Caveat Canem

Photo by Barbara Peterson

Human behavior is widely believed to be unpredictable; people are too complex, we think. We cannot make assumptions about how people will act in a given circumstance or when they are confronted with a specific scenario. Generally it is true. There is one class of individual however that is occasionally as predictable as, say, dogs...and that is the people who own them.

Now the custodianship of dogs poses important problems. They are among the most highly evolved of vertebrates, and so they have complex central nervous systems. For that reason they are subject to many of the same psychological disorders that afflict humans, such as anxiety and depression. Because they are predatory carnivores they can inflict grievous injury and even, on occasion, death. They also produce great quantities of waste. They demonstrate affection in ways that strike many people as obnoxious, like licking, jumping about and the always mortifying leg-humping. They are also among the noisiest of pets, given to barking and howling at night, when their human counterparts have the greatest expectation for peace and quiet.

I myself am of two minds when it comes to dogs. On the one hand, they are intelligent, generally speaking loyal, and occasionally quite beautiful. On the other hand, and I am with the Muslims on this one, they are "unclean." As soon as you enter a home you know dogs live there because of the strong, disagreeable odor. And I rather dislike the canine saliva foyer bath accompanied by the lighthearted chuckle of the owner.

All things considered I like dogs but I do not own one. Of the reasons I have chosen not to have a dog, the most important one by far is the same as the reason I got a vasectomy: I want to limit my responsibilities. Dogs are almost as much responsibility as children. They consume a lot of food and they produce a similarly great quantity of my least favorite substance, excrement. I do not want to worry that my dog would bite a neighbor's child, that my dog's barking would disturb my neighbors, that my dog would dig up a neighbor's flower beds.

Too many dog owners, however, seem unfazed by the burden of responsibility for their pets. Because they love their animal and because they are accustomed to its behaviors, they seem immune to incessant barking and they sleep peacefully while their neighbors pace, wringing their hands, frantic at the prospect of a workday severely deprived of sleep. Dog owners do not want to be put upon to handle their dog's excrement, but they behave as if you should be grateful to them when their animal deposits large mounds of it in your yard. In one neighborhood where I lived, the slovenliness of dog owners affected everyone. An individual who had a lap dog got up before dawn and toileted his dog in an open field. The children who played there had be careful not to step or fall in the dozens of gooey mounds of filth. In that same neighborhood there was a beautiful walkway between two subdivisions; this path was bordered by rushes and ornamental grasses but the effect was ruined in the spring, when the warm temperatures accelerated the decomposition of hundreds of pounds of fecal matter left there during the winter. The stench made an otherwise pleasant walk a nauseating experience.

As disturbing and irritating as is the blasé of dog owners with respect to the noise and stink of their pets, there is nothing less rational than a dog owner's indifference to the potential danger of his animals to others.

Dog bite and dog attack are significant public health problems. There are a lot of data on this important issue (dogbitelaw.com references epidemiology from the CDC and some noteworthy articles from the medical literature). Almost five million people a year suffer dog bites, and nearly a million of those require medical attention. In 2010 there were 34 recorded fatalities in the US from dog attack, and whether injured or killed, the victim is usually a child. It is disturbingly common that when a dog attacks someone, the owner has been repeatedly warned about the animal getting loose and demonstrating threatening behavior. More infuriating still is the astonishment feigned by owners of dangerous breeds (Pit Bull, Rottweiler, etc.) when their pets fulfill their genetic destiny by disfiguring or killing an innocent person.

Another disturbing aspect of the problem of the dog owner is the intransigence of those in authority when they are made aware of irresponsible behavior. In many neighborhoods across the Fruited Plain, people live in fear of the Neighborhood Association, anxious that if they do not keep their lawn sufficiently neat their houses will be foreclosed on! A dog owner however can repeatedly violate rules and ordinances regarding keeping their pets leashed or enclosed, without any trepidation whatsoever; the worst that will happen is endless advisements from the neighborhood officials. On the few occasions where I myself have called attention to a neighbor's pattern of letting his animals wander freely, not only unrestrained but also unsupervised, I have been made to feel like an insufferable crank with a bizarrely un-American point of view. I no longer bother, what is the point? The unpleasant reality is that while the courts increasingly hold dog owners responsible for the tragic consequences of attacks (some have even been found guilty of murder), accountability does not confront them until the point of a catastrophic event. Authorities are enabling of, and therefore complicit in, the idiotic choices of the most irresponsible of dog owners.

