RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I think there is way too much fighting over political differences. It doesn't matter what side it is -- Democrat, Republican, or whatever the party may be -- there is always someone with attitude. Parties aside, no politician is one hundred percent right on every issue, and none of them can truthfully say they've never made mistakes or bad judgments. Well, the whole darn thing is just a mess.

I'll go as far as to say I'm pretty much neutral when it comes to politics. However, I just don't get into the scene nearly as much as others.

I generally try to keep my politics to myself.

These absolutely scare me, in the same way that a robot that you can't rationalize with would scare me.

Yes, as Cowgirl mentions, you can shrug these people off (and that's usually the best response to their comments), but that doesn't take away from the damage they can do if in a position of power. And to a degree, we are all, as voters, in positions of power.

I know this guy who will vote his political party regardless. I asked him one day; if you knew that your party candidate would be horrible if elected and also knew the other party candidate would be excellent would you still vote your party? He said he would or not vote at all; now that's a little scary!

They don't really scare me. I don't partake in many political discussions. There are going to be people who agree with me, and others who won't. I just shrug it off.

There are four political modus operandi: Liberal, Conservative, Authoritarian, and Libertarian. Regardles of which part of the political spectrum you belong to, it's very possible to become an extremist. If you're a liberal and you take it too far you can be a communist, socialist, environmentalist (Eco-terrorism is much more common than you'd think), etc. If you're conservative and you take it too far you might hypocritically bomb abortion clinics and be in favor of slavery and other horrors we're trying to bury. If you're an authoritarian and you take it too far you can be a Nazi or Islamo-fascist. If you take libertariansm too far you can be an anarchist. Taking any political ideal too far has resulted in the worst atrocities we have seen, from greater ones, such as slavery in the past (though it has not yet been wiped from the face of the whole earth), the Holocaust and the attacks on 9/11 to everyday atrocities, such as extreme-liberalism in our schools and day-to-day racism. Indeed how we deal with these extremes will affect human society for centuries. It may very well become an age old struggle that only gets worse. I feel one of the few ways we can approach this is to install republics in the most depraved places, such as Iraq. While the sacrifice is great, the potential to change the political landscape of the region and our world is immense. At this point, regardless of if you like them or not, we can only pray that some of the risks our leaders have taken (including those senators and congressmen from both sides of the aisle who voted for the war in Iraq) end up paying off. Hoping for the war's failure out of spite is ignorant. This is not a liberal or conservative issue to me. It's a matter of freedom or imprisonment. We certainly cannot let extremism win out. Just so you know, out of honesty, I stand somewhere between Conservative and Libertarian. I am biased, as is every human being with even half of a brain. It's not a moral crime to be a republican, nor a democrat. It is a moral crime to be an extremist.

From intolerant, politically-correct extremism witnessed on U.S. college campuses to bombings, hijackings and terrorism seen around the globe, political fanaticism/fundamentalism is one of the chief obstacles facing democracy today. How we answer its challenge will likely define who we are as a people and nation for generations to come.

They exist on both sides of the spectrum and will only become more common/numerous as the quality and level of education continues to decline in America.