A Measure of Reason

Some things are worth fighting for, and some are worth fighting against.

The war in Iraq has made me think tonight about my life, where I've been and what I've done and what I've become. How do I make war on war, and what is war as I see it, this I ask myself, as I reflect on my life, and think I need to say some things for my son, so he will know who and what his father is with depth and meaning, in a way he will be able to know these things in case I died young for some stupid reason like my father did. We take too much for granted.
When you think about human history, you see it filled with human suffering and misery. Progress comes slow, and it seems that every time we make some advancements, along comes a war to destroy everything and mess the world up. The reasons are basic and simple when you look for their root. Hate, ignorance, greed, and sometimes just pure evil. Those who rise to power are never fully satisfied with the power they have, they want more, and to control everything and everyone, and kill or subject and dominate those they can't. Here we are in yet another war. If we went after those who attacked us, who were a threat to us, we would have captured Osama and it would all have been over by now. But we went after someone who was bad and made things worse in the process.
There was, and remains no valid reason to have gone to Iraq. But I'll put it in a nutshell. The Bush family is in bed with the Saudis. Iraq has oil, and is a threat to the wealth and power of the Bush camps and the House of Saud. If they (Bush, Saudis, ect) disrupt that supply, then they get to control prices, supply, and profits from oil. Sadam was contained, and was abusive to his people, yes, but was no threat to America. He was a threat to Iran, who now doesn't have to worry about Iraq, and they are more of a threat to America that Iraq ever was.
After an illegal coup (election), Bush took power....yes, took power, and no one stopped it. If that had happened in a third world country we had any interest in, we'd of gone in claiming "foul" and righted the wrong. But we profess love of liberty and freedom more than we defend it. Our nation has become corrupt to the core, and our civil liberties and rights have been attacked and compromised under The Patriot Act. Yes, it is an "act", like "pretend patriots". A true American would never stand for or accept what has come down the pike at us.
There is nothing wrong with being "conservative", but to be a right wing fanatic, so full of fear and ignorance that the ideals we profess to be sacred are so compromised, is the same attitude that allowed Hitler to rise to power in 1930's Germany. Good people lead astray by flag waving and lies. Sadly, most people will ride the horse until it dies than switch to a better ride. Self-righteous fools refuse to admit when they are wrong, and persecute any who oppose them rather than openly debate with open minds. It is only be reflection that mistakes can be corrected. Now that the lies and illusions are exposed that we see it all for what it is, but I fear this too will be short lived.
America is fed up with Bush and his SS squad, and even staunch Republican guard members can't chew on the bull anymore, except those fools that go down with the sinking ship and simply won't think for themselves. But that simply confirms my opinion about humanity in general. This is a rough idea of my point.
20% of the people in world are pure garbage. Maybe we need to bring back the Nazi death camps and exterminate these fools. They are the criminals, greedy, selfish, violent jerks who ruin the planet for everyone else.
The next 20% are truly decent people. They are honest and good and are kind, and represent what is best in us. Out of that 20%, maybe 10% are the belwhetters, the leaders who come up with innovation and work to do good for society on an active basis. They make us progress as a people and work for a better world.
The other 60% are fluff along for the ride. They are basically good, but can and will follow the flavor of the day, like horses with blinders on, the don't progress and they want a good life and all, but never take the steps or take any real action to make the world a better place.
This is how things usually shake out. Percentages may change, but it's a basic formula that seems to ring true.
So in stupidity they, we, "elected" a lying ass to office, and now everyone complains. Now we are stuck in a mess of a war with no easy way out and brought shame upon our nation. Now we have our citizens dying, and have violated our most cherished freedoms by design, and turn away from the view of what has come to pass and don't truly fight to make the changes we need to correct things.
