The Backlash Continues

Our decision earlier this week to wear our political stripes on the sidebar continues to deluge Thrasher's Wheat's comments and mailbox. We've gotten probably over a hundred comments or emails on our decision. Not everyone is happy or pleased with the stand. Many others are quite supportive. Even folks outside the U.S. seem to be taking an interest in this discussion.

We really feel that some of this comes right down to the whole premise of the film Deja Vu and Neil Young's intent to create a dialogue among his audience. And even here on this blog, there is a dialogue between the Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin supporters.

Over the past few days, we've engaged in some pretty intense off-line discussions among both sides over a variety of issues of the day: war and peace, the economy, the environment, to name a few. These have been both painful and enlightening. And if we didn't personally respond to your email, apologies, but we've gotten behind.

But onto our Comment of the Moment on The Backlash Begins:

With all due respect to the posters who have chosen to bash conservative fans and assert that their views conflict with Neil's -- Neil Young is not easy to classify into a political camp ... yes he does lean more left than right, yes he's very much against the current administration and has spoken postively about the hope that Obama will get the chance and deliver on his promise of 'change' but what most characterizes Neil is that he is an independant thinker, willing to express his own views rather than a party line. Whether he backed Reagen completely can be debated from here till tmrw but the important thing is that Neil had enough courage to express admiration for some of the things Reagan did or stood for. Neil was open minded enough and confident enough in his views to not be stuck in one camp. The self described "liberals" hurling accusations and insults against Republicans and conservatives are espousing a very different, very closed minded ideology which in my humble opinion goes against Neil's philosophy ... the whole premise in Dejavu was that people have differing opinions and the idea is to have a conversation and respect people's right to disagree ... I always find it perplexing when people who are self described "liberals" chant about their commitment to "free speech" and "freedom" but with strings attached -- the fine print is that the speech and the views must be consistant with their own narrow views. If not, they resort to name calling and smearing... take some inspiration from Neil and try to understand someone else's ideology .... that's what it means to be authentically liberal ... take it from a self described conservative you can't be both authentically liberal and close minded its a contradiction.

Hey, what's that sound? Look what's going down.