Normal People Who Do Extraordinary Things Are My Heroes

Normal people, the average ones we see every day, who do extraordinary things are my heroes. The ones who save people. Firefighters, nurses, teachers, a good chef, a kind stranger. These are the kind of people who give richness and add a texture to American life with all its quirks and quandaries that makes this a great nation.

There is so much goodness out there. There is almost a supra-abundance of people who struggle are contradicted but who still manage to overcome the the things that hold them back to do really remarkable things in this life. In this sense, I admire not only the people who live within the accepted norms of the social order, but people as diverse as lesbians, Hispanics, auto-workers, CEO's, heavy lifting longshoremen, tractor trailer drivers, guys who have little hanging testicles on their monster truck and people in the Coast Guard who have to protect us everyday.

I admire dentists for their ability and skill in transplanting teeth, and people from every walk of life. A human community must be large enough to include both the happy drunk, and the absent-minded albeit brilliant professor, from transsexuals in a Las Vegas show to noble statesmen.

We live in the largest, most diverse and hopefully most tolerant nation on earth. I think it is the fundamental goal of all people who subscribe to any aspect of libertarianism to ensure that all of them and their rights are equally protected so that the human potential they have has time and space to mature.

No one expresses this feeling more deeply and more humanely than Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass. I hope that what we do is to ensure these rights to everyone, it is idealism, sure it is, but without idealism there would be nothing worth striving for.

Comments

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

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