Hello and welcome to "The Future." I'll start this with who I am, and after this first article I'll stop talking at length about myself. My vanities legs only go so far.
When I was younger and free of any serious responsibility, I didn’t care about the pervasive absurdity that rots politics like a dark cancer. But now I am soon to be married and looking at a life with children and my lovely wife. And suddenly I find myself caring a great deal about the political world; about the leadership in our country.
I worry, like most husbands and fathers, about what kind of a life my wife will have when I die. And I worry about the world and country that I am leaving to my children. I feel like I can no longer count as insignificant my action as one person. It no longer is acceptable to me to discount my behavior and hope that the other guy is doing a better job than I. I feel strangely and powerfully compelled to, at the very least, say something about our current state of affairs.
I am neither staunchly conservative nor staunchly liberal. I am neither ardent Democrat nor Republican. I don’t care for the Greens, and the Libertarians just have too much faith in human beings. I would put myself as a solidly middle of the road person. I like to follow logic, and to be as fair and just and equal in regards to policies and laws. The only agenda that I am trying to push, to have heard, is one that many people have: the agenda of creating and maintaining a safe and reasonable home and world for their families.
I would prefer that my opinions be transparent in their origin, so the line to them is easily discerned and seen. It holds a person to a higher level of honesty, and hopefully credibility. As a result, I have to admit my biases, opinions, and some personal history upfront to be open and honest.
I don’t really care for many of the politicians of the day. I find them bombastically rude, generally arrogant, and often inhuman. Sometimes they are nothing more than talking heads to me, floating across TV screens and newspaper headlines.
I have a strong measure of faith in my neighbors to do right and, in general, live by some standard of the golden rule. But I also know that people tend to protect and look out for their own before their neighbors.
I really don’t like people who are adamantly of one train of thought or the other, and refuse to listen to new and different ideas. It strikes me as arrogant and close minded, two qualities I hope I never possess in large amount.
I don’t like taxes, understand their need in principle, and still don’t care for the IRS too much.
I don’t like men who are abusive mentally, verbally, or physically. It is the one thing that can drive me quickly to great bewilderment, frustration, and then raw anger.
I have spent many nights camping in California, my home state. My first job was working at a camp in the mountains, where the Milky Way shone like a bright streak of light across the clear moonless sky. So I tend to be a touch on the conservationist side, though not a member of Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or any other environmental group.
I find religious zeal to be an admirable trait, but religious zealotry disgusting and abhorrent. I suspect that there is a much higher power than I at work in the universe, but don’t give it much more thought than that. I try to lead a good and moral life without deceit, fraud, disrespect, theft, or unfaithfulness.
I used to smoke pot, but stopped when I met my wife. Yes, I got high, and no, I don’t care. It was always fun when I did it, and I only regret it in that when my children are of that age, then I will have to be honest with them.
And I have never been arrested, though probably deserving a few times here and there in my youth.
My perspective is as a husband, father, and man. It is that of a protector of those for whom I care and provide.
So this book is about the things that concern me, the long term and contemporary issues that we deal with in the political arena, and what I think are sound and reasonable proposals to solve a lot of those issues and problems.
The next posting will be my thesis for government – a statement of fundamental purpose. I use that basic thesis as the guideline, the main principle, for all the other issues that I examine. I’m a big believer in principles, perhaps as a reaction to what I see as a general lack of them from our current politicians.
You won’t find this blog filled with incredibly complex ideas that I flaunt across the pages in sanctimonious arrogant glory. Government and its working are constructs of us. We created it, and we allow its continued existence. It can be as complicated or as simple as we make it. I’m a fan of simplicity.
I hope that you enjoy this blog, and that it can make a difference for us right now, and more importantly, for those we leave behind when we die: our children. And if you hate it, your mental freedom is only a click away.
I believe, more than anything, that we can create and maintain a better world than the one we now live in. We can secure our futures in terms of health, wealth, and general well being. We can, in fact, make the world a better place, without compromising that which we have gained through our hard work.