On Lew Rockwell, George Washington and Liberal Commies etc.

I wrote an e-mail to my boss this afternoon in response to a comment he made about an article I was reading. First he said that he thought the article was bullshit... and then when he saw that it was on LewRockwell.com, he said "Isn't he a Liberal Commie?" etc.

For the record, I generally agree with what the guy in the article wrote, having been on both sides of both the airline situation and the police situation. I've been lied about blatantly by police officers in their own attempt to justify their treatment of you, and I've been through airports since 9/11 and had things like my nailfile confiscated... although that pales in comparison to the man and his wife's treatment in the article. Luckily in my run-in with the police, where the officers wrote that I was prowling in some lady's yard, that lady just happened to be my mothers bible study teacher and I had babysat her children in the past etc. Our family's were good friends. She wrote a rather scathing letter to the court backing up my side of the story and the court dropped all charges. I was rather upset about that for a number of years until I was jumped by a few ex-prison convicts and the law was on my side... I saw the officers as generally good guys trying to do the right thing. I think I have a pretty balanced view of them at this point.

But anyway... lest I digress as usual into a diatribe about how airport security is a result of "terrorism", which is the result of US Foreign Policy etc... and the ensuing pages of vitriol about our government blah blah blah.... I'll leave it with what I started this post for. ;-)

http://lewrockwell.com/about.html

I think you'll find that quite different from what you thought. Definitely not a "Liberal Commie" as you put it.

I'm still studying on Hobbes and Lockes views on social welfare versus personal "liberty" etc, but in the meantime, I think that I tend to find pros and cons on both sides... and I think that we unfortunately face a lot of the issue we do today simply because people can't separate the issues from the respective views held by the diametrically opposed camps of the Democratic and Republican parties. I think one of the prime manifestations of that today is the fact that Republican Conservatism transformed from it's traditional meaning of fiscal conservatism to the current meaning of social (religious) conservatism... and along with that, the core of policy in America today made a rather pronounced shift to the (religious) right, something I have a problem with simply because of the resultant infringements upon personal freedom in the US as government policy seeks to regulate more and more areas of life based on their perceived right to legislate their personal religious morality onto everyone else, regardless of personal rights, religious beliefs or even of any factual rational merit etc.

So it's very difficult today to say whether or not you're a Republican, because it's quite difficult to nail down exactly what that means right now. And while I think that Democrats are still pretty much the same as they've been for decades, even the nature of that party was once rather contrasted to it's modern incarnation. Almost as though the Republican and Democratic parties had flip-flopped.

Personally I won't vote for either "main" party.

I haven't read the entire document yet, but I believe this topic was addressed in some respects in George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/washing.htm

But I digress... ;-)

I'll probably be back later with a post about Washington's Farewell Address once I get a chance to read and digest it.

I have a lot of studying to do on history and politics and the philosophical justifications behind many related ideologies etc... I've been taking some time off to do more of the proverbial "listening" than "talking". I felt like I needed to just keep my mouth shut for awhile and spend more time soaking up information and mulling it over... re-evaluating my stance in issues etc.

Until next time...