A Quote by Katie Walsh
As an American, we have a right to vote and to our freedom of speech, and to voice our political views, and so I actually take conversations on the other side of the aisle not necessarily as a challenge but as an opportunity to continue the conversation, which is I think what we all value most about America.
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I have feelings that are to the right, and I have feelings that land on the left side of the aisle. The thing is if you have 10 views that land you on the left side of the aisle and two views that land you on the right side of the aisle, then people just put you on the right side of the aisle. I'm not sure why.
I'm not here to say vote for one side of the other. But I'm here to say use your voice and vote. Our ancestors, our fathers and things like that fought for this right. You should take advantage of it and get out and vote and use it.
To me, it's not necessarily about whom you vote for, it's more about the fact that you go out and exercise that right. There's a lot of people who fight for our right to vote and people in other countries fighting for other peoples' right to vote and I think everyone should exercise that vote.
You can't be selective about freedom of speech. If you say you believe in freedom of speech you have to acknowledge the people whose views you disagree with, people whose views you may detest, nevertheless have the right to freedom of speech.
The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily also deprives others of the right to listen to those views.
There's actually a wonderful quote from Stanley Fish, who is sometimes very polemical and with whom I don't always agree. He writes, "Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right."
Conversations are efforts toward good relations. They are an elementary form of reciprocity. They are the exercise of our love for each other. They are the enemies of our loneliness, our doubt, our anxiety, our tendencies to abdicate. To continue to be in good conversation over our enormous and terrifying problems is to be calling out to each other in the night. If we attend with imagination and devotion to our conversations, we will find what we need; and someone among us will act—it does not matter whom—and we will survive.
Our challenge is to not look away, but rather to transform the field; to create a new political conversation, our own conversation, out of which we can speak our truth in our own way.
If our faith is the most important part of our lives, then our religious views influence every other part of our lives, including our political views.
How can you have in our country that is based upon liberality and liberation, be so anti-liberal. That's toxic waste to our consciousness. It's hard to be an American conservative because that's a contradiction in terms. Now if you take away freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of protest, and lock people out based upon their race, their language and their religion, that's conservative and fascist. America is a liberal idea.
I do think that my generation is really smart and wants to have political conversations, and so I hope that we can continue spreading our ideas and being able to change how our systems work. So, I guess being an all-American to me is being someone who questions things.
The continued vitality of our Constitution and the survival of each freedom it protects depend upon the right to vote and the vibrant democracy it affords us. In short, the right to vote underlies each of our other rights.
I think the anti-prostitution feminists need to do some consciousness-raising amongst themselves about their feelings. But that's a different political activity. Asking ourselves, how do we feel about the fact that our boyfriends, our husbands, our male partners might hire sex workers? They should have that conversation, but they shouldn't attach it to policy conversations that affect people.
The other creatures with which we share this world have their rights too, but not speaking our language, they have no voice, no vote; it is our moral duty to take care of them.
I'm moved to think about the political state of our country right now. Most people who go out and vote have a very clear sense of what's right and wrong. And a lot of those people who don't aren't sure, so they don't go out and vote.
Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right.
