The unfortunate part of getting home most days around 4:30 is it means I’m going to catch a few minutes of Glenn Beck on Fox News. I don’t know why I do it to myself, because all it leads to is an unhealthy rise in my blood pressure and the vague feeling of unease as if I’ve just been in the presence of unadulterated evil. I could just as easily say that if my television were tuned in to one of the news channels with a liberal bent. The problem I have is all I hear from either side is “Progressives are bad” or “Republicans are the party of No” depending on who I’m listening to at the time.

Want to know a secret? Neither party extreme cares about all of your rights. They’d rather cherry pick the ones they like and ignore the others. The far right wants to roll back government regulation everywhere except in your bedroom and on television… I mean we wouldn’t want anyone to get offended if they accidentally saw a nipple (incidentally, what do people who are offended by nipples do with the mirrors in their bathrooms?) and we certainly wouldn’t want to give voice to someone whose religious views, orientation, or lifestyle wouldn’t have been recognizable in 1954. No, freedom and personal liberty don’t go that far. On the extreme left, we have those who want Uncle Sugar to care for us all from cradle to grave and who want to drive all imaginable standards towards the middle and the sad, sad condition of institutionalized mediocrity. Why worry about paying for it, right? Surely everything will work out alright in the end. What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve loved politics for all of my adult life, but I’m tiring of the straw-men and extremists. Sure, I’ll stay informed and I’ll keep voting… but until politicians and the media stop insulting my intelligence, I have no use for either of them. I’ll be making my own decisions based on my beliefs and understanding about individual issues… I worry, though, about so many who are going to pick up the banner of one side or the other and carry it forward as absolute truth.