Seed of liberty…
You never know what is going to spawn a shift in your worldview. It can be something profound, or something completely mundane but spoken to you at the right time. I remember when I was just barely 18, seeing the movie Heat with De Niro and Pacino and a secondary character “Nate” played by Jon Voight (who would later go on to pretending to refill my water glass at a restaurant acting like a server in Lexington, KY) made what turned out to be a very profound statement in my life. I’m not sure if it was Nate’s mullet, his mustache, or the combination of the two, but when he said “It’s a free country brother”, to Neil when he asked about Chris (Val Kilmer), it had a profound impact on me.
I’ve mostly lived my life as a “live and let live” kind of person. I don’t want to tell you how you should live your life, and I don’t want you telling me how to live mine. You can believe whatever you want about yourself, but don’t ask me to believe in your fantasy along side you. I’ve never really cared about people’s immutable characteristics. Black, white, straight, gay, man, woman, or anything in between, if you’re a good person, you’re a good person, if you’re not, well, you suck.
As people read these posts, I will most likely be labeled as a particular political ideology, which I guess by today’s standards, I am that party. But it’s not me that’s shifted to the right. In fact, I’ve shifted far to the left from where I was as a teenager/young adult. I was to the right of Rush Limbaugh in high school. Now I’m probably to the left of what Bill Clinton was as a president, but the entire political spectrum has slid to one side, making me appear to be right wing.
My beliefs are based in individual liberties. You live your life, I’ll live mine. You shouldn’t have to pay for me, I shouldn’t have to pay for you. You have the freedom to choose your life path, but your choices have consequences, both good and bad, so be prepared to pay those consequences, choose wisely.
“There are no solutions, only trade offs” - Thomas Sowell
