Saturday Connor Coyne, the founder of a blog named "Blue Skies Falling", a "decidedly liberal blog", contacted us by e-mail. He had a number of complimentary things to say about our family website, such as "While I disagree with most of your politics, your blog is candid, warm, funny, and well thought out."

Thank you, Connor.

From what I could determine from his blog archives, Connor is a young man living in McKinley Park, Chicago. Many of his posts are as articulate and thoughtful as the letter he wrote to us, and his description of our own website. Though our views on government's responsibility to its citizenry (and vice versa) as well as economics seem to be disparate at times... I think that more of our energy and passion vibrates sympathetically than it would seem at first glance.

For example.

We both, it appears to me, have little respect for the non-thinking, numb bovine herds of slogan-chanters that seem to be trotted out on the newswire every few minutes. We both encourage the people that we meet to think for themselves. We both seem to have a measure of compassion and a willingness to see beyond the veil that relegates most people to sound-bytes or quickly drawn conclusion.

"It takes all kinds", you often hear in quoted cliche.

I believe that to be true.

In the Navy I had the opportunity to visit many countries, meet many different types of people. I learned many lessons. One of the more important lessons was the first-hand in-your-face demonstration that much of what I had learned... things that I simply regarded as fact and had not even considered otherwise... was merely a single method of accomplishing something that had been passed down to me by my family, my culture.

It was not inherently right or inherently intended to be universally applied; it was just "my way".

As I traveled from Bali, Indonesia to Jebel Ali, UAE... from Singapore to Iskenderun, Turkiye... from Jeruselam, Israel to Melkinsfjord, Norway... I learned that there was a lot of different ways to do the same thing, different ways to interpret the same things, and different solutions to different problems that were no more right or wrong than my own.

Even still.

There may be many paths to the top of the mountain, but there is still only one "up" and one "down". Trending in either direction is a necessary element of getting to where you want to go. My morals, my ethics and the importance I place on truth... These are all subsets of what I perceive to be a more general set of ethics that I believe we *all* need to share to trend upwards as a society.

I think that this is a part of what makes me conservative.

I take objection to the Malignant Narcissist, not necessarily the Classical Liberal. I take offense to the hypocritical, not necessarily the critical thinker who disagrees with me. You can find examples of the things I dislike in every camp, and people that I regard as heroes right beside them.

So.

Decidedly Liberal? Articulate? Critical thinker?

I may disagree with you, sometimes strongly, but together we just may reach the top of the mountain together anyway.

DISCLAIMER: Though I enjoyed a number of Conner's carefully argued posts, he is not the only writer on the blog and some of the articles are laced with profanity and regurgitate a measure of partisan bile. If you are a young person, discuss this with your parent or guardian before inspecting this blog

Posted by Michael at October 24, 2004 01:52 PM