"Radical of the Week Award"

The article below reminded me of the reasons I first started blogging and got actively involved in local politics, at my ripe old age.
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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/national/stories/DN-youngcons_13pol.ART.State.Edition1.4e4bddf.html
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You see I was a young college student at one time, I was a hippie, I did all the things that hippies did. I was immersed in the “counter culture” I protested at CMU after the “4 dead in Ohio” disgrace. I dropped out, I hitched hiked to California, and all over. I did everything except put flowers in my hair. Now I romanticize it by saying I was trying to find the answers to life’s problems. Like the Australians have their youth experience what they call a “Walk about”, or the Amish encourage their youth to go out into the world briefly so their decision whether to remain Amish or not will be based on facts. To insure that the decision will be their own.

This type of cleansing was my education in the realities of life. I admit that I lost a lot of time and the where with all to succeed in life, but in a sense that loss made the wisdom I gained that much more dear.

I learned about freedom. Personal freedom. The one thing I learned, was that to have total personal freedom meant that I could have nothing. Janus Joplin reminded us of that by singing, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose”. No permanent shelter, cars, you name it. If it wasn’t given to me, I would have to work for the man, lose some freedom, get tied down and all the rest. I soon found, what everyone finds, the necessity of compromise.

All people go through something like that in varying degrees. I disagree that the process is silly or somehow wrong. It is a basic way a generation asserts it’s right to exist as something separate something unique. What a generation does with that right is something else, but their right to pursue it is unalienable.

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"It can feel like a counterculture on college campuses, definitely," Ms. Agness said, adding that the organization advocates public policies that recognize differences between men and women rather than ignoring them in an effort to treat everyone the same.
"We do receive a fair amount of opposition, but that's what makes being part of [the network] so rewarding," she said. "You find so many other women who think like you and want to be a part of it."
She added, "Our growth has been phenomenal ... which really speaks to the void on college campuses."
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The point I’m getting to is that at the time I decided to learn to blog, I knew that being a conservative could be the new Counter culture of the day. A means to lash out at the hypocrisy of the times. The political correctness of the times. When picking a name for my Live Dangerously blog I was influenced by the thought that to not vote like your parents by in large meant not to vote for the liberal attitudes in everything around us. Just like in the early days of being a hippie there would be certain dangers. Social and otherwise.

Ms. Agness seems to have found some of those dangers. She is the revolutionary of the times now, of the new generation. Willing to stand up against the accepted “consensus”.
When I see 50-60 year old hippies carrying signs and protesting, I realized that they are not so much about protesting as they are about trying to glorify their past. Then I thought how embarrassed I would be if I saw my parents doing that. I would want to rebel from that. I would want to stake my own piece of the world. I decided to try to show those that felt that way that there was an alternative to doing what their parents were doing. Thinking the Politically Correct way. The Established way.

That alternative is conservatism, fighting to keep the freedom we have so we can decide what is best for ourselves, let others decide what is best for themselves. Being on a campus where unorthodox or unpopular ideas are scorned and belittled or worse, one would indeed have to Live Dangerously to Be A Conservative especially upon that stage. My “Radical of the Week” goes to Ms. Agness.

Regards, Living Not So Dangerously Off Campus.
LD.