My Name is Neal and I’m a Politiholic
Alcoholics describe their experience with alcohol in a way that very nearly mirrors my experience with political news. I have to try very hard to avoid partisan political discussion because even a small amount of exposure can send me spiraling into depression and ultimately a sense of despair. Some people can handle it. I cannot.
Growing up, I watched This Week with David Brinkley with my grandfather on Sunday mornings. I loved Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts and George Will. That was where my addiction started and by the time I was in college, I was a political news junkie. I listened to Rush Limbaugh for three hours a day and National Public Radio the rest of the time. On Sunday mornings I recorded the political shows so I could watch This Week, Meet the Press and The McLaughlin Group back to back.
At some point there was a shift away from politics being a positive form of entertainment. It because a source of frustration for me, especially as I began to think of myself as more of a Libertarian.
When Rush Limbaugh returned to his show after re-hab, he talked about how it’s much easier to be a happy person when you distance yourself from politics. That was it. I walked away and now, as much as possible, I try my best to stay away from it. I’d rather be happy than right.
I’ve exchanged politics for technology because technology offers real solutions rather than false promises and power grabs. On Brief 377 we covered a Silicon Valley company called LS9. They’ve genetically modified bacteria to feed on wood chips or straw and excrete crude oil. Within just a few years their technology very well may eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. The political arguments haven’t changed much in years and years. Technology can transform our lives virtually overnight.
I won’t always be able to avoid political discussions, but I’m trying as hard as I can. Live is much more fun without it.
Read MorePolitical Homelessness
I’m a Libertarian. I think I have been since I was five-years-old. My fundamental value is a belief in the right to be free. Since the Great Depression, government has slowly taken more and more power and responsibility away from individuals and it did it mostly with the consent of American people.
I’m a Reagan kid. He was called the great communicator, and it makes sense to me because I could comprehend his fundamental belief in limited government even as a young child. Liking Reagan made me feel like my political home was in the Republican Party. William F. Buckley, the great Libertarian intellectual and friend of Ronald Reagan, convinced me that I was really a Libertarian more than a conservative. Buckley felt at home in the Republican Party and that was good enough for me.
Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America was yet another welcome mat that made me feel at home in the Republican Party. I even used to call myself a conservative. Not anymore though. The Reagan Revolution is over and Republicans have rejected his mission to shrink government control over our lives.
I’m a Libertarian who believes government is too big and it doesn’t serve the goal of making men free. Not one of the three candidates for president believes in Reagan’s message that government is the problem not the solution.
McCain sounds like a Democrat when he speaks against tax cuts that are “for the rich.”
Hillary fundamentally believes in tax-payer funded healthcare one group at a slippery-slope time.
Obama understands liberty the least when he says things like, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.” He should be saying, “Yes we can!”
If we truly are in an energy crisis, isn’t it tame we roll up our sleeves and fix it? To do that, we have to strip away irrational regulation that keeps us from getting oil wherever we can find it. We need to build clean nuclear power plants that will be ready to charge our future electric cars (or whatever we end up with). We need to innovate like never before because there are solutions out there. Energy is everywhere and if America is still the great nation I grew up pledging allegiance to, we’ll capture it and improve the lives of people around the planet.
If someone starts talking like that rather than about regulating my thermostat setting, I might register to vote, but for now, I’m still politically homeless.
Read MoreIt’s Not Easy NOT Being Green
Someone posted a comment on BigTrip.TV:
I’m interested to know what you’re doing to offset the carbon emissions from this “trip”.
I love that he put the word trip in quotes, as if it’s somehow suspect and not really a trip at all. Surely our true intention is to destroy the planet as we know it with our harmful carbon emissions. I don’t care to argue, so I replied with a joke, “We’re going to eat more cows.”
We live in a time where environmental fascism is being pushed so hard and so often, that thinking, logical people are bending over and giving into global, irrational, unscientific peer pressure. You can’t turn on a television anymore without hearing environmentalist nonsense about being green to save the planet. The planet is not in danger.
As a thinking person, I can’t base my opinions about the environment and global warming on emotional arguments like those offered by Al Gore and his allies in Hollywood. My gut feeling is that their arguments are nonsense, and oh you cannot imagine how much, I would love to ignore these people and just go with my gut.
My gut instinct is based on simple logic. If scientists cannot accurately predict the weather next week, they also cannot predict the weather next century. It’s the same logic I used to discount disaster theories about Y2K. When everyone was worried and spending millions of dollars on solutions, I changed the clock on my computer to see what would happen at midnight, January 1, 2000. Nothing happened, so I knew nothing would happen anywhere else, and I was right.
I can’t rest with simple logic, though, because the people making arguments based on emotion appear to be winning public support. In order to continue to believe what I think is true, I have to spend time reading the science behind the arguments to see for myself it the emotional arguments have scientific validity.
