If You Don't Like it, Leave!

 

   Normally I don't write about serious topics for weekend columns. Weekends should be a break from the what goes on the rest of the week. However, I've been stewing over something for a couple of weeks and it's time of me to get it out of my head.

   Someone I know posted on Facebook that anyone who does not support and vote for the same conservative leaders he favours should leave the country. His opinion was that people who do not support and elect the group that he likes do not love this country, are not true patriots and need to live someone else. 

   I wanted badly to comment on his post. I wanted to tell him that I was born here, raised here and have made a good life here. I cannot in good conscience support the people he chooses and I am not going to leave. My uncles and my father-in-law fought in a war to prevent this kind of authoritarian thinking. I didn't because I know that doing this would only start something that I didn't want to start.

   To me what he said was a variation of something that makes me really angry. If you don't like it, leave. 

   This is a phrase that tends to get used a lot in our society. We are really good at this. So good that we don't even need to say it. We can push people out with our actions. It makes us seem pretty tough and strong.  We are in charge, we are important and you can leave if you don't like it. We don't need you.

   There's is a big problem with that kind of thinking. It pushes people out. It pushes other ideas out. It isn't a strong act at all. In fact it is a weak act. If we push out all the people who are different, that means that all their ideas and all their potential go too. What you end up with is something that looks like intellectual inbreeding. Just as physical inbreeding results in lack of genetic diversity and eventually reduced survival, intellectual inbreeding leads to lack of diversity in ideas and the inability to deal with challenges when things change. There's no little creativity and innovation. 

   People who act and think differently can be uncomfortable for some people. We have to learn to deal with this. Our country was founded by men and women who had different ideas on how they wanted to live and how they wanted government to work. A lot of the good things in our country from the Revolution, to the end of slavery to women's suffrage to civil rights for all came from those who saw that things needed to change to make things better.

   The next time you are tempted to tell someone if they don't like how things are they should leave, listen to them.  Assume they care about the organization, the country, the group as much as you do. Maybe you'll learn something and you will both be better for it.