Thursday, May 19, 2005

Because they're mine, I walk the line.

Someone asked me the other day whether I was a liberal or a conservative. I answered truthfully: I don't know.

It varies with the subject.

With some topics, I lean towards the liberal left and with other topics I lean towards to conservative right.

Mostly, I think I stand proudly straddling the dividing line, waiting to hear the subject at hand before I speak up.

It seems to me that if you declare yourself to be liberal, or conservative, then certain things are expected of you, and when you fail to deliver those expected things, people are upset.

How can anyone be 100% either way, on EVERYTHING? I don't think anyone can.

If the truth were told, I think most people have liberal leanings in some areas and conservative leanings in other areas.

What's the matter with standing in the middle and choosing the battles on which I declare a
liberal or conservative stand, carefully?

Even those subjects on which I lean to the right, there are many paths leading to the left there in plain view, and vice versa. I don't think I'm 100% conservative or 100% liberal on anything. I have a hard time believing in people who claim to be all or nothing either way.

Is this good? Is this bad? I don't know. It's me. If you ask me what I think, I will tell you. After 26 years in the public schools, I've seen a lot, both good and bad. I've seen parents at their best and at their worst, as anyone does in any job. I am of the belief that it is very hard sometimes for a parent to evaluate his/her own child. Sometimes, we have to step back and look with someone else's eyes. But even after all I've seen, I still believe that most people mean well. Most people are good people.

Unless, of course, they are too damn stupid to think for themselves, and must rely on a guru of some kind.

Beware of the guru, my friends. A guru is simply someone who's found an audience of suckers. Suckers with money.

When it comes to certain issues, I proudly take a stand. Even then, I'm a mix of both leanings. Why not? Few things are absolute, and I am a mixture in my definition of absoluteness.

In issues concerning children and young people, I tend to be conservative with a BIG dash of quirkiness and humor. To be conservative and have no sense of humor? God help us all with THOSE people.

In issues concerning politics and religion, I tend to be liberal with a BIG dash of quirkiness and humor. To be liberal and have no sense of humor? God help us all with THOSE people.

And depending on the particular item under discussion, those leanings can turn on a dime.

Today I've been debating with Emily, over on my beautiful friend Goldie's blog. I think Emily honestly means well, but Emily is a semi-advocate of the Pearls. The Pearls are the authors of the most horrible child-rearing book in existence today; it's nothing but a handbook for child abusers and bullies.

It's a losing battle, because she's convinced that beating 4-month-old infants and small children with sticks and raising welts and drawing blood are good things that make obedient properly subservient children, and I'm convinced that any advocate of the Pearls is a sadistic poison-laced-Kool-aid-drinking bully with a low IQ and a penchant for the tiny penis. (said penis being either personally owned or occasionally borrowed.)

See what I mean? My mild courteous stance with people who raise welts on tiny children is a tad on the conservative side. Whereas my liberal leanings are demonstrated by my name-calling skills. Just kidding.

But in case there is any doubt, I am far from liberal and far from conservative when it comes to children. I am MYSELF, and as I told Emily on that other blog, if any child stands before me with welts, I will have someone's sorry ass hauled before the judge faster than anyone can tell me which Pearl chapter tells parents they MUST humble their children and force them to acknowledge their parents as their masters. Mr. Pearl brags that his daughter would, without hesitation, jump out of the window of a moving vehicle if he so commanded her to do so. I find this mindset appalling.

I did not have children so I could show off blindly obedient little zombies who flinched when I moved and jumped when I spoke. I had children not just because my birth control pills failed, but because I WANTED children. Real children, with minds of their own.

My children did not misbehave in public. They knew better. We taught them to know better with means other than blood, welts, and tears. We occasionally spanked, but it was with a bare hand on a little bottom, and not with a tree branch on fragile little legs or hands. And we didn't have to spank very much. I hope it was by example that my children learned how to behave. I'm sure Belle will chime in with her version if I'm wrong.

I've gone back and forth in my rantings here. I'm really so upset by Emily and her slick script of 'beating your child is necessary and social workers are stupid for thinking welts and blood are bad,' that I'm more than a little incoherent. I do apologize.

Children are the most valuable things on the planet. They are ours for such a short time. Why do people use those few years to hurt them, and hit them, and make them bleed? The obedience these people seek can be had by simply loving them, and showing them by example. And, ok, once in a while whomping their little bottoms so they don't run out into traffic or drink Drano. But if a trained seal is what some people want, I wish they'd just steal one from a zoo and beat it raw till it balances that ball exactly right, and let someone with a kind heart and a working brain and some common sense raise the children.

Now. Am I conservative or liberal? You tell me. I honestly don't know.

I don't care, either. It's not like a label will make any difference.