It comes down to our basic values and integrity as a people. In WWII our nation rose up to fight evil, liberated the world for it, and worked to heal the world. I'm not saying things were perfect. It wasn't. There was still oppression of blacks and women, and of groups that weren't flying with the flock, but there was more of an overall basic goodness and sense of decency in most people. We were on the path to "better", and we didn't cross the line so easily. There has been a rise in personal freedoms as we advance in technology and wealth eliminates poverty, and keeping pace with that are people who find new means of abusing others and taking advantage, and in placing wealth over their duty to their fellow human. We, as a people, have become so wrapped up in our selfishness that we have forgotten our community.
This is why people allow a new form of ignorance and abuse to manifest itself. This is why C average oil boy gets away with trashing the Bill of Rights, while "decent" loyal Christian soldiers march on like Germans allowed Hitler to march on. Our society is only as healthy and strong as our commitment to the ideals and values that we were founded upon, and when they are words not practiced, we deserve whatever comes our way. We profess equality for all people, claim to defend it, then allow Israel to abuse Palestine, and wonder why they blow themselves up fighting them. We wonder why we are attacked world-wide, and why roadside bombs kill our military almost every day.
The war that needs to be fought is the one for America's soul, and to reclaim our dignity and the respect of the world, which we had at one time. This means that we insure Afghan women are free live and prosper in peace, and don't have to beg in the streets, and that their children have safe schools and food. This means we treat all world evils equally, and not just where we have a dollar interest. This means that we make sure no kid in this country goes to bed hungry, and real efforts are made to educate our kids and to reduce the crime rate, that wealth doesn't have such a great divide, and corporations don't pay their to people monies they could never use while their employees lose their houses and jobs.
I could go on....like universal health care, or any other issue along those lines. The bottom line again is the rich and powerful using their power to keep down the working classes, and simple basic fairness and responsibility becoming a priority. The war on the war starts with a general, universal attitude not to allow or accept what is wrong to remain unchecked. This requires real effort though, and for the People to exercise their power and desire change. So the first war starts inside, as a decision to work towards change. Maybe most people don't think or know they have such great power. Maybe watching cable with a plate of fast food behind locked doors is an easy way in which to hide. Maybe people just feel helpless and apathetic. I don't know, but it is undoubtedly a mix of that and much more.
All I do know is that while many things have become good and better in the world, some really important things have simply gone to hell. Jefferson didn't know how right he was about his caution against losing what they fought so hard to create.
Now back to the war, and the war on it. We are stuck in a bad way. We broke it, so we need to fix it, but we can't, so we pay in blood on a daily basis. Maybe if we became what we once were, champions of freedom and decency instead of tyrants after oil control and our own interests... maybe if we kept the corporations out of it all and helped the people where we occupy rebuild and make a better world, and preach and teach by example tolerance and compassion, maybe the People over there would rise up and defend decency because they'd see it was in their best interests, and the best interests of their kids.
If we are feeding children and teaching mothers to stand up for their rights, and providing medication, safe streets and shelter, and asking these splintered groups to work with us to build a new world for all their people, and explaining that when they stop killing each other and us they would all be better off, maybe that attitude would be our best weapon. Then a death in Iraq would mean something and be worth the sacrifice.
Right now we are an army of occupation, unwanted police no different that storm troopers. Candy to a kid is accepted with resentment, because that kid is hungry, without electric, and looks at empty seats at a barren dinner table where his father or brother or sister or mother used to sit, before they died, from this stupid, stupid war. No matter who kills them, we are responsible, because we trashed everything like a bull in a china closet. Look how dirty Bush did our own people when Katrina struck! Rectal-cranial fusion is what I call it. Look how dirty we did our wounded, the conditions they were in, and what they suffer daily without compassion from a nation they gave everything for.
Now, how people view God is a great part of this. Each believes "God" is on their side, and I don't think God is on either. All the teachings of God are of peace and love and kindness, and if God has Wrath, it is God's to dispense, not man's. Religion is as easy to twist as the minds of the fools that follow any twisted logic. Again, back to the 60% "fluff" idea. We fight for God and Country and they fight for God and country, but where we are wrong is that is their land, not ours. They might need to work it out like we did 230 years ago. All we should do is stop genocide, and be there to help and lead by example.
