I totally agree with you BELLY on this issue. If you won't argue your point of view, then often you'll be walked all over - in other words; you'll be bullied. There's nothing that pushes all my buttons more than 'a bully'!

Fighting the good fight like most things in life depends on the environment. If I'm in a war, I'll use a gun. If I'm physically threatened, I'll use whatever I have to defend myself. If someone uses neutral language in a discussion, I'll use neutral language. If they immediately tee off with emotive prejudicial generalisations that bear little resemblance to reality, they have drawn their line in the sand. I've learnt over a long time that you know their attitude will not change, no matter what language you choose to engage them with, civil or otherwise. So you know when you engage them that you are not entering a discussion because a discussion requires them to hear your point of view and that's the last thing they want to hear. But you are entering a fight. Not a fight to change their view because you won't. But a fight for your standards, a fight that states those low standards need calling out. I know who I am, I know what my standards are. Walking past bigotry impacts my integrity more than losing face on a forum. They can ignore me or start talking about anything but the topic under discussion, at least there's one less platform they'll infest.

Social progress has been made by people by people who stood up against oppression and for what they thought was right.

However, I doubt that that’s what NNS means when he mentioned ‘fighting the good fight’. In a previous thread he accepted the designation of missionary. He disagreed with the attitude of some other posters that one should ‘live and let live’. He wanted to push his religion - his particular version of Christianity.

I am sensitive on that subject. When I was a child and heard about the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac I asked my father what he would do if he heard a voice telling him to sacrifice me. He told me he would see a psychiatrist. As a child I received a Jewish education, but doubt eventually caused me to leave it. I could no longer believe there is a God listening at the synagogue door and deciding our fate.

In my long life I have been approached by Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim missionaries. The Jewish ones have wanted me to return to the faith. However, I don’t go around telling people of religious faith it is nonsense unless they try to push it on me. As the obnoxious ones leave me they proclaim, “I’ll pray for you”. Ugh!
In my opinion missionaries have done great harm to the world. They have accompanied imperialist gun boats, destroyed native cultures and aided in the enslavement of native peoples. They have helped promote the attitudes that led to the Holocaust. The Buddhists, like Christians and Muslims have promoted the myth that they’re a religion of peace. In WW2 they were the primary religion of the Japanese army and in Sri Lanka they oppress Tamils. Israel imitates the kind of country Jews fled. Now they are the first class citizens, and others are the second class citizens.

Religion has given comfort to many people. However, I think it should not be the business of government, and government should not be the business of religion - separation of religion and state.

To Doug. Good correction. My bad on the spelling.

To DavidF. We won't agree with each other that's probably true, but at what point does the disagreements become something worth standing against, instead of endless bickering. Ending when one person gives the hardest punch instead of the best reasoning. Religion isn't what I'm talking about, but the conversation that inspired this was religious in topic. Basically where do you draw the line and either walk away or not enter the discussion at all, verses get into it, fully throwing the insults farther and farther down the other person. If I remember the conversation your talking about before, you admitted to being a missionary for your cause. You also aggressively upped the language and the insults in that conversation. My point on not living and let live was that there are things you don't just let go, unless you don't care about the other person. Drug addiction is one of those issues.

To Foxy. The things we feel passionate about are the things that we fight the hardest for. It no longer becomes a thing of just speaking your mind and from the depth of what you know, but a thing to stand for, stand against. Plead for against possibly uncaring or aggressively opposed views. I've seen you do this too, as well as myself. Eventually if the fight is invested enough for you then the stakes for fighting fair and in personal get tossed for a few well chosen slurs of the opposing person. I believe you're being named a anti-Semitic in one conversation, and I've seen you name those others with a few choice names as well. I'm not innocent of this either. But at that point I think it can be said the the fight is about the fight itself more then fighting for a good cause of any kind. If you see what I'm saying.

To Belly. That's a concern. Doing nothing, does nothing to resolve anything. But I'm beginning to wonder if that's entirely true. Or if there are other ways of making things right then our current ways of fighting each-other raggedy.in my first draft (before the word limit edit) I ended the OP with this paragraph.

"At the end of the day I sometimes wonder. Is there a point to any of these debates? Or is it's worth (if any) out matched by the harm it does. If it's not worth it, what does that say about us? Have we lost the ability to stand up to the wrongs of the world and listen to those who have correction to give us? If so that's a tragedy. Doing nothing and saying nothing often is looked as the same as being willing to be walked all over and a passive onlooker as another is being harmed.

What is the good fight? And what is fighting for the sake of fighting?"

To Unravel. You've hit my topic square on. Fight for your standards whatever those standards are, or let it all go. Sometimes you know the discussion is not a discussion. But recently I ended a long and heated discussion where I stood by my points, and when asked for proof of a matter I gave it and continually stood by it. One point being fought over in my opinion was a small point. Nothing too huge. But to the other person it was apparently a personal insult to point it out. I'm not going to apologize for it, but I do wonder about the point of any of it. The fight lost any point of being a good fight, but fighting for the sake of the fight that it turned into. "Prove this to me" combined with "why are you trying to insult me" along with the underlying scoreboard that saying nothing has in the past been counted as a win for that person. So I refused to back down. The small point was not wrong. Fighting for the sake of the fight.

To everyone (so far). Essentially this is my underlying thought. I have fought for the things I thought were worth fighting for here. And I've watched others do the same for what they think is worth it. And I see the fights those very debates get reduced to talking past eachother and an exchange of personal insults. Then it turns ugly.

My underlying thought is if all the fighting is worth any of it. Or should I practice to walk away from it all. Not get involved in any of it.

The underlying thought I'll consider privitely, but for anyone willing I ask. Where do you draw the line. For fighting the good fight, versus fighting for the sake of the fight. Nothing to gain, nothing to help, and possibly worth walking away from before entering to begin with.