I am really not sure why this is. I have long considered myself a strange dichotomy of the two sides. I have long opposed a sliding scale for income taxes, which is a traditionally conservative viewpoint. I also support individual liberties almost fanatically, which is one of the tenets of Libertarianism, and you can’t get much further to the right than a Libertarian. However, socially I am very liberal. I believe in legalization of marijuana, I believe in gay marriage, I believe in a good public education system, and I believe that we should all have affordable quality healthcare.

So as you can see, sometimes it can be difficult for me to choose a side (well at least when the two sides weren’t at each others throats!).

But now that apparently lines are being drawn I am being forced to choose, and as the conservatives get more and more rabid in their rhetoric (most of which I find inflammatory and harmful) I have found myself speaking out against the conservatives. Especially the so-called “neo-conservatives”.

All that being said, let me lay out my viewpoint of what it means to be an American, and what this country is about.

1. America is NOT a christian country, and never was meant to be. The very men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were very outspoken about organized religion, and this fact is very well documented. Anyone who tries to tell you different is attempting to rewrite history in their favor.
2. America is and has always been designed to be a democratic republic. Not a superpower, not a globe-spanning empire, not the world’s moral center, not the world’s largest police force. While I believe we have a role to play on the international stage, over the past 60 years following WW II this role  has become increasingly militaristic and decreasingly economic & diplomatic. This is scary to me.
3. The deregulation and general dismantling of the checks and balances put in place by FDR’s New Deal on the financial system is driven not only by greed, but a lust for power. The complication of the current financial system is far beyond the average person to understand, and yet the average person is the one who pays the most when it fails. In my opinion, this benefits the super rich, who wish the status quo to remain the same.
4. I am not a Democrat, nor am I a Republican. However, the behavior recently of the most powerful Republicans in this country has done nothing but drive me further away from that party. I am hard-pressed to imagine myself ever voting for a Republican again, and this is sad. Why? Because the last thing I want as an independent voter is a one party system. There is much to be said for the loyal opposition, but when all the opposition offers is rhetoric and tired ideas, they’re not much of an opposition. (as an aside, they are very hard on Obama, who’s only been president for 2 months. Yet when liberals attacked Bush they were labeled as un-American. Curious.)
5. Comparing Obama to a fascistor socialist is laughable. After Bush’s administration (and a Republican-led legislature) suspended Habeus Corpus (for the first time ever),  authorized wiretaps of American citizens, passed a $17 million prescription drug plan, passed “No Child Left Behind” (many children still are left behind, large public school spending can be seen as socialism), allowed the vice President to act as if the checks & balances put in place by the US Constitution didn’t apply to him (going so far as to hide his house, the US Naval Observatory from Google Earth), I could go on…. After they did all that, to turn around and call Obama a fascist or socialist is hypocrisy at best.

Look, I’m not trying to start anything here. I can actually understand a lot of conservative viewpoints. What I can’t understand is the blatant hypocrisy and the almost religious fervor of conservatives in supporting their movement. I am a logical person. If something can be proven, then I will trust that to be fact. I don’t trust “faith” or “belief”, I trust logic, and the scientific method. All I’m asking for is for grown men & women to act that way. That means being wrong from time to time. That means being able to admit mistakes. That means being able to empathize. That means being an American.

I call it the “John Daly”. It’s an Arnold Palmer with 2 oz of Crown Royal in it (more or less to taste. If you are the real John Daly, make it 6 oz).

Questions? Comments? Let me know because, as everyone knows, cocktails are a constant work in progress. Thanks!

The answer my friends, is twofold. I shall describe the two reasons here:

1. Sheer flipping boredom

The boredom comes from both overall lack of a social life currently (well not really, just a lack of sex) and from the fact that I just get bored easily. Gotta problem with that?

1. My web-geek personality wanted to test it out

I have been working mostly in secret on a couple of new projects, the details of which I cannot freely divulge at this time. Suffice to say that I decided I wanted to learn more about how wordpress.com worked.

So there you have it. Any questions can be forwarded to me via comments here.