I’ve had some ask recently why I link to the left leaning political blogs here in Montana. My answer was somewhat disarmingly simple — We are Montanans, and as Montanans, we have an innate desire to look after each other regardless of which direction they decide to move in on any given week.

Having spent nearly all of my 60+ years in the state, I’ve learned that respecting the differing opinions of others is more the rule rather than the exception. In some states across the nation it’s a different story. In Washington for instance, it’s always the us against them mindset that often derails any opportunity for any productive discourse — Respect for differing opinions on the coast isn’t a thing. Truth be known? There’s no such thing as “us against them”.

Politically speaking, being for something, or being against something, does not a political emergency make. All it means is that you are either for it or against it. We often times only view the world according to our own interpretation of it, and in that interpretation we come to settle in upon our chosen lifestyle and we move on from there.

Human beings, by their very nature, are social creatures. We, as humans, love to be surrounded by others who might accept our way of thinking. Not being accepted is a rather terrifying thing to some people, so they go all off into tangents and rants because even the negative attention is better than no attention at all.

Such is the state of today’s political affairs. There isn’t any political emergencies or political extremists — All we have are people who have chosen to act out irrationally, most likely because they feel they aren’t getting the attention they feel they deserve.

As sovereign individuals, we don’t have a right to impose our views or belief systems on to others.  We also don’t have the right to go around being offended for people who were never offended to begin with. Personal responsibility begins with you, the individual. As a sovereign individual, you don’t have a right to go around expecting others to pay for your mistakes.

Arguments:

example 1: If you were raised in a world where you might have been taught that morality and ethics were a hindrance to your happiness and well being, you might look at the outlawing of murdering children as an extremist concept — After all, you don’t believe in any sort of morality, so why on earth would anyone dare to outlaw abortion? It’s a nonsensical concept to you, so you go on about some certain political angst every time the subject comes up.

example 2: If you were raised with morals and some sense of ethical wherewith all,  you might consider your morality and ethics to be an added bonus to your happiness and well being. You then might find it somewhat troubling to know that there are those in this world that would choose to facilitate the practice of murdering children. You would pursue a course that would help to protect the children by attempting to outlaw the murdering of them.

In each argument above, we find two differing perspectives — We also find each argument imposing itself on to the other (as evidenced by all of the B.S. articles on the matter across the interwebs).

How can we, as sovereign individuals, find ourselves imposing upon each other in such a fashion as this? Are we so convinced about how perfectly right and true our arguments are that we have to go around forcing others to accept the rightness in order to validate our own misplaced feelings of perceived authority? If we find ourselves feeling we have to impose our belief systems on to others, then our own perceived authority is worthless.

Are you strong enough in your own person to accept the opinions or the views of both arguments here? Or are you so bent on your insecurity that either/or of these arguments causes you to lose sleep at night? It’s a fair question.

Respecting the opinions of others doesn’t necessarily mean that you are in automatic agreement. Some people will confuse respect with agreement, and it all falls downhill from that point going forward.

As a person, I might either agree or disagree with both arguments. See how that works? It’s really rather simple, because as a sovereign individual I can only live my own life. I don’t have time to live the lives of others anyway and I’d be a fool to even try in the first place.

In the world of the living, there are no extremists — Only people who have seemingly lost their way.

The ever present political emergencies aren’t really emergencies at all — It’s just people who might be afraid to actually live their own lives for a change and aren’t quite sure on exactly how to go about doing it.

At the end of the day it’s okay to tag or otherwise follow those who’s opinions you might not necessarily agree with. Once you’ve become comfortable in your own skin, you might realize that you actually don’t have a dog in the fight, so there’s no reason to go on and on with any particular argument that may in the end, mean absolutely nothing anyway.

Being in tune with the opinions of others is a good thing. You shouldn’t be too hasty in dismissing those opinions because sooner or later the opinion you dismissed today may end up being an opinion that gets legislated against you at the state house tomorrow. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re left or right, what matters most is that you allow others to live their own lives without your interference.