the red mist"?

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NIKI2

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 5:30 PM

Yin, your statement was also on point:

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This one in particular is meant to spark a conversation; in general, Salon seems to be more about analyzing and discussing than news-making.

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WULFENSTAR

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 5:53 PM

Replace "What if my child grows up to be a Republican?"

with,

"What if my child grows up to be gay?" (and supporting diatribe)

See the "outrage" fly.

Hypocrits, all of you liberals.

Or. "What if my child grows up to be a Democrat"?


You claim to be so "liberal", so "progressive", so "tolerant".

Until someone disagrees with you.

(Had an idea. I should rewrite the article. "What if my child grows up to be a Democrat?" Use the same type of writing and examples. See what would happen. Can't tho. I have a job. Anyone want to take up the challenge?)



"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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M52NICKERSON

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 5:57 PM

No there would be no outrage, you would understand that if you read the article.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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NIKI2

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 7:23 PM

I'll take the time (since Jim ran the dogs this morning, so I don't have to get them out!), I'll happily try my hand at it. It was harder than I thought (because I'm not familiar with historical conservative figures and don't use buzz words), but I tried. Please correct the names if I got them wrong:

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What if my daughter grows up to be Democrat?
At 12, Lizzie is a Tea Partier like me. But what if one day she embraces the Democratic party, like her grandparents?

My parents are Democrats. I'm a conservative. My husband is to the right of your average Bircher. Dinners together walk a tightrope of small talk -- none of us wanting to veer too far in either direction, frightened we'll go careening into a political abyss. Our daughter, Lizzie, is always a safe topic. She's our Switzerland.

But I'm not sure how much longer that will last. Lizzie, at 12, is becoming politically aware.

She's always been well informed. Not that she had much of a choice. After the 2000 election and before her first birthday, she participated in her first pro-Bush rally. I stuffed her in her bright green baby backpack and headed to Times Square. There, she grinned and drooled as tourists in fanny packs and white tennis shoes yelled mean things at a dozen of us who were protesting the Democrats' election fraud in Florida. Thanks to the Supreme Court, George W. Bush was sworn in -- thus assuring that Lizzie's formative years had ample opportunities for protest. Her favorite was the huge pro-war rally in Central Park, when she was 3. There were balloons and face painting -- and the playground near the park was more exciting than the ones back in Brooklyn, N.Y., where we then lived. Riding the train home, she waved her small paper flag like a sword and chanted, "'Merica! 'Merica!" Then she yawned and asked for her sippie cup.

I don't want to indoctrinate my child into the cult of my political beliefs. I want her to make up her own mind. But, since she's a kid, she mirrors our beliefs, as her friends do their parents'. If I were a union thug, an elitist intellectual, an Olbermann-watching left-winger, she would probably share my misguided views. But I'm a pickup-driving capitalist--and therefore so is Lizzie. (Except the driving part -- at 12, she doesn't yet. Thankfully.) It's not like we sit her down with Edmund Burke flashcards or whisper Ann Coulter to her as she sleeps, but we talk a lot at dinner, discussing politics and what's going on not just in our neighborhood or city, but in the world. (We recently chatted about climate change and chocolate eclairs -- and, because my husband is a historian, she probably knows more about Kierkegaard than any other kid her age.) But how to balance the way we view the world with how other people do? How to show her both sides of the political picture?

Our family dinners are very different from those when I was a kid. Back then, we didn't discuss politics at the dinner table -- or anywhere else. Our household was more of a dictatorship, with my dad's liberal beliefs reigning supreme. There was no room for dissent and none encouraged. When I was in second grade, I made up my own mind about an election. Our teacher gave us each a copy of the Weekly Reader, which still smelled of fresh newsprint. One story was about the '72 election and we got to vote! I'd checked the box next to Nixon's head. It was a nice head, I'd thought. He looked so smart compared to that McGovern fellow. I skipped to our house, no doubt wearing an outfit like rainbow shift and headband, something that would have fit in more in, say, 1964 San Francisco rather than 1972 Omaha, where we lived at the time. I have no way to prove this scientifically, but I'm pretty sure we were the most liberal family Omaha. While other kids were attending Up With People concerts, we were singing along to the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar&quo

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