Sorry Robert, I had no intentions of making “Your Turn” any sort of challenge. As for long-winded? Without direct eye contact, reading of body language this exchange will be long winded as both of us will have to spend more wordage on laying out our points. One of the largest failings of this sort of medium.
My intent was to spell out where I stand. And then listen to your position to fine tune my understanding of where you stand.
That way we can engage each other with more understanding. I was well aware you lean more to the left than I do, but unaware of how much.
Just as you were aware I lean to the right on many issues, not all by any means, but enough to call me rightist.
You bring up a number of points I agree with completely, others I do not. All of which I will respond too in due time.
The last Paragraph is the core of our foundation for debate as 'active participants’ in the hard work it takes to make this Republic work as intended. It also is a very short synopsis of how we got here.
At the end of the day, the mess we're in isn't really the fault of the Democratic or Republican Parties. It's our fault for trusting them and forgetting our duty to be eternally skeptical of our leaders and wannabe leaders.
One of the points I may not have made well enough is this.
When someone tells me they’re “doing it for my own good”, I get very, very suspicious. One thing that really troubles me is they assume I can’t think for myself.
Another is a great deal of the time “my own good” is actually a way of saying they get something they want out of the deal at my expense.
And snatch some more of my admittedly meager paycheck.
Of course there are a few laws passed ‘for our own good’ I can agree with. Seat belt laws are one, Motorcycle helmet laws are another. (Know I’m going to catch hell for the last one, bikers tend to be ... rebellious .... Ought to know, I wuz one some years back.)
It’s a matter of degrees, where the line gets drawn, a metaphorical tug-of-war between the right and left that keeps the State somewhere near the middle.
This will be a slow process due to time constraints. But I believe in enough to devote the time and effort.