A change of scenery

Have you ever had a completely stupid argument? It seems to happen to me more than most people, but I know everyone has gotten themselves into a debate so aimless and meandering that the original topic gets buried beneath a pile of tangents and speculative analogies.\nLast week my roommate and I got into just one of those debates, and lo and behold, I have no idea where it started. However, as a point of interest, I do remember where it ended: orange packages of Ramen noodles are superior to blue packs; red is gross, pink is worse; and I'd rather watch a David Spade marathon than eat the hybrid flavors.\nThe political bickering of the last few years has been about as inane as any discussion involving Pepsi versus Coke. Somehow we moved away from the issues that matter, where viable, and more importantly, provable evidence can be gathered to make informed and progressive decisions. Instead we've found ourselves in these Gordian knots, irresolvable and to be perfectly honest, irrelevant. Our culture's morality is too diverse to find common ground on every topic, so let's discuss issues on which we all agree.\nThe arguments on abortion are equally valid whether you're on the right or the left, pro-life or pro-choice. If we can agree to disagree for just a little while, we can solve the problems that have been left unattended on the back burner and now threaten to boil over, setting fire to the kitchen and putting the whole house at risk.\nIt just doesn't matter if you think dinosaurs and men lived together in the Garden of Eden or that by some astronomically small chance, man sprouted from the loins of apes. I hope we can all agree that something needs to be done to save our failing education system. However, there could be a silver lining after all: If our children can't read the Bible or "The Origin of Species," then the whole matter of where we came from will go away on its own.\nShould we immediately concern ourselves with the morality of the death penalty? We could do away with the whole debate if we fixed the problems plaguing the criminal justice system. Likewise, we wouldn't have to deny our citizens the right to bear arms if we could publicly address the root cause of murder: hate, prejudice and gang violence.\nWhether you like it or not, it seems that homosexuality is here to stay. I have my doubts, but even if there is a correlation between gays and the deterioration of our moral fabric, alcoholism, drug abuse and sexual deviance are just as detrimental to society as anything else. Before we blame Sept. 11, and Hurricane Katrina on same-sex couples, we should mull over whether or not God considers a 50 percent divorce rate to be impious. \nIf we could just put our irreconcilable differences aside for a moment, take a step back and look at what really matters, our country could really make some progress. Debate is healthy for democracy, but implacable gospel is why men go to war.