When the words written at the birth of our nation become etched upon our hearts and spoken in our conscience, a conscience which we follow, then we will again be worthy of our arrogance, and justified in using our might, might we trade away as we compromise ourselves for wealth and short term gains.
This is where the war on war starts, in a resolve to become what we should have been by now. Children have no respect, guns kill the innocent, no one accepts responsibility and makes compromises as matter of course. We allow ourselves to abuse our own people, and don't live up to the words we profess. What do we do to fix it all? We stand up for those ideals, and that is the weapon within that one day will hopefully change our world. Might makes right, but only when that might is the power of an honorable and compassionate soul.
So we're left with this, what does it take to get back the good we lost and keep the good we've risen to? I think it rests with individual character, and a personal realization that we all live on one earth as one people, and to have tolerance of those who are not like us or agree with us.
Easier said than done, because set attitudes and beliefs are so difficult to change. The reason for someone to take a second look is a truth so compelling that it simply can't be denied. That second look is at first internal, then external. To fight this war against war doesn't mean we never fight wars again. It means that when we must fight, we fight as true warriors, with resolve and a set clear moral purpose. There is and was no justification for the abuses our own people made against prisoners. It was secretive and dishonest. Once someone is disarmed, effort should be made to befriend and understand them, to disarm their motivation to be an enemy. This is done by education and reason, and compassion and understanding. First, you find out what motivates them and why they fight you, then you reflect if your own actions are true and correct, then you resolve your disputes and differences and try to live and let live, with mutual respect.
Only in this way can we truly win Iraq, unless we just kill everyone there. We say, these are ideals, and we wish your friendship, so what will it take to fix this between us. You reach an accord then move on. It is only when and where an accord cannot be reached, then you try to isolate yourself from them. If there is no isolation, you protect yourself, and if they still attack you wipe them out. It will never work in reverse, the tail will simply not wag the dog.
And our own people, the administration that started this war based on a lie for gain of wealth, should be charged with treason. Their actions are treason at their very root. The true enemy is the Bush administration and all who are like minded or too arrogant to change. The pictures above and below were taken ion election day, and today's death toll is that times three, almost equal to the loss of life on 911. Our honor fell like the tower did when we allowed some arrogant redneck religious zealot to dissolve our rights and invade a nation they did not have any justification to.
I grew up on The Raritan Bay, about 184 degrees and 22 miles South of the Empire State Building, and on a clear day through my dad's binoculars was able to watch the Twin Towers slowly rise, just to the side of the Verizano Narrows Bridge. Let me tell you a little of my roots.
I grew up in Union Beach, New Jersey, and grew up understanding World War II as a great war against evil, and remember a book collection that was a pictorial history of the war, so remember images of the death and suffering of man. I grew up reading into encyclopedias, and by cross referencing learned about American History, and also remember a trip to Gettysburg when I was young, and Washington DC, where I fell in love with my country.
My mother worked elections, and my father was a union man and a mason, so while he never came right out and told me or discussed in detail ideals and morality issues, he guided me in ways I have only recently come to understand, as did the love of my grandmother and mother. My mother taught Sunday School at Saint Mary's in Keyport in a church built in the 1800's, and I started out Episcopalian, but when in my early teens became "born again", but seeing hypocrisy and "knowing" that I didn't believe in "creation" or "Adam and Eve" as anything more than teaching stories, went searching. I used to sit in his International Travelall and use the cb radio, where I became friends with a girl named Susan Davis, and she introduced me to the First Unitarian Church of Monmouth County. I found a spiritual home where I could believe what I wanted to, as long as I kept an open mind and had acceptance of others and their beliefs.
I read John Stuart Mill, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Kant, discovered Alan Watts, then Hinduism, then the Tao Te Ching, and worked out and sought out my own personal relationship with "God". Along this path, I also discovered my American roots, and understood in great detail what the Constitution and Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence meant.
