General rule of thumbs:
If you are not prepared for people to voice their opinion, avoid making controversial posts.
If you have comments to make about the troops, and you have troops on your friends list, assume that they are likely to see those comments. Assume that there are going to be times that they cannot hold their tongue.
And when you make comments about the troops, remember that they do not all think the same. Even if what you are saying is something that is agreed upon by about half the troops (that is a higher percentage than you can actually expect for us to agree on anything), the flip side of that is that about half don’t agree.
Supporting the Troops does not automatically mean supporting the regime that is sending them to die.
Supporting the troops does not mean buying into every bit of ra ra Jingoistic propaganda that you see.
It sure as hell doesn’t mean blowing the troops off when their opinions don’t match the image that you have in mind of how they should think and act and feel.
I hold my tongue on a lot. I hold my tongue on most things. There are limits however beyond which I have a moral obligation as a member of the United States Armed Services, as a Citizen of the United States of America, and as a plain old Human being to speak up and say something.
If I see posts that are purely religious in nature, I am generally going to ignore them. It is your right to hold whatever religious beliefs you want. I am not going to judge that.
I ignore a lot of posts that are just plain dumb, or misinformed unless it is something I can actually be of help on in some way.
I generally try to avoid offending people whenever I can.
However, when I see posts talking about the constitution, about people’s rights, about what a person thinks it means to support our troops, those are kind of things I have to speak up on if I disagree. They are things that are very personal to me, and quite often have a direct impact on me and my way of life.
When people say “Support our Troops,” I am one of those troops.
When people say “The troops fought and died for your right to do such and such,” we also generally fight and die for your right not to do it as well.
When people speak about freedom of religion, and how something is trampling their rights, Freedom of Religion is Freedom to practice ANY religion, not just yours.
When someone says that preventing them from trampling someone else’s rights is taking away their rights… There is a world for that, and it is plain old bullshit.
I am opinionated about certain things, but as a general rule they are things that I am very passionate about for one reason or another. When it comes to issues of what our troops fight and die for, that one is about as personal as you can get.