So maybe Rush is partly right...

One of the things that drives me batty is when the right-wing talking heads call anyone with a viewpoint to the left of their own "wackos", "crazies", "extremists", etc. I consder myself very reasonable and thoughtful in my opinions, many of which these guys deride as a matter of course.

However, I've just realized that there really are some wacko lefties out there. I was just reading a post on a Prince fan site that had turned political. This one poster was going on about how capitalism isn't all its cracked up to be and doesn't provide equal opportunity for everyone.

I was thinking, "right on, brother."

Then the poster talked about how the G8's attempt to eliminate debt for some heavily indebted countries was a good start.

I was thinking, "a bit naive, but yeah, it's encouraging."

Then the poster stated that what we really needed to do was to revert to a 13 month lunar calender.

I was thinking, "whahhh?"

Then he wrote that we next needed to abandon money. Without money, he reasoned, there be no more poverty, no more impediments to finding a cure for cancer.

I was thinking, "Good lord, this person's an idiot."

I am left, but that doesn't mean I'm insane. The advent of money as a means of economic exchange is one of the greatest milestones in human development. It allows people to exchange the fruits of their efforts without having to physically drag a barrel of milk or a bushel of wheat with them to town. It allows one to adequately judge the relative value to society of answering a phone call or flipping a Big Mac, or even doing cancer research. It allows one, through loans, to fund current productive efforts using projected future results. Eliminating money would certainly eliminate poverty, if poverty is measured by the amount of money one has compared to everyone else. But it would do nothing to eliminate hunger, disease, homelessness, social stigma, or any of the other consequences that derives from being non-productive, for whatever the cause.

I guess this guy is to the left what some of these militia groups are to the right... their idealogy is the same as the mainstream (militia groups want personal liberty, this lefty guy wants to end poverty); but the conclusions that they then draw from that ideology is anti-social, impractical, and just an all-around bad idea. Rush is right, there are left-wing kooks. But I'm not one of them. And, for the record, neither is Hillary, Dean, or Bill.

That's why it's important for us reasonable people, we who are friends and family, to be able to listen to each other about issues of war and peace, economic growth, the place for religion in government, government funding of art and science, the role of the our country in the global society, the environmental effects of consumption and how to measure those effects, and so on and so on.

Reason. The stuff of which reality is made.

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