What Makes You Tick

I turned out conservative despite being from the Northeast (NYC) and having liberal teachers all through school.

My MBTI (personality analysis) is INTP, which means I’m wired to be logical in the extreme. I like to think that logic allowed me to see through the liberal teaching and liberal media bias.

 

Wow. A lot to chew on there. A lot of honesty.

Some have said here they are the opposite of their upbringing though so hard to say.

Thanks for adding a great post.

 

I guess in the macro, I want humanity to colonize space. It seems theres an agenda at the global scale to restrict humanity to this planet where it can be controlled and directed. Advancement toward an off-world human civilization are therefore dependent on individualism and independent innovation. So my politics focus on the rights and the abilities of the individual to operate independently of the various establishments within our realm of experience.

 

Guns and mass shootings a non-issue in Germany? I don't know what they taught you in those schools, but I'm guessing that Belgium and Poland weren't exactly a major focus of the curriculum. But hey, how about that wall, eh? The rather unusual aspect of a wall is that it works to keep people out, as well as in. I assure you that despite what your teachers had to say about it, there were many mass shootings in Germany prior to the collapse of the Berlin wall.

If given my druthers, bullets are better than mustard gas or zyklon B.

 

I've never been taught anything in school about guns, as I said, it is a non-issue in Germany.

But, congrats for being able to google stuff about a country that makes you feel you know something about.

Note in edit: Let's not convert this good thread into a gun discussion.

 

I’m certainly not opposed to your aims. The demographics most intent on escaping our warming planet and colonizing mars aren’t exactly my type anyway!

The last sentence of your post is a noble pursuit regardless of whether any of us ever fly beyond earth’s atmosphere.

 

Son of immigrants with no money and do very well for myself. Sorry about your hyperbole for lazy men.

 

I guess the summary of "what makes me tick" is that I was raised by far far lefties in a lefty community, and have seen the results of their ideology. My education was a series of head butts against lefty professors to the point that as soon as they decided to take anything other than a socratic stand on an issue, I'd search out the alternative and then figure out the reasons why they were wrong. I started noticing there was a much of a muchness when it came to lefty ideology, in that whatever they said they want, they achieved the complete opposite. A great example of that is what Berkeley has become. The birthplace of the modern free speech movement has devolved into a place where free speech is now despised.

So how did this happen? I sorta knew because I've seen the freedoms that Americans used to enjoy disappear one after the other after the other. Just small insignificant things it was felt, for example, helmet laws for motorcycles. Why? Because it's really dangerous to ride a bike without a helmet. Yeah well, the people who said that don't realize that bikes are pretty dangerous even with a helmet. Then seatbelt laws, then child seat laws, then laws against smoking in bars, then restaurants, then streets, sin taxes, more sin taxes, sin taxes to replace the affectiveness of sin taxes... First it was machine guns, then concealed guns, then too many bullets, too many bullets being fired too fast, too much damage from bullets.

It's always one inch after another after another.

Ever been on an airplane? I've been on a ton of them. My first flight was wonderful. Getting from the taxi and then to the boarding gate, then finding my seat and then arriving at my destination and making it through customs was just so.... humane. Been on one lately? If you manage to make it all the way past the multiple layers of security, you are then thrown into a seat, told to put a seatbelt on, and that bad boy stays on your entire smoke free environment flight where you will be treated like a dog until you manage to make it completely out the doors.

One inch after another after another.

This is what the left's agenda is.

Ever been to a developing country? Not just from the airport to a taxi to your gated resort where you will be waited on hand and foot by friendly English speaking natives, but really really been to a developing country. My first foray into that was in the Philippines. I was walking through Manila on my first day there. Still didn't know how to cross a street properly, but I had managed to make it a few blocks from the hotel when I felt something touch my hand. I looked down and there was a little girl who was probably between 5 and 7. She was wearing a grubby dress, barefoot, hair brown and brittle from malnutrition. She held her hand up obviously begging for money. I took a bill (don't know what it was because the local currency was still a deep and dark mystery to me) gave it to her, and as she ran off, I sank to the sidewalk and had to sit down. How could something like this happen? Where were her parents? Why were people just walking by? A few days later, I asked a local about that (and many more instances of street children and seniors begging) and found out that the answer to my question of how a little girl could be homeless and hungry was wrapped up in a dozen or so reasons. Everything from poverty to fervent religious beliefs (they take their christianity seriously there) to desperation resulted in a young girl who got pregnant before she got married found herself with a baby, and her only way out of poverty was to find a guy who might marry her, and guys aren't going to raise another man's child, so she took her baby to manila and dropped it off with a group of other street children, who then helped raise that baby themselves.