Dogs are wonderful creatures; they have provided countless years of high quality companionship through many ages and many civilizations. I believe in the right to have a dog, just like I believe in the right to have a gun. But as with guns and children, it is certain that if only those who were truly responsible would have them, they would be far fewer in number. In fact, there seems at times to be a reciprocal relationship between the numbers of dogs and children and guns one has and the degree to which, in general, one accepts responsibility.

To those in my neighborhood who let their dogs run the streets in packs, my advice is to you is talk to your insurance agent about getting an umbrella policy. Because if you don't have one and your animal causes harm to me or someone in my family, my lawyer and I will joylessly divide your property down to your last pair of socks. Ninety nine percent of the evil in the world is done not by devils and demons but by foolish and negligent people like you. When calamity of this sort strikes you, your conviction that it was none of your doing will do precious little to quiet the rumbling of your stomach.

Copyright 2011 Robert Albanese

Transience

Time is the Purified Essence of all things longed for and all things cherished.

Copyright 2011 Robert Albanese

Consider...

God made men free, but this has never been good enough for man. The history of mankind is the story of men seeking power over one another. Reflect on this as we surrender our freedoms to our New God, The State, in exchange for protection from the Boogey Man of Terrorism.

Copyrigth 2011 Robert Albanese

Byzantine

In common usage, the word "byzantine" means unnecessarily complicated, and it always carries a negative connotation. It is hard to imagine why "byzantine," the only remnant in our language of one of the greatest empires in the history of the world, should not reflect the glory that once upon a time could not be separated from this word.

The Byzantine Empire is virtually unknown in the contemporary age of the West. In his book "The History of Christianity," British historian Paul Johnson makes virtually no mention of the Orthodox East! Very few Americans know where it was, when it was, and what it stood for. It lasted for a thousand years, and it would probably be here today in a more visible form if it had not been under almost constant attack from the Catholic West and the Islamic East.

They did not call themselves Byzantines, for that name derives from the old name of its capitol, Byzantium. They called themselves "Romaios" and their Muslim neighbors called them "Rûm." It was the first great Christian empire and for about nine centuries it was a buffer between Europe and Islam. They had universal literacy when almost no one in the West could read or write. They had female physicians and tolerance for other faiths, including Islam. They practiced good hygiene when everyone in Western Europe smelled like a barnyard animal. Already weakened by repeated attacks by the Catholic west, it eventually vanished in an Ottoman Islamic tidal wave, and the world lost a great civilization.

But it is not entirely gone. Russia remains an Orthodox empire, and in the sixteenth century it was christened the "Third Rome" by a monk named Filofey. The Islamic world, particularly Turkey, borrowed heavily from the Byzantines, particularly in their architecture. Now I was always told that the Renaissance in Italy happened because of trade with the Arabs, who had preserved the Greek classics. In reality it happened because of all the Byzantine scholars who fled as the Turks advanced; they went to Italy and brought the embers of the forgotten Greek classics with them. Some eighty percent of the original Greek classic manuscripts we know of today were brought to the West by these Byzantines.

So Russia, Turkey and Islam, and the West after the Renaissance all bear the stamp of Byzantium. But in my opinion, there are Byzantines among us. You can't tell them by looking at them and some of them probably do not know they are neo-Byzantines. You can discern their nature only by perceiving the contents of their minds.

A Byzantine is someone who can see with the "three eyes:" Rationalism, empiricism and mysticism. The Byzantines know what these words mean and they know when the use of each one is appropriate. Most contemporary Americans can only see dimly with one, but the neo-Byzantine can see the cosmos is three dimensions, each perspective sharpening and clarifying the image of the other two.

The neo-Byzantines do not apologize for a love of learning, and they do not apologize for a love of God. By this criterion they are aliens in contemporary America, because it seems that in our age, academia and faith are perceived as incompatible with each other.

Finally, the thing that separates the neo-Byzantines most dramatically from the rest of contemporary society is that they are students of the pagan classics of ancient Greece and Rome to the same degree that they are students of the Bible, the Philokalia and so forth. Unlike Westerners, they do not see the two as incompatible, but rather complementary. Westerners of our age have returned to the Darkness of the European Middle Ages by discarding the ancient wisdom of the Greeks, condemning ourselves to relearning hard lessons with every generation.

I used to feel sadness that Byzantium is gone but then realized that it is all around us. A light that brilliant cannot be completely extinguished. While those of us who are its citizens-in-exile are for the time being few, I believe that this flame will blaze again in some other form. We will eventually dwell within the vastness of its borders, either in this age or more perfectly, in the next.

