Sticks and Stones

The saying goes “sticks and stones my break my bones but names will never hurt me”. Well that is not quite correct in my view. Names do hurt and they are being used a lot these days by people to try to defend their point of view when they have no other defense.

Let me start off with a little scenario or analogy. Lets say I am a father of a large family. We are walking along in a nice neighborhood. A much nicer neighborhood than what my family lives in or will ever have. We see a very attractive house and during the night, we decided to break in and set up our stuff, kids, pets, and other belongings in the homeowners living room.

Next morning the homeowners come down from their bedrooms and sees my family camped out in their living room and say, “ What are you people doing her”? I reply “well we were walking along, saw this wonderful house that is more than you need and decided that you should allow us to live here as well”.

Of course the homeowner would say, you have got to leave, this is my house, you are breaking the law, I paid for this house and if you don’t go I will call the cops. At which point I say, "I will do your yard work and clean you car. My wife will do the house work and other work you do not want to do, so it is a fair trade and we are staying".

The homeowner calls the cops and tells them what is going on. The local police say this is a federal problem to call them. The homeowner calls the feds and they say will look into it, but do not have the time until sometime in the future, probable after the elections or something to that effect. The home owner calls the local police and says that feds will get to it but until then it is a local problem. The local police say they do not have the money or manpower and can’t do it. They are broke.

The homeowner turns to me and says you have got to leave I do not want you here. At that point I say (…..Now here is my point in this ……) I say as the illegal alien in his home. “Well you just don’t want us here because you are a racist and a bigot”. There you go use an inflammatory term that has nothing to really do with the situation but labels the real victim here the homeowner as the one with the problem.

If you disagree with anything to do with gay rights or practices you hate gays or you are a homophobe. I saw a bumper sticker the other day, it had a gay pride sticker on it and the words stop the hate. As a heterosexual man I disagree with a lot of gay culture, but I nor anyone I know sit around and talk about how we hate gays.

If you disagree with the current administration, you are a racist because the president is black I guess. If you are afraid of the way the country is going, and give your opinion about what you see as wrong, you are a fear monger.

Can we no longer just have a difference in opinions without calling each other names? Can we just listen and then say “well your point is well taken, but here is my opinion on the subject”. We do not always need to agree, but we should be listening to each other without calling names. We should have stopped doing that in grade school.