I remember once when I was small, I was really upset because one of my stepbrothers had “borrowed” my rifle and returned it damaged and broken.
That .22 rifle was my prize possession: I oiled it and cleaned it daily; I had polished the stock to a high glossy sheen. I never left it outside and when I carried it, I was always extremely careful where I set it down. So imagine my distress when I went to take it out of the gunsafe and it was gone. I asked my stepmother where it was and she said my oldest stepbrother had taken it to go “chicken hunting.” My stepbrother came home that afternoon and dropped my rifle on the floor in the porch, it was covered in mud, the stock was scratched and gouged and the bluing on the barrel was scratched.
I was very angry but I didn’t say anything I simply took my rifle off the floor, and went to the bunkhouse. Later that evening when Merv got home I showed it to him. Then I cleaned it, oiled it and took out some sand paper to try and sand out the gouges and nicks. The hardest thing for me was leaving it covered in mud and damaged for the few hours until Merv got home. It was almost physically painful for me. When he got home and saw my rifle, Merv told Victor he would no longer be allowed to borrow any of the guns and that he would be giving me Victor’s allowance for the month. My stepmother argued that it was my fault as I hadn’t locked up my rifle, allowing Victor to take it. Merv just looked at her until she was quiet. He was upset but there really wasn’t any way to unbreak the vase so to speak.
I managed to buff out some of the lighter gouges and nicks, but the barrel was scratched and the action was looser, the rifle was never the same. Getting Victor’s allowance was nice but it didn’t even come close to what I lost. But what I gained was a valuable insight into human beings.
What does this story have to do with anything you are probably asking?
I went to see my Gramma later that week and she asked me why I was so upset. So I told her. She said something that I have never forgotten. “Ryan, things that are important to you may not hold the same importance to other people, things you take for granted may not even be something they understand.”
I said to her “but Gramma, doesn’t everyone know what right and wrong are? Shouldn’t they?”
My Gramma looked at me in what I know now was kind of a sad way and said “Some people think that right and wrong are things that can change, they think that right and wrong change depending on the circumstances. You also have to remember that people’s views of right and wrong come from the way they were raised and their religious beliefs, so sometimes their ideas of right and wrong will be very different from ours.”
I guess that is why I have trouble understanding why people call me racist or bigotted for stating what I see as a pretty obvious truth. Some people’s ideas of right and wrong are very different from ours, some people’s belief and value systems are very different from ours. If we fail to acknowledge this very basic truth, then in point of fact WE are the racists, after all , what is more racist or condescending than ascribing our beliefs and value systems to people who come from a vastly different place with vastly different experiences? This would seem to be common sense to me.
We have been conditioned to believe in the colonialist mantra, that in order to be equal we must all be the same, that assimilation is perfection and the goal of everyone. In that thought paradigm, we all believe in basically the same priniciples, we all have the same goals and we all share the same core beliefs and value systems. everyone is equal because everyone is the same. This is the same thought pattern of the new left, where dissension is seen as wrong, where free speech is only free if you agree with their position and where anything different or out of the box is dangerous. They will make you love everyone the same, even if they have to kill you to do it.
But see, I am an indian, I grew up with the stark reality that white people didn’t share my people’s value systems or our beliefs, and because of that, I learned that it’s foolhardy to deny reality, that if I am not careful, I will have their value systems imposed on me whether I like it or not. I have experienced the Tyranny of the majority, where I am supposed to go along to get along, and not rock the boat.
But, I have some friends, they are Jews. The Jews you see, have some experience with being outside the box, they understand that integration does not require assimilation, and that the majority is not in fact, always right. They understand that other people do not always share their ideas of right and wrong and they understand that it’s folly to believe that they do to a suicidal extent. They are a people who have avoided assimilation through sheer stubborness, they regained their ancestral lands despite what must have seemed like the entire world’s enmity. They learned that the actions of a few can overpower the words of many. If there is one thing that we can learn from my friends, it’s that when someone tells you over and over that they want to kill you and take everything from you, we need to listen, that their idea of right and wrong is very different from ours and what might seem unthinkable to us is common sense to them, it’s all about the value system.
