More than likely, you’ve received the following notice (or some variation thereof) from your financial institution, mortgage company, credit card company, etc.

Acme Bank will begin processing our 2009 year end statements on January 2, 2010. All year end statements will be mailed on or before January 31, 2010. In an effort to be more eco-friendly in our approach to sending out year end statements, we will no longer provide the history on the year end statement.

“Eco-friendly”? Are they serious? What is so eco-friendly about cutting down on the amount of paper that they mail out each year? Paper, the last time I checked, was still a renewable resource.

And answer me this, eco-earth-day-proponents… If mailing out less paper is an example of being eco-friendly, then why do I still get junk mail, weekly ads tossed onto my driveway, flyers hung on my front door, and up to 18 different versions of the same Holiday (read: Christmas) catalog per merchant I do business with (plus another half dozen versions via the merchants I rarely do business with)?

It seems to me that sending out less paper has less to do with being eco-friendly than it does with saving printing costs, resource expenditures, and postage expenses.

This disingenuous view of being ecologically responsible was evidenced at my place of employment, recently, when a new initiative of daytime cleaning was implemented. The cleaning crews, normally dispatched in the evenings, when the office workers had gone home, now do their rounds during working hours. One of the driving reasons behind the initiative was that it was tremendously cost effective, since less money would be spent on utilities to support the cleaning crew at night. Another big “benefit”, we were told, was that such an initiative was environmentally friendly. As part of the marketing promotion for the policy change, we were even given plastic toy figures stamped with “Going Green” on them. Never mind the fact that the production of such items is, in itself, not a green activity.

So, the moral of the story is, in order to better sell an idea that minimizes your own company’s cost expenditures… simply stamp it GREEN.

From First Things, the following quote from Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue,

At its most basic level, conservatism is a respect for history and tradition, including traditional moral principles. I do not believe I am more moral, certainly no better, than anyone else, and conservatives who act “holier than thou” turn my stomach. So do some elite liberals. But I do believe in a few timeless and unchanging truths, and chief among those is that man is fallen. The world is not perfect, and politicians will never make it so. This, above all, is what informs my pragmatic approach to politics.

From The Telegraph, a poem by Al Gore,

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun

Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea
Neptune’s bones dissolve

Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly

Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning’s celebration

Unknown creatures
Take their leave, unmourned
Horsemen ready their stirrups

Passion seeks heroes and friends
The bell of the city
On the hill is rung

The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools

And to think that Al Gore almost became President of the United States.

The phrase, “dodging a bullet” quickly comes to mind.

In the U.K., it seems that gifted students are being ignored by their teachers, lest they fall into the trap of promoting elitism. Per The Daily Mail,

Many teachers are not convinced of the importance of providing more challenging tasks for their gifted and talented pupils.

Bright youngsters told inspectors they were forced to ask for harder work. Others were resentful at being dragooned into ‘mentoring’ weaker pupils.

…

Teachers feared that a focus on the brightest pupils would ‘undermine the school’s efforts to improve the attainment and progress of all other groups of pupils’.

I find it interesting that the students interviewed expressed frustration at not only the fact that they aren’t getting more challenging tasks, but at also being forced to mentor their weaker (read: less adept) counterparts. Indeed, one has to wonder, if students are being  asked to mentor other students, exactly what are the functions and responsibilities of teachers in U.K. schools?

Yet, I can’t help but conclude that such nonsense is but an outgrowth of a socialist mentality. Socialism, per Wikipedia, may include,

…the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potentialities and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.

I’ve noticed some common threads, among those with whom I’ve debated the actions of our current administration: For one, they think that we (whether referring to the U.S. or the world) need to work together for the common good. Also, evil capitalistic greed is what has driven us to the unequal state we now find ourselves in, as a society. And, we should expect the government to be the means with which to provide and regulate the so called common good.

Do you remember this statement?

It’s not that I want to punish your success; I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success, too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

– candidate Barack Obama

When not reading from his carefully prepared text, Obama tends to reveal himself a bit more clearly. Notice that he thinks we need to make sure that other people behind a successful person (aka less gifted students vs. gifted students) get their chance for success. He also thinks that when the wealth is spread around (aka gifted students forced to mentor less gifted students) it is good for everybody.

As I see it, the problem with socialistic dreaming is that it promotes the notion that human depravity can be ultimately conquered by humans themselves.

