American
Charlie Kirk, Rest In Peace, brought to my attention the state of our country. No, I do not agree with everything he says. But you can not agree with some things a person says and agree with others.
I think it's BS that we have people who pick a political side and defend everything that side is for without actually questioning it or asking themselves what they think. Because if you don't ask yourself, what do you really think? What do you value, stand for, what would you fight for? You're just regurgitating what the people around you believe.
Do not ever feel like you should just conform to your friend's ideation to avoid friction. Now more than ever it is important that you speak what you believe. If they were truly your friends and truly loved you, they would respect your beliefs. If someone is speaking the truth, they will not attack you or be volatile for you speaking yours. That's how you know someone is regurgitating something they don't really believe- they're volatile about it. No one that knows the truth will force it down your throat or attack you if you believe something different. They'll say: This is what I believe. Take it or leave it. And not in a sarcastic, passive aggressive way, but in an objective way. In a non-attack way.
This country is asleep. Everyone's asleep. No one cares to ask any questions that would shatter their current beliefs.
It's okay to change your mind. It's okay to have different beliefs than other people. It's okay to be wrong, or what you say be a paradox. That is the way this world is, and the sooner you realize that paradoxes and polarity is what holds this world together, the sooner you'll find peace. Thank God for the people that have liberal beliefs and thank God for those that have conservative beliefs. Thank God or the invisible pole that holds them together. Opposite beliefs help us see things in a different way and maybe give insight into something we didn't see.
At its root, opposing views often signal a common ultimate goal. A liberal advocating for social programs and a conservative championing free markets both aim for the same fundamental outcome: a prosperous and stable community. Their disagreement lies only in the method they believe will get us there.
I completely agree with Charlie Kirk's stance on how we put up with too much violence, filth, and criminals. We just accept things that are absolutely unacceptable. Charlie said, "We need more people in jail. We do not have enough people in prison in America."
I, on the other hand, have a different perspective on that statement, one that comes from a place of experience: I've been to jail. And having been inside those walls, I have seen the absolute horrors that go on in there.
Prisons are private for profit. That's not okay. But let's meet in the middle. Okay Charlie, fine, we build more jails, we have more repeat offenders, violent offenders in prisons. But first, we fix what jail is. We fix what prison is. Because if prison rehabilitated, then we wouldn't have violent repeat offenders on the streets. It's not working obviously. What do we do to make jails and prisons a place to actually grow and change?
Well first we don't list everything that's wrong with jails. Because I alone could write a novel on that and not get anywhere. We could list thousands of atrocities in jails, spin our heads, and with that information we still will not have helped America, our home, or our fellow man.
This is how we start:
Highlighting Success: We must find everything that jails and prisons are currently doing right.
Studying Rehabilitation: We must find documented cases of people who have been truly rehabilitated by going to jail, and find instances where communities have been made safer through effective sentencing.
This is just the start of how we begin to fix the issue of America being an unsafe society. Likewise, this is how we help our fellow man who needs resources and structure to heal themselves and want to be a part of the society that helped them reform. This is how to create real change. This way we're not spinning our wheels with our defenses up and being deaf to what the opposite side has to say.