Copyright 2011, Robert Albanese Presentations

Consider....

It is often said by mature single women that "all the good ones are taken." With some reflection I have ascertained that married men were in fact idiots and slobs when their wives started dating them; they are "good ones" now because of years of the determined discipline of their wives. Dating a married man is like having a nanny; you get to enjoy the kids without cleaning the poop off their butts.

Copyright 2011 Robert Albanese

Advice to Young Men

Some years ago a friend of mine, let's call him Tony, told me a story of his father. "He was an asshole," my friend said. His blue collar family had lived in a spacious rustbelt house and being faithful Catholics, his parents filled the home with children. Tony remembered his father as taciturn as a stone but easily irritated. "He came home from work, had a beer, fell asleep in front of the TV, had dinner, went to bed." It would seem that his father lived this way without much deviation until his somewhat early death.

I have heard stories like this one many times through the years. What woman, I have always wondered, would fall in love with someone like my friend's father? I suppose we are to believe a woman meets a man like that and says to herself, "He is silent and irritable, a real jerk! I must make a family with him!" Not likely. Her husband must have undergone some kind of change. Perhaps he changed because his wife changed, and with that, his whole life changed. And in all of this business he could have taught an important lesson to his sons, but he didn't, and fathers never do.

In medical practice you become a student of humanity through reading and experience. After a few years patterns emerge and from those patterns you learn lessons and principles in life that would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to learn otherwise. In effect you live many lives, and you acquire what used to be precious but now is not highly valued: Wisdom. Wisdom demands to be shared, even if only the rocks are listening. So I'm going to tell you something your fathers never tell you. Something you really need to know.

The best thing that can happen in a young man's life is the love of a woman. Now I know there are men who prefer the romantic company of other men, and as a strong believer in secular democracy, I aggressively support their right to do as they wish. Nevertheless I can't help feeling badly for them that they do not share this experience. Maybe they say the same thing about us.

But most of you fellows know what I'm talking about. She is young and beautiful and she thinks more highly of you than you think of yourself. She is an incredible confidante. She listens to you attentively, she laughs at your jokes and she never tires of your kisses. She is astonishingly thoughtful and clever; she always smells great. She drives you mad with desire, and the miracle is you have the same effect on her. She gives you something you'll only get once in your life and only for a short time: Love that verges on unconditional.

It would be paradise for us men if we could freeze time in that lovely frame and enjoy the romance and the passion until the sun burns out. But we cannot. Women are by their very nature agents of change in our lives. It has been so decreed from Mount Olympus and there is no point in opposing heaven.

For all the violins and harp music and glasses of wine and poetry by the fireside, for all the euphoria and heavy breathing, for all the daydreams and popular songs, marriage is designed by God for the procreation of our species, not for our individual joy. And for many men, maybe most, it can at times seem like the world's greatest bait-and-switch. Let us deconstruct this process together and examine it under the cool fluorescent light of reason, not intoxicated by the hormones and pheromones of the Call of the Wild.

You put the gold on her finger and then you have a few very happy years if you are fortunate. When the children come along, however, your wife undergoes a sudden and dramatic metamorphosis. There is no deception on her part; remember that this whole process exists because we are designed to pass on our genetic material, protect our young, provide for our families and then to die. But this transformation your wife will undergo will leave you surprised and dismayed.

You will vanish from her field of awareness, you will become an annoyance. All of the tenderness that she beamed at you like a burning sun vanishes in an abrupt emotional eclipse. Your relationship, once so comforting and intimate, becomes triangulated and rectangulated and so on ad nauseam by the children, her mother, her friends. If one day, God forbid, your plane were to crash on a business trip, some weeks later someone in your house would look at your empty chair at the dinner table and say, "Whatever happened to that guy that used to sit there? The guy with the money. He was an asshole."

When he and his wife are young and full of sexual energy, a man's heart bursts with happiness. But sex is the great casualty of family life. Most women lose interest in it almost completely and even though sex within marriage is sanctioned by every culture and religion, your need for it has now transformed you into a selfish bastard. Your love life has departed on the 3:10 to Yuma! If you are fortunate it will improve to some extent as the children grow up, but it will never be as it was. This is reality for at least ninety percent of American men. It is not good, it is not evil, it is reality.

