R-E-S-P-E-C-T … find out what it means to ME.

I have been feeling like death and so for the past 3 or 4 days, I’ve been hanging out at home, schooling and reading and reading and reading posts on the Internet, specifically those on facebook. My interests don’t lie with what yawl had for dinner or where you are at this exact moment, rather I love politics and I love a good debate. But something has changed over the past 15 years or so.

My best friend in college was a crazy liberal … she probably still is, but, unfortunately, we don’t keep up like we used to – something about my kids and husband and her worldly travels that got in the way. I tell you about Julie because it’s case in point that things have changed. I remember when Bill Clinton was elected, we were in college and I, of course, hated the man and all he stood for and she hated Bush and all he stood for. We would debate and argue, but we never digressed into nastiness. The word idiot and moron and “Kool Aid” never surfaced … ever. I didn’t think she was a moron, on the contrary, I thought she was extremely smart to be able to keep up with me, I just thought she was dead wrong, maybe a little misguided, maybe a little fearful of the future, but definitely dead wrong.

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Today, anytime you debate anything at all, even out of the realm of politics you get chastised and called names and treated with such contempt. I wonder where all the anger comes from? I wonder where the hatred comes from. Are people really that unhappy with their own lives that they lash out with jealousy everytime they are confronted with someone whose ideaologies, religious beliefs and political leanings differ from themselves?

I encountered a “man” named Mark – I’ll call him a man because I have etiquette that prevents me from calling him otherwise — who was so filled with anger, he was teetering on the edge of being very very scary, unstable, if you will. Let’s say, if he was a conservative, he’d make it to Homeland Security. In his mind, overpopulation is, and I quote, “the most evil thing affecting the planet.” The most evil? Really? More evil than say murder? More evil than child molestation, rape, kidnapping, torture, war, greed, gluttony, sloth, child abuse? Really? This said by a man with 3 children.

He said this during a debate re: the HHS decree that the Catholic Church go against it’s conscience, violate Church doctrine and provide health insurance that covers, among other things, abortion, abortifacients and sterilization! He was an ex-Catholic for a whole host of reasons, but it boiled down to the fact that you can’t just do whatever you want and pay lip service to being a “good person” – it’s not a feel good religion, it’s not about you, and since it’s not about you, it’s not easy so he left the Church. Personally, I wish all non-practicing Catholics would stop calling themselves Catholic, like this guy, but that’s probably not a popular stance. But now this Mark is as anti-Catholic as anyone I’ve ever met. He dripped disdain. Personally, I don’t understand this. Aren’t liberals the ones always screaming from the rooftops, Co-Exist, be tolerant, accepting of others differences? Isn’t that their mantra? Let me tell you, I’ve been on the butt-end of peoples rods who have this bumper sticker on their vehicles and spew it from their mouths every chance they get. I know what they really mean … they mean, if you agree with me, if you do as I do or as i think or as I want, we can co-exist, but as soon as you stray, we’ll cut you down at the knees. Dramatic? Not by a long shot.

I am as close to their mantra as you can get. I’m a libertarian conservative. Live and let live. Unless you are my child, I don’t care if you are promiscuous, if you are Muslim, if you are pink, if you have tattoos, if you wear your pants around your ankles, if you color your hair green and wear a mohawk, if you drive a huge SUV or a Smart Car, if you are gay, if you go to Church, if you love Justin Bieber. I don’t care if you smoke pot or cigarettes, I don’t care if you co-habitate, or even bathe, I don’t care what you do, just don’t infringe upon my rights, my liberties to do what I want to do and I won’t infringe upon your rights and liberties to do what you want to do. You liberals think this mantra sounds great, but it goes against every grain in your body. You don’t want to co-exist. You want to mandate what everyone else can and cannot do. What it really comes down to for liberals is an all-out rebellion against religion. Liberals want to legislate their way out of morality. It suits them to believe that government supercedes God.

Just as with this Mark guy. And let me tell you, he’s not some guy in freakin Eurasia, he lives right here in our little town. I know his brother, his niece runs Cross Country with my daughter. Mark has a photography studio (which I will never use or recommend and from what I hear is simply a front because he’s a … loser who likes to talk about how crazy he used to be, but he really was a bit of a sissy, but I digress) — he is a local guy talking to a local girl and he went nuts.

But the real reason I wrote this (98 paragraphs in, I finally get to the main topic) was to point out that there were others in the conversation, 6 in all, I believe, 4 of us who agreed that the government cannot take away religious liberties protected by the constitution (I wouldn’t support a govt mandate that pork be served at Orthodox Jewish celebrations either, just sayin) and 2 who disagreed. One of the men who sided with the crazy guy was as polite and respectful to all involved (which surprised me, because he was on the other side of the butt end that I referred to earlier, but perhaps he was mis-informed) Like I said, I have no beef with anyone who disagrees with me, believe whatever you want, God have mercy on all our souls, that’s what free will is. Everyone who agreed with the poster was polite and respectful of the other two.

So there were 6 of us engaged in this convo and maybe one or two who were “liking” posts, but not commenting. When this man went bananas on me not one of them stood up to him and said, “Back off, she’s a lady.” Not when he called me a moron, or ignorant or stupid or the main cause of human starvation. Not when he referenced the fact that I’d be dead myself in less than 10 years, (mind you at 37, I’m almost 20 years his junior). Not once. Perhaps my brilliant posts gave people the idea that I was more than capable of standing up for myself, which I am, maybe I gave the impression that he wasn’t getting to me, which he wasn’t, but there were 4 men, 2 women conversing. Crazy went after the first woman as well, with equal amount of venom as he did I and no-one stood up for her either. Are my expectations of men too high again? I’m telling you, I must live in a bubble where my honor is protected, where the guys I know cut a brother off if they disrespect the women in their company. The girls I hang out with regularly, they all expect this as well, and their husbands deliver. It’s something I don’t even think about until it is absent, such as here.

I love chivalry, I love being a woman. I love the fact that I am the one who carries her baby for 9 months, the one who gives birth, the one who nurses, the one who nurtures. Dads are the tough guys, they’ve got a different role, one they can keep, because I like mine. Of course, there was a time when women talking politics was frowned upon, that’s sexism, but there was a time when women were highly respected and treated like royalty, that’s chivalry. Now, it seems, men and women are the same. Men and women all go to war, we all work, we all change the oil in our cars, we all cook, we all send our kids off to daycare, we are so equal, we’ve become the same. If this is the lifestyle you want, feel free I wouldn’t dare deny, I just don’t want it to creep its ugly head into my world and infect my daughters and my sons and my own self. I want equality, I don’t want sameness … that’s boring.