The entire course of human history has shown us otherwise.

(With apologies to George Lucas and Star Wars episode 4.)

The President’s numerous, and recent, trips to Virginia and New Jersey notwithstanding, Republicans were elected governors of those states.  The thrill (up the leg) is gone one year on, and when policies instead of history-making is more of a draw, two conservatives are elected.  (Christie is very pro-life, and is the first Republican governor in 16 years.  McDonnell is the first Republican for Virginia in 8 years.)  While Democrats are saying that the reasons are mostly due to local issues, the fact that they brought in the President so much for these races tends to discount their own analysis.  Bringing in a President that both these states voted for in 2008 was not enough to get the job done. 

Hope and change indeed.  Just not the kind the President represents.

In the small but closely-watched race in New York’s 23rd district, where the Republican dropped out, only to endorse the Democrat, the fact that Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman managed to garner 45% of the vote is astounding.  Coming in only 4.5 points behind Democrat Bill Owens is amazing for a 3rd party candidate.  While it’s likely that some of the absentee ballots cast early, before Dede Scozzafava essentially dropped out, may have gone to Hoffman, it probably wouldn’t have been enough to win it.  The main issue here is that, as Brit Hume on Fox News Channel put it, this is why you have primaries.  Scozzafava was chosen by the party machine.  Clearly, the base, even in New York, is farther to the right than the party realizes.  When you run a good, conservative campaign, you can both energize the base and bring in independents (ask Ronald Reagan … or John McCain).  This is a tough, if small, loss in a district that has been reliably Republican, but the party dropped the ball and misread its constituents.

Still, giving up NY-23 for New Jersey and Virginia is a trade I’d take.

Closer to (my) home, the city of Atlanta is poised to elect it’s first white mayor in 35 years.  Mary Norwood got 46% of the vote last night, which kicks in a runoff in a few weeks with 2nd place challenger Kasim Reed.  For a long time, it has been my opinion that Atlanta needed an African-American mayor to avoid spurious charges of racism.  Freaknik, an annual party generally attended by college students from historically black colleges, was heavily curtailed by 1998 and ultimately relocated to Daytona Beach under Mayor Bill Campbell.  If he had been white, he would have been labeled "racist" and that would have been an unfair distraction from the actual debate.  As it was, he was labeled an "Uncle Tom" for doing so, even though residents of all colors agreed that it was getting out of hand.  He did what had to be done, all for good reasons, but I think the racial overtones would have not allowed a mayor to do the job properly.  That Atlanta seems ready to elect a white mayor is a good sign that the race issue is diminishing, but time will tell if Norwood is elected.

One issue-related referendum I’d like to point out is that in Maine (as liberal as they come in New England) they overturned a law (that had not taken effect  yet) that would legalize same-sex marriage.  By a 53-47 margin, the people rejected what the legislature had passed.  Yes, the people elected those legislators, but apparently the peoples’ representatives stopped representing them at some point.  As I understand it, when it comes to referendums, same-sex marriage is 0 for 31.  I’m detecting a trend.

And finally, in a much smaller race, blogger Scott Ott, evangelical Christian and author of the wonderful, satirical blog ScrappleFace, lost to the incumbent for County Executive of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania by the small margin of 49-51.  The election was decided by 1,000 votes among the 40,000 case.  Scott put up a great campaign, and for a first-time political-office-seeker, this is fantastic, and shows that his conservative principles, especially with regards to fiscal policy, hit a nerve.  I hope this is not the end of Scott’s political aspirations.

Clearly, the White House hasn’t quite figured out the difference between the two.  Now, I will say that some many who complain about liberal bias in the media and quote Keith Olbermann to, in part, prove it also need this bit of education.  (Quoting Keith Olbermann to show he’s an unserious clown is an entirely different matter.)  But the White House ought to certainly understand the difference.

After spending the week declaring that Fox News Channel isn’t a real news organization because it has perspective (while at the same time ignoring perspective of a worse kind from so many other news organizations), Jake Tapper of ABC News got White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to determine what the standard was for “perspective”.

Tapper: “That’s a sweeping declaration that they’re not a news organization. How are they different from say, ABC, MSNBC, Univision?”

Gibbs: “You and I should watch around 9:00 tonight or 5:00 this afternoon.”