Most men react to their new lives in a few predictable ways. One unfortunate way is to take a lover outside of the marriage. Now the sexual winter of the marriage does not justify adultery; all the same it seems unfair that in the public dialogue on failing marriages, this issue is off-limits. I think that our churches and our culture apply pressure on men to regress toward some gender defined mean; our Western Civilization cannot, in contrast the Islamic world, come to terms with male sexuality. The American male's desire for sex in marriage becomes a nuisance to his wife and not only does she not consider it her duty to participate, she perceives her husband's desire for her as insensitive and so do her friends and so does her gynecologist. But please listen to me my young friends: Women are the answer to the problem of women like gin is the answer to the problem of gin. Here are scenarios I have seen played out a hundred times, you are certainly familiar with them too. These are such common patterns of behavior they call into question our assumptions about human individualism and free will.

A man's wife has lost interest in him and he becomes despondent. He is also angry; he feels cheated by her for ignoring him. He meets a younger woman who makes him feel the way his wife did once and he has an affair with her. He convinces himself that she is different, she will love him without changing, so he leaves his wife and children and he and his girlfriend move in together in a small apartment. Inevitably he becomes insufficient for her, she also must have children of her own. They have one child, then two. Now he is in the same predicament he was in before, an unwelcome intrusion into the mother-child-mother-in-law closed system, but now he has impoverished himself by multiplying the number of his dependents.

Then there is the woman who convinces our American male that she is like him, she wants sex and nothing else. NSA--no strings attached! What luck! he says to himself. They have clandestine meetings full of perspiration and passion but the character of it starts to change, she becomes jealous of his wife. When Christmas comes and she is alone, her fantasies of her lover in a Thomas Kincaid home with his wife and children opening gifts fill her with rage. She calls his wife and tells everything so they can all have a terrible Christmas together.

Then there is the woman who actually does like sex as much as men. Such women are rare indeed and that is probably a good thing. For if she likes physical love as much as a man, she would effectively be doing it constantly, as all of the men in her sphere of acquaintance are instantly ready to oblige her. Her exposure to bacteria and viruses and protozoa would be therefore be similar to that of homosexual males, and the unfortunate husband who chooses her as a lover might be found out because of an infection he passes on to his wife. Imagine the damage control in that situation!

The other common choice men make is to involute, as my friend's father did. Your wife has become deeply enmeshed in the lives of her friends, her parents, her siblings and her children (and in the latter case to us their fathers it seems unhealthy). She is very reluctant to have sex with you, and if you choose to be faithful, it means you will be essentially celibate within your marriage. You will spend the rest of your life working to support your family without the consolation of the tender love of your wife, for after she has worried about her mother and her father and her brother and her sister and her son and her other son and her daughter and her other daughter, there is really nothing left. Pleasures in such a man's life are few indeed: a little quiet, a cold beer, some tobacco, a football game on TV. You develop a hard shell and even though your life is dedicated to providing for your wife and children, you will die in your sixties and your gravestone will say "He was an asshole."

How many men say to themselves: Why didn't my father warn me about this? In retrospect our American man may see his father in a new light, as a man trying to cope with the unpleasant reality of unanticipated isolation. But no father can bring himself to talk to his son about this dilemma. We cannot tolerate the thought of the act by which our parents conceived us, the act without which we would not even exist. This conversation would make the skin crawl of both the father and the son, as it is in the end a discussion with the son about the sex lives of his parents (shudder).

With this knowledge, however, young men can make informed decisions. One path is to decide not to have children. I've known a number of couples through the years who have chosen to remain childless, and they seem quite a bit happier, their intimacy deeper. What strikes me about these couples is how much they do together; they travel, they dine in interesting restaurants, they go to plays and operas and sometimes they even read the same books. My Catholic and LDS friends will object, saying that we are commanded to raise up a population on the earth and we have to do as we are told by God, it is selfish to choose not to have a family. In my opinion, however, having children in a world of almost seven billion people is even more selfish. Also, how do Catholics feel about the profligate reproduction of Mormons? How do Mormons feel about that of the Catholics? I suspect each believes that the commandment to be "fruitful and multiply" applies peculiarly to them, not so much to the mongrels of the other faith.

