OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

No, not Monty Python. Although I could talk about that. Aren't you glad that you're not lighter than a duck? And I apologize to my wife, who's heard everything that follows before (follows before?)

Who here hasn't been watching the politics of the upcoming election? Hard to miss, huh? Not really very gracious behavior on some people's part, huh? Anyway, a few thoughts that just occur to me.

When I was young I was a liberal. At one time I confess to even being a closet Libertarian(sp?). But as I got older I became a conservative. I think this is a pretty natural, normal progression. There's an old insult that goes "I used to be a liberal, then I learned to read." Come on now - you mean you haven't heard any insults to conservatives lately - turn around's fair play.

I think it's natural for young people to be liberals. There is that natural idealism in them that makes liberalism very attractive. Later in life some of the idealism vanishes in the harsh light of real life (or at least it usually does).

I used to think that the government should try to help people, after all they were the ones with the resources to do so. Later, once I had a job where the government took more than their "fair share", I realized just whose resources those really were. Also, because I've lived long enough to see the results of some of the government's policies, I realize that what sounds good in principle may not work out well in practice.

I saw how well it worked for me to give money to my sons. I saw how little that money was considered compared to the money they earned by hard work. I saw how little it really helped them. Well, the government is doing great harm with its charity. But I think the main reason for this harm is not because of the charity itself but because of who is giving it out and how they are doing it.

But this post is not really about government (that would take a lot more than one post), but about Liberalism in general. Liberals seem to be more concerned with image than results, sort of an "the end justifies the means" thing, but where the end AND the means are disguised, many of its bad aspects hidden. Thus we can say "We want to help the poor." That's the end. And the means is "We will give them money." Now that sounds very altruistic, and it would be if it were only the money of the individual who was making the statements. But it's not. It should be "We will give them YOUR money."

It's hard to discuss liberalism or conservativitism without getting involved in politics, because that's where it comes to be played out. In general, however, the two are nothing more than two different ways of solving a problem. A conservative will say that a liberal is naive in his approach to the problems, the liberal will say the conservative is mean-spirited. Now logic tells me that the best way to determine which of two approaches to use on a problem is to seek the one which seems to have worked the best. And we certainly have plenty of history to look back on to judge such things.

Mankind is constantly trying new things, new techniques, but in general there is nothing new in the world. We've seen the failure of communism, yet there are still many people in this world who think it would be a great form of government (maybe if God ran it, but not when men do). Every form of government has it's good and bad points, and you can only judge by its success in history as to whether it worked well or not. We should do the same with philosophies too.

People are people, they all have their opinions. What concerns me is the lack of logic which many have when examining life and how it works. And the ones who insult those who disagree as their form of argument, I have no patience with.

This is really short because I haven't collected my thoughts about it. I'll think of something else for later today and will come back to this when I have more coherent thoughts.