Conflict. It’s the basis for most behavior. The world is filled with it. Conflict is inevitable, even in our everyday lives.

We hear about major conflict and strife in the news. Last Saturday, a Ku Klux Klan rally in Pittsburgh drew a crowd of about 2,000 protesters yelling for the Klan to go home. Some protesters even threw rocks at Klan members who were demonstrating on the steps of a government building.

Although the Klan is entitled to its First Amendment right of free speech, as are all Americans, its message is a bit disturbing. Some believe that because the Klan’s speech is so vile, it shouldn’t be allowed to speak. This is where most conflict begins.

The Klan members dressed themselves in their traditional white hoods and carried Confederate and Nazi flags at their Saturday rally. C. Edward Foster, the KKK’s Grand Dragon, urged white Americans to prepare for a race war and said, “America’s salvation is (black) deportation.” He also put down blacks, Jews, and homosexuals and attacked the media for making the KKK look like a hate group, according to a Reuters report.

All the media has to do to make the KKK look like a hate group is take its picture or capture it on video. The KKK thrives on hating others — that’s the basis of the group. Conflict is the foundation of the group.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) behaves in the same way. For 28 years it has been using violence in attempts to break Northern Ireland away from British rule. The IRA uses bombs to attract attention to itself. The same day the KKK rallied in Pittsburgh, a bomb scare at Britain’s most popular steeplechase event was credited to the IRA. Authorities closed British expressways.

Again, conflict is the foundation for the IRA’s activities and cause.

It isn’t until major conflict hits close to home that we realize its threat and power. If you were a victim of actual KKK violence or if you were threatened by an IRA bomb, the conflict would seem more real. It’s hard to evaluate and understand things that happen in a different city or country to different people.

For example, I am outraged at the Oklahoma City bombing. I didn’t know anybody who was a victim of the explosion, but terror like that strikes the hearts of most Americans. I lived in Oklahoma for a year, and although I was just a child, I remember Oklahoma City. I remember going to the zoo for our field trip. Whether Timothy McVeigh is guilty is for the jurors to decide, but I feel like I need answers.

Most of us can draw connections to major conflict, as I do with the Oklahoma City bombing, but still, the conflict is distant. It doesn’t affect our everyday lives. What we do experience every day are little conflicts.

Most everyday conflicts are so minor that they go unnoticed as conflicts. You have to wait for your roommate to get out of the shower and you are already late. You need to make a copy, but you don’t have the change for the copy machine. Some conflicts are more noticeable. You have to take a class to graduate, but it’s full and there are no other sections offered. You have three papers and two tests the week of Veishea.

We’ve all experienced different forms of conflict. Some people have had to deal with serious conflict, such as being a victim of violence or losing a loved one to violence.

Sometimes the conflict we experience is of our own making. You give someone your phone number and once they start calling, you wish you never wrote your number on that napkin. You want to go out for the weekend, but you end up having too much fun — to the point where you end up in the hospital or in a stranger’s bed.

Although conflict is a major component of our everyday lives, we shouldn’t thrive on that conflict. It is then when conflict becomes a foundation, as it is with the KKK and the IRA. Your opinion and actions may conflict with those of other people, but we must remember that everyone deserves the right to be heard.

It’s just not good when people decide to let their voice be heard by being violent toward others.

Erin Payne is a junior in journalism and mass communication and political science from Rock Rapids.