I am a constitutionalist

(Photo taken by my Dad - circa 1950)

The say that you should never discuss religion, politics and a woman’s right to choose. I frequently discuss my faith… so now, at a time like this, I feel it’s necessary to discuss politics and my views on race in light of what is going on in the media.

First, although I am a registered republican and more conservative in my political views (much to my parents chagrin) I am truly more a constitutionalist than a republican or democrat. I believe in the ideas that were set forth by our founding fathers and cringe at many of the things that our government does.

I cringed when Bill Clinton and William Cohen (Secretary of Defense) decided that American companies needed to buy “Commercial Off The Shelf” (COTS) products in order to build hardware for military purposes. I recall buying Radstone processing boards from England – thinking to myself – “This is crazy!”

I cringed when George Bush the younger gave the contract for air refueling aircraft to Air Bus and not an American company. This is odd because under the flag of free trade we undercut the pricing structure in a way that priced American companies out of competitive pricing due to subsidies we provide to foreign companies under that same flag of free trade.

We live at a time when with all the craziness that is going on in our country at this time, it is unbelievable that you can watch our government on CSPAN discuss steroids in baseball and whether anything should be done about the New England Patriots football team and I wonder how our country has diminished to the point where we are… then I recall watching a debate a few years ago where the House of Commons in England was discussing the age of homosexual consent – and realize that we, collectively across the globe are repeating history and are focusing more on pleasure than the Creator or problems. We as a western society are chasing Bacchus and Dionysus.

For those reasons, I am sad.

So… for the next few days, I am going to discuss race in America from the perspective of a black man in America.

I do this in hopes of opening dialog with friends of mine and among those of you that read what I have to say. Because whether we want to discuss it, it impacts us all.