Say it to my face, why don't you?

Well, this is a new one.

For all that I am an activist, I make a point not to push my politics in people's faces. I don't bring up Bush or Obama with random people I meet.

I don't wear one of those "Buck Fush" t-shirts. But I do have two bumper stickers on my car. One for Darcy Burner, and one for Barack Obama.

They're the only candidates I've encountered in my life who I felt strongly enough about to make that kind of public statement.

So yesterday, somebody put a bumper sticker on my car that read "Democrats are defeatist cowards."

Let us revel, shall we, in the delicious irony of the fact that whoever felt so motivated to deface my car and call me a coward, chose to do so anonymously. I have no idea who it might have been. Someone at work?

Someone at a random supermarket parking lot? One of my neighbors? I have no idea. But let's set the record straight.

Am I a defeatist for wanting to fight to take my country back? For wanting to fight for the principles espoused in our Constitution?

Am I a defeatist for serving as a precinct committee officer for my neighborhood, to organize and get out the vote for good progressive candidates?

Am I a defeatist for seeking out the company of my fellows at my legislative district Democrats meetings, to take part in the state party's organization and activities? Am I a defeatist for blogging here and elsewhere?

A defeatist would give up, stay home, and resign himself to watching the nation go down the tubes. I ain't doing that.

I'm fighting, in my own way and on my own terms, for the kind of nation and world I want my kids to have. But I'm sure as hell not giving in to defeat.

Am I a coward, then? I sure do hate fighting and violence. I guess I can see how certain unenlightened mindsets would call cowardly this instinct away from using force as a tool to get what I want. I don't own a gun.

In high school and grade school, I avoided getting in fights at all costs (which didn't stop me from getting beat up from time to time anyway).

I do, generally speaking, avoid confrontational situations. I'm not a belligerent or aggressive person. I marched against the first gulf war when I was in college, and put up my share of "no war for oil" signs before this war started.

And yes, my personal heroes do include those two icons of peaceful change: Mahatma K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Does that make me a coward, trying to live by the principles of two of the bravest agents of change the 20th century produced?

I don't think I'm as brave as Gandhi or King. They were truly in a league of their own. But frankly, I don't think it makes me cowardly in the least to want to emulate their methods. In many ways picking up a gun is the easiest way to fight.

Kill your enemies from a distance, where you don't have to look in their faces or talk to them or even pretend that they are also human with their own beliefs and hopes and loved ones.

Finding peaceful solutions to the problem if Islamic fundamentalist violence, or to the problem of Israel vs. Palestine, or to the thorny question of how to equitably share the world's resources among an exploding world population, that's hard. Violence is easy. Peace is hard.

And cowards are the ones who take the easy way out.

To me, one of the most ironic and perplexing aspects of the dynamic between progressives and conservatives, between tolerance and ideological fanaticism, is this: the conservatives and ideologues, by being intolerant to other viewpoints (even to the extent of being willing to kill people with other viewpoints) would seem to be at a tactical advantage.

That willingness, in the extreme, to win an argument simply by killing the opponent would seem to suggest that conservative thought would come to dominate the world, given enough time. And yet, history shows otherwise.

Somehow, despite this seeming tactical disadvantage, it is clear over the span of human civilization that there is vastly more tolerance and open-mindedness in the world today than there was a hundred years ago, or five hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago.

The "arc of history," as Dr. King so eloquently named it, bends as much towards tolerance as it does towards justice.

Being a progressive, I am naturally respectful of the rights of my fellow citizens, to hold opinions which I consider the most serious folly.

I respect that right, and even their right to express those opinions. But come on. There's a proper way and a wrong way to do so. There's a time and a place.

I may not get that same consideration back from them, but at least I don't go around putting disrespectful bumper stickers on other people's cars.

So, my dear anonymous fellow citizen, next time you want to call me a coward, have the guts to say it to my face.