Bitter apology

I have always felt that a personal apology for an public insult was a good first step. Then a more formal, public one should follow. I did need a good place to put it. Here it is. This is my public one.

The course of political debate can easily slip away from practices and principles, and deteriorate into the interjection of personal opinions about people. I am guilty of that. I had written a letter that explained how I saw the collapse of the “Tea Party Coalition”. In my explanation I did let my emotions get the better of me.

Jim, I apologize now in public as I did in private. As I stated I had high hopes for the “Coalition” and when things started to fall apart I took it very hard.

Thank you for your totally classless response. I had hoped for better. Silly me.

You intimated in your blog that I didn’t understand what’s important as you tried to clarify it for me.

Now let me try to understand this. The nation that I had known is disappearing before my eyes. Rights that our founding fathers correctly called unalienable are being eroded at an alarming rate. Those who hold to the right to estate (being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor) are now called selfish and greedy. Now there is “social justice”, which is just another way of saying that it is noble to take one person’s money to give to another person. The rights that the Bill of Rights were to insure are being egregiously ignored. I now can not say anything that will offend someone, or else fines and imprisonment will be coming. So much for free speech or the freedom of religion. It won’t be long before personal rights will consist only of being able to have sex with anyone I want. For now I can have a gun if they let me. State governments are so addicted to Federal money that they won’t speak up. I had taken an oath in 1972 to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. I don’t remember there being an expiration date on that. So it is still valid.

But you say these are not important. The only thing that is important is beat the machine, that collection of corrupt local political bosses who control everything. It is the evil above all evils. It’s us verses them. There can be no compromise, no negotiation, no prisoners, no touching the unclean thing. I must ignore the fact that it has sought our endorsement. I must ignore the reality that they need our popularity and people,as much as we need their money and people. I should not concern myself with anything but destroying the machine.

I sorry but I seem to remember that your main concern was winning. How will you win if no one will work with you? Getting a major party endorsement is critical. Without it a candidate will lose 95% of the time. Some of us are willing to work with the machine for now because the cost of not working with them is too high.

This compromise that you despise so much is demonstrated in early American History. Our founding father compromised principles when they sought and got the help of the King of France. Hadn’t they just espoused that they had unalienable rights given to them by their creator and that government rules by the consent of the governed? I don’t think that the French king was too big on those ideas. However, the cost of failure for them was too high to not compromise. I believe this year is also important. We need reform minded people in our Congress and State House. No, no one should sell his soul to the devil or the machine to gain office but to demand the purity that the “Coalition” is demanding will leave you pounding the halls of some middle school looking for candidates that are pure enough to receive your endorsement.

I am sure you are saying,” that’s not much of an apology.” Well, I apologize for anything that was about you personally, not for my opinion of your actions relating to the collapse of the “Coalition” that I described, or my opinion of your failure to understand the implications of national events and the inadequacies of your strategies.

At the end of my life I want to hand over to my children and grandchildren a United States of America that they will enjoy, and be able to prosper in, so that they will be proud to say they are Americans. I have a choice: do I fight against those who are working to take that away from me, working with people who are not perfect but have the same goals, knowing that it is a difficult and dangerous path; or do I follow you down the sanctimonious path of purity that leads to irrelevance and impotence? Hmmm. An easy choice for a thinking man. I choose the first.

By the way, I know that I don’t warrant much thought with you, but next time you might dress up your cliched similes. Use something like,”your apology is a useless as A Tea Party Coalition Endorsement!” That would really hurt.