{"id":1165,"date":"2025-04-30T01:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T06:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/?p=1165"},"modified":"2025-12-04T10:24:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T16:24:22","slug":"signs-of-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/signs-of-the-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of the times…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Signs of The Times...<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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This post originally appeared on\u00a0Dead Dillo<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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I\u2019ve seen a post or two recently about the \u201cHonoring Confederate History\u201d sign that the Sons of Confederate Veterans have put up on I-35. \u00a0There\u2019s some discussion of what should be done to get it taken down.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

I don\u2019t like the sign.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like the idea of \u201cHonoring Confederate History.\u201d<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

I don\u2019t know if I know anybody who is in the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.\u00a0 Maybe they are perfectly nice people, but I worry that this kind of club is a \u201ccloseted\u201d way of finding fellow White supremacists to hang out with.\u00a0 I worry that when \u201ccloseted\u201d White Supremacists find acceptable ways to hang out with each other, that they are more likely to come out of the closet.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

That brings me to the second sign.\u00a0 It\u2019s a sign for some show on HBO that features drag queens.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t find an example of a drag show billboard in Waco, but we certainly have drag shows in Waco.\u00a0 What if one of them decided to buy a billboard like this to advertise?<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

I know there are folks in Waco who would be offended to see a billboard advertising a drag show posted up along I-35. \u00a0I imagine some people would be grossed out, disgusted, outraged.\u00a0 I know people who worry that drag shows are just a \u201ccloseted\u201d way for sexual deviants to find fellow sexual deviants to hang out with.\u00a0 They worry that if closeted sexual deviants find acceptable ways to hang out together, pretty soon they won\u2019t feel like they need to be closeted any more.<\/p>

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What\u2019s the difference between these two signs?<\/strong><\/p>

I have friends who would say the Confederate sign is about promoting hate and racism, the drag show sign is about accepting people for who they are and having some fun.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

I have other friends who would say the drag show sign is gross and perverted and an example of inviting moral decay into our community.\u00a0 They might say the Sons of the Confederacy group is a way of learning about history, a way of remembering that even though slavery was bad, the soldiers who fought for the South were honorable, brave people who have been unfairly disparaged and deserve to be remembered and honored.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

This is the complexity we choose for ourselves when we choose to live in a country committed to the ideal of freedom.\u00a0 We choose to be offended and even outraged sometimes because we understand that if we want to be free, we have to put up with other people\u2019s freedom too.<\/p>

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Sometimes we even find ourselves in the aggravating position of sticking up for someone else\u2019s right to be despicable. We know the sword cuts both ways. We know that we might want to do something someday that they might think is despicable, and we want them to be obligated to stand up for us.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

This messy business of living with freedom is made more complicated because \u201clive and let live\u201d is not always the answer to getting along with others. Sometimes people do go too far, and we should not put up with it.\u00a0 At some point, tolerance of evil is evil.\u00a0 Unfortunately or fortunately, there is not a final, pat answer about how people who disagree with each other should live together in freedom, we have to keep tending to it.<\/p>

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So, what about the Sons of the Confederacy sign on I-35?<\/strong><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

I don\u2019t like it. \u00a0I can certainly imagine a scenario where a Confederate Pride club like this one might go too far with a sign, but this particular sign doesn\u2019t seem to be doing that as far as I can see.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

The space between \u201cI don\u2019t like that\u201d and \u201cthey should not be allowed to do that\u201d is important to me.\u00a0 That buffer zone protects our freedoms.\u00a0 I would not want to outlaw the Confederate Pride billboard, not because I am \u201cOK with it,\u201d but because I would not like it if the powers-that-be decided to outlaw a drag show billboard or something similar.<\/p>

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That space between \u201cI don\u2019t like that\u201d and \u201cthey should not be able to do that\u201d is an important space for speaking up. Hearing that what I am doing is offending or harming others is what allows me to moderate myself so that I can live (mostly) peacefully with my neighbors. Hearing from others who speak up helps us learn to consider our own beliefs in the context of the whole.<\/p>

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Is the space between \u201cI don\u2019t like that\u201d and \u201cthey should not be able to do that\u201d a space for full-blown pressure campaigns and harassment of the people with whom we disagree?<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

That\u2019s a personal decision. I am not you.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t lived your life.\u00a0 I can\u2019t tell you how angry to be or how much energy to spend on trying to force \u201cthe other side\u201d to stop doing whatever it is they are doing that offends you, or that you believe is harming you.<\/p>

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Personally, I worry that we-the-people are in a little bit of an outrage arms race right now.<\/p>

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I don\u2019t feel like it is serving us well. It\u2019s exhausting and time consuming and distracting. \u00a0I worry that in our zeal to limit the aggravating freedom of others we may unintentionally pave the way for eroding our own freedom. \u00a0I worry that being outraged about everything is a little bit like crying \u201cWolf!\u201d<\/p>

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I feel like we are sometimes overly vigilant, constantly on the lookout for things that are supposed to offend us. Sometimes it feels like we are mounting all-out battles when maybe an eyeroll, and a \u201cNo Thanks! That is gross!\u201d would be enough.<\/p>

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That\u2019s certainly how I wish the anti-drag show zealots would respond to drag shows.\u00a0 I wish they would roll their eyes, say, \u201cNo thanks!\u00a0 That is gross!\u201d\u00a0 and then just walk away. \u00a0If that is what I expect of others, shouldn\u2019t I do the same for the Confederate Pride club?<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

So, no thanks, Sons of the Confederacy. \u00a0I don\u2019t like the idea of a club to honor a group of people who were willing to fight a war so that they didn\u2019t have to give up their slaves. \u00a0That\u2019s gross!<\/p>

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I\u2019m not going to pitch a fit about your billboard, because much as I don\u2019t like it, I believe to a certain point you have a right to your beliefs and your Confederate Pride club.<\/p>

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Please remember that I stood up for your rights when it comes time for you to stand up for the rights of someone you don\u2019t like who disagrees with you.<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Signs of The Times… This post originally appeared on\u00a0Dead Dillo. I\u2019ve seen a post or two recently about the \u201cHonoring Confederate History\u201d sign that the Sons of Confederate Veterans have put up on I-35. \u00a0There\u2019s some discussion of what should be done to get it taken down.\u00a0 \u00a0 I don\u2019t like the sign.\u00a0 I don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":2460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-1165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-managing-our-freedoms-wisely"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2560,"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions\/2560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleybeanthornton.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}