Tomorrow I will be attending a wake for an old friend. He was a liberal. But Ralph was a "good" liberal.
I know sometimes it is hard to realize that there are both good and bad within the philosophy of the liberal. But I have several friends that I call "good" liberals and some ex friends that I call "bad" liberals. Ralph and Tom were/are good liberals. While we disagreed in philosophy we were still friends because we could talk about our differences.
Ralph turned 80 just a few months ago and he died just a few weeks ago of complications of Prostate Cancer. Whenever we talked politics he always had good reasons for his views. I didnt agree with his reasons, but they were well thought out and made sense if you accepted the original premise. He knew why he voted for Obama and to him it all made sense. We could discuss our differences and both of us gained from the discussions. I like to believe that I was on the way to converting him to be a Conservative, but in truth, I probably was not.
On the other hand, I once threw a woman out of my house whom I had called my friend. She voted for John Kerry. While voting for a traitor to our country, someone who had given comfort to our enemies in time of war, would probably not heve been enough for me to throw her out of my house, her reason for voting for him was enough to justify the action. When I asked, this apparently Christian woman, why she would vote for a traitor to our country, she said "Because I am a Democrat and my father was a Democrat and my Grandfather was a Democrat." I threw her out of the house.
Our Republic was designed by our forefathers to be self sustaining because it was driven by the will of the people. But our forefathers, I am sure, thought that that will would be a reasoned will. They did not plan on having robots casting votes at the polling places. The will of the people will produce a reasonable government only if the people are casting votes based on reason. People like Bonnie dont have a place in our democratic society. They have no worth to the rest of us. The value of a vote cast by just following a straight party line is nothing. Each vote must be thought out and cast because, in the mind of the voter, it will benefit the country.
Jim Isbell
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