Look At It This Way (#LAITW)

Heck yes, I’m going to be judgmental. We have to be. We make survival judgments all day long. And we should.

Whether we’re perfect or not.

I saw a post that said, “Before you judge me, make sure you’re perfect.” Don’t count on it, sister. If you’re coming at me with a weapon, I’m going to judge you to be a threat and do whatever possible to stop you, including the use of lethal force. Whether I’m perfect or not.

If you’re a thief, I’m going to judge you accordingly. Whether or not I’m perfect. If you lie, I will judge you to be a liar. Whether or not I’m perfect.

In fact, I know I’m not perfect. But that is not going to slow me down making judgments throughout the day that hopefully will support my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

I will judge you. And I stand ready to be judged.

Rush Limbaugh made an interesting point recently. What if the rules of politics were as respected and as adhered to as rules in sports? You break a rule in sports and you get penalized, almost immediately. Everyone respects the rule books. It’s what makes the game fair. You know, the “even playing field.”

Not so in politics. Politicians lie left and right. And with virtually no consequences. In fact, often to their advantage. One politician I could name owes millions to the IRS and nobody seems to care, nothing happens to penalize this politician.

What if… What if we demanded that our politicians play by the rules?! Say the rules of law including the Constitution. What if there were real consequences that set the offender back a few yards. I have a dream…

I like the way Ayn Rand puts it:

“If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.”

Here’s the resolution I would offer to everyone in the country…

“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” (JFK)

What a different world it would be.

If only spirits like that dominated.

Be reasonable. It’s OK to recognize your mistakes and fix them. That’s a good thing. Both for individuals and all the way up to a nation in general. But this country seems to have gone way overboard. Everything is wrong with the U.S. There are those who would have you believe that everything wrong in the world is America’s fault, too. Don’t sucker for that. It simply isn’t true. In the big picture, we have a very great deal to be proud of, both for how we’ve done internally and for how much we help the world. People flock here for a reason. Actually, for lots of reasons.

If too many of us let ourselves get sucked into the America Sucks rhetoric, we’re toast.

I often find myself wondering if any of it matters. To me. In the long run. Is there a prize at the end, given out by some one or some thing that knows all, for having pushed the right messages all my life? How about for being right more than half the time?

Is there an all-knowing, all-seeing being to whom I must ultimately answer that knows what all the right moves should have been? Does liberty and freedom and small government lead to a better world in 2515 than would big government and socialism?

What I really wonder is whether my wildly liberal/socialist friends and family members will get smacked down at the pearly gates.

What’s the point of playing politics if you never find out, definitively, who won? And by win, I mean moved the world in directions that led to the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.

Will I ever enter the promised land? Wait, I know how that turned out for Moses…

An argument for a sales tax on internet purchases is “the government needs/deserves its fair share.” Horse pucky. Outside of very limited, actually helpful, things government has done to support commerce (generally under the hard infrastructure category), there’s no argument that government deserves anything from commerce. Commerce is just another source of money for the government to spend wherever it wants.

It’s hard to predict what you’re going to really care about as you approach death’s door. Here are the five most common regrets folks within weeks of dying revealed to one nurse. Perhaps knowing about these will help you minimize your regrets at the end.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

From “Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed“.

If you’re misled, are you stupid? No. If you let yourself be misled by the same people again and again, are you being stupid? Yes.

Well… I’m not a fan of the word stupid, but it does approach the right idea. Maybe irrational would be a better word. Or, some say the definition of insanity is to repeat the same action expecting a different result. That’s closer.

At some point, you’ve got to wake up and smell the coffee.

If a law is written and/or approved by people exempt from that law, whether outright or by practicality, we’re screwed.