‘COEXIST?’ You First.

So I’m driving down the 405 in West Los Angeles, thinking about how I can’t exist while others who believe differently from me exist, when I see it – a blue bumpersticker on the back of a Prius with the letters of the word “COEXIST” replaced by a variety of religious symbols.  Whoa.  I’d never thought of just, you know, coexisting.  Thank you, mystery middle-aged hybrid-driving guy with a goatee, for stripping off my mental blinders and allowing me, for the first time, to truly see a future of love and tolerance.

Funny thing, though.  I don’t remember seeing any COEXIST bumperstickers – much less love or tolerance – when I was deployed to the Middle East.  And I sure don’t remember any in the ethnically cleansed villages of southeast Kosovo.  But I wasn’t really looking then since I was pretty busy actually doing something about hate and intolerance instead of just striking concerned poses.

COEXIST bumperstickers represent more than just the obnoxious posturing of self-important twits – although the obnoxious posturing of self-important twits is a huge component of what they represent.  These public statements represent the kind of dangerously parochial, ethnocentric mindset that conservatives are often labeled with, except this mindset is the mantra of the transnational liberal/left.  It is a mindset that sees the “intolerance” of the West as the real root cause of conflict, and imagines that if we can just get beyond our own myriad flaws all will be well.  What this mindset does not appreciate – what it almost willfully ignores – is that all those groups represented by all those symbols making up the COEXIST design are not the same, do not share the same values, and in many cases have absolutely zero interest at all in coexisting.

He nails it.  Read the rest here.

Update:  This has been now been Permalinked under Pages to the right.