COLUMN: Liberals, conservatives both must reflect on their arguments
Today's modern political climate is filled with mutual hatred and disgust of the other side.
This hatred showed on April 15 in Berkley, California as supporters of President Donald Trump clashed with protestors. Eleven people were injured in the brawl.
Online and in person, it seems the far-right and far-left have hijacked political discussions and reduced them to a shouting matches and even fist fights.
Both liberal and conservative arguments are rife with hypocrisy and ignorance. They inflame dissenting opinions and destroy political discussion in America.
Liberals argue that everything conservatives value is racist or fascist — which has proved disastrous to their cause.
The far-left attempts to shout down conservatives with accusations of intolerance, but fail to see the hypocrisy they spout in the process.
Liberals will rant about President Trump attacking the press and freedom of speech, but it’s the same liberals that rioted earlier this year to keep conservative media personality Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at the University of California-Berkeley.
There are other notable cases of liberals shouting down and threatening public speakers who come to campus, like the backlash against conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. Students on college campuses such as at DePaul University have threatened and tried to ban Shapiro. This is a prime example of censorship and a blatant attack on the First Amendment.
No matter how inflammatory their words are, people have every right to be heard and share their opinions. The left is just as guilty of shutting down and attacking free speech as Trump and his conservative base is.
Threatening people’s lives and attacking their right to speak because they disagree with people like Yiannopoulos, pro-Trump supporters or Shapiro are autocratic.
This is the same thing Trump is accused of doing. Yet liberals call him a fascist.
On the other side, conservatives seek to shut down liberals.
They aim to demean and talk down to them. But conservatives don't see they are guilty of the very thing they accuse liberals of doing. Conservatives' arguments, filled with irony and blatant hypocrisy, proves their own viewpoints wrong.
Conservatives call liberals "snowflakes" for boycotting companies or reacting negatively to things they don't agree with. The irony is that conservatives blissfully forget they have called for boycotts on Starbucks over their Christmas cups, Target for gender neutral bathrooms, and many more companies for implementing inclusive policies.
Former popular conservative television personality Tomi Larhen’s "Final Thoughts" segment was nothing more than angry rants about things she disagreed with. The reality is these rants were nothing more than Larhen whining about things she hates about liberals without providing any kind of counter point.
Facebook and Twitter groups like “Occupy Democrats Logic,” “Being Classically Liberal,” and others continually post memes and statuses that attack liberals as being stupid and childish. These Facebook pages are filled with comments and posts that assail liberals as being idiots, and dumbasses, while claiming how much smarter conservatives are than liberals.
There is no mincing of words.
The liberal and conservative arguments are equally filled with hypocrisy and are damaging to having any serious discussion of the problems in America.
Political disagreements are no longer a discussion of ideas and facts, but a match to see who can come up with the cleverest put down or come back.
If liberals and conservatives consider themselves the better half, then deep inward reflection should come before they further divide America.