I was so firm in these ideals that when, in high school, my homeroom teacher, Mr. Martin, told me to remove my denim Greek fisherman's cap, but did not require that a female student remove hers, I protested it. I removed it ONLY for the pledge of allegiance, and was suspended for it, and fought the school board over it and won I grew up in a salt marsh and weeds, a "clamdigger", and spent time "watching" the world. I realized that a chemical factory has polluted the bay, badly, and got an environmentalist streak going that got me involved with Clearwater and Save Our Shores, got me reading Mother Earth News and Prevention, and supporting CROP, and at 15, two weeks before my 16th birthday, I promoted a benefit concert for World Hunger Year starring Harry Chapin. I remember at Christmas I listened to WNEW and heard that the New Jersey chapter of WHY was going to close and only had $700 in their kitty. In two weeks time I arranged and promoted a benefit concert at the Monmouth Arts Center in Red Bank (now Count Basie Theater) that grossed $11,000 and netted $6,000. I had run away twice, the last time to Atlantic City. I ran away because I was misunderstood, and was 15 going on 50 and was really acting like 5. I was a royal pot head, listened to art rock mostly, played with Lionel trains, and created and built things in our garage, which had a wealth of tools. I was on the Twins then the Tigers in little league, and our house was two blocks from Matty's creek and three blocks the bay.
Union Beach was a town of 6,000, with 12 or 13 neighborhood bars, 7 mom and pop "deli/newsstand" like stores, four volunteer fire stations with six trucks, and a first aid department. The police station was at the waterworks, and Union Beach had the third cleanest drinking water in the nation soon after the water works was new in the 1920's or 40's. Four ball fields, a drug store, barber shop where I got my hair cut when I was a kid, and I went back for a haircut where Louie was still cutting hair last year on a visit home for a trim, even though I didn't need it. I walked to school in deep snow, and walked along train tracks, past a library, over a trestle bridge, went fishing on the bay, caught fiddler crabs in the mud along the creek, ate mussels fresh from the banks (were they polluted?). I remember the flood from a hurricane where I watched the water rise towards my home, and remember a dog riding atop a picnic table caught in the storm. I went up to the liquor store which had ice cream and candy, and had the 1969 Mets baseball cards complete for the entire season.
I read comics, got matchboxes from a drug store where I went to see my family doctor when they were in boxes and from England. I ran hot wheels track throughout my house, and learned to cook from my mother. I grew sunflowers and savored the seeds, and grew cherry tomatoes that were still the sweetest I can remember. I played doctor, made "war" with my GI Joes and little plastic soldiers. Practiced pitching against my garage wall, and then tennis, where I aimed at my "strike zone" and got really good at putting the ball right where I wanted it.
I watched Monty Python and Benny Hill and The News Hour when they were "new", and talked about history and philosphy with Mr. Melie, my 7th grade history teacher with whom I kept a good friendship until he died. He had a garden and I visited him when he retired, helping him in his garden.
Every summer we would go camping, usually with my Uncle Joe and the Gallopos, where we went to many parts of the country, from Maine to Vermont to Quebec and Montreal, to Niagra and Skyline Drive and saw caves and Mystic Seaport and DC and Myrtle Beach and Delaware and the Dutch Country and Cooperstown and the Delmarva , but then usually South Jersey, to Atlantic City area, where I was very close to where The Jersey Devil was said to have been spawned.
I picked blueberries in fields as a summer job, eating most of my profits, shoveled monkey crap at Bowling Green, where I was a sneak and bouight a crap car from a junkyard, lied about my age, and entered a demolition eight, where I got third place and $150 bucks, coming out $40 ahead of the $50 for the car and $40 for the entry fee and $10 for gas. I met a girl named Bethany Limb, my first true love, and would ride my bike in the snow 20 miles to see her. I got caught sneaking into her window, and her parents took us both to planned parenthood, to learn about responsibility and get her birth control.
