An answer to Sage's submission (this kid is your student body President. This is scary to me as a former liberal, now proud conservative that someone with these points of view is in a leadership position at my alma mater).
I am a 2004 graduate of UP, from the Engineering Management program. When I went to UP, I was extremely liberal but I went to UP because of the strong Catholic following and because diversity of opinion has traditionally been the norm, something that was rare then and absolutely absent now, 20 years later. You can see how I had to speak up after Sage's opinion piece written at the end of August 2020 in The Beacon. I look back on the way I behaved at UP and I did some things when I was a liberal that I am sincerely apologetic for now. A lack of personal respect for the other side is the biggest thing I regret having then. I thought all conservatives were not wrong, but BAD. That is the biggest fallacy about Republicans, that we are bad people essentially. Actually, we are decent people with great values that everyone should have support for: personal freedom, personal responsibility, pro-life ideas (anti-Abortion and capital punishment), the idea that Judeo-Christian ethics help rule your life, that we need a strong defense for our nation and that cops are the good guys and they protect people from death and criminal pursuits everyday, and that the cornerstones of us as humans are our family, our marriages and our community, not our government. As Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem."
It appears to me that your ASUP President is calling to arms a movement to take the most horrible things going on in the world right now with BLM and assaulting people with a different point of view, and condoning that behavior. You all go to school in Portland, Oregon, a place where if I went now and walked down the street in downtown Portland, I could come up missing and dead because I am a Trump supporter. The hypocrisy of the Left is more evident now than ever before.
My only concern was Sage standing up for extreme leftist ideologies that have actually caused people harm and caused the death of one Trump supporter.
The condoning of any group that has caused death to their opposition is not acceptable.
Liberals say they are the party of tolerance: tolerance means respecting opinions and viewpoints that are different from your own. When I was a liberal, I thought that tolerance meant only supporting marginalized groups against groups that I thought were oppressing them. That is not tolerance. Tolerance is respecting the completely opposite point of view.
It is ingrained into some liberals that folks on the right are not good people, period. It isn’t that we hold the wrong ideas, we are just bad people. When you break it down like that, it seems acceptable to some to condone violence, because who doesn’t want to correct a “bad” person?
Whereas on the right, for the most part, we don’t think those people are bad on the left, we just disagree with their point of view. Of course, this doesn’t hold for every conservative. We need to remember how to agree to disagree without personally attacking the people on the other side. When this happens, it is easy to go down the path of physical brutality to the opposition. Education is the remedy to this - learning both sides of events in the past.
My views changed once I found employment in the construction industry. I learned really what macroeconomics was, and how the more power we give the state, the more freedom we forever give up to others. I saw regulations go out and pink slips go out as well—as government regulations and taxes go up, if revenue does not, people must be let go. I am living proof that life tends to throw you a curveball or two, and that your experiences after school between you and your family, your spouse, your children and within your community and your interactions with government will shape you after school.
Don't do something reckless that ruins your ability to have the type of future you can with a fine UP education. I urge everyone at UP as a student to do the following: ask yourself where you see your life in 10, 15, 20 years? Do you want to have a record looming over you because of a radical idea that you had in your late teens and early twenties? Don't do anything that will get you arrested or ruin your chance to seek employment and start a career that can help mold you into the adult you are on your way to becoming. God has more plans for each of us than we could possibly know, and a UP education is a true gift in the midst of chaos.
I would also suggest reaching out to priests and counselors and like-minded people if you are a conservative going to school at UP and have found people assaulting you because of your views. Those groups I listed can be an outlet for you if you are being harassed by others at UP. You might be surprised to know one thing that all this chaos is doing is getting others to see what you have already seen for yourself at a young age. Google the "Walkaway" and "Blexit" movements and also "Democrats leaving for the Republican Party". People in the United States are waking up thanks to this violence, and changing their registrations. This was a great video regarding all the people calling into CSPAN after the RNC saying how this violence has aided them in changing parties. The people that are doing the assaulting on the Left are not winning people to their point of view, the opposite effect is happening in record numbers. It is causing people to revamp and revisit their values and see that they do not align with those of the people the mainstream highlights and compliments.
If you look at yourself now at the age of 18-22 and think you will never be conservative and that your actions have no consequences, you might want to re-evaluate your ways of thinking. I can guarantee that if your parents are assisting you with the cost of your tuition and room and board here, they might definitely have issues with your behavior on their dime as well. I have had friends of mine tell me that they do not even recognize the kids that they sent away to college because they become more indoctrinated to the liberal and progressive point of view. At UP, you get exposed to both (or at least you used to). Learn to listen with your mouth shut to others and you will get more of an education than you ever will siding with the hypocritical movements that threaten to destroy our great country and our Catholic way of life.
Much love in Christ to each of you,
Melissa Giglio Bowers
PE, CPD, Class of 2004, UP. Proud pilot!
Melissa Bowers is a UP alumnus (‘04). She can be reached at mgbowerspe@aol.com.
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