Politics

I very rarely comment on any of my political beliefs, in person or through my blog.

That said, today is an exception, and one that I hope, in this highly contentious voting year, will be forgiven.

At lunch today, I heard two statements that I found to be, well, wrong.

1) "Liberals aren't religious." This was in the context of church attendance rates between liberals and conservatives, and how the way to fix what is wrong with the country, most notably the poverty level, is through the churches, and the communities they serve.

2) "That's not what this country was founded on." Relating to the founding fathers' ideals and principles that they had when wrote the Constitution and established the early form of government that came to be the democratic form of governance we have today.

I didn't want to say this directly to anyone, but their comments struck me as particularly humorous. Given the fact that several of the founding fathers were atheists, or had little to no real religious leanings, I think it's strange to combine statement #1 and #2 in one argument. That, and the founding fathers were the liberals at the time; the conservative colonists were regarded as Royalists and had little to no involvement in the formation of the constitution.

So, I guess I'm either too liberal to understand, or many republicans are mistaken about the values they hold so dear, and prevent them from seeing and understanding another viewpoint.

**I should point out that the only issue that I really care about is the environmental policy that the two candidates are bringing to the table. Obama has me there. Neither of them are going to win my heart, but he seems to have something bearing a passing concern for the world climate, and the future of the planet.

If I had my way, every SUV sold would include an additional gas guzzler tax, with the proceeds going directly to "fuel" clean energy research, development, and production. At this point, it might just be pissing into the ocean (as I firmly believe that most coastal European cities will be underwater in the next 20 years regardless of any efforts likely to occur within the next presidential term) but I think clean energy could and should be the way of the future. Sure, there have been many periods in the planet's history warmer than this; that is very evident when you look at the fossil record and rock composition of the central US. But, aside from a catastrophic event such as an asteroid collision creating a world-wide dust cloud, there has never been, to the knowledge of academics, a period of such rapid global temperature change as the planet is currently experiencing. It is very real, and very scary.

-End rant.