RADICAL, DUDE, RADICAL

Don't tell him I said so, but one of my favorite reads, blogwise, is: A Radical Perspective.

The radical, who refers to himself as TAO, is a good writer and a logical thinker.

While he gives himself a little more credit than he actually deserves, not more than most of us do.

(One of my favorite brand new old sayings is: "Make me a list of the opinions you hold that you think are wrong. If you think they are wrong, why do you hold them?")

At any rate, it is not my purpose here to magnify TAO as a blogger, rather to let you know that there are more ways of looking at things than just "ultra right" or "ultra left."

One of the interesting things about him is that when he leaves comments on blogs around cyberspace, he often comes across as an "anti-person," that is, someone who is against whatever you say...and sometimes he is.

When you read his blog, on the other hand, you get a real feeling that he is someone who really cares about our country and has some honest ideas about what is being done wrong, or right, and what can be done about them.

I don't agree with him all the time.

For instance, often he makes some point which I understand, like: "I personally want to know that if I have a stream running through my property and I use it for drinking water then I do not want some slob upstream dumping his waste in water I use for drinking."

Then he ruins it with the phrase: "THAT is exactly what government is all about."

One might say, "Well and good," but from his context one would conclude that he believes that is what the FEDERAL government is all about.

At that point, he and I would part company.

I would say, "THAT is exactly what local governments are for. And local governments are much easier for the people to control."

The problem, in my mind, feeble though it may be, is that the federal government must have very restricted powers (listed in the Preamble to the Constitution), and leave the rest to state, county, city and other local bodies to deal with.

That's a lot harder than just turning everything over to the feds, but it has been the basic (though far from perfect) approach for over 230 years, and has served us well.

In fact, every time the feds have become overly involved in our daily lives, it has cost us as a nation in terms of both freedom and GNP.

The idea of the men who put together this great experiment called The United States of America, was to carefully balance the freedoms of individuals and the involvement of the federal government.

It would have been a heresy to them to give deference to some action that took freedoms from the individual simply because someone saw it as necessary "for the greater good."

They believed that the greater good was served by lessening the involvement of the centralized government in favor of state and local governments.

TAO and I (and maybe you, too) agree on many things regarding the problems we face and the complications of solving those issues. We disagree on the proper approach to solving those problems.

Nevertheless, I think you'll find him very interesting, very thought provoking, and even fun to read.

He will give you A Radical Perspective.


NOTE TO TAO: Please fax your check over to me ASAP, for, as you know, these are difficult economic times.