Ok, I'm on some kind of "conscience of society" kick, sue me. Real quick though, I do have to give a "Hell Yeah!" to our troops over in Iraq. The reason should be obvious.

Anyhoo, let's talk about this term that gets tossed around a lot nowadays; Acceptance. To me, acceptance is a dirty word. Instead of looking at it like a word or even an idea, let's look at acceptance like a person.

Acceptance is a huge, smelly, greasy, fat disgusting bastard that knocks on your door at 12am and asks you for money, food, and the keys to your car. He's all up in your face so bad that you can't get a word in edge-wise. He's loud, crass and most likely the first person to go in a "we're trapped in the Himilayas and we have to eat someone to survive" scenerio. Acceptance is an asshole. He asks for everything from you, without acknowledging who you really are. Anything in the world is secondary to Acceptance's needs. All he wants, is what he wants, and fuck you if you don't like it. No matter how disgusting or distasteful this guy is, he can be that way and be on the side of right, but if you disagree with him, you're scum. You are the puss-filled pox on the ass of a leper.
It's a sad fact, but that's the way it is when you deal with acceptance in this day and age. The sick part is that we all know it. It doesn't matter if your job, your personal beliefs, or just your state of grace is at stake, if it doesn't co-incide with acceptance then it's secondary. And that's the problem with Acceptance, it's unyielding and gives no quarter, but asks for a ton. It's a one way street that leads to a dead end, and here's why:

America is supposed to be about evenhandedness. Now, we all know this doesn't happen every day and it doesn't happen in instances when it absolutely should, but its what we should strive for. Acceptance does not allow for even a chance of that happening. Acceptance, as a liberal ideal, preaches that everone in America must accept everyone else. It goes further than that even, Acceptance hints at making you like everyone, kind of the way a loan shark hints that you should pay on your vig. That's just not right.

Now, let's talk about this other dude that I tend to associate with, his name is Tolerance.
Tolerance is a low key kind of guy...he sits in his car and gives you plenty of rope with which to hang yourself, but the second you go too far he breaks down your door and steps on your neck until you scream "uncle." He's not a nice guy, but he's a patient guy. He doesn't mind if you spit on something here and there, but he gets really riled up and is likely to break a few heads to get his point acroos. See, Tolerance is like a killswitch. He sits back all grumpy, watching things unfold. He let's you gain your own prospectives and then hammers you when you've strayed too far. He doesn't care if you like something, he doesn't think you have to like all things...but he wants you to understand about things other than yourself and he wants you to see different points of few. He figures that if you know the whole story, you'll figure it out on your own. He's got all the time in the world and Solomon's wisdom on his side.

That's the way it looks to me. I like Tolerance, he acknowledges who I am, but let's me know who everyone else is, and he doesn't ram it down my throat.

So in this fight, I say Tolerance with a KO in the 3rd round.

Enjoy.