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The principles that rule this blog

Principles that will govern my thoughts as I express them here (from my opening statement):


  • Freedom of the individual should be as total as possible, limited only by the fact that nobody should be free to cause physical injury to another, or to deprive another person of his freedoms.
  • Government is necessary primarily to provide those services that private enterprise won't, or won't at a price that people can afford.
  • No person has a right to have his own beliefs on religious, moral, political, or other controversial issues imposed on others who do not share those beliefs.

I believe that Abraham Lincoln expressed it very well:

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot
so well do, for themselves — in their separate, individual capacities.”


Comments will be invited, and I will attempt to reply to any comments that are offered in a serious and non-abusive manner. However, I will not tolerate abusive or profane language (my reasoning is that this is my blog, and so I can control it; I wouldn't interfere with your using such language on your own!)

If anyone finds an opinion that I express to be contrary to my principles, they are welcome to point this out. I hope that I can make a rational case for my comments. Because, in fact, one label I'll happily accept is rationalist.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The result of the election

This will be the last post with a label "2008 election" on this blog. The election is over. and the people have spoken. And in our tradition, we have to accept the result, for the next 4 years. As John McCain said in his gracious concession speech, Barack Obama is our President, beginning in 2½ months.


As I said in my last post, the United States survived Bill Clinton; it will survive Barack Obama. I'm not going into mourning for this country; and I'm not closing this blog. (It is not intended as just a John McCain blog; I started it before I knew who the candidates would be in 2008, and my first choice wasn't even McCain, though I was happy enough to support McCain once he became the obvious front-runner for the nomination.)


I retain the right to criticize President-Elect Obama when I think he is wrong, just as many others have criticized our current President when they have thought he is wrong. I also retain the right to support him whenever I think he is doing the right thing, though I doubt that will happen very often; this is not like a Parliamentary system such as Great Britain's, where "the duty of the opposition is to oppose."


John McCain joins a group of people I have felt should have been President but didn't make it. Some, like Bob Dole, at least made it as far as their party's nomination, as McCain did this year. Others, including Arlen Spector, Bob Dole's wife Elizabeth, George Romney, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and my own political hero, Nelson A. Rockefeller, never even got the nomination. Any of these might have made an excellent President, if the American people had chosen him or her for the job. (You note that all the men and women I have mentioned were Republicans, though Kirkpatrick started her career in the Democratic Party. This is no coincidence. I've rarely seen a Democrat I could support. Jimmy Carter, one of the few Democrats who wasn't too far to the political left for me, was too politically naïve for the job, and made a most incompetent President.)


It should be obvious to all who have read this blog that I believe that the people chose wrong. It seems that the economic meltdown came at just the wrong time; McCain had been starting to move upward in the polls and if there had not been such an economic collapse, I might be today cheering the public's choice of John McCain as our President-Elect. But the 2008 election is over. I hope I will still be alive in 2012 when, I'm sure, the people will choose a new President better qualified and more worthy.

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