The emotional argument is that the scientific community has reached the consensus that global warming is a reality and it’s caused by human activity. Global warming is necessarily bad, and since it is caused by humans, it can be corrected, but only if we act now before it’s too late.
There is nothing scientific, rational or even reasonable about that argument. To begin with, scientific fact isn’t determined by consensus. I worry about the state of science education if we don’t remember what we learned about the difference between law and theory in science.
It is a fact that the existence of global warming and its causes are based on climate models that could turn out to be accurate, but could just as easily turn out NOT to be accurate. It is also a historic fact that warmer periods in the past have resulted in global economic prosperity, so global warming, if it exited is more likely to be good for us than bad for us.
It is not, however, a fact that global warming exists. The planet hasn’t warmed since 1998, and 2007 was cool enough to offset all warming that has taken place over the past century.
One of my favorite presidents in history is Teddy Roosevelt. He loved nature and he lead us to set aside parts of our nation to be preserved in a natural state. Nature is good. Pollution is bad. Protecting nature is good. Making people feel guilting for using resources is evil.
Rather than bowing to environmental fascism, religious fundamentalism or any thought system not based on reason, I choose to embrace logic and balance. I have full confidence, when we go too far as humans, a little something God built into nature called homeostasis will bring everything back into balance.
My favorite climate scientist is Dr. Roy W. Spencer. He just released a book explaining climate science. It’s called Climate Confusion. It’s based on science not emotional arguments and I highly recommend it.
If you read this and disagree, feel free to post scientific research that contradicts what I’ve written. I would love to read it, but I’m not going to get into an emotional argument with anyone about science.
Read MoreCollide Magazine
Collide Magazine is a relatively new magazine. They interviewed Cali and me last year and the interview was published in the January edition. The tag line is, “Where Media and the Church Converge.” I’m not sure the tag line is entirely descriptive, but I can’t offer a better alternative.
Rob Thomas, the publisher, gave us a complementary subscription. I’ve read every issue from cover to cover.
Here’s the deal: I have a Christian past that is very church-centric. Growing up, I was so heavenly minded that I was of no earthly good. I carried my Bible to high school and never really talked to any of my fellow students. I spent all my free time hanging out in the sanctuary at church singing and playing the piano.
I also have a Christian present that is very different from my Christian past. As the church in America became more and more politically focused, I backed away. The Focus on the Family/American Family Association kind of Christianity, with it’s focus on sanitizing society from any kind of exposure to sin, just doesn’t look anything like the Jesus approach. He hung with prostitutes, drunkards, and worst of all, tax collectors. If the American Family Association existed in the Garden of Eden, they would have had the Tree of Knowledge chopped down and feed through a chipper.
The Christians who publish and write for Collide don’t seem to be scared of pop culture at all. They don’t print movie guides with warnings about every potential exposure to something impure. They write about movies just like regular, normal people who just also happen to be Christians. It’s such a novel approach that I can hardly adjust to it, but it is overwhelmingly refreshing.
On the Internet, we tend to gravitate toward people with similar ideas and sensibilities…even sometimes without even trying. I’ve gravitated toward a whole bunch of people who grew up loving Jesus, but feel like outsiders from mainstream, American Christianity. For those of you who are like me. Collide is worth a look. It’s caused me to do some deep thinking and it’s inspired some radical ideas that I’ll work on down the road.
Read MoreI Have to Find a way to Ignore the Election
I used to LOVE politics. I listened to NPR and Rush Limbaugh and watched the Sunday morning political shows. After Rush Limbaugh got out of rehab, he said something that changed my life. He said it’s much easier to be happy if you get away from all the talk about politics. I took that to heart and my blood pressure went down. It was a very good move.
I’m a Libertarian which is essentially the same as being politically homeless. Republicans are too socially conservative for my tastes. Both Democrats and Republicans are way too fiscally irresponsible for my tastes. I believe it’s always wrong to take money from one person to meet the needs of another because it takes away the means and motivation to be charitable. There isn’t a politician with a chance of winning that says anything like that.
I focus on technology because it’s optimistic and has the potential to bring about positive change in everyone’s lives.
Politics is about artificial change and hyping fear so a few people can gain power over the majority. Democrats hype fear about healthcare and climate change. Republicans hype fear about terrorism and illegal immigration. The end result when either side does anything is restriction of liberty, so my goal is to try as hard as I can to just ignore it and enjoy life.
The worst thing about politics is that it divides people, and I can’t see how that’s ever a good thing.
We’ve been talking about selling our stuff and taking Geek Brief on the road for a year. If we can make that happen, I think it would be a great way for us to ignore whatever is going to happen in November.