Tapper: “I’m not talking about the opinion programs or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying that thousands of individuals who work for a media organization do not work for a news organization. Why is that appropriate for the White House to say?”

Gibbs: “That is our opinion.”

On FNC, the 9:00 hour is Sean Hannity’s show, and Glenn Beck runs at 5:00.  So expressing viewpoints, on shows that are not news shows but are transparently and openly opinionated, by the White House’s lights, disqualifies you from being a news organization.

Well, apparently there’s more to that than just expressing viewpoints.  Else, why would the President himself have had MSNBC’s Olberman and Rachel Maddow as part of an off-the-record briefing?  Apparently it’s not just perspective that’s the problem.  It’s disagreement they’re trying to suppress.

Because you know that other news organizations are watching how this administration is treating FNC.  The message is clear, “If you want access, you will tow the line.”  True, other administrations have had issues with the press, and with specific networks or newspapers, in the past.  But Obama is taking this into uncharted territory.

Ostracizing a news network for it’s opinion shows critical of you is way, way out of line.  While it’s not technically violating the First Amendment, since there are no legal impediments being thrown up to Fox News, the spirit of the amendment is being violated.  This is either thin skin or something worse.  I hope it’s the former, but I’m watching out for the latter.

Update: A commenter on this post (which tries to make an equivalence between Obama’s general dissing of FNC to when Bush would try to get NBC to air unedited quotes of himself) make a great point.

All three networks to opinion after 5, what’s the big deal? I don’t think FOX has tried to hide the fact that Beck, O’Relly, Hannity or Greta are opinion. Hell, it’s not like any of those three were ANCHORING the presidential elections.

A la Olberman.  Ouch.

These culture wars aren’t new. Via the magic of RSS and Google Reader … a reply to Jared comes apropos post from the Desert (and I quote in full, because that’s sort of the point):

It was said concerning Abba Agathon …that some monks came to find him, having heard tell of his great discernment. Wanting to see if he would lose his temper, they said to him, “Aren’t you that Agathon who is said to be a fornicator and a proud man?” “Yes, it is very true,” he answered. They resumed, “Aren’t you that Agathon who is always talking nonsense?” “I am.” Again they said, “Aren’t you Agathon the heretic?” But at that, he replied, “I am not a heretic.” So they asked him, “Tell us why you accepted everything we cast you, but repudiated this last insult.” He replied, “The first accusations I take to myself, for that is good for my soul. But heresy is separation from God. Now I have no wish to be separated from God.” At this saying they were astonished at his discernment and returned, edified.

Aren’t you one of those right winger Christians who [hates gays, is a hypocrite, hates women … does or says or thinks X, Y and Z] ?? Well, we might say  … yes, unless they accuse of separation from God.

[Update]: I should add the reason we might say yes is not because it is true (which is usually not the case) but because it is good for our souls to bear the burden of false accusation.

Regular commenter JA offers today the following observation:

However, I would (and do) distinguish between tribalism for minority “tribes” and tribalism for the majority in the most powerful nation on Earth. Black pride, Jewish pride, Mormon pride, Catholic pride — these, while (and this is where I probably disagree with Sharansky) still falling short of the ideal of universalism, can be useful for societies which contain them. It’s when the primary group of a powerful society shows too much tribalism that it becomes dangerous. But, again, I think universalism is ultimately best.

A few remarks might follow from this. (I might note that these remarks stem from the book Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, by Nathan Sharansky) Read the rest of this entry

Sweden, long an example that the Left has pointed to as a socialist enlightened economic haven, has been running away from socialist progressive ideals.  The latest domino to fall is the realization that tax cuts spur on the economy.

Sweden’s centre-right government on Saturday announced income tax cuts of 10 billion kronor to stimulate the job market, its primary objective.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and three other ministers in the four-party coalition said the reduction would mean most wage earners would have 200 to 250 kronor (20 to 25 euros, 29 to 36 dollars) more in take-home pay every month.

The proposal, to be presented to parliament on Monday as part of the 2010 budget bill, is the fourth leg of a tax cut programme introduced in January 2007 to stimulate employment.

The fourth leg would enter into force on January 1, 2010.

With that step, 99 percent of full-time employees will have had their taxes reduced by a total of 1,000 kronor per month, while 75 percent will have had reductions of 1,500 kronor, the government said.

