North Carolina Shows Its Ass…. Again

Well, as a resident of the above mentioned tar heel state, I find myself this evening feeling a bit dirty, like someone spilled oil on me that I can’t get off. There have been times in my past that I wasn’t proud of “where I come from, ” and this is another. As some of you know, I grew up in a rather smallish mountain town (NOT South Park) in Pennsylvania. I wasn’t proud of it, but as I grew older, I became less embarrassed by it and now find that I am proud of where I grew up. Several years ago (11, in fact) I moved back to North Carolina. I had lived in NC for many years in the military and wasn’t thrilled about the idea of coming back here 11 years ago. But I have changed in that as well. I love living in North Carolina. It is a great state filled with good people.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for August 31, 2010

Tuesday night has again crept up on me. I offer some more good articles for discussion this week, including one sent to me by a friend. I included it because it really did kind of speak directly to how I was feeling about Beck’s rally this last weekend. It is the first article below, so thanks for sending that over. Elsewhere we have UCLA firing a scientist because his scientific results didn’t match their political opinions, the possibility that the Republican party could embrace gay rights, and absolute impotency of the federal regulatory agency that always lets us down, the SEC. I will be posting a guest commentary on Thursday night but will be largely unavailable this weekend, as my sister is getting married. JAC, if you could bring the topic forward that I mentioned would be good for open mic, I would appreciate it greatly. Still taking applications for regular contributors to the site as well! Enjoy your Tuesday everyone. I will be weighing in all day when possible.

Legislating Morality vs. Legislating Freedom RE-DONE

So I am sure that many of you are sitting here saying, “didn’t we just talk about this subject?” Well, the answer would be yes and no. I felt as though we began to discuss this subject but that it quickly devolved away from the subject and into other realms. I was not the only one that noticed this, as several of you left comments lamenting the lack of discussion on the topic at hand and several others sent me emails to espouse the same sentiment. So I decided that I would offer the article up again and see if we can’t get a more focused conversation around it. For anyone that forgot, or who wasn’t around for the original posting last week, I offered this as a mash-up with both my and Jon Smith’s thoughts on the subject. I have changed the first paragraph (the one you are reading right now) but have otherwise left the article unchanged. What I would like to do is discuss the concept of legislating morality as compared to legislating freedom, and ferret out why one works and the other is one that leads us down a path of tyranny and oppression. I will bring over some of the conversations that I felt went down the right path, and obviously others are welcome to do the same. This is not an attempt to keep anyone’s thoughts down, but more to have another chance to discuss a topic that I felt kind of got away from us.

Guest Commentary Mash-Up- Moral Law vs. Freedom Law

I thought that I would try something a little different this week with the guest commentary. I often present the guest commentary as simply that and allow it to stand on its own. This week’s topic is something that I hold a fairly strong opinion on and which I enjoy debating. So I proposed the idea to our guest commentator of my writing a short article myself beginning the discussion, and then after doing so, offer his article on the subject. Then, of course, we will be able to attack the subject in a more defined manner. He agreed to my altered format and has had a bit of a head start as he has already read what I wrote, and he wrote his piece before I wrote mine. Obviously, I also decided to post this on a different night than the regular Thursday night/Friday morning when the guest commentary is usually presented. This is a particularly relevant subject, as the idea of legislating morality has somehow managed to drill its way into the mindset of modern American politics. And this has had dangerous and disasterous consequences. Read on to get both my, and guest commentator Jon Smith’s, reasoning on why this is so.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for April 20, 2010

We come off of some great discussions about whether or not people in this country are really seeking liberty over the last few days. I have appreciated the thoughts from everyone, and I thank everyone again for keeping it civil. I do so which that there was less dancing and more discussion on some of the threads though. Would it kill some of you to just answer the questions that are asked of you rather than dancing and avoiding them?  🙂  Tonight there are more topics that are discussed than usual simply because I had been working on some of them earlier in the week and more interesting ones came up to add! Just a note to Todd, I am not avoiding answering your questions. I simply ran out of time tonight. I will work to respond to you as promised throughout the day on Wednesday.