I was a Hugh O'Brian Youth Leader and represented my school afor having the most leadership potential, and went to a conference in New Brunswick, where, since I had a beard at 14, bought a bottle of rum, stayed up talking politics with kids from across the state. I got a "special" plate at dinners because I didn't eat red meat, still don't to this day, and when it was time to question speakers they sent to us, was a force to be reckoned with. At awards, I was given "Most Outspoken and Insightful" by the other kids there, and was asked by them to give a speech about social responsibility.
I learned about the history of my county, and saw about every historic site nearby. I lived with the minister of my church after running away for about six months because my parents couldn't control me. Harold Dean, who proudly told me of when he was with, right up front, Martin Luther King when he spoke in DC. In fact, that is where I wrote my first song/poem, and met Bethany. He lived right next to the tennis courts at a park in Holmdel, and in Holmdel Park in winter I'd sled down a hill there.
I would get on my bike and just go, met girls from all over and had girlfriends in different towns all over. I worked at Keansburg, and rebuilt a haunted house that had been closed for a few years, and ran a booth where I modified a game, met girls there, too. I droipped out in the end of my jounior year and took my GED after scoring 99 percentile on the ASVAB, and loved taking arctiectural drafting and design and mechanical drawing in the vocational school. Then my dad died. At his funeral, when others placed flowers on his grave. I didn't I left, went to a florist, got a white rose, kept a petal and a thorn and a leaf from it, and set it on top of the rest, and kept that as a tradition. Anything else just wasn't pure enough. I keet that tradition to this day.
I short circuted, just taking off one day in the cold rain, walking in just a pair of brown courderoys. I was gone for a few days, when at the beach at Sea Bright in the early morning I met and talked with this guy for hours. He gave me a flannel shirt and sneakers and called my mom. She came and took me home.
I remember buying a 70 Galaxy 500 for $40 and a bag of weed and a radio, and when I brought it home my father called it "a pig. He had a few heart attacks and was supposed to slow down, and he was on strike for a year, so our family saving vanished. I'd come home from school to find him under my car working on it, still smoking, and I'd bitch him out. I'd make him open the vent window when he smoked, but wouldn't move the car unless he had his seat belt on. He taught me to drive sitting on his lap was I was very young, and every Sunday morning before church we'd go to Ralph's for a newspaper and hard rolls, and I'd make the left turn into our yard every trip home, me on his lap. His loss devistated me, more then I ever realized because we were JUST becoming friends when he died.
About a month before he died he asked me what my most valuable possession was, and I couldn't answer. He told me my name. He said, "You can't buy a good one and you can't sell a bad one" That is now my company motto, and guides me and saved me from myself when I lost my freedom for taking vengenance on someone who ripped me off. I am now teaching that to my son and nephew on my wife's side who we have custody of because his mom is a street drunk and we're all he has left.
It's the greatest gift he could have given me.
I was working one monday morning when my mom, Mr. Purdy, and my sister showed up. He had been taken to Columbia Presberterian in New York City overnight. On the way up my mom said she prayed if was was going to be an invalid or unhappy just to "take" him, and she said the next thing she "heard" was him telling her that "not to worry, I'm going now, everything would be fine" It was on the New Jersey Turnpike as I was watching the shoulder of the road go by. She told us, and my sister and her in the back seat started crying. I did ,too, but not loudly. When we got up there, they told us, and we went into where he was, cold and covered in a sheet. We kissed him goodbye, and found out the exact time he died, just after noon, was the same time my mom heard him tell her goodbye.
My father's life ended at 57, stolen by the lead he worked around and an evil corporation that polluted at will. I was bitter because of this and denied it, covered it up. I worked at an art metal studio, drove pizza, worked at a German restauranmt, which is still there, met a best friend at an electric supply store/warehouse, then got my first apartmnent in Eatontown after traveling around a lot. I joined the traffic Advisory Board, Historic Committee, and met a guy my dad was a policeman with in the early 60's. I protested the draft, but stayed very clear of the communist crowd who was doing the same. I even redesigned a traffic circle.
