GUEST | To All Reasonable Cornellians Out There: A Bold Test for Liberals and Conservatives

The following is a guest submission from Andres Sellitto Ferrari, founder of No Labels at Cornell University. He is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, and can be reached at as2747@cornell.edu.

To the reader, this will seem more like a questionnaire than an article, but bear with me. I want to ask you the following, I want you to be true to yourself, and I want you for once to make it all the way to the end. I will divide this test in three parts (and yes, it will be controversial, so be ready):

For everyone:
Can you be critical of yourself and your beliefs?
When was the last time you spoke to someone who disagreed with you, and actually listened to him/her?

For conservatives:
Do you actually believe that African-Americans are not a singled-out group in American society?
Why cling on and oppose issues that most Americans support, and bring religion into public policy (Planned Parenthood, gay rights, health care, legalization of illegal immigrants who besides that offense have been law-abiding, minimum wage)?
Should freedom of speech cover hateful ideas?
Can you agree with liberals when a reasonable point is made by them and not englobe a group of people into a set of stereotypes?
How can young people support a movement that seems to be against their causes, demands and needs for the future?
Do you think the media you follow is objective and not biased?

For liberals:
Can anyone make a conservative case in a lecture in any class in Cornell without being shunned out (even by the professor), given dirty looks or just plain ostracized?
Can conservatives rally in Ho Plaza, or even criticize rallies without anyone assuming a racist ulterior motive for the protest, or instantly disregarding it and labeling conservatives “stupid” and “backwards”, grouping people into a set of stereotypes?
Can conservatives write about their ideas without being attacked, censored, shamed and denigrated?
Do you think that feminists protecting and protesting next to fundamentalists is, to say the least, ironic?
What will happen when there is no more safe spaces after leaving college?
Do you think that you could stand for the same causes you stand here in America, and speak, and behave the same way you do here somewhere else? (In Israel? In Palestine? In Syria? In Venezuela? In Saudi Arabia? In Sudan?)
Do you think the media you follow is objective and not biased?

If you honestly answered everything, congratulations! You are a pragmatic person, and can draw your own conclusions and do your own critical thinking.

This test is obviously incomplete in substance but accomplishes its goal; to show that there is a Big Middle, the ones who want to talk, to agree to disagree without hate. Let’s stop preaching to each other’s choirs.

We can be pragmatic, we can think about solving the problems we have now and stop creating new ones.

More people agree with you than you think. It is time to drop the labels and speak to each other. More can be done, and more will be done this way.