The Laughing Wolf

Most American politics is about fairly trivial stuff - a sure sign of our success as a nation. We have the great luxury of being able to ignore it most of the time, of being able to treat it like a game instead of a deadly serious conflict. People are used to being unserious about political things. Sure, they get worked up and yell a lot, but they often don't vote or actually open their wallets. It's not really that important to them.

The War On Terror is different. This is a must-win. Personally, I'm all for fighting this war aggressively, taking the offensive, and winning, without ambiguity or apology. That's what I'm for.

I'm for individual freedom. Everything else follows from that. Including my support for a war against people that would put half the world in burqas. And my lack of support for the religious right. And my lack of support for the nanny-state left.
Freedom.

I hit on the same thing in last two time's "Food for Thought"s.

WHat it comes down to for me is that I'm *for* individual liberty: everything else - yes, even the WOT - is secondary to that. I say "even the WoT" because if we lose our essential liberties, we have nothing worth fighting for.

Not as big a conflict as it may seem: we have people like Smash, Charles, Blackfive and Wiggins concentrating on the battleground vs Islamocfacism. It just puts my focus on a different front of the same war: the front against the creeping statism that's engulfing everything.

I have wondered frequently if the reason the Left doesn't define itself by what it's against isn't because there's a realization there that what they're for isn't something that's going to appeal to the electorate, an it were spelled out bluntly by them.

I'm all for freedom:

freedom to do as I want,
freedom to love as I want,
freedom from interference,
freedom from hate and fear...

But most of all, freedom to eat the home made cherry pie (featuring fresh picked cherries from my own tree) that is cooling in the kitchen as I type this. Now, if I could just figure out how to sneak it out from under the watchfull eyes of the rest of the household... };^)

Happy fourth, y'all!
jan

I ended up with an answer that was lengthy enough to warrant a post.

I kinda stole from Kathy K. :)

http://right-thoughts.us/index.php/weblog/what_do_you_stand_for/