I met Lori before I moved there while working as a monster at The Haunted mansion on Long Branch Pier. My first major was Theather before my spilt major of Oceanography and Media. I was playingAsteriods when I saw her, and got her and Cindy, her friend to go to a park with me where we smoked a bone, drank Boons Farm, and flew a kite. We fell right in love. We were together for a year and when she finished high school I went to Cocunut Grove with her, my second love, who stayed there for college, as I took a bus home. Met Julie, my third love, at an Elton John concert in Central Park, and refined love. But life being what it is it isn't always what it could be. I got into marine trades, boats to be exact.... but destroyed that life because of the revenge I mentioned, and restarted my life and traveled. I spent time in Williamsburg, sat in every seat in a pub that Jefferson and Madison did, and had a warm ale talking politics with a friend. Best fireworks I ever saw was in Yorktown Fourth of July, and frequented Richmond and Naggs Head and Kitty Hawk. I went to Mystic Seaport, Woods Hole, then back to the Jersey Shore, where I ran charters off the boat I lived on, did lobstering and bulkheading with a guy named "Wacker", worked for myself bartering, was working with CG Aux and two voulenteer fire departments until a theft/vandalism left me with a trashed empty boat...my home. So I came to Jekyll Island to work, but budget cuts left me no chance so came here to Jacksonville, where I met my wife and had my son, and am today.
Even here, three years ago I fought The School Board to save Normandy Elementary. They fixed it so enrollment dropped from over 300 to about half that, kept it on the chooping block and sending kids elsewhere to get the student population down so they could close it. I think they wanted it for a regional office, but I monkey wrenched that at least. I even tried to enjoin The Board from even voting on it, but I was attacked by the "Powers That Be" and they voted 5-2 to close it, and they violated three provisions of the Florida Class Size Reduction Act in doing so. The law said not to add transportation by a school closure, not to close and reduce class size elsewhere, and to use existing facilities instead of building new. They said they'd save $200,000, but failed to mention the added $140,000 in new costs from added transportation. The building was in perfect shape, even had a new roof, but Head Start Pre-K wound up moving in, and while I could force them to reopen because the closure was illegal, and I can prove it, I'd be just as bad as them if I forced Head Start out, because they would never get a facility as good and they keep it at capacity. The lesser of evils at this point is to let them stay there, but they closed Normandy and it scored an "A: on the FCAT, while every other area school was a "C" on the FCAT. I thought the idea was to get schools to score an "A". Well, back to where I was, further in the past reflecting.
I worked in Trenton at Trenton Marine right below the Trenton Makes, World Takes Bridge, was a supervisor doing asbestos and lead abatement, have hazmat training, and did some contract work that I am not at liberty to discuss. I woirked as a bartender twice, best time at the Dubliner, a pub in Red Bank, and was 1/3rd owner of a natural foods restaurant in Red Bank, this was before going to Williamsburg. Here's a story from back then. It was just after Christmas and dead cold. I was coming home from The Green Parrot, perhaps the best club I ever went to (loved the copper dance floor, and saw loads of great bands and was tight with the owner). I remember passing through Asbury Park and in their police station/city hall/train station complex knew of and saw a group of about 30 people escaping the cold in the train station, which the cops opened for them because there was no where else for them to gogo. I felt I had to do something, and just then the train signal went off, and like automatically I turned my car right and went across the tracks, passed the station to go three blocks South to the WaWa, and went in, bought three pots of coffee, milk, sugar, cups and doughnuts and went and fed everybody. This is when I was part owner of The Owl and The Fiddler, so it became a regular event to close the restaurant, make a kitchen scrap soup and go feed people. I remember this one young black guy, he was a mason, and his old lady kicked him out after he spent everything paying for rent and food and bills. He looked lost. I gave him a little part time work, and remember him asking me who I was with...I said myself, and it took him a while to realize that you didn't need to be part of anything but yourself to want to help people. I remember one night a bum came in and said "John's dead". He was a street person as well, well spoken and kind, but he fell asleep under the Convention Hall boardwalk and froze to death. I couldn't find a cop so went there, and he was too far gone to revive. I made services take action, and they (Asbury) assigned an officer to monitor the well being of street people as best they could. The best day in all that is when the giurls from Marine Bar, right across the street from my restaurant, came over with two pans of lasagna they made and wanted to go with me. I was part of a little alternative paper called The Flowering Tree, and wrote a piece on it, and other people started showing up, on their own, to feed and bring blankets and clothes to people there. It was eventually taken over by a church.
