The Grand Experiment

Over the next week or so, having finished up my series on sleep apnea, I'm going to try my hand at social commentary with a current events bent. If I can make this work, I should have endless material for essays. After all, what's NOT funny about a President spending years with a "Screw the rest of the world, we're going it alone, we don't need anyone else" policy, to such an extent that our leaders bravely took action and renamed "french fries", and then turning around and visiting foreign leaders with the goal of lecturing them on foreign cooperation? (Keep in mind, this is an experiment. If you see no such posts in the next week, it means I determined that I'm not a very good political pundit, and produced nothing worthy of posting.)

Before I start, however, I feel I should give you a little bit about my political leanings. I am not a liberal, and I am not a conservative, and heaven forbid I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I feel that both parties occasionally get it right and both occasionally get it wrong, and both parties have a tendency to take the things they get right to such an extreme, they are no longer "right" any more.

I prefer to take my political candidates on an individual basis. I believe that no party, and certainly no person, is so perfect as to be above making mistakes. And I believe that it is fair to point out our political leaders' mistakes, and to have some fun with them.

I have liberal friends and I have conservative friends. At the moment, we're in the middle of a conservative upswing of power, and an administration that I strongly disagree with, and so I am tending to get along better with my liberal friends than my conservative. The reverse was true under President Clinton.

I believe that George W. Bush has thus far presided over one of the most damaging administrations this country has known in my lifetime, and I include in that assessment the administration of Richard Nixon. I will not hide my disgust for the current President and his policies, while at the same time holding dear this country which allows me to express such things without fear of political reprisal. But such comments should not be taken as a repudiation of all things conservative, merely of one particular man and the small group with which he surrounds himself. I have Republican friends who privately agree with my assessment of Mr. Bush, but voted for him anyway because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for the Democrat.

I believe the goal of any election should be to elect the best PERSON for the job, and that the job of President largely involves protecting this country and our interests, through use of foreign policy. I believe political hot topics like gay marriage and abortion belong in the states and are floated during Presidential elections as a smoke screen to cover shortcomings in the candidate or his proposed plans. I believe we're at our best as a country when we vote for the person who will do the best job, and at our worst when we vote for the person merely because of his or her political affiliation (instead of because we happen to agree with his policies, which we are admittedly more apt to do if he is affiliated with the same party we are).

It is my opinion that some of my more liberal friends have lost sight of the goal, and now vote for the Democrat candidate to the exclusion of all else. I believe many of them would vote for the Democrat if the party nominated Koko the signing Gorilla. I would make the same theory about my Rebublican friends, but after the most recent election, I don't need to.

Copyright (c) February 23, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net