*OT*Thank you for your response, Joe. I'd like to answer some of your points directly:
<I still find your evenhandedness to be missing in action.>
I fully admit to NOT being evenhanded regarding right or wrong, fact or fiction, valid or invalid, logical or illogical, etc., when it comes to statements or arguments. As to political parties, I beg to differ with your opinion of me...no party holds the patents on either sin or virtue and I've certainly said as much many, many times. Maybe you don't WANT to believe it...can't help you there.
For the time being, I simply believe the Democratic regime is issuing far more nonsense and behaving with much less civility and rationality than their Republican counterparts. The heated rhetoric aside, the arguments and statements made by the Dems are not as well-grounded in fact or law. Increasingly, their statements have moved to a "shoot the messenger" mentality when a coherent argument can't be made against the message. This is what's happening to Katherine Harris right now; blatant character assassination instead of bothering to debate her actual statements and findings. It's a well-worn propaganda technique used by both parties (just more frequently and more effectively by the Dems at this time).
<you often cite the existence of facts, but it seems like it is too much trouble to post them. Like the facts about the degradation of our nation.>
No trouble to post facts, Joe...just not worth my effort. If you can look at a graffiti-covered high school with bars on the windows and metal detectors on the entrances and tell me that public schools are "better" and that cities and neighborhoods are "safer" now than in decades past, no amount of statistics could convince you otherwise. Again, I wish it weren't so.
I'm not quite 43 years old but in the past 25 years I have travelled extensively through all 50 states, all of Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, every country in Europe (pre and post German unification), most of the Far East, and South Africa. Much of what I have learned is from first-hand observations and real experiences, not just statistics and the internet. I don't make this stuff up. I have been both an employee and an employer, a student and a teacher, a plaintiff and a defendant...statistics are more easily manipulated than polls!
Thank you for maintaining civility in your statements without sacrificing passion, Joe; I mean that sincerely.
Btw, tell your friend that if everyone had waited until the world wasn't "screwed up" to have a kid, no one would have been born during the ENTIRE 20th century!
Christin and I are looking forward to having children as soon as the Good Lord sends them and we'll probably do what all good liberal Democratic leaders do: send them to private schools!
Regards,
Mark |
