LOL, I f*ckin get it! (POLITICOS VS PEACEFULOS)

[dalebert]

I'm both.  I'm the third of 5 kids.  I haven't put on the rosy colored glasses, and still feel very guilty for how I treated my younger brother.

I was picked on occasionally by my older brother and I passed it on to my little sister. He would pin me down and breathe in my face with his god awful bad breath. I'd try to hold my breath and he would just wait until I had to take a breath and blow again. I HATED that! And he loved it. To this day, I have several times broken off dating with an otherwise great person due to bad breath. I wonder if it's related.

Once my friend from down the street and my sister and I were playing with a tape recorder making silly recordings underneath my dad's baby grand piano. My friend said something funny and I had a mouthful of iced tea and I did a spit take. I aimed it right at my little sister, spraying her from head to toe. My friend and I kept replaying the tape of her high-pitched voice trailing off as she ran out and to the kitchen, a combination and speech and crying-- "Mooooooom!! Dale spit tea all over me!!" Years later we found that tape and it brought back more laughter. I wonder where it is now. I wish I still had it. My sister was able to laugh at it now too many years later.

[porcupine kate]

Soap Box please.....

My house growing up was a festival of violence and mistreatment of others.  One day a friend sat me and two of my siblings down and told us that we had a choice.  Stop fighting with each other and help each other through the massively messed situation at home or wind up in trouble and alone like him and his brothers.  Thankfully we chose to work together to deal with the mess we were living in and are all functioning productive adults.  Much to the genuine surprise of our aunts and uncles.

I see activists in NH needing to make a choice before things get worse.

The liberty movement in NH is at a crossroads of sorts.  It could keep fighting like siblings or it can take a look around and see that it has bigger problems to work on and stop bickering with the people that agree with us on most things and work on showing the general public that liberty with personal responsibility is the best way to live.  Showing the general public that their lives can be better is the only way we will ever have less government on our backs.   

Now if we could find a way to respect what we have in common and work together to move toward more liberty and personal responsibility.  So many activists are losing sight of the fact that we are being watched by the people around us and those people do matter.  I see so much rude behavior on all sides it makes me sick.  We are hurting the cause and making moving to NH less welcoming. 

We need the voluntarists to lead by example and show how to live out of system.  We need the minarchist/libertarians to move the laws slowly toward less government.  We need to be on our best behavior and be good responsible neighbors so the general public around us can see we are on to a darn good idea.

If I could change one thing about the movement I would. 

I would have everyone stop and take a minute and think about how the general population views what they are doing for the liberty cause and find a way to help make it more inviting, understandable, respectful and tasteful.  Little things like how you dress, the quality of your presentations, signs, literature and language all help in selling your ideas and way of life to the general public.  The more taste and class we bring to the movement the more successful we will be.

Don't discount other people on a different spot on the path to liberty and start inviting people to start down the path of liberty.