HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Mar 28, 2004 At the age of 11, I had the honor of shaking hands with John F Kennedy. He was running for president in 1960 and made a speech at a shopping center in my hometown of Redondo Beach California. My mother took me out of school to see him. We were devout Catholics and my parents adored John Kennedy. Needless to say I grew up a Democrat. I was very liberal in my views when I was sent to Vietnam in 1969. I continued as a Democrat through college and even voted for Jimmy Carter twice. Then it happened. It was a slow process but a necessary one. I began thinking for myself and developed the art of critical thinking and objectivity. It is not easy to be a critical thinker. Sometimes you have to accept things that make you uneasy and go against prior beliefs. Objectivity is another tough concept to grasp and one many people never come close to understanding. Without going into more detail here is my point! I changed from a card carrying liberal in my 20s into a free thinking conservative in my 30s. As I developed my critical thinking skills I also developed a sense of who to believe and who to keep an eye on. Through this process I came to a stark conclusion regarding politics and political parties. This conclusion comes from observation, not political ideology—it comes from numerous discussions and arguments with friends and acquaintances—it comes from my life experiences and has been reinforced to me many times over the past three months. GENERALLY speaking: Liberal Democrats are not as smart as Conservative Republicans! If in reading this statement your blood began to boil and you couldn’t wait to fire off an attacking email to me, you just proved my point. If you were a critical thinker, your first instinct would have been to think about it for awhile and decide if maybe there is some merit to my conclusion. It gives me no great pleasure in stating this belief. It is something I see almost everyday. Let’s face facts—there are different ranges of intelligence in the human race--agreed. I know many people smarter than me. After talking to a person for a while I can recognize if that person is not too bright. And my life conclusion is that the less smart (not politically correct to use the word dumb) people in our society tend to drift toward the Democrat party. No big deal. They have to go somewhere. In closing, the beauty of my presumption is that the madder you become by the declaration, the more it proves my point! ------------ About the author: Pete Whalon has just completed a memoir on his Vietnam service. He is self-publishing the book and it should be ready for sale June 1st of this year. Email Pete Whalon: kinoman7@aol.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
