Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 5): And This Passes For A Good Time

NOTE: This is the next to last of the posts from this particular series of posts that I have already typed. I am thinking about more topics to address under this heading, and I will use this heading from time to time in my blogging.

I spent a little time in the dating wasteland the other night. I went to a live music show. It was a local cover band at a bar. Nothing horribly exciting, except it was 80's rock and roll, live, and the drinks were reasonably priced (if your drink of choice is Diet Coke, always).

The band was great. They are called Oil Can Harry, and if you are into the local music scene and in southeastern Wisconsin, check out a show. At this point you might be thinking, "how does this fit in with my theme of living conservative in a liberal world? " Stay with me here. Almost as entertaining as the band was the people in the crowd. You see, I am an avid people watcher.

One of the often repeated mantras of liberalism is "if it feels good, and no one is harmed, and everyone involved is a consenting person, you should be free to do it. So, right below the stage, on the left, is a group of twenty-something women dancing, and dancing rather nastily at times. There were three of them. Occasionally a twenty-something young man would come from the fringes of the crowd, dance with them for a while, then fade back into the crowd. Always the same guy.

Anyways, I am watching the women, and two of them are REALLY getting nasty. They were grinding on each other, and at one point, one of them turned toasted the crowd and pulled her sweater open, baring her breasts for the crowd and bouncing em around for all to see. She and her friend would, from time to time, engage in some very intense kissing as they danced. Dancing to one song as they were grinding very hard, the woman in front's skirt rode up over her posterior, and her friend's jeans had slid down somewhat and it was obvious that neither of them was wearing any underwear.

Now, not being a homophobe, I didn't really pay any attention to them aside from the fact that they were obviously doing it for show for the crowd. A little later, I noticed that one of the women was wearing a wedding ring. So, my obvious thought was that this was a case of girls night out gone way too far! Then eventually, watching the interactions between the women and the man who would from time to time join them, I realized that he was her husband. They all thought it was quite a hoot for the wife and her friend to put on a show for the crowd.

This is one of the legacies of liberalism: promiscuous actions with no decency, shame or regard for the possible consequences of their actions.

Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 4): Social Awkwardness

NOTE: Yet another catch-up post in this series of posts.

Dating is a scary word when you are forty-two. Heck, it is a scary word when you are in your twenties if you are serious about it. At forty-two, all you can be is serious. You don't have a whole lot of time to date around.

I was one of those people who waited. I waited to have sex, I waited to date seriously, and I waited to get married. My goal was to do it once and for all. Too bad my ex-wife didn't think the same way. She said she did, but when the rubber hit the road, she started having cyber-flings, and they turned into some rather serious relationships, and eventually she announced that she was leaving me (this by the way, is the short version of the story ... I may tell more of the story in a later post). Two months after her announcement, she was gone.

So now I am stuck navigating the Darwinian wasteland of dating late in life, and I have discovered something: dating has sure changed. People meet online, they "hook up" at bars, and they treat people like socks ... as long as they are warm and comfortable, they are fine, but as soon as they start showing some wear, it is time to get rid of them and get some new ones. There are so few people looking for a serious relationship these days, even amongst my age group.

Add to that the prevalence of liberalism in females, (I read recently that fifty-three percent of women identify themselves as liberal) and you can see me start fraying right before your eyes. Contributing to that fraying is my theory which I call "the perils of not being Brad Pitt.". The theory works like this: every woman has a vision of the perfect man. As a generic name, we will call him Brad Pitt. Why pick on Brad, you ask? Because once, while talking to a female coworker who was well and truly smitten with him, I pointed out his very public faults at length, and she dismissed them, saying "when you look like that, it makes up for a lot."

Anyways, so this perfect man has a set of attributes, any one of which can be dismissed, either singly, or en masse if, and only IF, you are attractive enough. If you have the bad luck of being me, meaning generally unattractive due to lugging around excessive weight, then it starts to nibble away at the attributes you DO posses that the woman would normally consider to be positive.

So I pick my way through the wasteland, keeping a weather eye over my shoulder for Darwin as he hunts the unworthy, something I find beyond scary, perhaps even terrifying.

Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 3): And Justice For All

**NOTE: This was written previously and kept sitting on my iPad until I was ready to post it. There are about three or four more of these that I will be posting as "catch-ups" between now and new years.**

So this week, we talked briefly about the death penalty in my class today. To be honest, I tend to waver about the death penalty. I am torn between the fiscal sense of the death penalty and the lack of social good it does ... let me explain.

I believe that the death penalty makes good fiscal sense. It costs lots and lots of money to maintain a prisoner in prison, especially with the indefinite sentence of "life in prison", which ostensibly means you remain in prison until you die. It makes much more fiscal sense to enable states to use the death penalty as a punishment for violent offenders, which then removes the financial burden from the state of maintaining the prisoner.

