My Intolerance (exerpt)

(Charlesdog recently posted these reflections, and I thought it was worth sharing...)

When my parents were my age, my father went to Woodstock and hitchhiked all around the country living in communes and my mother was in the Peace Corp in the Dominican Republic living in a tin roofed shack with no indoor plumbing. I went to a school where you called your teachers by their first name. When I told a kid their that I didn’t shop at the Weaver’s Way Co-Op, I would have gotten a better response if I had farted in his face. I’ve heard “Touch of Gray” by the Grateful Dead more times than you could imagine. Needless to say, I grew up liberal. Naturally, being a liberal, I was tolerant of other people. Or was I?

A few years ago a nice family couple moved in next door. I had many conversations with them, and I was always welcome at their house where something was always cooking on the grill and the Cappuccino was always flowing. These people were great people, so naturally, I thought that they were liberals. Well, it turns out that they were Conservative Christian Republicans. I guess we all assume that people who we like are just like us.

They are slowly being “outted” to the people in the neighborhood. I say this because being Republican in Germantown is like being Gay in Alabama. The exchange goes something like this, “Is it true so and so is a Republican?” Then I say, “Yes.” Then they say, “Oh, I never would have known, he was such a nice guy.” Needless to say, this family still lives next door and has taken to the community well.

Read the rest of Charlesdog's post...