How do you fix that? That question is one that my friends on the left have no answers to, except to give homeless street kids money. So okay, a few years later I went to siem reap from phnom penh. On the world's bumpiest road in the world, we eventually stopped at a bus stop to use the rest room, buy more beer, and to stretch our legs. As we all filed off the bus, there was a group of about ten kids begging for money from tourists getting off the bus. I went to the restroom to shake the beer dragon and there was a sign on the wall of the building that said...

"Please don't gives money to the Children. Their parent sent them here to beg for food and money instead of sending them to school. They are regular kids who have home and live in this village. They are not homeless and orphanage. Thank you for the attention" (literally word for word because I took a picture of this note).

These are just a few small examples of experiences that taught me how incredibly difficult the business of charity is, and how easy it is to hurt the very ones you want to help. My friends on the left don't care about what happens to the people they help, but they do care about thinking that they helped. I think they are the most incredibly shallow people I've ever come across, and as a result of that shallowness and overall lack of any experience, or even an ability to think, a knee jerk is all they are capable of, and that's usually the worst thing that can possibly be done. As a result of this naivety, we've been handed hundreds of millions of deaths directly attributable to leftist "thought" processes in the form of collectivism.

 

Really, I just have one problem with your posts. I wish you would cut the PC bull and say what you really think. Joking aside I love how you get to the heart of whatever the discussion is.

The taking of freedom bit by bit seems to be working. Many of the things you mentioned really bother me too. My wife will seldom ride with me anymore because helmets give her headaches and my state won’t drop the stupid law even though a bill is introduced to do so every session. I’ve known two people killed from motorcycle accidents. Both were wearing helmets.

Also good points on charity. I help those who I know are deserving. My mom used to help with a church run charity that mostly helped people with food and clothing. There were regular customers who were known to sell their allotments. I would tell her they needed to stop that nonsense but I don’t think they ever did.

You are the second person to bring up lessons learned from developing or third world countries. The closest to that I’ve seen was the former USSR in 1991-92. There was little food, empty store shelves, and raging inflation. Really just a third world country with over applied makeup. Seeing it made a lifelong impression on me.

I probably would have benefited from some more communist professors. Only had a couple and it was classes where there wasn’t really any interaction. Through hard work and sacrifice on the part of myself and my parents my only foray into “public education” was my last two years of college at a land grant university. A blessing in that I got a good education but I probably would have benefited from some exposure to the nuttiness of professors you describe.

On the other hand, I can’t understand spending thousands to go somewhere like Berkeley. I mean if you want indoctrination just consume free media.

Thanks for your contribution to the thread.

 

Assuming you immigrated to the US, thanks for being part of this great country. And for being part of the thread!

 

It's not just developing or third world countries where people can learn something, but even the most advanced countries. In Japan, I saw the orderliness and cleanliness, civility, and perfect service that it is famed for. It's a country where physical violence is something that only happens in the movies.

I was in shinjuku station trying to find my train when I saw about three cops and somebody else that was probably a station employee standing over some woman that was acting for all the world like she was high on something. It could have been heroin or some real medical emergency for all I know, but she was totally out of it. Then some paramedics came with a stretcher and they picked her up and off they went to the hospital.

Fast forward to last summer and I was at the Richmond bart station waiting for my brother to come pick me up. He kept me there for hours because he didn't know where richmond bart is. I saw multiple examples of people looking like they were high on something that wasn't exactly life, but no cops and no paramedics. One guy was talking gibberish while leaned up against a wall, another was laying down and not moving at all. Probably sleeping, but... the lady in the Japanese train station was doing the same thing.

Forget the vast differences between a shinkansen and a bart train (first world vs third world) and just think about the difference between the humanity. In one country, people are caring for their fellow man. In another, people are not.

The thing is, I know why we can't care about bums in train stations. Good lord, but they're everywhere! They might be dead and dying, or they could be homeless and trying to catch some shuteye. Calling an ambulance for every crazy mofo on public transportation in the states would bankrupt the lot of us! In Japan, there was just that one lady. Everybody else was just normal moes trying to get somewhere.

Why do we have so many bums and good for nothings, but Japan doesn't? They have so few that they can actually take care of them in a humane fashion. We have so many that there's nothing we can do. Don't even get me started on the differences between a shinkansen and a bart train. It's literally the difference between the first world and the third world.

