Kathianne
07-01-2015, 08:11 AM
This essay pretty much mirrors my own take on the 'left' and the 'right.' The left 'never gives up,' while the right never misses an opportunity to give the left an opening by resorting to hyperbole on any given issue. My take is the right is actually more open minded, certainly more concerned about liberties, but continuously gives the opposition their openings to pounce:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419871/there-are-two-americas-and-only-one-truly-free-david-french?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral
In the Real World, Not Hollywood, the Left Is Close-Minded, and the Right Allows Dissent
by DAVID FRENCH June 17, 2015 4:00 AM
I’ve split my professional life between two American cultures: half spent in the bluest-of-blue cities and the other half in the reddest-of-red rural South. I’ve split my jobs between universities and law firms that are almost uniformly Left and conservative nonprofits that are steadfastly Right. I attended a conservative, Christian college and then one of the nation’s most liberal law schools. My family has bounced between Cambridge, Massachusetts, Manhattan, rural Tennessee, small-town Kentucky, and Center City, Philadelphia (where we lived right at the edge of the so-called gayborhood). And after all those travels, I’ve come to at least two important conclusions: The sushi is better in Manhattan, and the freedom is better in Tennessee.
My conservative undergraduate institution — Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. — was far more open to dissent, including from angry atheist classmates (yes, I had a few), than was Harvard Law School. No one was jeered, shouted down, or threatened at Lipscomb. No one called future employers of atheist or liberal students to try to get job offers canceled. Professors didn’t scream at dissenting students, and activists didn’t plaster photoshopped, pornographic pictures of liberals all over campus walls. At Harvard, all those things happened — to conservative students.
...
Even the conservative churches I’ve attended have been more ideologically diverse than the two major liberal campuses where I either attended (Harvard Law School) or taught (Cornell Law School). Indeed, the numbers demonstrate the truth of my anecdotal experience, with self-professed Evangelicals more politically diverse than not only Ivy League faculties but entire, allegedly “diverse” Northeastern cities. In other words, you’re more likely to hear a meaningful debate between people of fundamentally different political opinions in a church pew than in New York City.
...
We have yet to see whether these cultural approaches can coexist indefinitely. While your average Tennessean doesn’t much care what someone in New York City thinks or does, the urban Left isn’t willing to embrace legal or cultural federalism and allow states to go their own way. Instead, it demands that all social trends conform to its agenda, demands that public schools teach social leftism exclusively, and, most recently, refuses to allow even Indiana to chart its own course on religious freedom and tolerance.
...
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419871/there-are-two-americas-and-only-one-truly-free-david-french?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral
In the Real World, Not Hollywood, the Left Is Close-Minded, and the Right Allows Dissent
by DAVID FRENCH June 17, 2015 4:00 AM
I’ve split my professional life between two American cultures: half spent in the bluest-of-blue cities and the other half in the reddest-of-red rural South. I’ve split my jobs between universities and law firms that are almost uniformly Left and conservative nonprofits that are steadfastly Right. I attended a conservative, Christian college and then one of the nation’s most liberal law schools. My family has bounced between Cambridge, Massachusetts, Manhattan, rural Tennessee, small-town Kentucky, and Center City, Philadelphia (where we lived right at the edge of the so-called gayborhood). And after all those travels, I’ve come to at least two important conclusions: The sushi is better in Manhattan, and the freedom is better in Tennessee.
My conservative undergraduate institution — Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. — was far more open to dissent, including from angry atheist classmates (yes, I had a few), than was Harvard Law School. No one was jeered, shouted down, or threatened at Lipscomb. No one called future employers of atheist or liberal students to try to get job offers canceled. Professors didn’t scream at dissenting students, and activists didn’t plaster photoshopped, pornographic pictures of liberals all over campus walls. At Harvard, all those things happened — to conservative students.
...
Even the conservative churches I’ve attended have been more ideologically diverse than the two major liberal campuses where I either attended (Harvard Law School) or taught (Cornell Law School). Indeed, the numbers demonstrate the truth of my anecdotal experience, with self-professed Evangelicals more politically diverse than not only Ivy League faculties but entire, allegedly “diverse” Northeastern cities. In other words, you’re more likely to hear a meaningful debate between people of fundamentally different political opinions in a church pew than in New York City.
...
We have yet to see whether these cultural approaches can coexist indefinitely. While your average Tennessean doesn’t much care what someone in New York City thinks or does, the urban Left isn’t willing to embrace legal or cultural federalism and allow states to go their own way. Instead, it demands that all social trends conform to its agenda, demands that public schools teach social leftism exclusively, and, most recently, refuses to allow even Indiana to chart its own course on religious freedom and tolerance.
...