On my way home from work the other day, I noticed a bumper sticker on the car in front of me. It said:

There was a tiny graphic next to the words, which I spent 3 intersections trying to read. It looked like a military medal.

I can’t remember the last time a bumper sticker made me think for days!

I can’t disagree with it more.

Think about it: If the idea is that people shouldn’t express opinions about topics, or places, they haven’t experienced personally, then empathy is impossible. And so is the education of children. Also most voting in Presidential elections.

Should people attempt to learn *something* before mouthing off on this topic or that? Yes. Yes, they should! And it is helpful not to act like an arrogant expert when you know only a small amount. A little knowledge and all that.

This idea is especially important where sensitive social issues are concerned. I can’t tell someone what their experience was or should have been, just as they can’t do that to me. I’ve never served in the military, been a different race, or been pregnant when I didn’t want to be, and most of the people I talk to on a day to day basis have never been out lesbian moms. But all of us are capable, to at least some degree, of imagining ourselves under very different circumstances.

How else do people learn? Through experience, certainly, and through reading, through thinking, through imagining, but more than anything else, IMO, through talking about what they’ve learned with other people. How else do you get different perspectives or other interpretations of events?

Just for example, since I think it was a military member or veteran’s car that I was behind, I’m just as entitled to have an opinion about the war in Iraq as anyone else. Can you imagine how things would be if only soldiers and veterans were allowed to vote on issues related to war? Everything looks like a nail if you only have a hammer.
Of course it would be ridiculous for my individual opinions to carry significant weight in terms of strategy or planning for how to bring home American military forces.

You can’t become an expert through casual reading of the newspaper or listening to NPR. But you can learn enough to form an opinion, one that is just as much part of “public opinion” as any Blackwater security agent making $1200/day as a hired gun in Iraq.

So take that, bumper-sticker car!

Oh yeah, and I saw a car yesterday with both a confederate flag license plate decal and a Morehouse School of Medicine bumper sticker. It made me really wonder what kind of conflicted character the driver was. FWIW, it looked like a white guy to me.