I'd like for us to have that, but before throwing a bunch of money at that problem, perhaps we might want to figure out why it's a problem in the first place.

 

How would the Richmond Bart station compare to the Richmond bus station? Got some education there when I was young, dumb, and poor. Most drug dogs I ever saw in one place at the same time...

Great point. The first response now is throw money at it no matter what the problem is. Education is the prime example for me. More funding will fix it. Sure.

 

I lived in point richmond for a year, but never saw richmond bus station. It's just a series of stops as far as I know, and I sure the hell wasn't going to take my white ass on a bus tour through richmond.

 

I have lived in Preston, Minnesota, Los Angeles, California, and a dozen places in between. I've been privileged to work and socialize with more different races, ethnic and religious people than I can remember. I learned very early that Preston and Los Angeles are different. That seems self evident to me, but some folks think one size fits all. It doesn't. I have voted for five Republican presidents and two Democrats. I started working a rural paper route at age twelve and used my money to buy a Winchester Model 12. I worked my way up to .... and retired at 65. College taught me how to learn and seek the truth wherever it might lead.

 

I tend to be focused on economic issues and believe that government policies should be to the benefit of the people. We need to be mindful of how government policies can directly or indirectly hurt the people and how the free market, the wealthy, and big corporations can hurt people as well.

 

I'm sure that guns are a non-issue when it comes to education in Germany, but I assure you that it isn't unknown in developed countries that Germany decided to attack France by way of Belgium with guns. Attacking me for my common knowledge of Germany's history with guns by laughing at the possibility that I might have googled this information (readily available outside of Germany, I take it) and then basically laughing at my pathetic knowledge of Germany's history with guns makes me wonder just what you teach your own students now that you've been employed in one of our obviously less than illustrious institutions of higher "education".

In other words. Put a sock in it, buttard. Either address what I post in a civil tongue or I might decide to give you another mega-wedgie.

 

Actually, you were the one escalating the personal attacks by first insinuating that I was a little slow picking up on what was taught in school, and second by just taking one short part of my non-partisan first post and running with it, to throw this thread back into the usual "my side good, your side bad" bickering, that tends to be really unoriginal and boring.

Second, I never mentioned that German soldiers did or did not use guns in WWII, of course they did. My comment was on the absence of everyday gun violence in German society, in contrast to US society, which is something I have experienced first hand because I have lived in both countries. In Germany, I would't have to worry about my son going to school and not coming back home in afternoon because some deranged student grabbed his dad's gun and decided to play Rambo. Here I do. Fact of life.

 

My primary motivation politically has dramatically shifted as of late from Economics and Social stability to protecting my republic and its institutions from what I see as a threat to the integrity and future of the civil and ethical standards we spent a couple hundred years creating. I keep my mind open as I always have by reviewing issues/Topics from multiple opposing sources to establish what I see as a truth. My time spent evaluating is dependent on the complexity and nature of any said piece of data. Without consuming the information in detail you are not thinking clearly.

 

Free unrestricted speech, also low taxes.

Always for low taxes, less regulations, merit based education.

 

No, he's laughing because you don't have a clue about economics, but you think you do.

Steve

 

Fair enough. I apologize for starting that. It just struck me as fantasy to be saying that Germany and guns have nothing in common.

 

Appreciated!!

 

The difference between Preston and LA could only be the climate. Other than that I can’t see the differences.

Working with people of diverse backgrounds is enlightening. Also interaction with diversity as a child. My dad made sure my brother and I were around all kinds growing up. Poor, rich, religious, atheist, white collar, blue collar, and on and on. Listening to people tell stories is a favorite way for me to learn, hence this thread!

I have my deceased uncle’s model 25. Wish he’d had a 12 but the value I place on it isn’t related to small mechanical details anyway.

My college experience was like yours. Less indoctrination and more on equipping me to figure things out. Some aren’t so lucky.

Thanks for adding your thoughts.

 

I like your attention to unintended consequences. Kind of a pet peeve of mine.

I agree government ought to benefit the people but sometimes I just wish the government would leave the people alone!

Thanks for adding to the conversation.

 

I wish more people would use opposing sources for information. And evaluation is crucial. Just repeating or parroting information doesn’t really do anyone any good does it?

I understand your focus shifting lately. Unfortunately, I think we all should have been paying more attention to integrity and ethics in politics for a long time. I’m afraid the horse left the barn years ago but nobody noticed. Now that it’s obvious I fear it’s too late.

I love hearing “republic” instead of “democracy”! That’s refreshing.