BTW, listening to someone...under no circumstance...means you "respect their views."

You can respect someone's human right to think, speak, experiment with their own beliefs...without falling ass over teakettle for whatever they've found for themselves. Take note, shills: "Why I, as a black man, have gone to KKK rallies with no violent intent."

Also, this gem:

"The line from Confucius was that 'Virtue is never solitary; it always has neighbors.' What he meant by that was that good behavior and good thinking is contagious. In a way, virtue is like the homeowner who moves into a rundown neighborhood and through that investment and the cheerful improvements they make to their own home and the friends and family that follow, the block begins to turn around.

It’s become a point of virtue-signaling these days to criticize this as 'gentrification,' but of course that’s silly. We should want people to be doing this--not just in housing but in all walks of life. If politics is a snake pit of corruption and avarice, then good people should enter it and improve it, not simply denounce it. If capitalism is too selfish, then the caring should start businesses with better cultures (which, when successful, will steal market share from the bad actors). If a group has extreme or offensive views, it shouldn’t be cut off and isolated for fear of “normalizing it.” It should be normalized--by encouraging normal people to interact with it, correct it and prod these misguided people towards the right path.

The silliness of Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged is the premise that the talented, brilliant people leave society to create their own utopia...because they weren’t appreciated enough by everyone else. What childish nonsense. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave, the duty of the philosopher and of the virtuous person is clear: To come back to the group and share one’s knowledge. To resist the urge to be the solitary wiseman and to instead be a good neighbor.

Remember that today as you work on your studies. That the point of all this is to make the world--not just yourself--a better place." - Daily Stoic blog, Ryan Holiday

Also, why we're here...

“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective assets: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, in all of which we depend on the cooperation of others while having no means single-handedly to obtain it. In respect of such things, the work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull. That is one of the lessons of the twentieth century. It is also one reason why conservatives suffer such a disadvantage when it comes to public opinion. Their position is true but boring, that of their opponents exciting but false.” ! Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative (?)