This is my brain on drugs, about four years ago, give or take.
Jim is right. And what about the Tailhook scandal? Oh, and by the way, when are they going to get around to disciplining the assholes that tried to push evangelical Christianity on recruits, trying to coerce them with their positions of authority. Strangely enough, that seems to have been swept under the rug.
Oh,and by the way, to the person who asked about how a new recruit would take her, if I was that recruit I would take her dead seriously. I would treat her with the same degree of respect that I would treat any superior officer, male or female. Not one ounce more, not one ounce less.
That’s one of the first things you learn in the military, discipline and respect. If you don’t show the respect, you will learn discipline REAL DAMN FAST!!!!!!!!!
And that is the way it should be, regardless of who the person is. This whole controversy, and the reason it is a controversy, is nothing but a shining example of how people let their sexual hang-ups override their common sense.
Sure you can disrespect some “shameless floozy” that shows her body, but don’t you dare disrespect somebody that tries to shove a damn Bible down peoples throats, or interfere with the pervasive culture that allows it.
That was comment number twelve to a post on Urban Grounds about Michelle Manhart, an Air Force officer who got in a little bit of trouble over posing for Playboy.
I point this out as a means of reminding people that, yes, you can change. It depends on how the change comes about. In my case-and this is important-it come about due to my thoughtfully seeking greater access to a wider variety of information and points of view than what I was traditionally exposed to.
As a result of such greater depth of information, I found myself becoming more and more conservative. I guess my exposure to Fred Thompson during the 2008 campaign was the final pull that brought me over to "the dark side" of Federalism. Where once I was all over the map ideologically, but basically a left of center moderate, I have transitioned to the point I am a fanatical federalist.
More importantly, it pisses me off when I think of how I was sold a bill of goods for such a long time by Democrats, liberal activists, and worse of all, a complacent and seemingly at times bought and paid for mainstream media, who come to find out seem to all but promote RINO Republicans to lead the GOP, then turn on them during general elections. They also tend to ignore things that make their side look bad. But they always find a way to fool you into thinking they're objective.
Lately I got some comments from a person who is a liberal, and I think a liberal pagan, though I'm not sure. He commented on a number of posts, but one in particular he made mention of how two groups of opponents on the gun control issue allegedly decided they had more in common than not, and decided it was something they could compromise on.
As somebody who has always been a supporter of the Second Amendment, even in my most liberal days, I can respond to that flat out by asserting that there is no compromise when it comes to the Second Amendment. But Democrats don't really want compromise. They want to ask for ten times more than what they really want, and then when they get what they actually do want, they call it compromise. But you can't compromise on the Second Amendment, because it means what it says. And what it says has nothing to do with government regulation. Well-regulated means, quite simply, well armed. You can no more compromise on the Second Amendment than you can on the First Amendment, or any of the others. No, you can't cry fire in a crowded theater, and if you do you'll be prosecuted. That's not exactly what I would call a compromise, but okay, if you insist, I'll play along. If you walk up to somebody and shoot them because you don't like them, or hold a gun on them and rob them, you can be prosecuted for that as well. There, how's that for a "compromise"? Well, that's as good as one as you'll get from me.
Okay, just to show I'm reasonable, no one should be allowed to own their own private nuclear bomb.
See, you can't win with liberals, because they hate this country. They'll deny that, but then they'll turn around and in all sincerity do everything they can to increase the role and size of the federal government, and will do so in the name of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Class warfare, you see, is more than a means to an end. In some ways, it is the end. Its a way of transforming American society from top to bottom, by becoming more like the "advanced" European societies they so admire and wish to emulate. That on its own puts the lie to how much they love this country.
I was lucky. I always hated political correctness, something any so-called liberal should also hate if they really believed in the First Amendment, but there again, their hypocrisy shows loud and clear.
I don't know for sure what the final straw was. It might have been the dawning realization that Democrats were craven based on their actions in the days following the 9/11 attacks, their support for such things as the Iraqi invasion and the Patriot Act when it was convenient, but then fought against both tooth and nail at the first opportunity. Yet, they almost all voted for the Patriot Act without even reading the bill. In the 2002 mid-term elections, many Democrats couldn't get too close to George W. Bush. God damn, some of them were almost groping the fucking guy in public, on their own campaign advertisements. They were and still are sickening pukes.
Mainly though, and I say this in all sincerity, I always recognized that conservatives, as a general rule, are just better people than liberals. As an example, I'm always giving conservatives and liberals both hell about abortion. I'm always telling them since liberals are the ones by and large who get the lion's share of abortions, we shouldn't stand in their way. The world needs less, not more liberals.
Guess who gives me the most grief about that. It's hard to figure out, but it shows that conservatives are genuinely sincere in their stated opposition to abortion. They don't even want their worse, most hated enemies, to engage in such a despicable practice, one that will and has lessened the numbers of future liberals since 1973. Conservatives deserve at least some respect for that much.
That's why I don't really feel comfortable with the term conservative. Federalist, not that fits me to a t now. I think it always did, it just took me some time wandering in the darkness to find my natural home.
As for where I've been, that person is a stranger to me.