"The coalition government has agreed on reforms for jobs and entrepreneurialism that will increase employment in the long-term. It has to be more profitable to work and more companies should be able to hire employees," the government said.

Imagine that; looking at the long-term rather than a quick "stimulus" "fix" for the here-and-now.  Not only that, but letting the people keep their money rather than spending their childrens’ is predicted to increase employment in the long-term, in hopes of reducing this:

Since coming to power in late 2006, the government has launched a series of measures aimed at inciting Swedes to return to the job market instead of living off of state subsidies.

The success of public assistance shouldn’t be how many people are on it, but how many no longer need it.  That line is not original with me, but it is an idea that the Swedes are coming to grips with.

Thanks, Ronnie.

The linked post and associated picture ask “Can you imagine the outrage if this sign showed up at a MoveOn rally instead of Saturday’s tea party?”

I’m not getting it. What is there to be outraged about?

Help me out here, what outrage and about what?

And what would be a “trigger” related MoveOn rally poster even say that would be objectionable?

As planned, President Obama gave his speech to schoolchildren nationwide, on September 8th.

And as was widely reported, many parent’s (and conservative pundits) across the country expressed concern for the event.

And, as I expected, many people, liberal and conservative alike, are now gleefully reporting that President Obama’s speech was all about education and nothing about indoctrinating our children into Socialism (e.g., here and here).

Of course, these writers completely miss the point!

No one in their right mind would ever have considered pledging to serve Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush, the two other presidents, we’ve been reminded, who also gave speeches to schoolchildren across the nation. Yet, since last year, we have had to wallow through incessant hero worshiping genuflections to the one who brings his historic presidency to fruition, embarking upon a worldwide tour, delivering orations worthy of all the grandeur of our long lost savior returned, at last, to unite our land, our people, our globe. This cult of Obama is just that, sending tingling chills up people’s legs and causing others to liken him to “god”. Shouldn’t such adoration bestowed upon an elected leader at least give one, especially the Christian, cause for concern?

Others of us, the blind ones, have missed it completely, not unlike Aunt Eunice, who never gets the jokes at the family get-togethers. We could only see a pro-abortion Senator, with barely a measurable amount of negligible service, unpublished in the legal journals, who had previously organized… communities.

But I venture towards reality.

Needless to say, since his inauguration, we have watched Obama attempt to make good on his promise to “spread the wealth around”, what with his trillion dollar economic extravaganza and plans for government run healthcare, expanding the federal government’s reach into the private sector.

The man is socialist through and through, and desires to increase the role of government in our lives.

So when he decides to speak to the children of America, I’m not expecting him to try and win the war; but I am on alert, and wary of each battle.

Christians: pray for President Obama

I’ve been reading Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Conservative, for a few years now. While I’ve enjoyed most of his writing I’ve been taken aback, in the near past, with his increasing propensity to drift into some other-world region neither Right nor Left nor Libertarian nor… Crunchy. While such a position is not, in and of itself, reason to pull ranks, and while I can put up with most of his doom and gloom prognoses on issues such as the economy, a recent post of his, regarding the uproar pertaining to President Obama’s planned speech to schoolchildren nationwide is the last straw.

From Dreher,

A teacher in a Dallas suburban district just phoned the colleague of mine who works in the office next to mine. She’s a personal friend of his. He says she phoned from the break room at school, close to tears. She told him, “This is getting out of control. Parents are calling up the school and yelling at the principals. The principals are freaking out.”

All because the president of the United States is going to give an address on education to students.

Meanwhile, it took no time for a commenter on the Dallas Morning News editorial board blog to compare the president to Charles Manson. Which was followed by this:

This all sounds very familiar. Oh yea, Hitler was well liked by children. He could speak to them very well, and won them over. Hitler organized the youth as an army, complete with regiments. A boy could rise from the simple rank of just a boy to lead a squad, platoon, company, even a battalion. A girl could rise to become a leader. Even lead them into community organizers. Don’t drink any more of Obama’s Kool Aid. Wake up people.

Obama would be smart to release the text of his planned address to defuse the crazybomb on the Right. I doubt that will be enough. A Texas Republican friend this morning told me two things: a) not all conservatives agree with these people; and b) that said, this is the last straw for him, that he doesn’t want to be associated in any way with the GOP, which in his view has lost its collective mind.

