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My Profile
Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
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7:51 p.m. - 2003-04-07
Why I'm a Liberal-The Sequel Oftentimes I run against the shiny ideals or well ground axes of my fellow Liberals. I may be: The Last Liberal in America Who Doesn't Have An Agenda. You see, my belief isn't specifically about saving spotted owls or returning sections of the Bronx to the descendants of the Bronx-a-wakan Tribe that hung out there 300 years ago. I'm for LIBERALITY. Liberality, the broadest amount of personal freedom we can get while maintaining a society that functions and agrees to a common standard of law and public social custom. I don’t mind leveling the playing field some, because really it’s to everyone’s advantage that as many of our citizens as possible are educated and given the opportunity to prosper and contribute back. I do, however, try to find the most reasonable line I can between curable unfairness and “Shit Happens” unfairness. Sometimes stuff just can’t be fixed, no matter how much money you throw at it or you try and legislate it out of existence. Something that far too many Liberals refuse to acknowledge. Sometimes shit just happens. The same liberality of view holds true with domestic policy, most especially with that of legislating morality. Here is where I call in my “Who Gets Hurt and How Much?” measuring device. Make school prayer mandatory? Who gets hurt? Well, pretty much everyone. Even those of the particular flock in favor. This is school, people. The place they send you to learn absolutes. 2+2=4. H2O is the formula for water. Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays and poems. Absolute. So what happens when you get the principal coming over the PA every morning announcing God and His Boy are the ONLY God and that’s the truth? What happens to the kids who were taught differently at home? What are they supposed to believe? School is where they teach you the facts! “Does that mean my folks are wrong? How I believe is wrong?” And what of those of the preferred brand of ideology? What does it tell them? Where is the true understanding and purposeful tending of faith? With religion espoused by the school it makes it awfully difficult to distinguish between rote memorization and true faith. My sons’ faith is far too important for me to leave to the school. Teach my kids the principal exports of Tobago, but leave my boys’ souls to me, thank you. Freedom. The freedom to teach my sons the way I want to. Liberality. Blue Laws are almost an obscenity to me. Once a person reaches the age of consent then the government has NO business telling that person what he or she may do with their genitals or who they do their genital bits with. Of course, as long as THAT person is of legal age as well. It’s the “Who Gets Hurt?” factor. Nobody. Nobody outside the participants is being effected at all. You want to be a Shaker and be celibate? Fine by me. You want to go to Crisco parties with strangers who answered an ad in the back of “Orgy” magazine? Whatever, dude, just make sure you shower before you sit on my new couch. Personally I couldn’t give two farts in a windstorm what my neighbor does in bed or what sex or color his lover is. And I sure as hell don’t want my neighbor deciding FOR me who I’m allowed to fool around with or make my life with or what I’m permitted to do and not do when it comes to getting my jollies. What I do behind closed doors is MY business, and I support those who are willing to make certain the government understands that too. I apply the rule when it comes to environmental issues. In the corner of my front porch is a bird’s nest. It’s protected from the weather pretty well and is almost always there when the birds come back in the spring. But the nesting pair that wins the birdie wars over that coveted spot inevitably tear out the old nest and put in a new one. Why? Because the old nest is filthy. It’s full of waste and droppings and could give their fragile new hatchlings a disease. So they start fresh. We humans as a species don’t have that luxury. If we crap up our nest where can we go? Nowhere. So it makes sense to me to keep what we have clean. And to repair as much of the past mess as we can. It makes sense in the broadest Darwinian way to leave a clean place for our children to raise their young. Duh! Plus, as the Greenhouse Effect has shown us, you frig with the environment, it’ll get you back. Big time. But like always, this is where I lock horns with some of the more extreme Liberals. You know the kind, the ones who won’t be happy until we’re all wearing thatch underpants and learning how to feed ourselves by photosynthesis so we can stop the cruel slaughter of asparagus and lentils. Somewhere between those guys and the “Hell yeah! Let’s pave Yellowstone and open a seal fur coat shop next door to the PCB refinery!” is environmental common sense. And yes, it still has to do with freedom. I wish to live free from someone else’s mess. You take away my freedom when you wantonly pollute the air and the water and the soil. You are deciding FOR me that I should get cancer or glow in the dark. Foul play, in more ways than one. This why when it comes to interpreting the Constitution I am always on the side of liberality. To me it is far better to err on the side of freedom than it is to impose restriction. And if somehow this freedom hurts more than it liberates, it’s a hell of a lot easier to tighten the ropes a little than it is to bring someone back from the dead after they’ve been strangled by a too constrictive noose of law. This is true on BOTH sides of the ideological spectrum. What the hell is a “hate” crime? Is my car less stolen because a random junkie stole it and sold it to a chop shop than it is if someone stole it because I’m white or female? My car is still gone. To steal from me or rape me or murder me, for whatever purpose still means the perpetrator hated me enough to de-humanize me. That the criminal believes I don’t matter. All crimes are hate crimes of a sort. It is up to the judge and jury to decide the severity of the crime and proper punishment. Making special classes of crime based on motivation or the relationship between the victim and the criminal is absurd. The woman in the ER with the broken cheek bone has still been assaulted, are her injuries less severe because her husband beat her and not a mugger? Is the husband less culpable than a Klansman? Or vice versa? It is difficult to always get it right. Issues are not always clear. Hell, most things are downright murky. Yet it is vital that we try. Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” I disagree. Freedom is the thing most worth protecting. ~LA ‘Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.’ --Rosa Luxemburg
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