errorlevel and I went out canvassing today for John Laesch, one of two democratic nominees for congress in Illinois's 14th district. (Yes, this means he is running against Speaker Dennis Hastert.) We didn't get to talk to many people today, as a lot of people weren't home, and it started raining about 20 minutes in. But, the few people we did get to talk to had some wonderful insights.

I went to an anti-war rally today at Northern Illinois University. While there, I signed up to volunteer for the John Laesch for Congress campaign (IL-14 Congressional district, Dennis Hastert country).

Now, I strongly believe that in order to support the right to free speech, one must also support that same right for those with whom one disagrees most. However, just because I think that one ought to have to right to free speech does not mean that I believe all kinds of speech are always appropriate at all times. It was at the rally that I believe free speech got in the way of a coherent message.

It really saddens me that the only cognitive dissonance I can find through conversation is people that agree with my political beliefs. Of course, even people on the same side never agree completely and that is where my little dissonance is found. However, I want to be able to talk to people that are on the Right without being called un-American. I want to be able to talk to people on the Left without being accused of being fascist. I want to be able to talk to people who vote for politicians that I find to be completely abhorrent without them getting angry that I dare question their choice. It is painful to see the media failing at its task of creating an informed electorate, but it is downright excruciating that people are not stepping up to the plate to discuss things on their own.

errorlevel has had this account made for me for a while now, so I guess I could start using it. ;)

As a Christian, many see me as a hypocrite for supporting this idea. However, that couldn't be farther from the truth. I support Separation of Church and State not to protect the government from the church, but to protect my church from politics.

Politics is corrupt by it's very nature. Making the church involved in it can only serve to make the church corrupt. We saw a small example of that with the church who expelled it's members who voted against Bush in the '04 elections. Involving the church in politics would involve it with everything that comes with it...

Many people that claim to be pro-life claim to be so because they want to support the life of the child. How is it, they suggest, one can claim that the being inside the mother's womb is not a human? This is nothing but a strawman argument set up to equate abortion to murder. Once abortion can be equated to murder then the case can be made for outlawing it, much like murder. However, outlawing abortion would do nothing in the interest of a person that is really Pro-Life.

One of the largest problems with the Democratic party today is that it has trouble defining itself as anything but not Republican. The things the Democrats have stood for in the past have been demonized by the Republicans and the Right. Now, Democrats find themselves in a precarious position where their base tends to be more like the Green party and other more progressive and liberal parties than those at the helm of the Democratic party.

For the Democratic party to support things such as universal healthcare and free education from kindergarten through college, they need to be able to withstand the wrath of Republicans and the accusations of being "communist". They need to be able to effectively communicate that socialism is not the same as communism. They need to take back the word "liberal" and not treat it as something to be avoided like the plague. They need to show that it is possible to be both conservative and support social programs. They need to show that investing in the future is a smarter strategy than blowing the budget with tax-cuts. They need to show that universal healthcare will actually save people money and that the taxes needed for such healthcare will be far less than what people are currently paying for their HMOs or health insurance. They need to have spines.

Last weekend I went to a wedding. It was sweet, small, simple, private; and unfortunately, not recognized by the state. The wedding was between two men who wanted to declare their love for eachother. After seeing the two grooms walking down the aisle and hearing them say their vows, it became very apparent that this wasn't about sex. In fact, there was nothing sexual about any part of the ceremony. There was no mention of sodomy, fellatio or even kissing. The only exception to kissing was the customary kiss between the wedding participants.

Instead, there was love. Love tends to be forgotten when it comes to relationships between gays. People forget that relationships are more than just sex even though they'll claim otherwise. Yet when someone mentions "gay" or "homosexual" their thoughts immediately gravitate towards sodomy and other sexual acts. This is more a reflection upon their own faults than it is on gays.