I first had the idea for doing the Unconstrained Discourse several months ago. I created the link from the Godfrey Family Home Page and created a placeholder page to tell readers that it was “coming soon”. That was on January 3rd.
What took so long? To be honest, it was part laziness and part procrastination. But there was one other factor that played at least as big a part as those two vices – I needed to figure out what I believed.
I have plenty of ideas bouncing around in the great emptiness between my ears; and any one of them would make a great Discourse. The problem that I ran into was I began to find inconsistencies in my opinions. As I tried to reconcile what I thought I believed, I realized that I needed to rethink things that I had long considered not open to dispute. I found that my opinion on some issues was indefensible because of my opinion on other issues. The more I tried to get a handle around these conflicting thoughts and emotions the more confused I became. That’s when the laziness and procrastination really began to kick in. This was just TOO HARD!
I finally decided on a course of action that when stated out loud seems almost too simplistic: I needed to identify a set of “core beliefs” by which I measured everything else. I started with the most important and arguably the easiest to prioritize: The Bible is the irrefutable Word of God and everything else has to be measured against Its Truths.
That one was easy. This is the only one of my core beliefs that deals with the spiritual. Why? Quite frankly it covers everything. It sets the tone for all other core beliefs and opinions.
I then began to analyze my political beliefs. I found it hard to separate what was truly political (campaign finance reform) from that which was a mixture of politics and social issues (legal recognition of homosexual marriages). In the process of thinking about these issues, I realized that the Constitution of these United States is an amazing document. This became my second core belief: The Constitution is the bible for the federal government. All functions of the federal government should be measured against the constitution. If the Constitution doesn’t grant a power to the federal government then the federal government doesn’t have it.
Tumble quickly to core belief number three: The federal government should be as small a possible and its only function is to provide those services that individuals and the states cannot provide for themselves (national defense).
Many of you do doubt are thinking that there’s nothing really Earth-shattering about those three core beliefs. Maybe you wholeheartedly agree with all three. Folks, be very careful. If you start measuring many of your “beliefs” against these three core principles you’ll find that at some level those beliefs are incompatible with one or more of these principles. What’s really scary is when you try to reconcile apparent inconsistencies between the principles themselves (the Bible speaks strongly against homosexuality but the Constitution doesn’t give the federal government the right to make it illegal).
If these three weren’t hard enough to deal with, I had to go and add a fourth to my inventory of core beliefs: personal rights, liberties, and freedoms are more important than the government’s performance of its duties except in the most extreme circumstances.
I’m still working on that fourth one. I don’t really like the way I worded it, and I’m not entirely sure I fully understand what I mean. In general though, it means that most of the time the government has no business in my life.
Finally, a quick fifth core belief: no individual’s rights, liberties, and freedoms are more important than any other individual’s.
So where does that leave me? I’m one confused, middle-aged man. When I started comparing my opinions on various political and social issues against these five core beliefs I found that I couldn’t justify many of my opinions. Here are some of the areas where I had to reexamine (and in many cases change) my beliefs:
I’m not going to tell you in this Discourse what my beliefs were (and are) in these areas. That’s for future editions. Let’s just say that I’ve been disturbed by what I’ve come up with. In some cases I’m still unwilling to accept some of the conclusions that I’ve come to. I’m still looking for flaws in the core beliefs so that I can maintain some of my long-held beliefs.
In the next Discourse I’ll begin to address some of these issues in detail. My goal is two-fold: I want to further cement my own beliefs, but I also want to challenge you to go through the same process. I urge you to spend time thinking about these things. Decide what YOU believe. Decide what’s really important and then evaluate all the things you THINK you believe against your own set of core beliefs and principles.
Wayne