politics!

So today will be my first day ranting about politics on my blog, I hope I still have friends when this is all over. To start I would like to give a quick look into my political beliefs, what they are, where they came from, and where I plan to take them from here. As we already talked about earlier I started life as a pretty hard core Republican, but never really fit in because I lean too far left for most conservatives. It wasn't until Ron Paul ran in 2008 that I even knew what a Libertarian was, but I realized that I fit in very well with most of them, when it came to the economy they were quite conservative, but when it came to social matters they believed in freedom to make your own choices. I actually became interested in politics when I realized it wasn't just left vs right, or R vs D. The next big stepping stone for me was reading Atlas Shrugged, Never before had my feelings been summed up so well in words, I won't claim to agree with Ayn Rand on everything, but this book really woke me up to a lot of my feelings about the world. I realized that what I held for beliefs weren't deplorable like people made them out to be, but rather just in a world full of injustice. Reading Rand and investigating who she was as a person and where she came from really lit a fire in me for more knowledge, so I began soaking up anything I could find that had to do with libertarianism, or capitalism. It was around this time that Ron Paul was releasing his homeschool curriculum and I was very interested in homeschooling our children. One of his collaborators was a man named Tom Woods and he was supposed to be some sort of history teacher. I decided to look him up and see if he was worth listening to. Mind = Blown this guy is an intellectual heavyweight. I've been listening to his daily podcast ever since, which has turned me on to economics like I never would have imagined. After years of listening to The Tom Woods Show, I've been turned onto a couple other great podcasters with varying backgrounds Brion Mcclanahan and Jason Stapleton. Between the three of them they school me on eonomics, history, and current events on a daily/weekly basis, and also have given me the confidence and motivation to start my own blog (and hopefully podcast). I would say that is my quickie biography in how I got to where I am today.

Now that everyone knows where I'm coming from I wanted to make todays political rant about labels and how stupid they are. I'm so tired of people labeling EVERYTHING! Republican vs Democrat, Black vs White, Rich vs Poor are you that small minded that you would base someones merit on a label? What degree of ignorance does it take to judge someone you know nothing about based on a quality they may not even be able to control. The way I see it we should all be judged as an individual based on our WORKS not on our WORDS. Anyone can say nice things, or have good intentions, but if they never make a stride towards actually doing the right things they are no closer to being righteous than the person that has done nothing. Judging people based on their works gets rid of all the meaningless labels and compels us to work together rather than against each other. When people work towards something they feel is right they don't care who is helping them black, and white, rich and poor, and other labels melt away as people work towards a common good.  I want this attitude to transfer over to political things, stop clinging to whether or not someone shares your label and find out if they share your views. I would be happy to work with a freedom loving democrat as much as a freedom loving republican as long as the end goal was more freedom and less government. We don't have to agree on everything, but when we find something we do agree on, lets work as a team, throw away our pride, and work together to achieve a better world. This is a call to action, and that action needs to start with communication. Unless you are willing to have meaningful discussion with people of other views you will NEVER know what they agree with you on. If you dismiss someone in their entirety just because you disagree with them on one subject you have lost a potential ally on another subject. Don't be afraid to talk to people, get educated on the topics that mean the most to you and share your feelings or ideas, but be willing to listen "respectfully" to other peoples ideas. Don't be afraid to challenge your own ideas or let other people challenge them, if someone finds holes in your beliefs be willing to admit its flaws and try to fix them, or be willling to admit you may be wrong. There is nothing wrong with changing your beliefs when you realize you may be wrong, its much worse (in my opinion) to hang onto a bad idea just to protect your pride in admitting you are wrong.

Now that everyone knows where I stand. Feel free to let me know what you believe in, and lets work together to change hearts and minds for the better.