I make no secret of my political leanings but you simply cannot imagine the amount of surprise in some quarters over my stance. Over the past few years, I’ve heard from avowed Republicans and Democrats both the statement, “You’re not a Republican.”
Really,
A large part of that has to do with my very liberal attitudes on social issues. I simply don’t feel politicians should get their noses up in people’s personal business. The choices people make about how they want to live thier lives as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else should be their own.
Admittedly I am very hawkish on foreign policy issues. In large part my belief is firmly rooted in historical lessons where over and over again entities who have tried to negotiate from positions of weakness have done so at their peril. I’m not about using force unnecessarily but force should never be taking off the table entirely as far as foreign policy goes. It would be nice to live in a world where that wasn’t the case but the human animal just hasn’t advanced on the evolutionary scale to that point yet. And I count the minutes until we do.
Also, there needs to be a social safety net, socialized medicine is necessary in our country and while the insurance lobby and many members of the Republican party rail against “ObamaCare,” the truth of the matter is that the Medical Reform Act is a good piece of legislation if only a flawed first step along the path. Repeal is not the answer in this case. Modifying and fine tuning reform and providing a framework for affordable care for everyone is something that makes a lot of sense on both a humanitarian level and also on an economic level. Really the thing that needs fixing is tort reform and limits on awards in malpractice cases. As much as we would attribute godlike powers to medical practitioners they are simply as human and as fallible as the rest of us. My commonly used analogy is you can barely get someone to fix your automobile properly and the human body is a much more complex machine. While we have learned much in the last century we still have a long, long way to go to fill the gaps in our knowledge.
Finally, I think the biggest part of the problem we have in our country is an entrenched bureaucracy that does everything in its power to be wasteful because there isn’t a reason not to be. Look no further than Congress, those stalwarts of dysfunction in American government. I came across this story today and if it doesn’t perfectly illustrate how Congress fiddles, Nero like, while the country burns, nothing else does:
Really,
A large part of that has to do with my very liberal attitudes on social issues. I simply don’t feel politicians should get their noses up in people’s personal business. The choices people make about how they want to live thier lives as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else should be their own.
Admittedly I am very hawkish on foreign policy issues. In large part my belief is firmly rooted in historical lessons where over and over again entities who have tried to negotiate from positions of weakness have done so at their peril. I’m not about using force unnecessarily but force should never be taking off the table entirely as far as foreign policy goes. It would be nice to live in a world where that wasn’t the case but the human animal just hasn’t advanced on the evolutionary scale to that point yet. And I count the minutes until we do.
Also, there needs to be a social safety net, socialized medicine is necessary in our country and while the insurance lobby and many members of the Republican party rail against “ObamaCare,” the truth of the matter is that the Medical Reform Act is a good piece of legislation if only a flawed first step along the path. Repeal is not the answer in this case. Modifying and fine tuning reform and providing a framework for affordable care for everyone is something that makes a lot of sense on both a humanitarian level and also on an economic level. Really the thing that needs fixing is tort reform and limits on awards in malpractice cases. As much as we would attribute godlike powers to medical practitioners they are simply as human and as fallible as the rest of us. My commonly used analogy is you can barely get someone to fix your automobile properly and the human body is a much more complex machine. While we have learned much in the last century we still have a long, long way to go to fill the gaps in our knowledge.
Finally, I think the biggest part of the problem we have in our country is an entrenched bureaucracy that does everything in its power to be wasteful because there isn’t a reason not to be. Look no further than Congress, those stalwarts of dysfunction in American government. I came across this story today and if it doesn’t perfectly illustrate how Congress fiddles, Nero like, while the country burns, nothing else does:
In the 18 months the 112th Congress has been sworn in, the House has introduced 60 bills to rename post offices. Thirty-eight have passed the House and 26 have become law. During those 18 months, the House has produced 151 laws, 17 percent of which have been to rename post offices, according to Congressional Democrats.Just priceless, instead of actually doing the hard work of addressing the problems of the postal system, our leaders choose to give us the fluff of renaming post offices. Really sums up what’s wrong with our government, don’t you think?
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