Us vs. Them

When I was younger I used to freak people out by staring at them for a moment and then shouting "You're one of THEM" and running away. I know, sad, but their reaction is usually pretty entertaining.

This phenomenon happens a lot in the blogosphere. An individual perporting to be conservative says something like "Terri Schiavo's family should be allowed to make the decision..." and suddenly they are one of THEM! They are a traitor, pure evil.

Bill from INDC has a post about this today, which is where this all came from. It is awesome, you should read it. It references this post from the Commissar which is also quite good.

It seems that party loyalty has allowed some people to forget what the point of the parties was in the first place. The Democrats and the Republicans are doing what they think is in the best interest of the country. It just so happens that they disagree on what the best thing is. But somewhere along the line both sides became convinced that the other is pure evil. I'm hope this is just the loudest voices talking. Somehow someone has managed to convince us that if someone disagrees with us they must hate our ideals, they must hate that we are trying to help America and so therefore they must Hate America.

But maybe they just hate YOUR idea of America. If for instance your idea of America is a land of Families with 5 kids playing football and drinking beer while listening to country music, some Americans wont want to live there and may in fact hate your America. And if for instance your idea of America is gay couples and their dogs visiting porn shops before they pick up their adopted children from school well then some people will hate your America as well.

America, land of the free. What makes us different then places like Iran and China? It is that we are allowed to disagree with eachother and with our government. We can criticize and think for ourselves and if it doesn't agree with the current administration that doesn't mean we hate America, it simply means that we disagree.

If we hate the people that disagree with us, don't we in fact hate what it is that makes us America?