Talking Politics

Something very strange is happening in my life right now. It is strange in the sense that two months ago I could not have completely imagined it, and two years ago it was nowhere even near my radar screen, let alone on it.

It's sort of like a plant that you discover growing in your garden, and you give it space and care for it, but you aren't quite sure just yet what it is.

So, I did the Tea Party thing, where I stood up and confessed to the crowd of hundreds that I don't even like politics. And it is true.

Now, with the help of Catherine from the local once-was-Ron-Paul-meetup, I am pulling together a group called Steubenville for Liberty, to discuss and become educated about issues of liberty and constitutional government.

And I've spent a few hours over the last few days talking to complete strangers about the "Audit the Fed" bill and collecting signatures. I'm learning there are lots of people out there who really want to talk about things that are on their minds. Tomorrow I'm off to our Congressman's local office to deliver petitions.

It's all very interesting. While I'm processing this and some new reading I've been undertaking, I'm thinking some new thoughts:

• For many, many people, politics is about anger, or at least some tempered version of "righteous indignation." As people perceive me as "being interested in politics" they seem to share with me things that anger them, and then look at me a bit tentatively when I don't get angry with them. It's not that I don't know how to get angry. I haven't quite figured out this dynamic yet, but it happens repeatedly and keeps striking me as odd.
• For me, my interest in liberty is completely born of a passion for human dignity. I believe it is really born of my own passion for my own human dignity, something which has left me theologically fumbling over the years, but which Fr. Giussani has more recently helped me to grasp more fearlessly and with more clarity.
• I am realizing that there is an intense link between unschooling and my deep affinity for liberty as a "political" persuasion. I guess I mean that for me, personally, not for unschoolers as a whole or liberty-tarians as a group. But perhaps what I mean to say is that the truths by which I seek to parent I am seeing as applicable truths by which to govern nations. Truths are the same; the scale is just grossly different.
• Speaking of liberty-tarians, I have been puttering at reading Libertarian thought. It is a problem that as a party, the Libertarian platform is pro-choice. However, the most well-reasoned political defense I have read for the right to life of the unborn also comes from the pro-life Libertarian camp. (This dichotomy goes to extend my dislike of partisan politics.)
• A book I am currently listening to on tape, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is fascinating listening (even if the narrator has the irritating tendency to end too many sentences with a raised inflection). It brings a completely different face of Republican politics and policy to light than most pro-life voters are used to thinking about (hint: it is not positive).

Ok, so that's a pretty random list of thoughts. No dramatic conclusions to share.