Just my opinion...

A good friend of mine, Greg, appeared as a guest speaker on a local radio talk show this week.  Greg is a bit more conservative than I am and does not share my appreciation for President Obama but…  He worked in a plug for Haskell!!!  How strong is that?

Oh, and since I’m talking about Greg being a geek that can speak – I’m giving him this plug.  Look at what he wrote for his daughter.  Makes me proud to be a geek sometimes when I get to call guys like that friends.

It’s incredibly embarrassing to me that I have to make the following admission:  I had no idea what Microsoft “Oslo” was all about.  Oh, I’d heard of it but didn’t look at the scope and objectives.

I’m a true believer in using DSLs as a method of accelerating the software development process.  Well, that’s the objective of Oslo.  I’ve now downloaded the Microsoft “Oslo” May 2009 CTP and am starting to play with it.

I might be slow but, at least, I’m clueless.

I’ve always loved living in the United States.  When I was young, my Dad would tell me the reason he loved this country was that we actually have the ideal that “all men are created equal“.  He also told me it was only an ideal because the men who originally wrote those words meant white, male, land-owners.  So the founding fathers didn’t have a perfect notion of equality.  We the people later started correcting the concept with the abolition of slavery, making sure everyone had the right to vote, etc.  We the people, given enough time, work toward a better place for us all.  We haven’t gotten there yet but this is still a very young country and some of our issues can be explained by our immaturity.

I know many people have issues with President Obama but one thing we the people can all be proud of is this.  We’re the only nation to elect a minority to its highest office.  We’re getting closer to our declaration that “all men are created equal“.

Later my love for the United States included the fact that we don’t fight religious wars.  I’ve now had discussions with friends and listened to pundits and experts talk about the current war in Iraq and the rhetoric leading up to the war.  I’d love to say that the war in Iraq isn’t a US religious war but as I look back over the chronology and recent news about how religion was used to promote the war to former President Bush, I can’t help seeing the war in Iraq as such.

There are plenty of criticisms of the war in Iraq.  The war in Iraq is really a spin-off of the War on Terrorism.  An extension or the War on Terrorism is the Patriot Act.  Patriot Act is a particularly distasteful name to me given that this law flies in the face of our core beliefs of civil liberties.  Perhaps you feel differently, I provided a link to a description of it and from there you can go get the full text of the law.  Read it all, I did.  It sucks.  If President Obama doesn’t make moves to repeal it I will not support him for a second term – and I supported him for President in 2008.

Our War on Terrorism  is also at the core of all the torture issues as well.  As a nation, we’ve allowed ourselves to become torturers.  Now, I’ve listened to all the arguments about “imminent danger”, you know – there’s a ticking time-bomb that can take out a city and it’s ok to torture this one guy to save many lives.  Problem is, that situation never existed in any of the cases.  Actually, that situation only existed on cable TV and in the movies.  Over and over I’ve heard the argument that “torture ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ have  made us a safer people”.  The argument no one can ever make is that torture has made us a better people. 

Is feeling safer really enough for us to resort to torture?  I hope not because it’s one of the same arguments made against the Second Amendment.  As Benjamin Franklin said:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

(Often attributed to Thomas Jefferson but look here.)

I do love living in the United States (being allowed to write this blog article without regard to retribution is just one good reason) but I don’t think I’ll ever be “patriotic”.  A few pretty smart people agree with me on the topic of patriotism as well.  A few I find particularly resonant are:

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. ~Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. ~George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. ~Bertrand Russell

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. ~Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them! ~Albert Einstein

The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? ~Pablo Casals

Remember that today is a celebration of freedom.  Not patriotism.

Have a great 4th of July.