No, Mr. Dreher, the furor is not because the President of the United States is going to give an address on education to students. It’s because people were sold a bill of goods when they naively thought hope and change was coming to our land (albeit, the globe) via the White House. Instead, we’ve seen a concerted effort to “spread the wealth around” with a decidedly socialist agenda. Citizens of the United States do not want government intruding into their lives and they especially do not want to let THEIR children become a captive audience to such culturally socialist mantras.

Consider this video that was shown to school children at an elementary school in Utah.

Our children should be taught about patriotism, responsibility, human rights, civic duty, and our rich history. They should not be expected to “pledge service to Barack Obama” (3:17 into the video above), or any other human, be they Democrat or Republican. Granted, the video above was not shown nationwide and is not part of the President’s planned presentation, yet one has to wonder why such a blatantly political video would be considered as acceptable to broadcast to public school children in the first place?

Parents are concerned because time has shown that increased government intrusion in the lives of its citizens results in less freedoms for said citizens. This is a president that has clearly demonstrated his desire to increase the federal government’s role in the private sector. That alone should be cause for concern when this administration expresses a desire to speak to the nation’s children – correction – the parent’s children.

Unfortunately, Dreher fails in his attempt to illustrate the utter craziness of the crazybomb Right with a blatantly disengenous comparison of his friend’s tearfully compassionate teacher with that of an anonymous foul-mouthed internet troll who compares Obama to Hitler.

So, adios Crunchy.

What is happening to the Left, the One, and their cherished socialist agenda? In Townhall meeting after Townhall meeting, we see the people voicing their opinions – and their opinions are decidedly against the moves the Obama administration are attempting to make (ref. here).

How has this come about?

From Richard Fernandez,

Somebody believes the left is losing the public policy debate because they’ve got all the flagship institutions. And that’s a liability. Umair Haque, writing in a Harvard Business Publishing article, argues that the right, like al-Qaeda has mastered the art of “5th generation warfare” and is swarming all over the left. He notices that liberals have been losing the debate lately and tries to analyze why. The problem with the left, he seems to think, is that they are responding from a center, sending talking points out to a periphery, whereas the right has discovered how to attack swiftly, from a plethora of directions and in depth. The right is inside their OODA loop and Haque realizes that if this goes on long enough, the left will lose…

Is the swarm simply a swastika-laden Astroturf tactic of the Right, per Nancy Pelosi? Fernandez doesn’t buy such conspiracy theories,

The Republican leadership was in fact the first victim of the revolt from below. Only after the “5th generation” war had ripped through the comfortable assumptions of business as usual did it break out to face the left. To think that the current unrest is the creation of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would be to make a fundamental mistake. Those figures are simply its beneficiaries — and its beneficiaries by accident. If Haque really wants to fight 5G, I would like to propose a different set of rules.

1. Listen to the people;
2. Believe that truth is something to be discovered in dialogue with the public; that the debate is never “over” simply because the great and good say so;
3. Consider it possible that all men, including small businessmen, plumbers, rubes from Alaska, cleaning women who say their prayers at mealtimes — are in some fundamental way the equal of graduates of Harvard Law School and know as much about life and death as Dr. Zeke Emmanuel;
4. Accept that facts do matter because reality is authored by something larger than government, greater than the Congress and more lasting than any administration;
5. That all efforts to “attack the base” will ultimately fail because a government by the people, of the people and for the people will never perish from the earth; and
6. Realize that these precepts are obvious on the face of it though there are none so blind as they who will not see.

I would add that the Republican leadership had also better realize the following:

1. The revolt from below does not necessarily indicate that the people support Republicans vs. Democrats;
2. If they attempt to travel down the same spend-easy path, as liberals tend to rush into, they too will find themselves under harsh criticism (aka peaceful revolt);
3. The people, by and large, are repulsed by any political party’s attempts to increase government intrusion into their lives.

I have always though that the US as a whole leans conservative, but now I have a Gallup poll to back up that impression.

The strength of "conservative" over "liberal" in the realm of political labels is vividly apparent in Gallup’s state-level data, where a significantly higher percentage of Americans in most states — even some solidly Democratic ones — call themselves conservative rather than liberal.

I like the accompanying graphic.

Now, why party affiliation doesn’t quite match this, or why we elect such liberals as the one currently in the Oval Office, or heck, whether or not these folks even know what "conservative" means, is an open question.  But the fact that they at least believe themselves to be it is heartening to me.

