CONFESSION OF A CONSERVATIVE

I really don’t know very much about Obamacare, but I know I don’t like it because my “people” don’t like it.

I have found that it makes life simpler if you don’t have to know everything about everything. I don’t know everything about how the human body works, or the inner workings of the stock exchange or how electricity comes out of nowhere and into my Victrola, so we surround ourselves with people who know what we don’t know. If what they say seems to make sense, or even if it doesn’t make sense, for some reason we trust them. We will hand over that portion of our lives to them. We then have “people.” We have our medical people, our financial people, electrical people, etc.

When it comes to politics, most of us also have our “people.” There is no way we can really understand the financial workings of the government and, unless we are certified climate scientists we cannot (should not) intelligently comment on global warming. A 7 foot high stack of health care regulations I’m betting is also beyond our intellectual reach and yet we all have opinions. Where did we get those opinions?

If someone doesn’t tell me the ins and outs, the details, of political stuff, how would I know what to think? The problem is since there is a left and right in politics, and they both have an opposite view with supporting facts on almost everything, who do I read or listen to? It seems every talking head on TV/radio today is an ideologue. Any article or book I would choose to read was written by somebody with an agenda. Unless I know that agenda, how do I know I’m not being led down the garden path?

Since going outside of ourselves and relying solely on others is a risky way to evaluate what we think and why we think it, let’s go inside. I wrote a paragraph that summed up my life. This was an interesting experience, and would suggest you try it.  It made me take a look at the major influences in my life, they were: Religion, Sports, Military, Police, Corporations and Family. Putting them all together they equal-- me. I got something positive and ingrained out of each aspect of my life which today makes up my politics, my “world view.”

Given these “pillars” of my life when a political subject comes up, I run it through my experiences, my map, the way I’ve seen the world work, and what makes sense to me and immediately arrive at a visceral level conclusion which may or may not, in the long run, be accurate. My initial beliefs are:

Religion trumps atheism

Winning trumps everybody getting a trophy

Military trumps suspected terrorist

Police trumps demonstrators

Corporations trump government

Family trumps a random passel of people doing what ever makes them feel good.

As an example when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was stopped and questioned by Cambridge, Massachusetts police in 2009, President  Obama immediately came out at a press conference questioning the police motives. I immediately came to the conclusion that Gates was stubborn and obnoxious. Neither the President nor I really had any “facts,” but we come to a conclusion based on gut feelings, on what our experiences have shown  life to be for us.  When you hear that the police and the Occupy movement have clashed, whose side do you instinctively line up on? My father and role model was a policeman for over 30 years; facts were not immediately important to me in either example.

I believe our life experiences generate our conservative or liberal views, those views then direct us to the people we feel we can trust to tell us the “truth.” So, when it comes to whom we select as our “people,” those folks who can best give us the skinny on what’s really going on, we tend to go to those “experts” who best represent our world view. As a Conservative I go to Rush, Hannity, Beck, and I watch Fox news. They explain the world as I know it. When I listen to Matthews, Maddow, Reverend Al and watch MSNBC, I believe I have intercepted a broadcast from Mars. I’m sure a Liberal would reverse that.

As a life-created Conservative I have my views on Obamacare, Abortion, Gun Control, Energy, Immigration, Minimum Wage, Trickle Up/Down Economics, Global Warming, etc. I know what I know based on my experiences and I use selected members of the media to provide me with factual and emotional backup. Liberals do exactly the same thing. We all run around talking as if we really know what’s going on, but we really just parrot the people we trust. 

If the other side drives you nuts, shoot for understanding rather than convincing, and with understanding, maybe it’s best, as Pogo said, to start with ourselves. Why, with minimal facts to back us up, do we feel so strongly in the way we feel and believe so strongly in what we believe? Write that autobiographical paragraph. I think it will explain a lot.

ABSTINENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER

                                                   

God said to Adam and Eve, “You guys have it pretty good, the whole world is at your disposal (except for that apple thing), you are free to come and go, sleep as long as you want, dress or not dress as you wish, but that is not really why I made you. I have a master plan and here it is. I didn’t spend seven days creating all of this to have it end with you. So, I have in mind something called children. Those will be little yous, and they will contain all of your knowledge plus what ever knowledge they can pick up, thus multiplying the world’s knowledge, base. They will then have children (that you can visit, spoil, and later go home) who will again add knowledge. Get the idea, pretty neat, eh?” 

Adam and Eve weren’t born yesterday (wait, actually they were) but they could see that they had a good gig going so they wondered aloud how having to watch over some untrained, undisciplined poop factories would be of any benefit to them.   God saw their point, so he said, “I realize I’m asking you to take on a tough assignment, and the best I can do to get this process going and for you to willingly create these people I call children, I will provide for you the most pleasurable act, both physically and emotionally, a human can experience. But, you must use it wisely. I have designed this act (I’ll tell you later what it is. You’re not going to believe it!) primarily to produce children to keep the human race “stocked” with new folks. But, if after a couple of appletinis you and Eve as a special couple wish to use “it” to reconfirm your love for and commitment to each other, I’m good with that.”

OK, maybe that’s not exactly how it happened, but you get the idea. Sex has a specific place in human nature.

The government’s latest policy of allowing girls age 15 and over to get the morning-after pill, providing condoms like candy and taking the parents ever so surely out of the sexual aspects of their children’s lives, all with the demented logic that “They are going to have sex anyway, let’s just accept and prepare for it.”  It may just be my age, but I’m sorry I just don’t buy it.

Every action has a consequence, and that consequence informs us if we want, or don’t want, to do that action again. That’s what moves us forward and ultimately determines who we are.  I find more and more that we, as a society, try to remove the natural consequence of an action if that consequence is unpleasant. Heaven forbid we should have any unpleasantness in our lives.  Sex is very pleasurable when done for all the right reasons (and truthfully, all the wrong reasons also), but it can produce negative consequences, e.g. unwanted pregnancies, STDs and strained or broken relationships. It seems we spend an inordinate amount of our time trying to obtain the positive and artificially eliminating the negative.

Abstinence completely eliminates the negatives of sex. It is 100% foolproof,  but that would mean in order to not bring unwanted children in to the world, to not have or give life long medical problems, or to not break the heart of another human being, a person would have to give up momentary pleasure until all the right pieces are in place. Thus the rub! Our society has declared, through its actions, that we are humanly incapable of that degree of self-control, so abstinence is completely off the table as a form of “birth control.” Any speaker going to a school today and preaching abstinence (as if they would ever be invited) is viewed as some out-of- touch religious kook worthy of the maximum dose of ridicule.

I am not naive enough to believe that many people today will practice the lost art of abstinence, but I am disappointed that society has so given up on its young. Society has given up on teaching them the realities of action and consequences, the reality that life is not fair and equal, and the truth that just because they can do something doesn’t mean they should.

Shouldn’t abstinence at least be considered an option? Should we throw our hands in the air (or our pants to the ground) and just give up?