Radio, the Road, and the Right

8 hours down, 25 hours to go. This is a cross-country road trip with little if any time for enjoyable sight-seeing, friend visits, or any of the other pleasantries that make such things worth doing. It's just me, Shelley, and a 16 foot long Penske moving van less than half full of almost our every possession.

Things I love about road trips are:
1) The scenery: and its parallels with local cultural identity
2) The abject freedom represented by the one-man:one-highway situation ("I can drive anywhere i want and there's nothing anyone can do to stop me")
3) Time to Think: uninterrupted and plentiful

SO in light of all that, this whole process of moving from San Antonio to New York isn't half bad - I certainly do have plenty of time to think and abundant scenery to enjoy (ok, looking forward to getting out of the empty prarie eventually), but oddly after a summer of nothing but travel, the prospect of covering 2,000+ miles in 4 days seems exhausting.

On top of everything else, there's this blog. Now don't get me wrong, I love sharing the (mis)adventures and mindless curiosities with you all, but the amount of time I have to think versus the limited (or non-existant) internet access and time to take advantage of such between 12hour drives makes for a very frustrating scenario.

While traveling I usually just pop in one of my many favorite CDs and glide down the road to a familiar tune, but recently I've become interested in radio-hopping around the FM dial to see what's happening in the areas I pass. Most common are generic rock or country music stations, followed by the rare unique music station, and then there's talk radio - NPR is a favorite and standardized nation-wide, but the real gem for me is conservative/religious talk radio. Don't jump to conclusions - life "on the road" has brought me no closer to Jesus than life "on the lamb," but I've always said that the best way to understand an adversary is to actually listen to what's influencing them. So I listen to a variety of different programs, usually named after the especially outspoken and boisterously self-righteous host. Sometimes I hear interesting, intelligent comments from people who happen to hold a different opinion than I do on major social issues, but most often I just witness (aurally) the continued propogation of lies, slander and sensationalism with little basis in any facts recorded outside a leather-bound NIV.

I take it as much as I can, but when I start to notice myself talking back at the little petulant voices, it's time for more music or the moderating voice of NPR. I know many conservatives consider this news source to be unabashedly liberal, and I'm willing to allow that the people who work at NPR, by and large, skew just a little left-of-center, as do the majority of college-educated, middle-income, city-dwelling Americans. However, I take great offense at the charge that a left-learning journalist must therefore produce left-leaning journalism, and while I do believe TV media has failed us all by making this falsity fact (Fox gets credit for first making partisan journalism profitable) I know it doesn't necessarily need to be so.

Any event, after a few minutes of balanced perspective and actual news reporting (as opposed to war-mongering editorialising and evangelical political prostelitizing), I still need a few more minutes of music before I re-embark on my exploration of the Right (though technically Left) end of the radio dial. And I can't even get started on AM.

This is just me venting, and like I said, there's too much time to record all the relevant thought processes I had on an 8 hour drive so far, but some items for us to all consider (while I keep driving and suffering the conservative-goes-caustic rhetoric):

1) Boy Scouting's lingering exclusion of homosexuals may remain legal as a private organization, but how much longer can they maintain the moral argument given the increasing public face of model citizens who happen to be gay (and the obvious bigotry of the homosexual-child molester association upon which they base their defense)?

2) How can the absolutist approach to anti-abortion principles (all life is sacred) ignore this same principle in the support of foreign wars, the death penalty, etc?

3) What is it about marriage that needs protecting from homosexuals? I understand that legally most churches have the right to refuse to conduct ceremonies, but I never can understand how John and John getting married in California directly affects (and threatens) Bill and Sue getting married in Mississippi? If Bill and Sue wind up divorced 3 years later (as 50% of hetero-marriages do), aren't they doing more to damage the prestige and sanctity of marriage without the Johns' help?

4) How does an American christian maintain the illusion that they are a persecuted minority? I agree, the majority of America may not be as radical as the fringes, but at most the two sides (religious and secular) are equally matched, and to claim that being forced to compromise is equivalent to full-scale persecution is the kind of irrational rhetoric that accomplishes nothing but radicalizing otherwise moderate elements, and what's to be benefitted by that?


These are all huge issues (for conservatives) in America today, and I don't have any answers whatsoever. if you do, please post them up for our collective benefit. Remember, I'm not asking you what you think about these issues, I'm asking how (as a secular American) I can expect to have a civil discourse with a staunch conservative who holds as fact so many assumptions I believe to be largely ficticious.

Where do we find common ground, and how do you reason with someone who's core belief is that rationalism is an inadequate system of logic?

Long post, not very well-formed, but something for me to keep thinking about as I roll down I-40 on my way to Nashville.

Best wishes from the road, and hopefully once I get settled in I can think more, write (less) more often, and maybe come up with a more clever on-going blog project.

-Weber (on the lamb)