People write the darnedest things! Check out this e-mail I received today. One Bryan (I’ll spare him the use of his last name), writes:

I think you need to ask yourself a question……

Here it is….. Have I gone to far? First off let my say I do enjoy your work, albeit with a grain of salt. Next, I know this might be hard for you to contemplate. But just humor me for a moment. Have you ever heard the saying “The truth is probably somewhere in between both extremes.” Ok you obviously hate the Bush administration. So let’s call him the “right” extreme. Although I don’t agree….I would call someone on the level of Hitler the most extreme conservative, but I digress. Bush is the most extreme for this argument. Who would be on the “left” extreme… hmmm…. Let’s think…. Maybe Ghandi, but he wasn’t a saint either. Just lookup his views on the untouchables cast in India. Ok. How about you! Yea… So if I am right, then that means the truth is somewhere in between your point of view and Mr. Bush and both of you can be accused of being an extremist…

Just think about it…

OK, I’ll allow that the Bush Administration fits on the ideological spectrum somewhere to the left of Hitler. Let’s say, on a scale from 1 to 10, Adolf’s a 10 and Marx was a 1. The question is, where’s Bush? By definition 5 would be a centrist. Since Bush’s regime espouses a radical right-wing agenda–establishing a concentration camp at Gitmo, paring the Bill of Rights, running up a $10 trillion deficit so that a few thousand superrich people don’t have to pay taxes, a USA-Patriot Act that allows government spooks to paw through your stuff without having to tell you about it–he’s no 5. Or 6. I’d give him an 8 for what he’s done and a 9 for what he’d like to do. Death camps? Nah—not yet, anyway.

Where I run into trouble with Bryan is his supposition that, as someone who’s against Bush’s politics, I’m an anti-Bush, a Ghandi to Bush’s Hitler. That would make me a 3 for what I am and a 2 for what I’d like to do. But that’s silly. I’m all over the place ideologically; I espouse libertarian values of keeping the government out of people’s personal lives, conservative opinions on balancing the budget, free trade and keeping out of foreign conflicts that don’t concern us, and leftist views of economic and social justice. I support the Second Amendment right to bear arms; I’m against the death penalty because it turns society into murderers, not because I think Mumia’s innocent. Which I don’t.

I’m certainly not much of a wild-eyed revolutionary in the vein of, say, Dubya. For one thing, I pretty much like my streets free of rioters and think the United States would be just dandy if it would nip and tuck some of its uglier aspects: propping up dictators, paying teachers like shit, letting homeless people sleep on the street, that sort of thing. On the other hand, I’m willing to concede that the system may not be reformable, that it may one day have to be utterly destroyed in order for progress to occur. That’d be a shame, though, since it wouldn’t take much reform to make things perfect. So where do I rank myself? I don’t, but if you put a Constitutionally-protected firearm up to my head and demand that I tell you, I’ll say: 5. I feel like a moderate, anyway. The “average” may be right-wing, but that doesn’t turn the rest of us into left-wing. Not automatically, anyway. Ideological labeling is stupid, unless you’re describing a simpleton like Bush.

So, there. I thought about it. Why? I can’t imagine.