[Nathans_Dad]

Interesting experience tonight, especially given the recent discussions about people's behavior on this forum and the overall decorum of PPOT.

A friend of my wife invited us over for dinner to meet her husband and a few other couples. One of the men is a civil liberties lawyer here in Texas and a card carrying member of the ACLU. He apparently litigates cases for the ACLU against the government all the time. I spent most of the night talking with him and the other guys about various topics, everything from football to kids to politics. Myself and one of the other guys were conservative, another guy who was a civil lawyer was middle-left and the ACLU lawyer was pretty hard left. Anyhow, we had a very polite and interesting discussion for over 4 hours over beers, dinner, football and whatnot. Although I disagreed with some of his views, I listened to his positions and then responded with my own, which he also listened to. We found that many of our ideas were similar, we simply differed on how to put those ideas into practice. Not once were the words commie, pinko, neocon, mouthbreather, Bush'ist, asshat or nazi used. Contrast that to the discussion that occurs on this forum and you begin to see just how far from reality PPOT is.