I Was A Hardcore Conservative: What Changed My Mind [View all]

[RedWedge]

Lots of good stuff here, and none of it requires you to personally reach out to people who endorse your oppression if you don't want to.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/what-helped-convince-me-to-stop-being-hardcore-republican/

#2. I Was Most Persuaded By People Only Slightly Less "Backwards" Than Me

I still remember the time I heard a very respected church couple say, "You can be a good Christian and vote Democrat." I think I had to sit down. My head was spinning. Up was down. Down was up.

I knew this couple was "good" on every part of the Good Christian checklist -- they would have been anti-gay-marriage at the time, among other things. And for me (remember, up was down), this meant they were cool on every point except the crazy thing they just said about DEMONcrats (or DemoRATS).

It turns out that I, and most people, are more likely to take seriously "otherwise good people" with "one crazy idea" than someone who is different from me in every way and wants me to change everything.

(snip)

Non- or less-religious people may say, "But I use Bible quotes all the time to tell religious people they are wrong and it doesn't work." Of course it doesn't. I never listened to that kind of argument from someone who didn't actually believe in the Bible, because what is this, some kind of game to you? You think you found some loophole in my Dungeons And Dragons rule book? You don't believe the quote you are throwing at me, but you think I am dumb enough to fall for it because I am dumb enough to do whatever my magic book says. This is not a good setup for a cooperative response.