tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015340.post1015835352444783640..comments2023-12-22T01:59:35.407-05:00Comments on The Musings of an Urban Christian: Green in the BalanceLHhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02127870226377459490noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015340.post-31571046372452196842009-11-26T05:10:57.360-05:002009-11-26T05:10:57.360-05:00Thanks, Joel, I appreciate your input.Thanks, Joel, I appreciate your input.LHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02127870226377459490noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015340.post-52220557399539922682009-11-25T07:23:16.184-05:002009-11-25T07:23:16.184-05:00I think my whole recent (deep) tour of Libertarian...I think my whole recent (deep) tour of Libertarian Land helped me to really grasp some of what you're saying here. I think I have always had a bit of a cold scientific observer inside of me, and it never really made sense to me that roughly half of the U.S. population does *not* think that big government is a good idea. It always nagged me, the notion-- so popular with the "progressive" world-- that so many millions of our fellow Americans were just darkened in their understanding, and needed to be fought against, not (truly) understood and empathized with.<br /><br />Many (not all) of these haters of big government are "plain folk": people who grew up knowing lots of tradespeople and people who owned a small business as a sole proprietor. I did not grow up that way-- I grew up in Philadelphia, where the for-profit sector is visibly deprecated, pretty much by design. I grew up thinking: "Educators, ministers, health care professionals (especially ones not owning their own business), civil servants-- good, and helpful to society; store owners, factory owners, landlords, bankers, merchants-- very prone to greed and anti-social thinking".<br /><br />But (to get back to your point, at least a little) the fact is that those who don't produce anything directly really do need those who do. And vice versa, of course, but I already know very well that "knowledge workers" are important. (I'm an IT professional, who doesn't even "produce" software anymore, just talks and writes about it endlessly; my parents are both schoolteachers, etc.) So, um... that's a trade off! Some people work with "stuff", some people work with "ideas about stuff". And they need each other.<br /><br />I've come to it relatively late in life, but now I truly revel in "trade off". I love negotiation, to the extent that I feel that it is the very stuff of life, i.e. life itself is a sort of negotiation with "the other", that which would cause your living existence to cease if you didn't negotiate with it successfully. So... yay for this post!Joel GLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06244692753296680669noreply@blogger.com