Setting The Record Straight

I was surprised this weekend when I noticed a mild spike in my blog readership. I assumed that someone had linked to one of my recent posts, and it was only after the blithering words from the comment trolls started rolling in that an E-mail from the lovely proprietor of Capital Freedom Blog tipped me off that Fox News contributor Radley Balco over at The Agitator Blog had linked to my recent rant on Gas Price Gouging.

I’m quite flattered to have the attention, and I offer my thanks to Mr. Balco for the recognition and a general thanks to everyone for the comments—good and bad, pro and con.

Part of running a successful blog involves dealing with people with different viewpoints. Some take the time to make well thought out discussions of their criticism, while the majority of the nay-sayers resort to screaming age old insults and name calling.

One commenter actually called me a “partisan hack.”

I nearly laughed my ass off. You see, I might sometimes appear to be partisan, but “a partisan hack” I am not.

The NY Time’s Paul Krugman is a textbook example of a “partisan hack,” I am, at best, an amateur hack, but then the term hack is generally attributed to someone who should know better or is professionally employed (and compensated) in a field and fails to meet recognized standards or otherwise exhibits blatant bias.

I’m just a Mechanical Engineer, posing as a writer, remember?

I think that my own political affiliation, or lack thereof, has been well documented over the past 12 months that I have been writing “What I’d Liked To Have Said.” However, based on some of the recent comments I’ve received, I feel that now might be a good time to have a refresher course on where I’m coming from.

My dad escaped the coalmines of West Virginia to become the first person in his entire family to graduate from college—University of Kentucky, Electrical Engineering, class of 1952. He served four years in the US Army and qualified as a test pilot--continuing his engineering and flying career as a Civil Service employee for nearly thirty years. As a result of his education, he made more than an average living when I was growing up, but I can’t take any credit whatsoever for when and where I was born and the luck I enjoyed living in a household with two parents that loved each other and put our family’s well being first—no matter what the costs.

I was raised a southern "yellow dog" Democrat. George Wallace was governor of Alabama and the schools were segregated until the year before I started kindergarten. I’m too young to remember the day President Kennedy was assassinated, but I do remember the embarrassment of Governor Wallace standing in the doorway at the University of Alabama to block the admission of first black students and I remember the day Martin Luther King was shot dead.

I attended all 13 years of crappy public school with black and white classmates and in spite of residing in southern Alabama, I was not raised a racist or bigot. Ironically, Wilbur Jackson, the first black football player to start at the University of Alabama, attended the same high school I graduated from. I can’t take any credit for that either.

My mother’s family operated a small farm in southern Alabama. Her family never ever owned any slaves, but my grandfather did manage a group of “hired hands” and leased a few small shanties to black share cropper families in the days between WWI and WWII. My grandfather, a WWI infantry veteran, was a hardworking, self sufficient man of very modest means, who died never realizing that the value of the land and the timber growing on it would one day be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to his heirs. I, personally, can take no credit for his good fortune.

Because of my access to our farm, I learned to shoot a gun, fish, hike, camp and generally be comfortable in the woods at an early age. There is nothing like being able to walk outside in the morning and walk away from the house in almost any direction and not leave your family’s property, even if you walk all day long. It’s even more impressive to be able to walk into the woods with the weapon of your choice and shoot until you run out of ammunition--not hearing a word of discouragement from neighbors or government idiots. I guess that most of you Yankees and everyone from NY City can’t possibly understand the kind of freedom(s) I grew up enjoying. I take credit for considering “gun control” to be “the ability to hit the intended target—every damn time.” I've also never pointed a loaded gun at another human in my entire life.

In 1933, the year my mother was born, you could own 3 cars, 2 airplanes, 25 guns, 10 dogs, 3 mules, 2 horses, chickens, 100 head of cattle, a tractor, and the federal government nor the state of Alabama required a license to own or operate any of the above. Further, if you owned enough land, you could drive your car to your airplane hanger, take off, and fly wildly over your pastures while the dogs, chickens, mules, horses, and cows stampeded around in fear at your maniacal behavior. You could then go home, get up the next day, and do it all over again without fear of legal reprocussions.

Not anymore.

Today you have to have a drivers’ license ($25), a pilots license, ($4,000-$6,000), various federal firearms permits ($$$), and proof that all of your animals receive routine veterinary care ($$$) and you can't chase them around with your airplane else the police, the FAA, PETA, and God knows who else will be knocking on your door wanting to haul your ass to jail and/or take your animals away from you.

What total Bull Hockey.

In spite of my continued rhetoric delivered in support of President Bush, I am not a Republican, and I am most definitely NOT a partisan hack. My political leanings work more along the lines of Libertarian, although the majority of Libertarian candidates tendered at the national level are basically unelectable.

Just like decisions relating to attending church on Sunday—I hate it when 100 humans get together and hang a name on a sign over their head because invariably some sanctimonious asshole(s) always insist on imposing their own special caveats on the process. I believe in freedom of religion, not the freedom from religion currently imposed by the federal courts.

I also believe that you should be able to freely, legally smoke dope, pop pills, shoot cat shit mixed with Draino into your veins with a dirty needle, drink corn whiskey, smoke 50 packs of cigarettes each day, have sex with men and women of consenting age, drive your 1964 Plymouth down the highway in deserts of Nevada at 175 MPH, and jump into the shallow end of the swimming pool head first, butt naked. Did I miss anything?

No?

BUT, when you finally wake up and you are dead, dying, paralyzed, have cancer, AIDS, scurvy, cooties, herpies, or your ex-old ladies ex-old man shows up and kicks the living shit out of your stupid ass—I also believe that you don’t have the right to come crying to me or to my representative asking to steal my money in the form of taxes to burry your miserable, flea bitten carcass, buy a cure for what ails you, or to prosecute your tormentor(s).

Live and let live—live and let die…survival of the fittest has a lot going for it in my book.

I have a great deal of criticism to offer when it comes to Bush’s spending record during the past 4-3/4 years, but remember that CONGRESS passes the budget with the presidents’ approval. A line item veto would go a long way toward solving the majority of our problems--that, and term limits for Senators and Representatives.

Our federal government has become a lumbering leviathan that vastly exceeds the structure laid out by our founding fathers. The federal bureaucracy has overrun issues that were originally left to the people and the states, and the recent disaster in New Orleans and the protracted delay in the federal response is a perfect illustration of the impossibility of depending on GOVERNMENT to preserve the safety of individuals in a time of crisis.

Try as they may, the federal machine cannot respond adequately to these kinds of problems and sadly we have become a nation of invalids and half-wits that can barely make it through a day without depending on government to maintain our health, our sanity, or other major aspects of our well being.

It’s a sad day when three quarters of the population can tell you who Michael Jordan is and can identify the finalists on American idol, but over half of high school seniors can’t describe the three branches of the federal government and a similar number of adults can’t identify the names of their own Senators and US Representatives.

No, I’m not a partisan hack.

What I am is a proud, but frustrated, embarrassed, pissed off WHITE MALE AMERICAN that is really glad that I didn’t reproduce (I have no kids) and I worry and wonder how much longer the USA will survive in any form if we let the ”lamestream media” and the “partisan hack” liberals continue to have their way.

One of these days I'm just going to ask: "Beam me up, Scotty…"