Yesterday's post was essentially my script for a YouTube video. I wanted to do a response to a video done by one of my favourite YouTubers who goes by the user name of JustA11en. In his video, Allen asked why so many anti-religion, pro-science people on YouTube were so aggressive and hateful.
Allen is a politically conservative christian from the southern USA. He's also a damn decent individual. Open-minded, thoughtful, intelligent and always willing to listen. He's also usually quite engaging and charming and quite often incredibly funny. No, I don't want to have his babies.
I haven't made any secret of my politics on this blog - it's fair to say that I'm the polar opposite of Allen politically. Long time readers with good memories might remember that in the early days of this blog I went looking for some right-wing blogs that were also intelligent, even-handed and thoughtful.
I came up dry.
It seemed all the right wing bloggers I could find were loud-mouthed, ignorant, braying, hateful jackasses. Yes, I know many left wing bloggers are too. As a result I tend to not spend much time on overtly political blogs.
As an aside, if anyone thinks they know of some intelligent right wing blogs that don't spend all their time spraying hate and bile, feel free to tell me about them.
Anyway, this is one of the reasons I like Allen. He's conservative and I disagree with him on just about every substantive political issue. But I respect him. I respect his very human way of relating his views while rarely going for cheap shots. I'm quite a fan of cheap shots myself so I don't mind that he indulges himself occasionally.
YouTube is renowned as a cesspool of the worst, most hateful behaviour on the internet. And that's saying something. So the fact that this is where I found the first conservative commentator that I could respect is mildly ironic. It restores my faith in human nature somewhat that in the midst of the most juvenile morons on the planet I can find someone I disagree with, yet still respect.
Here's the video version of yesterday's post where I respond to Allen (warning: it's about 10 minutes long):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-geOb6yqZFo
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