In my time on Facebook, I have been un-friended twice:

  • The first time was in January, when I objected to the universal condemnation of Israel for their attacks in Gaza, and wondered why people weren’t condemning Hamas for the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians and using civilians as human shields.
  • The second time was yesterday, when I objected to the characterization of anyone who objects to Obama’s “progressive” policies as racist - we just don’t know we’re racist - rather than acknowledging that some of us have fundamental differences of opinion about the appropriate role of government.

In both instances, the “friend” who un-friended me was a liberal.

At the same time, I have a large number of quite conservative friends, who consider me quite the liberal for my positions on same-sex marriage, church/state separation, the failure that was the presidency of George W. Bush, the disaster that is the war in Iraq, the incredible over-reaches/power-grabs of the GWoT and PATRIOT act, etc. I write about these on my blog and link there here, debate them, etc.

None of my conservative friends have un-friended me, as far as I am aware. Certainly not in the middle of an active debate.

People who know me - who are my friends - know that I am neither a “liberal” nor a “conservative”. There are areas where I am quite liberal (e.g. many social justice issues), and those where I am quite conservative (e.g. fiscal policy). I consider myself a libertarian, but with more of a “trust but verify” view of government than many libertarians.

Basically, I can find something to debate with pretty much anybody.

I am co-author on a blog, The Victorious Opposition. This blog is a spinout from another, explicitly right-leaning, blog, where I got involved in the reader community, debating my anti-Bush, anti-GWoT, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-ACLU positions in a decidedly hostile environment. My co-founders of The VO were my two primary antagonists in that forum. We routinely talked about Thunderdome[TM] - the three of us would go out it in quite the heated fashion on many a topic.

Yet when they decided it was time to go start their own blog, they asked me to come write with them. There are a couple of areas where we found common ground, but for the most part, we don’t agree on very much. But we understand the power of open and honest debate, with multiple distinct points of view involved. Yes, sometimes it gets heated, but it never gets uncivil - we don’t allow ourselves to go there, and we don’t allow our community to go there.

Most people appear to like “debating” in an echo chamber. Which boils down to excoriating the other side, and group-think. Both the left and the right are guilty of this, in spades. I think our way is better.

But back to the title of this essay - the left wing generally accuses the right wing of being closed-minded and inflexible, uninterested in heterogeneous society. One of the accusations I hear on my blog, however, particularly when I’m writing about same-sex marriage, is that liberals are actually the rigid, inflexible, closed-minded ones who have no tolerance for anyone challenging their views. In response, I point out the last few years of the right wing declaring that anyone who disagreed with the sainted GWB was un-American, un-patriotic, should leave the country, etc (which was routinely hurled my way at that other blog, including by my now-co-authors) wasn’t exactly the height of open and civil debate.

But my second instance of being un-friended by a liberal, in the middle of a debate, because (in this instance)  I objected to being blanket characterized as a racist for my policy objections, makes me wonder if maybe they’re right.

And in case you’re suspecting I over-reacted to something and maybe said something I shouldn’t have - here’s the comment I responded to:

I don’t think you can reasonably separate the political past of this country and the results of the policies that came out of that past. To wish we had the country whose Conservative policies - including spending, military, and social policies - were severely damaging to Blacks (and many others) is to wish that the people who were harmed by those policies were again relegated to that place. Now, the people making the statement may not have delved that deeply into their consciousness to examine exactly what they’re implying, but maybe it’s time they start doing that.

and here’s what I wrote in response:

I find the implication that those of us who don’t agree with Obama’s “progressive” agenda are inherently racist - but just don’t know it - more than a little offensive. You trivialize our objections to fundamental policy issues about the role of government as bigotry. That’s not particularly debate-worthy.

When I went back this morning, I could no longer access the discussion because I’d been un-friended.

So I gotta ask - why are my liberal friends afraid of actual debate that challenges their deeply-held convictions, but my conservative friends are not? Who, exactly, are the closed-minded ones?