I looked into the other side of the political spectrum and I saw something I hardly recognized.

I saw myself.

How did this come about, this kinship I felt develop with those I meant to separate from? It was simple. I refused to see them as a hateful enemy, but instead, as someone I could try to understand from my own perspective from within.

I too place the highest esteem on rugged individualism. I don’t want any handouts and I think persons grow stronger when they must conquer adversities in their lives including economic, social and physical ones. I like the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and believe that a man has a right to defend himself — and more importantly his family — if he truly believes they’re threatened by serious bodily harm and taking another’s life is the only way to prevent deadly force.

I never want to hear that someone got an abortion, or learn that a woman would ever find herself in such a desperate situation where the only option left to her was to choose such an irreparable action.

Government should stay out of my private affairs and require a “means testing” for recipients of any programs the US and other industrial nations have created as safety nets. I would include America’s Social Security and Medicare pacts in those categories.

I would do away with all wasteful regulations and give bonuses to government workers who devise plans to cut spending, even if it meant savings by trimming their own department’s annual budget.

I want someone to invoke the goodness and compassion of a higher force when someone opens public meetings, but it doesn’t have to be the One I believe in.

You know, I ain’t so much different from those guys “over there.” Now that I see how alike we are, perhaps we can whittle away at the differences we believe keeps us so far apart. I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.(youtube.com)

 (“We have met the enemy and he is us” is from the old Pogo Comic Strip)