Cal Thomas

A Curious American with Conservative & Liberal Friends

I loved this inspiring interview on Edelman today, and wanted to pass it on.

Yes, there's a lot of housecleaning to be done. There's ongoing genocide, climate gaslighting, bad hombres.

But 99% of Americans are kinda sorta just like you and I. It's easy to forget this. We're going to have to find a way. Somehow.

In a day when liberals and conservatives are pretty much at each other's throats with an unbelievable name calling, rather than standing side by side, just aligning exclusively on the conservative element, you recognize we're all fellow Americans. How did you do that? How do you manage to acknowledge that the other guys aren't evil just because they're the other guys? 

Cal Thomas: Well, I think you have to get to know people. You know, we're all members of tribes now, and we're defined by labels. And so many people don't get to know other people from another political worldview. They don't know about their families, their struggles, how they came to their point of view. Bob Beckel, the late Bob Beckel, one of my dearest friends, and I wrote a column for USA Today for ten years called Common Ground, and we wrote a book by the same title.

Bob used to say, I've now written more books than I've read. And we'd go out on the we'd go out on the lecture circuit and we would kind of debate and we'd say, Well, you know, that's a good point. I think I could agree with that. And he would say the same to me. And then at the end, I would say, now Bob is not on the other side. Can we get rid of the other side business? Bob is my friend, my fellow American. Both our dads were in World War Two. They weren't fighting for or against Franklin Roosevelt. They were fighting to maintain an American ideal. America has always been an idea in search of the ideal. And then we'd hug each other and people would be crying and all that kind of stuff. But this is how I became friends with Ted Kennedy. I never denounced him. I would critique some of his policies, but I would never denounce him. Now we're into a period where if you don't like somebody's political view, they're evil. They're destroying America… I'm sorry to say. And it's just not productive. It doesn't produce results. It may produce votes among some people, but it doesn't solve any problems. And if you have that attitude to a fellow American, then I think you can reach their heart and soul a lot better than denouncing them. 

Read more: (scroll)

https://www.thetayf.com/blogs/this-weeks-stories/the-end-of-an-iconic-american-brand

Bonus:

Can you guess what her superpower is?

I’m a 102-year-old doctor. Here’s the No. 1 thing the healthiest and happiest people I know never do

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/08/i-am-a-102-year-old-doctor-heres-the-no-1-thing-the-happiest-and-healthiest-people-i-know-never-do.html