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? 

I refused to see them as a hateful enemy.

And then I saw him 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.

Don’t want to hear about it, but still approve it

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 “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 programs 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.

Time to whittle away the differences

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 keep 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”

    —from the old Pogo Comic Strip)