Free to agree or disagree and learn

Orson Scott Card on the election.

When November rolls around, we will choose for ourselves exactly the president we deserve.

In 1864, the American people decided they didn't deserve dithering, pro-negotiation, anti-abolition ex-general George McClellan. They chose Lincoln instead, and as a result chose union and victory and freedom for slaves.

I hope with all my heart that in 2004 the American people don't deserve John Kerry as their president.

And,

"I don't know if President Bush is in any significant way the equal of President Lincoln. Lincoln, however, is not on the ballot. What matters is whether Bush's opponents are in any significant way his equal in their willingness to fight an implacable enemy whose goal is to murder Americans of every age and in any place.

Lengthy not-unrelated riff follows: Wherever I go I buy newspapers. It's addictive, this desire to know what others think, to see what shapes their opinions, how they think, what they think about, what stories they are reading. That's why I often look for newspapers from a century ago. The events are long gone, the issues resolved. There is a big difference though. Those old newspapers actually debated the issues in print, from the competing opinion pieces from two or more local newspapers to the shifting-loyalty letters from folks who actually had viewpoints and had options of who to validate by buying a paper. It made for lively discussion, something that has been missing from our national stage for decades.

I dont' always agree with Mr. Card, (although I do in this case) but I enjoy his viewpoint whether or not I agree with it because he and I are both free to express our opinions. Let the buyer be the judge of the worth, and that is what free speech is about. It is a duel of ideas that has no downside. That is precisely why the stranglehold Liberals have on academia, newspapers, television, and Hollywood is so corrosive -- not to this country or to free speech -- but to the evolution in their thinking.

In many ways the collapse of the Soviet Union as a result of their commitment to a long-discredited politics-as-economics system parallels the ossification of Liberal thinking -- the unwillingness to accept change when called for by reality. In an information age, reality is king, not the staged game plan, alternate universe the Democrat liberal left should have long abandoned.