Practical Heresy

Forget any religious connotations; I am not a lapsed something-or-other with an axe to grind or a holy cow to be gored.  Which is not to say that I will not grind an axe or two, or gore the occasional holy cow, merely that this is not my purpose.

I am an American, living in a United States that hasn't been less unified since the middle of the nineteenth century.  Some fear that we are standing on the precipice of a great abyss; that perhaps our great republic has run its course.

If you have been paying any attention at all to the world around us, it may appear to you that we've become mired in a swamp of our own preconceptions.  Some might argue that we are always mired in that swamp.  Still others will simply blink, not perceiving anything wrong with the status quo.

The Right sees nothing but permissiveness and sloth on the Left, and the Left sees bigotry and greed on the Right.  And outside our own country, the rest of the world sees the folly; for we are not divided into Liberals and Conservatives in this country; we are Conservatives, and More Conservatives.

Most of those standing on the so-called Left are in fact standing where the center used to be; Obama is reviled as an arch-socialist, yet most of his policies were written by Republicans of twenty, thirty years ago.  Former Florida governor Jeb Bush himself noted that Ronald Reagan, a veritable patron saint of The Grand Old Party, would probably fail to gain support in today's radically right-wing Republican party.  The party of Lincoln would probably run ol' Honest Abe right of the party on a rail.

But this isn't my purpose, to discuss politics.  Rather, it is to cut through them.  I am not seeking consensus, I am exposing hypocrisy; more, I am seeking answers.  And the answers do not care about party lines, or philosophical leanings, or political pretension.

Let's tip over the apple cart, and sort out the good apples from the bad; let's let the cat out of the bag and see where he leads us.  Let's step outside the box of conformity, and dare to cut to the chase.

Because I believe that all problems have answers; sometimes, we won't like the answers we find.  That's when we examine the questions we've been asking.   Perhaps we've all been looking for places to use our hammer, instead of trying to find a screwdriver or wrench.

This is Practical Heresy; overcoming our societal dogma to find practical solutions to the problems we face as individuals and as a people.