Saturday, March 22, 2008

Visiting The Family

I spent Thursday night, Friday, and most of the day Saturday with my parents. Got to visit with my sister, brother, and his wife as well. Enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Dad and I have been talking quite a bit lately about a number of topics and we've had a few disagreements. Most of these have been caused by the outlook on life that I've come to accept in the past few years.

The basic gist of what our disagreements center around is my belief that one should be personally responsible for one's own safety/security and as long as you aren't infringing on anyone else's rights, you're fine. That sometimes directly conflicts with dad's belief that some intervention is necessary to protect people from themselves.

I'm not used to disagreeing with my dad on much of anything. As a kid, I generally accepted his opinion on matters as the "gospel truth" so to speak and that habit followed me as I matured. I'm pretty sure it's a side effect of my lack of experience and natural tendency to defer judgement on matters I know little to nothing about to others I trust. It's made for some interesting adjustments in my thinking that I'm still in the process of understanding and building around. Unfortunately, my inability to adequately throw thoughts into a cohesive verbal response on-the-fly has been hampering my ability to communicate to him the reasons for the conclusions I've reached on several matters.

The reason I bring this up is that I've recently read a couple of posts put together by the Munchkin Wrangler that I'm pretty sure dad and I would be at odds over. My inclination is to let the free market sort itself out and for government to have as little power as is necessary to make sure everyone plays according to the rules. The rules being "no infringing on the rights of others".

I'm now beginning to truly understand why folks use the phrase "heartless libertarian".

1 comment:

Brian Junyor said...

Did you know that Herbert Hoover never promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." ?

It's important to figure out what you believe, and as you correctly alluded to, just as important to figure out why you believe it. In your search, you might find old truths to be justified or they might just be a "chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."

Ha! Finally worked Herbert Hoover into a reply.