I need

to get out the door and get home, but this is bothering me a bit and I'm going to post on it briefly. Maybe I'll add to it later.

I sat down during the BBQ with some guys I work with fairly closely. As a group these are a terrific bunch of guys, and they're very good to work with. The problem for me is when politics come up during our conversations. Needless to say they're on the left, I'm on the right.

I don't care that they have different opinions - that's natural and healthy. What bothers me is the assuredness with which they lay out what I think are unfounded and in some cases malicious lies. This concept going around that the president is a dyed-in-the-wool racist is laughable as far as I'm concerned, and yet my friends routinely cite it as biblical truth. (The Halliburton thing came up again, too).

I suspect the part that bothered me most is the characterization of the people who support the President and/or Republicans as basically abortion foes and anti gay and little else. I realize it's easier for most people to reduce their opponents (intellectual and otherwise) to a simplistic position. It makes it far easier to discard his arguments if you reduce them to bare minimums. But as I've discovered in my journey to political/social conservatism, people on the right (as I'm sure of the left) are more complex than that.

Abortion never entered my mind in the 2000 elections, much less gay rights. I was unhappy with the Clinton administration and what I considered its cavalier attitude to the will of the people, and I felt Gore would simply continue in that mold; hence, I voted for Bush. 9/11 cemented my view that I made the right call, but I had reasons for voting the way I did beforehand. Through my conversations with the folks who read this blog, I've gotten to know many other conservative types who are not one dimensional, and I get a little frustrated with my friends for acting like we're all either one-note voters or dim-bulb hicks.

I choose not to end my friendships (admittedly born only of a shared workplace, but I do like these guys), and I try and avoid talking politics with them, but they can't seem to see beyond their own prejudices. I do think it illustrates what many conservatives have said - the left, claiming always to be the party of inclusion and openmindedness, has sunken into a rigid orthodoxy that contradicts its avowed principles.