For men, choosing not to have children is not without risk. It is never possible to be completely confident that your wife will not change and begin to yearn for children. I recall the scene from When Harry Met Sally:

Sally: When Joe and I started seeing each other, we wanted exactly the same thing. We wanted to live together, but we didn't want to get married because every time anyone we knew got married, it ruined their relationship. They practically never had sex again. It's true, it's one of the secrets that no one ever tells you. I would sit around with my girlfriends who have kids - and, actually, my one girlfriend who has kids, Alice - and she would complain about how she and Gary never did it anymore. She didn't even complain about it, now that I think about it. She just said it matter-of-factly. She said they were up all night, they were both exhausted all the time, the kids just took every sexual impulse they had out of them. And Joe and I used to talk about it, and we'd say we were so lucky we have this wonderful relationship, we can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in. We can fly off to Rome on a moment's notice. And then one day I was taking Alice's little girl for the afternoon because I'd promised to take her to the circus, and we were in the cab playing "I Spy" - I spy a mailbox, I spy a lamp-post - and she looked out the window and she saw this man and this woman with these two little kids. And the man had one of the little kids on his shoulders, and she said, "I spy a family." And I started to cry. You know, I just started crying. And I went home, and I said, "The thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment's notice."
Harry: And the kitchen floor?
Sally: [sadly] Not once. It's this very cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile.

So of course Sally dumps Joe like a sack of fertilizer. A man who chooses this path may wind up passing through a several relationships until he finds the woman for whom he is truly all that she needs.

Another pathway is that of life without women at all. The happiest man I ever knew was a psychiatrist who was one of our supervisors in residency. The thing I remember most about him was his bellowing laugh. He loved to golf, and he golfed every weekend, answerable to no one. He did what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. He told me once that he had been married for one year and then divorced. "Marriage was the dumbest thing I ever did," he observed. Some young men reading this paragraph will say that's all well and good, but I couldn't live without sex. My friend, you have not been paying attention: No matter which path you choose you are going to be living without sex to a greater or lesser degree. There are two disadvantages to this lifestyle. though. The first is that speculation as to your sexuality will follow you constantly. "Confirmed bachelor" appears to be a euphemism for homosexual. The other, and the most important one, is the lack of abiding friendship that fortunate men have with their wives. There is no guarantee you'll have that kind of relationship with your wife however, as some relationships devolve into irritability and resentment. We have all known couples such as those! A third objection to the choice of a single life is: "I don't want to die alone." According to existential psychiatrists, everyone dies alone. Perhaps, too, it would be better not to cause so many people such bitter sorrow as your final act.

Then of course, knowing all this, a young man can choose to marry and have children anyway. The life of a family man is a good life. That's precisely why married men rarely leave their wives for their mistresses, and it's why an adulterer's behavior is often so pathetic when he is caught. Unburdened by the delusion that marriage will be sexually fulfilling, a man can enjoy the comforts of a peaceful domesticated family man's life without accumulating resentment toward his partner. Prepared for the change his wife will undergo, our young American father pursues activities that he finds gratifying and that do not require the participation of his wife. Common examples are sports, fishing, amateur radio, computers and so on. As the children get older, these activities often become a foundation for sharing time and experiences with their fathers. And having children adds dimensions to a man's life as they do to a woman's. There is pride in their achievements, fascination at the evolution of their personalities and eventually grandchildren (they provide the joy of children with much less aggravation and sorrow).

Unfortunately I have to make a disclaimer to a point I made previously. I have observed that male sexuality is accepted as normal and natural by Islamic society. The fact that there is no celibacy in Islam implies to me that they do not perceive sexual activity as an obstacle to holiness, to oneness with God. In one pamphlet I read about Islam, the author justified the practice of polygamy on the grounds that it is a solution to the disparity in sex drive between men and women. Now Americans, unfortunately, are relatively incapable of nuanced thinking. If I say I like white, it means that I hate black. If I say I favor limited government, I am a racist. In this case, the primordial binary mind of the American perceives my praise of Islam for its acceptance of maleness as a hatred of women; they assume that I believe women should be enslaved, that they should be forced to wear burkhas and forbidden to drive, that they should be beaten when they do not obey their husbands. Under what exercise of thought is that conclusion justified? I do not believe that fairness to men must equal the oppression of women, and I do not believe that the rise of women must happen by placing obstacles to men. To me it seems reasonable and necessary that our society formulate cultural practices that enhance the likelihood of success in life for both women and men, not one at the expense of the other.

Back to the original point of this essay, the purpose of it is to help young men enter into family life with the necessary knowledge of how it works. Behavioral psychologists say, in contrast to analytical psychiatrists, that emotions are caused by thoughts. In chronically angry and depressed people they often identify cognitive distortions. I can think of no better example of a cognitive distortion than the notion that wives should not change. Maybe Tony's father was an asshole because he was an asshole, but maybe it was because he entered marriage and family life thinking that his wife would always be there for him in the way that he needs. When she became psychologically and physically unavailable to him, he became depressed and angry because he felt that it should not be this way. If his father could have prepared him for what was coming, he might have adjusted better to the dramatic changes his life would undergo.