However, I believe that the social benefit of the death penalty is limited at best. The deterrent effect of the death penalty is confined to the offenders themselves. A dead criminal will not commit any more crimes. Beyond the actual offender, I don't really think that the average person gives any thought to the death penalty as a deterrent. After all, we execute criminals so infrequently, is a sentence of death really any different from a sentence of life in prison?

IF we were to want to make the death penalty a more effective tool of social change, it would require a serious change in the way the due process of death row inmates is handled. We would have to limit the ability of an inmate to postpone their execution date by filing lawsuits and motions. We would need to streamline the appeals process for death penalty cases so that an appeal is filed, heard and disposed of in short order. Perhaps if it becomes regular news of criminals being sent to their maker, others will think twice about committing heinous crimes.

Finally, we considered this thought: put the executions on pay per view. Even at only five bucks per execution, there are enough death junkies out there to put the death penalty on a paying basis. Just one televised execution would net the prison system millions. Imagine, living in a world where rape an murder are rare, and the perpetrators are caught and punished for their crimes.

ADDENDUM: So as I post this I am re-reading it and realizing it ends rather abruptly, but I will leave it as it was when I typed it.

Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 2): Why I Am Writing This

NOTE: This is a post that was written some time ago. I am gradually posting them in order to build up the blog and perhaps get myself into the habit of the blogging regularly.

I was talking to my class one day when I was struck with a couple of revelations. One revelation is that my urban students are "stuck on liberal," a revelation that is none too shocking. The second revelation, however, was shocking. The revelation was that it is the fault of conservatives that my students are stuck on liberal. As a matter of fact, it may well be the fault of conservatives that urban public education is failing altogether. This got me to thinking about the world we live in. It truly is a liberal world. Young people are inundated with liberal thoughts and ideology for at least twelve years if they are in public education.

Conservatives are an interesting bunch. I ought to know, because I am one. There are many different types of Conservatives, but there are a few distinct characteristics that many conservatives share. Many conservatives believe that the public education system is a bankrupt program which has failed to elevate the masses to full participatory citizenship in the great experiment we call the United States of America. Public education has failed to fulfill Jefferson's belief that only when people are well-informed can they be "trusted with their own government."

I would argue, however, that this failure is due to the ascendancy of liberalism in the public schools and the flight of conservatives out of them. In the 60's, liberals realized that the best place to replicate was in the sector of public education. Liberals started to go into teaching and take over the staff lounges at the nation's public schools. During the 1980's, seeing the path that liberals were taking our public schools, conservatives, and especially Christian conservatives, pulled their children out of public schools and placed them in private, often church run schools. Removed from the population of public schools in one decade were not only the students whose family upbringing would make them conservative in nature, but the conservatives who would have otherwise worked in public education to teach them.

We are rapidly approaching a time when those who believe in a greater government role in the lives of citizens will not only outnumber those who believe in limited government, but they will have a large enough voting bloc that old fashioned liberty, liberty envisioned by Jefferson, when he said "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."

It is sad, as one who loves liberty, to see the people of the United States sliding into the depths of being a culture of dependency. They look to the government for the things that our forbearers did for themselves. During the "great recession" of 2008-2010, a Facebook group was created called I.N.A.F.J. which stands for "I Need a F-ing Job." It was a poignant plea from people who are fed up with being unemployed. They wanted jobs, sure, but by creating a Facebook group, it seemed like what they were really after was validation. Through online T-shirt sales, they actually raised the money to pay for a billboard that greeted the President in Buffalo during a stop there that read "Dear Mr. President, I need a freaking job. Period. Sincerely, inafj.org." Last time I looked, it was not the job of the government, or the President, to help you get a job.

Now, I understand that the costs of regulation and high taxes leads to private sector job losses. I also understand that government action can create a favorable business environment that leads to job growth. That is not the point here. Sure the INAFJ folks talk about taxes and regulation on their website. They favor (supposedly) smaller government that spends less, allows people and businesses to keep more of what they earn and with that kept wealth, stimulate and grow the economy. But anyone who would buy a billboard that reads "Dear Mr. President, I need a freaking job" is a group that Makes me say "Dear Billboard Owner, Retrain, Reapply, Relocate" because, when it comes down to getting a job, I believe in the three R's.

Living Conservative in a Liberal World (Part 1): Who I Am

NOTE: I typed this a while ago. I started this document on my iPad to test out the Pages word processor, and now I am finally posting it. I will add more sections I had typed on the iPad over the next few days and continue this beyond what I have already typed.

I am a conservative. There, I said it. Of course, that is only the first part of this conversation. I am a conservative, but to many of my liberal colleagues and friends, the question is: "why?"

I am a conservative because I know what it is to be poor. My parents divorced when I was a baby. I was raised for the first twelve years of my life in a public housing project called Berryland, on the ninth side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My mom was on welfare ... we were on welfare. Mom didn't drive, so we took the bus everywhere. Mom would shop at the grocery store and pay the bill with food stamps. As soon as I was in school, the welfare office required my mom to find work. We eventually left the projects and moved on to apartments, duplexes, but never a house. After all, a house is not a home, as the song says.

