"Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant."

Michel de Montaigne, Apology of Raymond Sebond, 1569

For almost a year and half now, I have been doodling (with words instead of pencil lines) on this site. It has brought me a measure of peace as I have been allowed to charge a few windmills and, at least in my own mind, knock a few of them over. However, most of the time, I have the distinct feeling that I am howling at the top of my lungs in a sound-proof (and possibly padded) room. I seldom seem to write well enough, interestingly enough or controversial enough to rouse anyone to respond. If the statistics that this site provides me are true (and, these days, I don’t believe that much of anything is true, especially statistics), people are reading my "doodles". So, ipso facto, it has to be because of my shortcomings as a writer that no one seems moved to "holla back".

I intend to change that. I think it is time to take off the gloves and all this artificial "political correctness" crap and let some genuine, personal thoughts, beliefs and reflections be splashed on the walls of this solitary cell. Two outcomes are possible: readers will either be so pissed off they will not be able to restrain their fingers and will fire back scathing rebuttals in response or, at least, I will find myself further liberated. Without rebuttals, I will be convinced that statistics do lie and, since no one is actually reading my doodles, I should consider it merely a private diary and I am free to put up whatever I really, honestly believe - i.e. my personal truth. Poetically, as this is the month of our nation’s birthday, it is altogether fitting and proper that this be my personal "Declaration of Independence". My blog shall, forthwith, be even more like a monkey cage with the inhabitant, little old me, slinging whatever I can wrap my mind (and my hands) around through the bars of the cage and out into the world. If it hits anyone, my bad! If someone actually is smacked upside their heads, maybe they will engage their minds (if, perchance, they can turn off the boob tube and actually think for a novel change) and argue an opposing opinion. I have little hope for this outcome. But, just in case the gods are listening, I hold it out as possible and even desired. If not, I will have the satisfaction of having, at the least, a cleaner cage. And cleanliness is next to sanitary, if not godliness.

I should, I expect, start off with where I stand. In my life, I have fulfilled Churchill’s (who knows if he really said it) wisdom which declares "If you are not a liberal in your 20s, you have no heart; if you are not a conservative in your 40s, you have no brain." When I entered university at 18, I became a card-carrying, tree-hugging, pot-smoking, protest marching, anti-war peacenik. This was in 1969, so there was a great deal to be protesting against: Vietnam, Cambodia, sobriety, Nixon, daily hygiene, the draft, shaving, pesticides, clean clothes, ad infinitum. I soon discovered that rebellion was also a great way to meet girls. The more radicalism you projected (and, apparently, the less frequent you bathed - I tested this, personally) the more pheromones you produce and the more you became irresistible to the female of the species. These were, as you can imagine, really "good times" for college students. Occasional classes during the week and, then, organized railing against all manner of evils of the corrupt, imperialist, bourgeois American government on those glorious 3 day weekends. Of course, there was the occasional run in with a tear gas cannister that the Nazi, goose-stepping brownshirt "pigs"would hurl into our "peaceful" demonstrations but, as I quickly learned, unwashed male + mace + male pheromones = a damned good Saturday night!

I cringe, at least a little, to admit that May 4, 1970 - the day of the student shootings at Kent State - was one of the best nights of my young life. If you have been lead to believe that women are vulnerable at weddings (see "Wedding Crashers"), you have never experienced true "vulnerability". In those halcyon days, a late-adolescent female mourning the deaths of people whose names she didn’t know, who are hundreds of miles away on another campus and that she, somehow, "feels connected to" (presumably, because like her, they were also protesting against Vietnam) is truly vulnerable and in dire need of "comforting". Mind you, I am talking about Comforting (with a capital "C") reminiscent of what Britney Spears required after the 2007 VMA Awards and the (lamentable) performance (with a lower case "p") of "Give Me More". If anyone was ever in need of aid and comfort, it had to br Brit and, in 1970, it was the disillusioned college co-ed. I thanked the prevailing deity for allowing me to be alive and in possession of a full tank of testosterone in those glorious days. I was, for the good of my fellow students, unselfishly, ready, willing and able to lend aid and comfort to whichever distressed damsel was in the most need of comfort.

So, the most frequent bath I took in the years 1969-1971 was running through clouds of tear gas and not showers. My daddy didn’t raise no fool and, for the record, Old Spice™ simply is no no match for Ode de Radical. Speaking of dear old dad, when I did make my monthly sojourn back to the homestead (principally, to wash my 5 pairs of underwear, 2 pair of jeans and 2 pairs of socks), his demeanor was classic. He would look at my long, scraggly, unwashed hair, my Che Guevara t-shirt and my John Lenin-style sunglasses and his face would assume this half-smirk/half-smile expression. He would, almost unperceptively, shake his head, left to right, look me in the eye for a second or so and sit down with his newspaper. Never a word was exchanged in this initial encounter. It was as if dad knew that, if he were to say something appropriate, like "Damn, boy! Ever heard of soap?" or "Son, do you have to put your hair in curlers or do you just run through the streets naked to dry it in the morning?", he would just goad me into a tired, repetitive tirade against his middle-class ignorance and the true decadence of the nation and his life. So, he would let a little time lapse - maybe after I had a actual bath and a decent meal or two at home, before he would, tentatively, venture with a less-inflammatory "How’s classes going, son?" Wise man, my dad. He had been 19 years old, himself, once upon a time.