So get married and have children. When your wife assures you that she will not change and your relationship will always be the same, she is not lying because she believes what she is saying. Nevertheless is it far from the truth. You are now prepared for what is to come.

You're welcome.

Copyright 2011 Robert Albanese Presentations

My Left from My Right

When I was a boy, I went to my school library and got a book about the American presidents. This was some years ago of course so it only went up through Kennedy or perhaps Lyndon Johnson. Each president was represented by a few photographs and some biographical information. I saw that there were only Republicans and Democrats from Lincoln onward, and decided that I must be one of the two. My favorite presidents were Lincoln, Grant, Theorodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy, so I decided I must be a Republican, four to one after all.

I went home after school that day and asked my father whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. "I'm a Republican," he said to my relief. He told me that his father, an Italian immigrant with a very Mediterranean appearance and a strong accent in English, came to America and found a Democratic Party dominated by Irishmen who had no love for the Italians. He became a loyal Republican and was even president of his local Republican Party.

When I got to high school, I came to believe that I should think this politics and economics business through for myself and I briefly thought of myself as a socialist. After further reading and consideration I determined, as a senior, that I was a Libertarian and I have remained Libertarian for 35 years.

As a young man, it seemed to me an important thing to embrace the most coherent philosophy, the most correct philosophy, the one that was the most humanistic. I reasoned that since the Right only thinks you should have one set of freedoms, and the left thinks you should only have another different set of freedoms, these two philosophies must be predicated on a contempt for mankind, and I still believe this concept to be true. After all, if you believe that Mankind is basically good, why must humans be controlled by the State? While I was a senior in high school I watched a television debate between a liberal atheist and a conservative evangelical minister. In he end the only thing they could agree on was that Mankind is basically Evil. Paradoxically, both say they love Mankind. Well I say if you love Mankind and you believe we are Evil, then you love Evil and you yourself are Evil! I do not believe we should give Evil people power over us by electing them to public office.

So for many years I have lived on the lonely, rocky outpost of Libertarianism, nonetheless secure in the knowledge that I have researched the philosophies and I have chosen the correct one, the superior one, the most internally consistent one. As I have grown into an old silverback male gorilla, though, it seems a lot less important to me how right I am and how wrong everyone else is.

How nice it would be, I thought, to be a Liberal Democrat! I could have intellectual friends and go to stimulating cocktail parties and talk about thought provoking books. I would not have to apologize for a love of learning and admiration for the French. Being a Federal Employee, I would share my philosophy with most of the people I work with, and I would finally be a part of something bigger than myself. Maybe then I would have the one thing that has eluded me my entire life, a sense of belonging. My Liberal Democrat friends would welcome me as one of their own, and our relationships would be deeper than I thought possible.

On the other hand, I could be a Conservative Republican! I would have industrious, successful friends who yearn to be unencumbered by socialist utopianism. I'd go to relaxing backyard barbecues and talk about investment and home repair and pass the time with people to whom I need not apologize for my belief in God and my Farmer's Almanac values. And I'd have that thing that has eluded my me entire life, a sense of belonging, and my Conservative Republican friends would embrace me as one of them and suddenly I'd be connected to people in a way I never been before.

So I thought about changing into something much more conventional; now that I am a silverback, connectedness seems more important than being right. But then I realized that I cannot be a Liberal Democrat, because I cannot mobilize bitter hatred for Conservative Republicans. And I cannot be a Conservative Republican, because I do not harbor scorching contempt for Liberal Democrats. Often I hear Conservatives say horrible things about Liberals, and the Liberals react with indignation and shock. And yet, when Liberals say equally terrible things about Conservatives, the utter lack of of a sense of fairness is completely invisible to them. Similarly, when Liberals malign Conservatives, the latter react with astonishment, as if they are not just as guilty as their mirror-image Liberals. This idiocy is all the stranger to a Libertarian, to whom Liberalism and Conservatism seem so similar.

So I suppose I will live as I have lived, on this cold and windy philosophical outpost, believed to be insane by the vast majority of people. I'll just continue to mumble to myself and dream of a Libertarian non-Utopia and pretend that the non-Libertarian Utopians can get along. I guess I'll never get close enough to find out otherwise.

Copyright 2010 Albanese Presentations