That was my winter of 84/85. In 888 when I was on my boat I did SAR and used my boat to rescue people because the CG station at Shark River Inlet was closed down, so CGS Point Pleasant and the one at Sandy Hook were both about 20 miles away.
Some other good memories were making Honk If You Hate Disco and I Hate Disco bumper stickers in high school, then making Disco Sucks ones when I was in Eatontown, and doing a carry/sell thing when I hit the clubs. I went to Rennissance festivals, worked on Clearwater festivals and knew Pete Seegar and harry Chapin fairly well, had Johnny and Joey Ramone crash on my boat, burned a fatty with Living Color, sang on stage at The Stone Pony a few times, went to the library a lot for chamber music and jazz. I worked with Save Our Shores and would have cops bring hurt wildlife to my boat for me to bring to Wildlife Co-operators for rehab, and worked loosely with The Marine Mammal Stranding Center, and rescued a porpoise and two sea turtles.
I was always on the go, and liked to try and do new things all the time. I've slowed down, and am worn down a lot now, but think it's time to get some of it back.
These are the kinds of things that shaped me, that gave me a sense of duty to society, and the experience to see things maybe a little differently than most people do. I can be arrogant but polite, in your face but humble, knowing that it is our flaws that can be our best asset, if we decide to overcome them and make ourselves, and the world just a little bit better.
I describe myself as a college educated white boy with street smarts and a sense of duty and integrity. I wage war on war, and war against those things that need to be changed. If I don't know I'm right, I'll search for understanding and an answer. If I know I am, I can be a force to be reckoned with. I have been on the open ocean and traveled far, seen different cultures and seen death, facing it myself a few times. I have suffered heaven and hell, saved lives and helped people who never knew my name. I have fought corruption, lost then found my sense of direction a few times, been elated and depressed, and learned that the best way to see what is best within yourself is to step outside of yourself and reach out to others and help them if able, because when you see yourself in the eyes of those you help, you can see yourself shine. I was always unable to accept help from others and never sought help when I needed it, which was the last lesson of humility that has come to pass. I still am slow at it, but can do that at least now if I really need to.
I like to pay my own way I guess, and while I still have a few shortcomings, I am honest and sincere, and own myself. I shoot from the hip, which is what makes me powerful when I take on a cause I think needs attention.
A war on war cannot be fought or won by a "tree hugger" it requires a warrior, and real courage to stand against indifference, ignorance, corruption, and hate. Sometimes you have to not only take a stand but get your hands dirty to get the job done. Equal force against undue force, and copnscience against a lack thereof. I get along well with people of true character, and that is a difference I wouldn't trade for anything. My job is to make the world a better place because I may be able to. You win when you try, win or lose on the issue itself. And if you can walk away with your integrity intact, then you have aspired to your own humanity. The measure of a man is best determined by his own sense of true morality and decency.
War is not defined by the simple war we are in in Iraq, or in my war aginst the school system or city government, or state, but in the personal war to fight for a better world against anything or anyone who would trade what is right for what is wrong. I'm actually willing to put real effort in and defy the lesser things, and I find that attitude too rare in a world full of such wonders and so called advancement. If I can , I will pass this on to my son, because a conscience is the best gift a father can give any child.