The Baffled Right

Reason alone establishes the concept of freedom, and passion collides with it.

Immanuel Kant
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Hello Arlene
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Lately I've been noticing a particular kind of faulty and incongruous thinking on the part of some Conservatives. It seems as if there has been some sort of brainwashing going on to convince people of conditions that are the opposite of what they really are.

Take the case of the woman who erected a flag pole on her front yard and flew an American flag. She was told by a member of the neighborhood organization to remove it. She was shocked. She said she would have expected that if she lived in a liberal neighborhood, but was amazed that it happened the conservative neighborhood she was in. What?

I wanted to tell her that if she were living in a liberal neighborhood no one would be knocking on her door to tell her to take down her flag. That's what liberalism is about, individual rights and freedoms of expression.

Then there's the case of the young boy who killed his neo-Nazi father. The boy is in serious trouble, but the grandmother took the man's other children away and proudly informed the media that they were being cared for in a conservative home. What?

Those children should be in a good liberal home, as far away as possible from conservatism and especially the influence of the extremist conservatives such as the neo-Nazis.

How can two otherwise intelligent people be so confused about things and guilty of such miscalculation unless somewhere along the road they were convinced that both Liberals and Conservatives are something they are not. The problem is those two people and others like them vote.

President Ronald Reagan, whom some Conservatives still consider to have been a great Present in spite of his economic flop, once said "The Liberals have got it wrong again." That remark helped to sew confusion about the reality of the political scene. He should have been President of the United States. Instead he was President of the Republican Party alone.

I may be dreaming, but I hope the day comes soon when both the Liberals and Conservatives have their positions in the country honestly and not misleadingly stated and are spear headed by intelligent and reasonable people who can earnestly present their philosophies to the country without all the emotion and false drama and then let the voters decide.

Some day I may write on how Liberals misunderstand Conservatives.

DB - Vagabond
Never Give Up
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AUTUMN QUESTION

What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?

3 answers so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

I await your answers.
DB
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A Perfect Disunion

There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happeneing.

Marshall McLuhan
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The United States of America was founded, among other things, on important documents. One of those is our constitution. The Constitution begins "We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...."

That document is what binds us together as members of a free and lasting society. Yet over the years, for one reason or another, people have tried to misinterpret, change or even throw out the document. What happened to "the more perfect Union"?

I've lived in this country for 72 years come Saturday and I'm proud to be an American. But I'm not proud of the intolerance, bigotry, bias, prejudice, racism, sexism, antisemitism, islamophobia, homophobia, extremism, fanatical conservatives, fanatical liberals, religious exclusivity, hate crimes, plundering of the poor by the rich, denial of civil rights, litigiousness, selfishness and bellicosity that I see, hear and read about every day. And for the first time in my memory I am frightened by the current events.

The attack on working people from the Governor of Wisconsin and the ignorant state congress that backs him up, similar movements in other states, the Radical Right's insane attack on the whole fabric of American life, the attack on women, on the aged, children and the poor are making a pot of great danger which is about to boil over.

There are serious attempts, and legislation in the works, to reduce or eliminate funds for family planning, health programs for pregnant women and children. With the rise of other nations gaining more economic and political power they would cut funds for education, student loans, fire teachers and force students to amalgamate into extra large classrooms. They would cut funds for NPR because they are too cowardly to hear opposing points of view. They would take away funds for the protection of the environment. Meanwhile they continue to protect the tax advantages for the super rich.

It is obvious at last that our congress people, many of them, perhaps most of them, are owned by great wealth, large corporations and powerful special interests. These ideas could not be coming from considerate men and women. The lame answer they give is to "balance the budget." But they are looking for the money where it isn't instead of where it is.

I am not a wealthy man. In all of my 72 years I have never been wealthy, But I have seen more examples than I care to remember of people being victimized by the stupidity of the rich.

