Rev. Pat Robertson

I would not pass up our class's video conference session with Rev. Pat Robertson for anything even though I do not think it was our best video conference session we've had thus far. I wouldn't pass it up because I think there was a valuable lesson to be learned.

There is no doubt that as he explained some of his extreme view points on topics such as war and religion, tension in the studio began to rise. As a Christian, I would guess that I would agree with Rev. Robertson on topics such as morals and a belief in God, however, it was shocking to me to here his somewhat radical views on other issues. I got the vibe, that maybe Rev. Robertson has a certain level of ignorance and has trouble being tolerant of other cultures and understanding them. I do not think he is a bad person, I just think he is a little mislead in certain areas.

What I took away from that experience was a prime example of how important it is to at least hear every person out, even though you may not agree with them. He may be extreme and have some rather rare ideas, but he has the right to an opinion and the right to have a voice. It reminds me of what my communication synthesis professor once said: "I think our country and our world would be in an enormous amount of trouble if every citizen was a republican, and I think our country and our world would be in an enormous amount of trouble if everyone were a democrat, that's the beauty of a democracy, we have both."

I can relate this to our class's video conference session with Rev. Robertson because if it were not for people like him who speak out on their extreme ideas, how would the rest of us realize that these thoughts exist and how would we be able to form counter arguments for people with similar thoughts to create a balance, much less form our own ideas that will likely be very different?

This experience taught me that the worst things you can do are to shout or throw your hands down on a table and walk out of a room. The lesson I think is, that you can disagree all you want, but you have to fight fair, which means listening first.