Mr Swartz is on the (far) left, which he thinks should be a larger plurality. In this post expressing that sentiment he writes:

It quickly became clear that I was the only person even remotely on the left. And it wasn’t simply that the others disagreed with me; they couldn’t even understand me. I remember us discussing a scene in Invisible Man where a factory worker brags he’s so indispensable that when he was out sick the boss drove to his house and begged him to come back, agreeing to put him in charge. When I suggested Ellison might be implying that labor, not management, ought to run workplaces, the other students (and the teacher) didn’t just disagree—they found the idea incomprehensible. How could you run a factory without managers?

And thereby it becomes clear why the left which Mr Swartz envisions is so small … it’s because the ideas he holds are so, well, wrong in a very obvious way.

Imagine as Mr Swartz suggests a “factory without managers.” How might that proceed. Well, consider that factory entirely consisting of managers. Somebody of course has to procure raw materials … and a good price would be nice. So one or more of the workers, depending on the size of the plant, isn’t on the plant floor, he’s making calls and finding suppliers. Somebody (or more people again depending on the plant size) has to manage the cash-flow: ingoing, outgoing, and arranging for lines of credit. People will have to locate buyers, find markets, locate new ways of the products produced at the factory to be used. Some people will need to tool up for new product, decide “build or buy” on new property for expansion and arrange for the, uhm, capital as is necessary.  Additionally some of those workers will need to arrange for the hiring of new workers, assist during health emergencies, and could even help plan retirement plans. Others will need to do engineering or basic science work to figure out new and better ways to manufacture whatever it is this factory produces. These roles, oddly enough, are indispensable. They all  in fact take quite a bit of hard work. Additionally many of these roles take more expertise and background training than an unskilled labourer requires, which cost that person time and money in order to acquire. A plant manufacturing “stuff” if it is real actually depends on these sorts of services. We have a name for those people in those roles, that name for people watching the supply chain, doing sales, managing capital and doing HR services are what we call management. Oddly enough the idea is in fact incomprehensible. It is in fact impossible to run a factory without managers in a actual real world situation.

So it seems this is the sort of leftist who finds it sad that factories which don’t actually sell their product, acquire raw materials, and so on … are not seen as realistic. Or to put it another way, I find it completely incomprehensible that Mr Swartz figures on running a factory without people performing the jobs and roles noted above. Who will do this? How and why? There must be a standard answer in his repertoire. What might that be?

My commenter JA scoffs at my idea that those the communist sympathizers and the sympathies held by the left in the mid to late 80s didn’t suddenly have an epiphany and decide that everything they believed was wrong. That they instead have softened their rhetoric and acquired camouflage. Part of his difficulty with that sort of notion is that Mr Obama is of this generation and himself being somewhat younger and one of the “non left lefties” that Mr Swartz complains realize that the socialist/communist dreams of the 80s left has not been inherited by the younger left.

Scott Ott, of ScrappleFace blog fame and occasional CNN guest, is running for Executive of Lehigh county in Pennsylvania.  Tuesday night, he went strolling around Allentown, looking to strike up conversations, maybe hand out a few campaign bookmarks; no real agenda in mind.

Turns out that when he enters a store and starts talking to the guys there, a chance to really discuss the issues crops up and he has what he called "an intensely practical, intelligent discussion about political ideology and freedom".  The conversation begins:

"What will you do for me if I vote for you?" the shop owner said. "Will you get me a grant for my store?"

I’m a bad politician.

I said (paraphrasing from memory), "The first thing I’ll do for you is put an end to the idea that public servants should hand out special favors to people who support them."

I told him that the next thing I could "do for him" was to abolish the idea that government is going to save you from your troubles, and to exchange that for the idea that you are responsible and free, and that no one cares more about your children, your business, your home and your neighborhood than you do. In addition, no one is better equipped to deal with the challenges of your neighborhood than you and your neighbors. But it won’t happen until you stop thinking that someone else is to blame, or that some outside agency is going to intervene to fix things.

He looked at me and said, "You’re a Republican."

I was delighted that he associates freedom and responsibility with my party.

His thoughts on that discussion, what the aims are (or should be) of the Republican party, and a sense of community that’s been lost elsewhere can be found here.