The Grand Transition Into Sanity began as I entered my 3^rd year at university. I had made the big turn and was now an "upperclassman." The cold, harsh reality of the world was less than 24 months away. It was, I was sober enough to realize, time to get serious. So, what exactly did this "rebel without a clue" er...ah...do? I’ll tell you what I did. I marched over to the recruiting office of the U.S. Army. I explained to the former focus of my teenage wrath that I was planning on going to medical school and had no way to pay the freight. Since the war was raging, did they have a program to help former hippies enter the mainstream and pay for med school? Wonder of wonders, they did! It was called "The Health Professionals Scholarship Program" or HPSP. By signing up, Uncle Sam would pay for medical school (tuition, books, living expenses) and, in return, I would agree to serve as an Army doctor on a year-for-year basis. If they paid the full 4 years of medical school, I would have a four year Army obligation after graduation. Since I had not yet been equipped with my long-term visual apparatus, I figured that I wouldn’t actually have to put the hated khaki uniform on for another 6 years and, the way I saw it at the time, the world would be ending long before that. I signed up and the rest, as they say, is history.

I changed my whole life, right them. Dirty bellbottom jeans and sandals became khaki trousers and button down shirts. I began to actually attend classes and, to the great shame of my former comrades in arms, I began smoking a pipe (with tobacco, mind you) and carrying a briefcase. I lost a lot of former friends and even more potential dates, but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. (Today, I think the phrase would be "It was time to man up!") I had enjoyed my fling with the counterculture but I didn’t see much of a future in being a full-time bum. I would become a traitor and join the enemy or, as Huck Finn would say, "All right, then, I’ll go to hell!". And I didn’t go half-way; I became a full-fledged, card-carrying company man. A true blue American patriot and life-long conservative. And there I remain today.

Now 58 years old, little has changed in my world philosophy. I believe that man is man and, as such, is not perfectible. He is a flawed animal and prone to fits of murderous rage, illogical thought, unshakable prejudices and a well-entrenched self-interest. And, despite millennia of evolution, he is a recalcitrant racist and always will be. Anyone who stands before television cameras or holds court at a cocktail party and says "I am not a racist!" is, in brief, a slef-delusional hypocrite and a liar of the worst sort. I will admit there are varying degrees (e.g. Mother Teresa and Gandhi were low on the scale; Hitler, much higher), but we are all racists when looking across the table or down the street at our fellow hairy bipeds. Racism is as hardwired in our DNA as fight-or-flight, self-delusion, sentimentality, fear of the unknown and greed. Jesse Jackson, as he has recently proven, is no less a racist than David Duke, Woodrow Wilson, Michael Richards or Don Imus.

I also believe that no amount of government intervention will ever solve poverty, recalcitrant homelessness, laziness, teen age pregnancy and unwed mothers, fatherless households, black-on-black crime, urban blight, fluctuations in the American economy, religious fanaticism and terror "in the name of god", acts of deranged mass murders, dedicated immigrants - "illegal" or documented, tax evaders or drug abuse. These are the bitter fruits of human nature and nurture. Anyone who believes that throwing more money at any one of these problems will make one whit of difference is deluded and, most probably, a politician seeking votes for an office he is unfit to fill from the booboisie who are dumb enough to believe him and are, by definition, unfit to vote. They are charlatans, snake oil salesmen and crooks of the lowest order. In brief, they are most likely Democrats or, worse, liberals. They are me in 1970 except they never scraped the scales from their eyes and looked at the world as it is. They bought into Bobby Kennedy’s "Some look at the world and ask: why? I dream of things and ask: why not?" twaddle. They are, as RFK, himself, clearly pointed out, dreamers. The world takes dreamers of quick cures and social utopias and "If only we would spent more money...", pushes their faces into the mud and the grime and growls: "Here, see things as they always have been."

We are on this earth not as the children of a benevolent, caring, nurturing welfare state but as individuals who are responsible for ourselves, our family and, rarely, whatever meager contribution we can offer toward the betterment of our pitiful species. In that light, I, personally, am not responsible for urban violence, AIDS, outsourcing of low-skill jobs overseas and unemployment, the cancellation of The Sopranos, the failure of our schools, the high cost of postage stamps, performance-enhancing drugs in sports, road rage, internet pornography, software or music piracy (well, maybe a little), the decay of the Great Barrier Reef, genocide, the denuding of the Amazon rain forest, Rosie O’Donnell, religious fundamentalism, perverted U.S. Congressmen, "The View", the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing, the Holocaust, Jerry Springer or the "legacy of slavery". I hearby swear and attest that I had no part in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, John Garfield, William McKinley, JFK, MLK or RFK. All these I blame on my species, collectively and inseparable. I continue to pay by membership dues to this sordid and insane commune, but I am not - nor do I care to be - the ringmaster,

All in all, when I start to despair of the burdens of the world and, more often, the depravity rampant among my fellow hairy bipeds, I take solace in the words of my betters. As with Mark Twain, my desperate search for a glimmer of sanity in the chaos is tempered by his observation:

"All I care to know is that man is a human being - that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse."

To that, I can only say: Amen and heaven help us all.