My children are grown and gone and I have been divorced and living alone so long that I've taken to haranguing my three dogs with philosophical rants ala Dennis Miller, minus the profanity (most of the time, anyway). Yes, I have way too much time on my hands and I wind up watching more TV than is probably good for me. As a result of the excess time and the glut of media coverage, I've become something of a political junky, even though I view politics more as another form of entertainment, a sort of freak sideshow, than in any serious way. I'm often disgusted and frustrated and just tune out, but I'm knowledgeable enough to enjoy political humor and I enjoy open-minded, non-dogmatic discussions of politics. The things I loathe are political extremism and rabid Republican or Democratic rhetoric (is there a school where they train people like Laura Ingraham, James Carville, Mary Matalin, Floyd Brown, et.al. in this stunningly obnoxious conversational form?). In all honesty, I think the two party system is anachronistic to any thinking person who isn't drifting through life on autopilot, one of those teenage boy testosterone things like sports, that keep people locked into a divisive, them and us mentality. Additionally, it's a terrific means of performing the ultimately gratifying alchemy of turning money into power. There probably wouldnt be nearly as much to disgust me and turn me off if someone could convince the religious uber-right that we have separation of church and state in this country and help them get over their anal retentive obsession with trying to legislate others sex lives, morality, and taste. It's a tired old statement, but let's face it, there isn't anybody who doesn't have some dirty laundry that someone would love to hang out on the line for them publicly someday. Get over it! There are no saints in politics. Or much of anywhere else, for that matter. Anyone who's obsessed with saintliness should shut up and practice instead of hanging around political arenas.

I've always thought of myself as a liberal, but have inevitably (I guess) gotten more conservative as I've gotten older and begun to glimpse an overview of how everything in the world interlocks. I was surprised to find that it was Winston Churchill who said that anyone under 30 who isn't a liberal has no heart and anyone over 30 who isn't a conservative has no brain. Although I think of myself as politically independent and a free thinker, I tend to take a more libertarian view of most things now except in the area of gun control. For instance, the liberal in me says "Stop federal funding of the Arts? I don't THINK so." But the libertarian in me says "Why not? As long as the government funds the Arts, it reserves the technical right to meddle in them and do we really want THAT?" And additionally, the most compelling art, the art I want to experience, the art that moves me, is the art that cannot be stifled by lack of funding or anything else, the art which is the result of a creative compulsion against which the artist is helpless in the face of all obstacles. True creativity will not, cannot, be denied and is not funding-dependent. Get and keep government out of it. As another for-instance, I think welfare is one of the most degrading and spiritually corrupting systems ever conceived by man.

I still think of myself as spiritually liberal, but life and experience have transformed my ideas of liberality from a sort of mindless altruism to a more pragmatic realism. Rather than blindly proceeding on a mandate that something must be done immediately to relieve every incidence of suffering and injustice in the world, without meaning to sound insensitive or uncaring, I think sometimes people just have to work things out for themselves and that they will not accept help or solutions that seem reasonable to others. And unless we're going to start playing God and assassinating unreasonable leaders, there's just not always something we can do about it.

I was raised a Catholic, and have often longed to be able to find peace and spiritual comfort in Catholicism, but I don't and I'm not sure I can. I love the history and the pageantry of the Catholic church, but there was that little thing called the Spanish Inquisition and my primary point of departure from organized religion is the point where it ceases to be about spiritual growth, comfort, and enlightenment and becomes an excuse for cruelty, divisiveness, and intolerance. Something that chafes at me like a hairshirt is the shameless hypocrisy of ultra-religious people who openly hate and despise all who don't share their beliefs or who openly wish ill toward others (i.e. right-to-lifers who feel no need to respect the lives of the already-living). I believe free will is essential to any journey toward spiritual enlightenment and that experience is the ultimate teacher. I dont believe religion should be used for any purpose other than personal spiritual growth and it can never justify hate crimes, the killing of anything for sport or the harming or killing of anyone in the name of religious or social conviction.

I have always, too, been confused about the concept of prayer as opposed to thanksgiving. It seems to me that if one has faith that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good being we claim to believe He is, any prayer other than thy will be done is an act of insubordination and an exhibition of faithlessness. The God Ive been taught to believe in loves me unconditionally, is omniscient, omnipotent, and has a master plan, of which I'm just a part. I believe He created me with free will so that I might find my way to Him through the educational experiences of life on the earth He created. Who am I to tell Him what He should do, or the way my life or someone else's life should go? I think the most gracious thing I can probably do is to continue to get up cheerfully each morning and proceed kindly to do the best I can with the events of each day. As long as prayer is used for thanksgiving, I have no problem understanding, but I think too many people use prayer to petition God to come around to their way of thinking.

