>
VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, [6], 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 16:20:37 07/30/03 Wed
Author: Mt. Healthy Mountaineer
Subject: Re: Strange. -perhaps your perspective is too small...
In reply to: mvd 's message, "Strange." on 08:48:00 07/30/03 Wed

You see, as I go through this big adventure that we call life, I find that my perspective widens all of the time. What once was distant and inconceivable now becomes close and a possibility. What once was strange and different now becomes familiar and normal...

Or, could it be that since I drive 45 minutes one way to work every day, the 1 hour trip seems pretty pedestrian (although if it were truly "pedestrian" it would take much longer than one hour).

But, back on the subject of liberalness (liberality, liberaltude,...) Columbus is really a town that makes great strides to be progressive. Having lived and worked in environments that were much more conservative (not politically) I was always struck by how Columbus, as a whole, really tried new things, creative ways to finance, to build programs as well as buildings, to try to include people. Is it perfect? Far from it, but its a damn sight better than most.

BAck to Bloomington, I always found its liberalness to be annoyingly fake - let's do different things just to shock everyone else. Sure, that works the first month you're on campus and then you don't have time (or in my case, the inclination) to give a damn if someone is wearing a dress to class or if the Gay-Lesbian Alliance has a parade. Have a parade. Cool. Just don't make attendance mandatory - is this the May Day parade in Moscow during the Soviet Union?

Eventually, what gets on most people's nerves is that the forces of "liberaltude" get pissed if someone else wants to have a parade: anti-abortion protesters were shouted down and hounded off campus. The Nazis were literally beaten up and chased out of Bloomington by the Gay-Lesbian Alliance while they tried to have a parade just off campus on Kirkwood Avenue (it was definitely funny, but a troubling example of a double standard on free speech), Supreme Court Chief Justice William Reinquist was shouted down by members of the IU Law School and a student charged the stage as he was speaking.

It completely cemented my opinion that everyone must have the right to speak in order for democracy to work (I was briefly a member if the IU Student Senate, so I know from the experience that there was little democracy going on). Your freedoms give you the right NOT to listen, not the right to shout me down, beat me up, intimidate me. I guess it was a lesson in the corrupting influence of power (I will shout down the Nazis because they would have me shouted down in a different environment).

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Post a message:
This forum requires an account to post.
[ Create Account ]
[ Login ]
Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.