My "Independence Day"

Welcome to my little experiment. I have always been a fan of politics, and given the current political environment, I decided to jump right in and write down my thoughts. I hope this will help me in my career, as I want to be a High School Government teacher, and if it doesn't, oh well. I hope to run for a State senate seat some day if I see it necessary, but I hope that day isn't for a very long time.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a sophomore at Baker University in Kansas and have lived in Kansas all my life. I am a registered Democrat, although I am under the impression that all politicians, regardless of their party affiliation, are politicians, so anything they say needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I lean to the left on most social issues, and am more moderate when it comes to financial issues, but I am still trying to figure out where I stand on some issues. Maybe this will help with that.

I am a strong believer in the rights of people, whether they are the right to express themselves religiously, or the right of people to say things that I may not agree with. I believe the Constitution was written for a purpose, and that while we can amend it (which is a great thing) we should not throw around that word lightly. I also believe that everyone has the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (within reason, of course). But I believe that we must move away from the Bipartisanship in Washington, D.C. today in order for our country to survive.

That about sums my views up. So feel free to leave me a comment or two or start a friendly debate, and I may bring it up in a later post. Understand however that if you are commenting just to argue and want to bring no intellectual capacity to this table, then I will probably ignore you...and no hate speech, slander, or anything. Let's keep this civil.

I look forward to reading your comments and debating issues further! I will end each post with a famous historical or political quote, and for this inaugural post, I leave you with this from Machiavelli's The Prince:

"From this arises an argument: whether it is better to be loved than feared. I reply that one should like to be both one and the other; but since it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking."