By Jason

I can never remember a time when I truly believed that there was a God, other than a child's blind belief in Santa Clause. I was completely taken in by lots of other hocus-pocus, however, liberal and otherwise.

I consider liberalism to be a philosophy that takes the most complicated issues and reduces them down to simple one-liners and easy fixes, and I haven't seen any posts here that have changed my opinion of that. The liberal philosophy that I was exposed to also had a lot of the same attributes as claims of the paranormal. And when I found myself questioning some of the liberal reasoning, I was greeted by the same types of diversions that psychics and others use to distract from any reasonable questioning of their claims.

Emerging from the fog of youth and starting to see things without as much bias, politically and otherwise, was a very hard thing to do. For me, this happened when Ronald Reagan was elected President (chorus of snickers, laughs, and groans). The media was pounding relentlessly on this guy. The Left was assuring everyone that it would not be long before World War 3 started. All of my friends said he was too old, stupid, and so far right, he had fallen off the edge. But I found myself in the extremely uncomfortable position of privately agreeing with his basic philosophy. You see, the philosophy I'm talking about had nothing to do with his age, or looks, or the fact he could fall asleep so easily, and it was something that my friends would never see through the smoke and mirrors of personal attacks. To this day, many of them still believe in ghosts. But, enough of that.

The point I am trying - poorly - to make, is that it was as hard to discard the safety of my long held political beliefs, as it was to discard my gullibility for paranormal claims. In both cases, one has to look beyond the pleasant comforts of wishful thinking, and ask the hard questions. It is certainly not a question of intelligence, for I know plenty of intelligent people who are liberal, and many others who believe in the paranormal. I consider it to be a matter of how willing you are to coldly look at an issue without regard to your wishes, or popular opinion. And that's how I got here!