The Difference

I have watched Ang Lee's Ride With The Devil many times. I love that movie. Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Simon Baker and Jeffrey Wright are Confederate partisans running around fighting in the Civil War. At one point in the movie, a Confederate man is explaining why he thinks the South will lose the war. To paraphrase, he was up in Lawrence, Kansas while the town was being built and he saw that the school had been built before the church. The people of Lawrence were educating their children in their lifestyle before their education in religion. The Confederate saw the war as one of ideals, a war that the North was fighting to push their interpretation of America on the South, while the South was merely fighting to keep their lifestyle. The South didn't need to enforce its lifestyle on the North.

I do not sympathize with the South at all, but I do identify with this interpretation as an excellent example of our struggles today. As a liberal, I do not want to tell anyone else how to live their life. It is a fundamental principle of my beliefs. I will not dictate to anyone except my children, should I ever get so lucky as to have any.

When I read jackasses like Coach Dave at Sadly, No!, I want to stop them from dictating lifestyles to other people. I want to remind them all of the basic American freedom that they are twisting to their own purpose. Does that make me any better than them? Am I not forcing my ideals of tolerance on another person unfairly? Should Coach Dave not be allowed to live the life he wants to live?

I lose sleep over assholes like this guy.