Tuesday night Open Mic for November 17, 2009

Open Mic is upon us once again. I have to say tha tI have liked the idea of open mic since we have started doing it regularly. It certainly gives me a slightly easier night for writing. But i am a bit disappointed in the fact that the original intent has not been nearly as realized as I had hoped. Certainly I want to foster discussion, and thus offer 4 short topics that can get some discussions going. However, I really thought that there would be more of folks offering topics of their own, as opposed to simply replying to mine. So don’t be afraid to post the things that you want to discuss as well as my topics. Or pull topics over from other days that you didn’t get to finish. That was the idea for open mic, a chance to tell me what we are going to discuss today, hitting the important things to you rather than me. None-the-less, we have some interesting topics this week. We have gay marriage, taxing the rich, and government agencies attempting to control the message.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for November 3, 2009

Good Morning fine readers of Stand Up For America. As I begin writing this evening I am in a fairly good mood. Tuesday night open mic is upon us again and it seems that the very elections we discussed yesterday are dominating the news cycles tonight. I am going to avoid open mic’ing the big governor’s races and the “message sent to Democrats” nonsense that seems to be dominating the airwaves. I will touch on some of the election night news in some different ways, however. I am excited to be working on what I think are some good upcoming articles and I have been discussing a few things with some of the folks that read here daily for future ways to get us back to discussing the things we need to be discussing. I do have a request of everyone though… If you have any guest pieces that you are thinking about, I am in need. I have one from Black Flag that I plan on posting this week, and I know many of you have been anticipating that one. But I have a specific need here…

Dual Issue Article

I was sitting here thinking about what I wanted to write about tonight and there were several issues that interested me that I was considering. The problem is that none of them were issues that were going to be enough to fill up an entire article for the night. I wanted to discuss Barney Franks and his return to the Bill O’Reilly arena this evening. It certainly interested me, especially after watching it twice. Another topic that caught my eye, especially in light of some of the health care discussions that have been happening on the site lately, was that of 50 Doctors and medical professionals indicted by the federal government for medicare fraud. Neither of these issues warranted a full article for me this evening, and I didn’t want to start researching something bigger knowing I have some long work days coming up. So I decided to do both of them…

What… No Activist Court?

In a somewhat surprising ruling the California Supreme Court has upheld the people’s voice on Proposition 8. I say somewhat stunning because it is well documented the role of California’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in being an activist court. I have simply come to expect the California courts to ignore the law in favor of making an activist statement. And to see a California court not be activist is somewhat shocking. As many of you know I am one of those odd birds who falls in the realm of fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I want to explain that better below because someone stated that this was an impossibility, although I don’t remember who it was. But the point of this article is that the California Supreme Court last week gave its verdict on the legality of Proposition 8.

Let’s Just Clear A Few Things Up Shall We…

You know, I found myself arguing back and forth with Ray and Todd yesterday, trying to make my point. At some point I crossed a threshold and realized that I was writing another damn article just to make my point. That isn’t to knock those two. I love to be challenged. They were doing exactly what I want people to do. But there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding about where I stand on the issues and where I lean politically. More important, there seems to be some misconceptions about this site in particular and what I created it to do and what I hope it will become. So let’s just take some time to address those particular questions, shall we?

RNC Chairman Steele Says GOP base is Bigoted?

I got wind of this and to be honest I was a bit shocked when I read it. Many of the readers of this blog would consider themselves conservative. At least that is the impression that I get from all the comments. We have a few folks from the left (which I would like to see more of), but a generally conservative base. I often comment that the Republican party is no better than the Democrats these days. And I know I am not alone when I say the Republican party over the last bunch of years has become a party we don’t recognize any longer, and a party that certainly does not get unwavering support. Reading about RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s comments yesterday showed me a side of the Republican party that is exactly why I walked away from them several years ago. 

OK, OK… My Thoughts on Gay Marriage

OK, so I posted the “sexy, fabulous” post last night with a hint of my thoughts on gay marriage, but apparently did not do a good job because today has been a day where I have been blasted. It started with one of my favorite relatives this morning telling me that she disagrees with me. She thinks they should have all the same rights as straight couples. But it didn’t end there. As many of you know, I have a lot of gay friends. I got text messages and emails from all of them, too. So let me spell it out for everyone. When it comes to gay marriage…