Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Being a Moderate

I’ve always considered myself to be a moderate. It is often said that in Biblical interpretation there are two methods, fundamentalism, which is the literal embracing of everything in the Bible, to the historic critical method which essentially embraces only that which can survive great scrutiny. I often find both methods to be irrational. One blindly tried to prove every little detail and drowns itself in Incidentalism. The other, in its approach to provide great scrutiny under the magnifying glass tends to burn things up that had no need of being burned. Both methods, oddly, are very similar in the fact that they are both incredibly rigid. I’ve always tended to take a more middle of the road approach usually to be told that I’m wrong.

Politically, I’m much the same way. I tend to see both sides of issues and I tend to lean towards the pragmatic side. What is distressing, for example, about George Bush is that he claims to be a conservative. So he cut taxes. Conservative move, I guess. But then he greatly increased spending. People often say it’s the liberal approach to increase spending----and taxes. The conservative principle says to cut taxes you reduce spending; the liberal says that you increase taxes to cover increase spending.

Seems to me that a reasonable approach is that you pay as you go. People want some services and as long as they are willing to pay for them, tax wise, do it. If not, don’t. Seems middle of the road and logical to me.

But the current system, cut taxes and increase spending sounds neither liberal, conservative, or moderate. It’s the Bonehead approach.

I totally supported our invasion in Afghanistan. I probably would have supported an invasion of Iran, a long, well known training area for terrorists. Iran reminds me of Nazi Germany and Iraq was like Facist Italy. So we decided to take on Mussolini instead of Hitler.

Grr. Moderation, it seems to me, doesn’t look to fight wars, but if we do, tends to fight the correct nations.

Rush Limbaugh once said that the worst people in the world were moderates as they didn’t stand for anything. People who know me well know that this really does describe me. I don’t have any opinions on anything and have no convictions.

Okay, I’m just ranting and don’t have a conclusion other than this. Bye!

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