I love reading opinions.* What I don't like is following along, agreeing or disagreeing, when the author veers off on some tangential personal attack.
Strong views are great. Hatred and name-calling makes me question your arguments. There are a lot of choices, and I choose rationality.
OK, there are some evil people in the world and there are evil ideas. You don't fight them by showing how nasty you can be. I subscribe to the 95% rule: the majority of people try to do the right thing at least ninety-five percent of the time.
Watch out for that other five percent. That's where we have our disputes. They are caused by any number of things; ignorance, fear, greed and prejudice among them. Sometimes two people can look at the same facts and reach different conclusions.
I don't hate President Bush because I disagree with several of his policies. I disagree. He seems to be a pretty likeable man with a big job, and he doesn't have the background or experience of his father. It's tougher, but I'm still trying to give his advisors the benefit of the doubt.
I just don't see how you can start a modern war, increase other spending and cut taxes at the same time. That's as silly as starting a war and something called the Great Society at the same time.
There have been reports lately of cities with a constant low-level hum in the background. Only some people are sensitive to it. I think that hum is the sound of thousands of fiscal conservatives spinning in their graves.
Richard Nixon? I wouldn't have wanted to hang out with him, but we could have had a drink and talked football. Only two policies I really liked and two I disliked come to mind after all of these years, and I challenge anyone to guess what they are. The prize is, hmm... a bag of papayas, if I don't have to ship them.
Then again, I'll read anything. If I'm eating alone and there is no newspaper or magazine around, there will probably be a book or a food package propped up behind the plate. Restaurants are calling my number when they put writing on their placemats.
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2 comments:
Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act...enviros tend to like those things.
I totally forgot about those. They're just kind of... part of the environment now.
The big one, that pisses off all of my Nixon-hating friends, is that he got us out of Vietnam. In a messy way, but he did it.
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