Christmas has come and gone. I’ve been thinking about the conversation between Roy and I last week – where Roy ended the debate/conversation because he felt I was becoming too emotional and angry (or something like that). I have to admit, I do become excitable and animated when I talk about a number of things. I have to admit that I was probably too much so. I understand that people can often misunderstand my reactions and emotional disposition, and I have to work on that. I just get excited. I suspect I have to be less so, or at least less so for those who don’t know me well, or who are going to misunderstand. Obviously, our conversation did nothing to help further understanding or our friendship.
Yet, as I think about this and the coming conversation with Roy, which I need to have with him concerning all this, I know that his reactions were not quite virtuous either. His comment about me being so extremely conservative, which I am not, is off base. I countered him on that statement, but he said, “to me, from my perspective, you are.” He needs to re-evaluate what an “extreme conservative” is, else he is not going to recognize them when he truly confronts an extreme conservative. Unless, of course, he comes from the position that there is no such thing as a legitimate conservative position on issues, only the liberal solution! Even worse, equating liberal political and social ideas with the Gospel, which is exactly what many religious conservatives do. What made me so extreme? I don’t advocate for socialized medicine. I don’t believe that our government is the solution to most of our problems. I think that despite the virtuous intent of the Social Security System and the Great Society programs, they have not helped, over the long run, the poorest of our society, but only made them depended on the government and the entrenched bureaucracies involved. I don’t believe government involvement in much of anything is ever the best solution, because government breeds bureaucracies who are more concerned, after a while, about their own survival and power base than their initial purpose. There are obvious exceptions and many people in government are good people, yet I don’t look first to government to solve all our social problems. It cannot!
In the midst of trying to explain my position, he would also interject extreme conclusions he thought would be the outcome of my argument, like, “so, you would just let them all die,” when we were talking about infant mortality in this country and my contention that socialized medicine was not be the best solution. He did that a number of times, at which point I had to look at him and simply say, “Roy, be realistic!” My reaction to tactics like that was to talk faster trying to get my explanation out there before he attempted another extreme comment. That is how I reacted – to become more animated, more excited, more forceful, and finally just more frustrated. I should have simply kept calling him on that type of response. I should have simply said, “if you want to know how I think or what I think, then let me explain without your assumed final outcomes or extreme statements!”
So, I’m going to talk to him about that. I also have to admit that my response and reaction was not as it should have been. I need to work on that!
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