I Do Not Want To Love A President As Much As I Do Want To Respect A President

Now that the conventions are over, the real campaign finally begins in Presidential Death March 2012.
But a little snippet of our Dear Leader, President Obama, is illustrative of a very fundamental difference between most conservatives and most liberals.
Liberals want to be loved.
Conservatives want to be respected.
Now, it is not to say that a little of both is a bad thing. Actually it is what I think most people do believe even if is not the reality.
So in the snippet, a member of the assembled audience listening to the Dear Leader, President Obama, shouts "We love you, Obama!" to which he shouts back, "I love you back. But let me tell you the fourth thing -- you’ll love me even more. (Laughter.)"
Now I know one thinks that it is innocuous from both.
But not really.
For the liberal it is all about self-worth. And an insatiable need to be loved. And they do not understand when somebody or people do not love and or like somebody.
A few of my Facebook friends were writing about this during the just concluded Democrat National Convention. Feel the love. See the love. Sense the love. And so on.
Who cares? Is it that important to be loved by all?
No, not in the least.
One of the aspects of this self-love fest is in foreign policy.
One of the constant complaints about foreign affairs is that when a Republican is president, the world does not love us.
When a liberal is, the world loves us.
However, that is a total fallacy.
See, what the liberal is talking about are governments that do not like or even love us. Many of these governments have sycophantic people that either back up that position or in real hardcore dictatorships back the government out of fear for their lives.
So, it is true that maybe the last Republican president, George W. Bush, faced protests and visceral personal hate from said protesters and even governments. But what about the average person in these nations? Do they hate us? No, not at all. They love the United States and what it stands for if they had a chance, they would come here in a nano-second.
And yes, in the days even before Barack Obama became president, the world loved him. Of course these are people who would agree with his point of view in the first place. And they are on the left. And they need to emote. And they did.
Maybe Mr. Bush 43 was not loved, but he was respected. Because unlike the leader seeking self-gratification, Mr. Bush did have a set of beliefs that he stuck to. One did not have to like them, but they had to be respected.
That is what people should be looking for first and foremost in any kind of leader.
Respect.
And what I have seen in the past three-plus years is a love-fest in regards to the Dear Leader, President Obama, and little if any respect.
Or let me speak personally here.
If you read this blog and totally disagree with it, fine. I have no problem with that. I hope that you would at the very least respect the point of view I present. And really, one does not have to do that. And again I have no problem with that. I do have only one problem and that is if one chooses to be nasty and hateful. I do not tolerate that. Nor do I respect that. The fact is that I know I am not liked and or loved by everybody. And I just do not seek that.
But many liberal people I know just do not understand that whole concept. To them it is all love and nothing else.
But that is a two-way street.
The one that truly seeks to be loved by all must love all as well.
And then reality smacks them in the face. And they crawl into a corner and sulk. Thus they seek no respect and get none. Nor are they all that loved in the end.
But as far as a president goes, I expect that person to be respected at home and abroad. I don't need to love that person at all. Thus I can write that as time goes on, I have developed a certain respect for the former president, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton. And I even kind of sort of like the guy in a weird way.
No, when I hear people say they love any president, and that president shouts back that you'll love me more because of, laundry list here, there is a narcissism about that I find disturbing. And it is a marked difference between a conservative and a liberal.
Love vs. respect. What do you seek?

Whatever Happened To Manners?

You know, the above thought came to me last night due to two different incidents.
The first as we were having dinner at Pei Wei restaurant. It is a P. F. Chang subsidiary. So it is somewhere between fast food and a sit down restaurant with waiter service. What you do is order, pay, find a seat and a server brings your order.
As Mrs. RVFTLC and I were enjoying our dinner, a man was on the other side of us on his phone either e-mailing, texting or online. The server came with his meal and he did not even acknowledge that he was there. And needless to say did not even bother with a thank you. He just went on doing his thing. Within a moment or two he began to eat.
How rude.
I mean, would it have killed him to lift his head and give the server a thank you? It does not have to be heartfelt. But an acknowledgment of someone bringing a meal to him.
Dirtbag.
After dinner, and kind of the reason we had dinner out, we went on our way to Master Cashew's first day at puppy school.
And of course not without drama.
As we were heading to the freeway, Mrs. RVFTLC was trying to merge to the right lane to get on the freeway to our destination. She started and a car honked. And the driver we thought just forgot to take her hand off the horn. It was long after Mrs. RVFTLC realized she had to stay in the lane and let the car pass. Too bad the gal driving STILL had her hand on the horn. Mrs. RVFTLC simply raised her hands in a "Really?" manner. And said gal extended a rather long, right-handed middle-finger to Mrs. RVFTLC.
OK, Mrs. RTFTLC realized her mistake and did not try to intentionally cut the gal off. Yet she did not stop honking and ended up flipping us off.
Nice.
A couple of bursts of the horn would have done the same thing. Mrs. RVFTLC would have acknowledged the error and gestured some apologetic signal to the other driver.
Again, it would be what we used to call common courtesy.
This has opened a floodgate of examples of manners just going out the window.
A good friend of mine and I go out often to eat. Mostly at full-serve restaurants. Several times in the past, my friend was not all that far from the guy I first wrote about.
We would be checking out a menu and he would be trying to check his phone. Texting, Facebooking, something that diverted his attention. And at least twice he was talking to someone as the waiter or waitress was trying to take our order.
What are the two faux-pas here?
One, he is ignoring the waiter/waitress. Two, he is ignoring the guest, me.
Finally one time I finally just told him "Get the hell off the phone! The waiter/waitress wants to take our order!" I then proceeded to tell him how rude it is. And he thanked me because he did not realize he was doing what he was doing.
Another example was pointed out by my friend at The Unmarried Man and this post on e-mails.
Too bad he seems to follow suit of his co-workers in real life.
See, we all have e-mail that we should be answering at work in a timely manner. And as An Unmarried Man points out, a lot of people do not seem to get that. Yet that thinking should not stop when one leaves the office. When someone is e-mailing for needed information and is ignored.
The bottom line of this diatribe is that we all seem to forget the basic courtesies that our parents and or grandparents taught us when we were growing up.
You know, that you must say "please" and "thank you". That it is important to pay attention to people no matter what. That one respects people. That one does not with ease take advantage of others. That a man should, no must open a door for a woman.
I just do not get where this coarseness comes from. Did something happen from when I was growing up to now? Did parents abdicate one of the basics of instillation in children?
I think that there is probably a lot to blame here, but because it is not one thing, rather than blaming something, we must re instill the basic idea of manners. And it starts with each and everyone one of us. One of us at a time.
Maybe instead of the question of what happened to manners, we can say that we started to bring it back.