To me, success is measured in terms of serenity and inner peace; not in terms of fame, fortune or material possessions. I believe that the only person in the world who is responsible for my happiness is me and that if I don't like the way I feel at any given time, I alone have the key inside myself to change it. I think personal responsibility is a forgotten and most under-appreciated virtue. I admit I haven't always practiced it myself and, like the President, I've lied outright when I didn't want anyone else to know the ugly truth, or when telling the truth was uncomfortable or likely to get me into trouble. I try now not to put myself in situations I might be tempted to lie about later, but, cripes, I'm human. I believe that bad and tragic things sometimes happen as a consequence merely of being alive and part of Gods master plan and that life is meant to be an exciting rollercoaster ride, not a quiet, gentle, ride on a carousel. A life without the surprises, the challenges, the risks, the opportunities to fail, overcome fears, and grow that the rollercoaster provides is meaningless. Why bother? Didn't anybody in our litigious society ever read The Prophet--the deeper that sorrow carves into your soul, the more happiness you can contain, etc.? People seem to think that they must be somehow compensated for every unpleasantness they encounter in life. Nothing can seemingly be accepted without complaint/retribution. We really need to figure out a way to sue God, I guess, for allowing life to be less than a strictly happy experience. But realistically, we cease to feel joy if we have nothing against which to measure it.

I don't believe we were intended to live forever and that disease and the aging process are God's gifts to help keep things moving smartly along. I worry about medical interference with the natural course of life on this fragile planet and while I believe good health is essential to making good use of the time we spend here, aside from eating right and exercising regularly, I do not intend to make any effort to extend my life unnaturally (i.e. with blood pressure or heart medications, etc.). I have nothing against chemical-imbalance-correcting or quality-of-life-enhancing drugs such as Premarin, vitamins, anti-depressants, etc., but if you can't control your blood pressure and heart function with diet and exercise, you need to look at your lifestyle, not drugs. Since I don't get to be young forever, it's okay with me if I don't get to live forever. It seems the most naked and bald-faced conceit for anyone to want to live forever and more importantly, to think there's justification for doing so. If the world can continue turning without Jesus, Buddah, Einstein, et al, it can certainly do so without the vast majority of the rest of us. I don't believe that every child must live against all odds or that every disease must be conquered and eradicated. I saw a real-life emergency room show recently where a young doctor and her team worked feverishly to revive a 5 month old fetus which was born so prematurely that it wasnt breathing on its own as a result of the mothers suspected drug use. The young doctor commented on what a fighter the baby was and how good she felt to have saved it. Well, no, it wasnt the baby who was a fighter; it was the young doctor who was the fighter. The child wasnt breathing when it was born and perhaps that was Gods way of snatching it back from a life He didnt intend for it to live. And then again, perhaps not. Perhaps He put it in the hands of the fighting young doctor in order to ensure its survival against the odds. I dont know. I think were going to have to set up some ethical guidelines really soon to help us determine where the line is between making good use of the equipment God gave us and playing God, subverting God, nature, whatever we choose to call it, by refusing to place limitations on our intervention. Yes, we CAN intervene almost limitlessly now, but SHOULD we, MUST we? And must we keep glorifying these litters of children being born to people who have gone to great expense and painful lengths to subvert what seems to me the obvious will of God that they not have children? Does it just not occur to anyone that if you or your mate are unable to have children maybe God is trying to tell you something?

I believe that some of the gravest problems facing our world today are the direct result of mindless overpopulation. I have no objection to people having all the children they really WANT to have and can care for, but I really feel that we must stop adding unwanted children to our list of social ills. We just cannot continue bringing human beings into the world without thought, as by-products of our self-centered, drug/alcohol dependent, escapist, uneducated or intellectually lazy lifestyles or because economic circumstances make sex the only affordable entertainment available to us. It's a painful pass for a champion of personal liberty, but I'm afraid we're going to eventually come to a place where we will have to regulate procreation in some way that prevents carelessness. Of course the idea of mandating or regulating any aspect of each other's personal lives would be outrageously condescending and criminally intrusive if we routinely taught our children to exercise forethought and sexual responsibility, but there are too many people who aren't consciously teaching children anything anymore. There are too many people who aren't even bothering to raise the children they didn't want and didn't exercise the forethought to avoid having.

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