People want to "take back the country" but only in their own vision of it. The vision is in The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. I look for compassion, understanding and friendship among Americans. "a more perfect Union." But as long as there is this civil war going on between Conservatives and the rest of us, between the super rich and the rest of us, between those who are not willing to contemplate what's happening and the rest of us, there will be no perfect Union.

The rest of us must win.

DB
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False Forts

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shell never die.

Edward Kennedy
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I think the average American is a better politician than the average politician. These days Congress, the so-called representative of the people, seems to consist of two opposing gangs facing each other across an open field trying to determine who has the larger snow balls and how far they can throw them. Decisions are not made based on pragmatic values but on ideologies. An ideology is as worthless as a teaspoon when there's a mountain to be moved. The Liberals have their backyard and the Conservatives have their backyard and don't you dare cross over the fence or your neighbors will throw rocks at you.

Most of the politicking that goes on, the threats, the compromises, the concessions, the promises, is invisible to us, the People, and yet this desperate split between the Left and the Right is somehow supposed to represent how the people think.

I don't know about that. There are stone heads on both sides, even as there apparently are in Congress, but, as a Liberal I have been able often to discuss many issues with my Conservative friends, including politics and religion, without being made to feel that I was a poor, miserable, misinformed wretch who needed to be enlightened and saved, and vice versa. Maybe I'm an exception to the rule, but I don't think so.

But Congress seems to me to be a lot of grandstanding and saber rattling and it would be amusing if there weren't desperately important issues at stake. When they're in session they talk about building bipartisan support, which rarely ever happens, and when they're running for election they say that it's time for a change. The country doesn't need a change. What it needs is a conscious, intelligent, pragmatic development forward toward the goal of making the country a better place for everyone who lives here.

Congress seems to be a big family that can't get along with itself. Maybe if its way of life was threatened, as many American's lives are, the members of the family would sit up, stop being childish, lose weight (those who need to), stop fooling around and start considering ideas by their value to America and the world instead of where they came from.

The dream is still alive, the hope is still alive, the cause is still as crucial as ever and the work will always need to be done. But it won't be done by throwing snow balls.

DB - The Vagabond

Wary Wisdom 4/27/09

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can have.

Theodore White
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Ah, back again are you?
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A "difficult act of heroism"? Now why should that be? What's wrong with thinking for yourself, having original ideas and expressing them? Why should that require bravery?

It might be because some people do it in a belligerent fashion. Instead of "I'd like to offer a different opinion." they say "Sorry, buddy, but you're wrong." Ot it may be because a person with a different idea can't express it as easily as someone can who expresses the common opinion armed with all the sayings and sound bites that accompany it. Most likely it is because the ones with the standard, chiseled-in-stone ideas are ready to do verbal battle with anyone who disagrees with them.

I once lost a friend because she found out that I had a political and social opinion that was different from hers. Losing a friend for that reason is an absurd experience, but what was worse is that she acted as if I had been hiding my beliefs from her when in fact the subject of politics had never come up in our conversations.
She just summarily and scornfully dumped me as a friend, and that was that. What a shame.

I knew a man in a small backwoods community, who held very strict political views. They were well known in the town and were known to be extreme. People knew not to bring up the subject of politics with him. If perchance someone disagreed with him the verbal abuse to follow was terrifying. But if one tried to argue the point with him that person's life might literally be in danger.

On the other hand, I knew two men who were the best of friends. They shared a lot of enjoyments and laughs together, and yet they had diametrically opposed views about politics. One was a far left liberal and the other a far right conservative.
One day we were sitting around talking and a mutual friend asked them how, given their differences, they could remain such good friends. One of them said something like: "I'm a bleeding heart, pinko, empty headed liberal and he knows it, and he's a heartless, lock jawed, cement headed conservative and I know it, and on that basis we get along just fine." The other one nodded in assent.

I don't know, but I tend to think maybe the world could breathe more easily with something akin to that style of light hearted bipartisanship.

DB
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Go get some rays.
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