This past week there have been a few comments on the blog that I think I need to address because it's obvious that people don't read the entire blog and have some sort of preconceived notion about who old Gordon is.
First, I grew up as a lower middle class youth in central Ohio. My Father, a former Teamster, was and still is the hardest working guy I know. I witnessed him doing paint jobs with a broken neck while our family was on food stamps so I know what hard times and work ethic are.
I always had it that rich guys were out to hold the poor working guy down. My friends are always surprised when I tell them I voted for Jesse Jackson, Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Howard Metzenbaum and worked briefly on Jerry Springer's gubernatorial campaign.
But after I reached adulthood and a level of maturity I started to question the conventional wisdom of certain aspects of life, namely, under who or what moral authority is it OK to take someone's money and give it to someone else; regardless of the benevolent purpose? I also started to hang out with rich people and you know what, they don't have time to hold down poor people..... they are too busy working.
Well Gordon, it's a democracy, it's the consensus of the public to take wealth and use it for benevolent purposes. Is that right. Then please invite me to your house some night and me, Tony, Sal, and Fredo will take a vote on whether or not you should deed your home over to us so we can make sure we provide for some construction workers' pensions. My guess is that you'll decline.
In my profession, I am bombarded with clients, middle class schleps just trying to make it in life, crushed with back tax debt. I want any liberal out there to tell me what's fair to those people and where do they come up that number.
Yeah, but Gordon, we vote to put leaders with wisdom to take and allocate those funds. Rightttt! All those clowns in Congress are full of collective wisdom. Like Sheila Jackson-Lee's quest to make sure African American's have hurricane's named after them or maybe the wisdom of Ted Steven's bridge to nowhere when the money could be spent more wisely, like say, schools.
Therefore, I ultimately came to the conclusion that government cannot do something for someone without causing harm to someone else. You want to know how SUV's came into existence... look no further than CAFE standards that forced automakers to build more efficient vehicles, notice how we no longer have station wagons.
From a social perspective, I then started to question the theory (note, theory, not scientific law) of evolution and I've never had anyone answer this question..... Before there was anything in the universe, there was nothing, who or what happened to create something from nothing? In addition, I have yet to hear of a scientist that could take a combination of dirt, heat, air and water and make living organism out of it. If you are a believer in the big bang and a primordial soup, how did living organisms just pop up out of it. You see, it's a theory, not law. To be law, one has to be able to repeat the experiments and predict the results before they occur. That has never occurred with evolution.
I do believe in micro evolution; the process where species change as a result of changes in environments. But there is no evidence of macro evolution; the process whereby new species are created out other species' gene mutation(s). I'm sure everyone has heard of the "missing link" but no one really understands what that means. It appears, that from the beginnings of human life we cannot find a link to other animal species. If we are so close to the chimp family (or any species for that matter), why haven't they managed to find a way to build skyscrapers or airplanes after all these eons of evolution. Heck for that matter, no other species has found a way to be a Congressman, the rock bottom of basic human intelligence.
Humans have all this technology to clone yet no one, to date, has ever been able to mutate a gene from a pig and make it anything other than a pig. In addition, if one were to believe that all life began out of one primordial soup it would make sense to me that there would be a common DNA strand among all humans, crocodiles, whales, trees, tulips. To my knowledge, that link does not exist.
Maybe the most influential turning of my social outlook was the behavior of liberals themselves. In college I was always struck as to why the champions of free speech were always shouting down or ridiculing conservative thought in a way that those thoughts could not be heard. What were they afraid of? I was shouted down and ridiculed myself by a professor even though I was a card carrying liberal (see my post on Pygmalian effect) simply for questioning the conventional wisdom.
As far a being Bush's towel boy. Far from it. I'm really not a big Bush fan because he's a big government conservative. At the same time, I also feel obligated to defend his position on the war because, frankly, there are lot's of people taking pot shots at him but no one has offered a solution. Bush lied! is not a solution to the war as it stands today and if you are one of those people firing out that answer what is you opinion of the link on the video I posted below where everyone prior to 9/11 assumed that Saddam had the WMD capability, including the liberals GOD, Bill Clinton.
Finally this is the thing I've always noticed about liberals, they are the first to have compassion as long as they don't have to get their hands dirty. When it comes to actually doing something you'll find that it's God fearing conservatives doing the heavy lifting. I didn't hear of the giant pack of atheists heading down to Katrina to take care of people down there. There were plenty of them on TV asking why the government wasn't doing something.
I did see Matthew 25 ministries down there. You see, like most Christians, I believe that God commands us to be charitable, individually. Jesus never said one word about the government doing anything in the Gospels but he did call each of us out individually to help the "least of us".
I can be very compassionate about every problem in the world as long as you pay for it but is that really compassion?
So for the person who wants to call me out and ridicule me (anonymously, of course) what solutions do you offer or is it just your deal to sit back and take shots while everyone else carries the bucket?
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