It's a matter of context.

I started a post a few days ago and didn't finish it. It was incredibly frustrating. It was a familiar lament in this space: Our society's inability to discuss an issue without picking a side. Or to express a preference for something without being bound forever in the lead weights of our opinion. Cast as liberal or conservative. Democrat or Republican. Frick or frack.

I deleted the post before it was finished.

And then Christopher Hitchens died, and my cowardice became the very lead weights I had mentally decried. That dude had some balls, and I'm pretty sure they were made of lead. (Well, that sounds dreadfully uncomfortable, but you get my point, I'm sure.) He was an avowed atheist and yet aligned himself with George W. Bush (um, so not an atheist) in our nation's invasion of Iraq. And he had no problem with that. He felt no need to explain, "Well, I acknowledge that we disagree on the existence of God; but we agree on the existence of WMDs and sometimes that's just how these things go, you know." Nope. He knew, and that was enough.

Hitchens got it. You can agree with someone on one point and disagree on another. And they can both be really big points. I wish I were that brave; that I could speak my mind and commit to a viewpoint, just once.

I think that's the definition of freedom. To be comfortable enough in your own mind to speak your own truth and not care what anyone else may think about it. To resist the urge to qualify your perspective as merely your perspective.

Why can't I do that? Sheesh, why can't we all?