That, my friends, is freedom
Matt Pearl
The key to being patient in this life is simple enough for us to understand: we must truly believe that, ultimately, what is good and right will triumph over what is evil and wrong.
Patience is a little easier when you feel confident that all will be set right in the end.
I have few virtues in this life: I procrastinate, I lose focus, I am moody––sometimes temperamental and I too often find myself thinking from a self-centered perspective. But I have managed to be patient through many things––not all things, but many.
My patience receives its most frequent tests when the polar opposites in our political spectrum assert themselves with obnoxious levels of self-righteousness. When one group would rather die than let a statue stand, and the other half would rather die than see it fall, you have a problem.
And with that said problem, I am losing patience.
When these sides begin to butt heads, putting mass and social media campaigns to work in the effort to solicit America’s partisan sympathies, my patience dwindles even more.
When violence breaks out, which causes lives to be lost or ruined, I lose a little more. Then folks tell me my only choices are to line up either with ultra-liberals or Klansmen––I choose neither, by the way––and my patience is nearly gone.
What brings me back to my calm, rational self? I remember that the people speaking the loudest in this nation still may speak only to themselves. Not me. Not you. We can think it’s wrong to be a racist while holding a distaste for protesting statues depicting historical figures.
Yeah, it’s America. You can dislike all the extremists here. And what’s more, we used to do a better job of it. In this age of moving our fringe members to the center, and our moderate citizens to the edge, I don’t know what to think.
What if I disapprove of the Confederacy in general, but I don’t think it’s dignified for a nation to rewrite its history by removal of a Robert E. Lee statue? I know for certain that I hate everything that Neo-Nazis represent; how is it my social responsibility to prove to everyone that I’m ashamed of white supremacy in this country?
If you’re one of those folks who feel like I do––folks who disapprove of the hate groups and the violence but don’t line up with every daily progressive political ideology––then you understand.
Slavery was bad. Nazism is evil. White supremacy is wrong. Protesting about historical statues is none of those things: I’m just not interested in participating in it.
Can’t Americans see the difference there? When they can’t, or when all the left gets characterized one way and the entire right is categorized in another, then I again start to lose my patience.
But everyone just doesn’t see the world in the same light. I am the way I am in great part because of how I was raised, the values I was taught and the culture of the home and communities in which I have lived.
It has been a lesson a long time in the learning, but it’s an important one to me: Everyone is not going to like me. Everyone is not going to agree with me.
For my part, though, I will also say this: My mind is my own. My values are my own. No one may take them from me, nor do I have the burden of sharing them, except at my choosing. That, my friends, is freedom.
Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City, Albany, and Grant City.
