Treatise of Me
Who am I? That is a complex and probably uninteresting question. I am a man. I am a husband. I am a soldier. I am also a liberal. I am also a conservative. I am also a libertarian. I am also a progressive. What I am not is someone who can be neatly and perfectly pigeon-holed into one label, but then again no one is.
I am a liberal. I believe in a social safety net for the disadvantaged. I believe in school lunches. I also think the various forms of welfare should be a hand up, not a hand out. Welfare should be tied to some form of work like the Civil Conservation Corps under FDR.
I am a conservative in the fiscal sense. I believe in paying for what you buy. That goes for individuals as well as governments.
I am a progressive. I like the idea of public libraries, the FDA, the EPA, and suffrage extending past land owning white males. I am pro-health care reform because our current system is the laughing stock of the industrial world.
I am a libertarian. There are too many laws and far too many crimes. I like the idea of a flat tax with no exemptions other than a basic personal exemption. Prohibition did not work for alcohol and it is not working for drugs. Having an incarceration rate equal to a third world country or totalitarian regime is nothing to be proud of. Military and foreign adventurism is something we were warned about by George Washington and promptly forgot.
I believe in a well regulated free market economy. Sometimes the greatest profit does not equal the greatest good. Some light needs to be shed on dark pools, high speed trading, and other activities which unlevel the playing field.
I am anti-groupthink. If an individual can say they are purely a conservative or purely a liberal they are either lying or a fool. Keith Obermann is as much an idiot as Glenn Beck. As much as I dislike Ann Coulter, I have agreed with her on a couple of occasions.
I am pro-equality of opportunity, but anti-equality of outcome. Not everyone is a winner.
I want secure borders but immigration reform. We cannot rid ourselves of twenty million illegal aliens by any other path than making them legal, but we have to close the barn door first.
I’m anti political dynasties whether they are Kennedys or Bushes. It smacks of oligarchy.
I am an American. States righters ignore several salient points. First, the supremacy clause in the Constitution gives federal law primacy over state law. Second, only the Supreme Court was given the power to determine constitutionality of federal laws; states were denied this authority. Third, we have had this debate before, Jackson’s nullification crisis, the Civil War, Civil Rights… Fourth, we tried a weak federal government and strong states; try looking up the Articles of Confederation and the abysmal failure that was. Texans need to remember their republic went broke and asked to join the United States. The federal government assumed Texas’ debts upon entry into the Union, as the federal government assumed the states’ debts from the revolutionary war.
That’s not all there is to me, but it is a start.