I was the last of five children, but I was the first to go to college. But, I get ahead of myself. I finished high school, and afterwards did a tour in the Navy. While in the Navy, I learned about duty, honor and service, three ideas that would come to shape my psyche.

I had gone to church and youth group during my teen years, and thought that the way that the church and youth leaders reached out to others was cool, and after My enlistment, I decided to go to a bible college to become one of those people, someone who reached out to others and helped them.

Sadly, events transpired at the church and bible college where I was studying that went against my personal code of honor that I had developed during my military service. This caused a crisis of faith as I wondered how the leaders of an institution that was supposed to be serving God could act in a way that seemed to me to be detrimental to their fellow man and disrespectful of the civil authority. These events led me to leave the bible college.

I spent several years wandering through life, wondering what my purpose was. A change in employment brought me into contact with several teachers. After a while, I finally understood. I was meant to teach. I reentered college, and this time set my mind on getting my education degree and teaching license. Five years later, I entered my first classroom.

I am a conservative. This is strange to many people, because I choose to teach in a public school. It was not a choice I made lightly. I had married, and become stepdad to two wonderful girls. I wanted to provide for them the best way in could, so public schools with their good pay and excellent benefits were a perfect fit. Plus, there was something more.

I understand the entrenched liberalism of the public education system. I understand that politically I am outnumbered by a margin of about nine to one. I know that I could have a less stressful life teaching "good" children who are not from broken and dysfunctional homes if I were to teach in a private or religious school. I know I would find more people whose ideologies are closer to my own, which might help to enhance my social life now that I am divorced. Sure I understand all of that. But I understand something even more important. These students who are in public schools need me. They need someone who is willing to stand for the principles of duty, honor and service, because the liberal public school teaches who understand these things are few and far between.

I am a conservative. I am a teacher. I am more important than anyone realizes.

Time Enough for This

So I don't blog regularly. I should. I could. I always say I don't have time, but a quick mental self-audit has revealed to me that I definitely have time for this.

We tell ourselves we don't have time for something to make us feel better about ourselves when we are too lazy to do something we really know we could and maybe should be doing. For instance, I have a friend. OK, big revelation, I know people. I mean honest to goodness, real life people. Anyways, this friend is a business owner. He is married, and his three kids have all grown and flown.

He will call me some nights and want to play video games online. Now, don't make that face. Video games are a perfectly acceptable leisure time activity for grown adults. Note the conditional factor: LEISURE time. Being married, his domestic duties are limited to helping his wife out from time to time. Being alone, my domestic duties are ... well ... all of them. Sometimes I think he doesn't take into account that I have to keep my place clean (or somewhere approaching that condition) all by my lonesome.

I sometimes feel guilty that I am playing games and not doing something productive. Oddly enough, I tend to get this feeling when I am playing games, and not when I am, say sitting on the couch watching a movie. I think it has to do with the ability to multitask when you are watching TV. Can't get up and do something while playing a game online ... your friends end up getting scragged by some virtual terrorist with a beef about freedom, short skirts and rock 'n roll.

I guess what I am saying is that in all of my pondering about my life as 2010 draws to a close and 2011 nears, I should make better use of my time ... and perfect my sniper shot.

I am NOT immune!

If you remember my post entitled "Congratulations Mr. Jobs, It's A Fad", I was initially very skeptical of the iPad, but if you noticed the signature line on my last post (and this one), I am now a part of the iPad toting legions.

I actually have three Mac guys in my school. One is definitely a toucher. I swear, when Steve Jobs is webcasting, he is looking for lotion. The other two aren't so bad, but with Mac people, I always worry that there is a kind of a heaven's gate thing brewing. It is more of a cult than a company. The slavish devotion of Apple's devotees is almost religious. But I digress ...

I was, and I guess still am a PC purist. Back in the days I was a DOS guy. I resisted buying windows, saying that if I had wanted a Mac, I would have bought a Mac. All the while, I had to (grudgingly) admit that Apple always created a great product that worked marvelously, but this is because they control every aspect of the hardware. The Apple OS works with only a limited hardware set, eliminating the need for drivers for every piece of random equipment built by every manufacturer of PC components. In computers as well as cooking, the old saying is true: "too many cooks spoil a pie"' and that is the Achilles heel of the Windows platform. Too many people making components for the operating system. When Windows Vista was introduced, it was plagued with crashes, almost all of them due to buggy drivers.

So now I am sitting here, typing a blog post on an iPad, proud owner of an iPhone and a Mac Mini (albeit an older one, the first generation mini), and I am seriously drooling over the newest generation of MacBook Airs.

I am still a PC guy at heart, but I now understand and appreciate the beauty and functionality of a Mac.

8^) Jim
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Location:W Green Tree Rd,Milwaukee,United States