David McElroy

As I waited to pull onto U.S. 11 just a few miles from my house Wednesday evening, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about it. The highway is busy that time of day, with two lanes of traffic in each direction and a turn lane in the middle. I’ve crossed those lanes hundreds of times, and I had no way of knowing this time was going to be different.

Traffic was heavy, but I was going to have time to cross to the other side if I timed it well. Just as I pulled out, though, an oncoming car did something I didn’t expect. I accelerated to get out of the way, barreling into the turn lane, where a car coming from another direction had just unexpectedly moved. I changed directions once again and ended up in yet another lane, startling another driver.

I’d almost hit at least three cars. I pulled off the road to think about this.

When a doctor first diagnosed me with breast cancer two weeks ago and said I had to have surgery, I expected to go through changing emotions in the days leading up to the experience. But knowing that and experiencing it are two entirely different things. Four days before I’m scheduled to be cut on next Monday, I can say I’ve had a number of emotions creep up on me unexpectedly.

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Those of us who’ve rejected the idea of a coercive state are frequently told that we need to be realistic and support government. Others tell us that we need to support “limited” government or “small” government. But what they never realize — and what we don’t point out often enough — is that they’re the starry-eyed idealists, not us.

I came across a concise and excellent quote from Brad Spangler that we should all learn to say when statists tell us to be realists. Spangler is the director of the Center for a Stateless Society. Save the graphic here and make it into posters if you want. (Click on it for a larger size.)

“Anarchists are the hard-nosed realists. People who have this fixation on some ideal government, which isn’t fundamentally just a criminal gang with flags, are the starry-eyed dreamers without a firm grasp on reality.”

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I make lots of random notes. Some turn into articles, but some are too short or never make it. I’m cleaning out the notebook of a few of those brief items.

I can’t bring myself to watch presidential speeches anymore, so I didn’t see Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last night. (It has nothing to do with who the president is. They’re all just as nauseating.)

Obama’s pitch seems to be for Progressive Lite, but the GOP already has that position covered, don’t they?

What about you? Did you watch it? Did you throw things at the TV? Did you like what he had to say? Or were you — like me — ignoring the whole thing?

I sometimes feel as though I should institute a “Missing-the-Entire-Point Award,” but I’ve realized that I’d have to give it out so frequently that it wouldn’t have any novelty or value. Do you ever feel as though people respond — in online discussions or in real life — without bothering to even understand what they’re responding to? I feel that way most days lately.

On a related note, I’d like to know why so (relatively) few people can see outside of their own existing narratives. For instance, a lot of people who call themselves conservatives have framed the political world as being about the “liberal media” working to hurt conservatives, so they can’t see past that frame and see that other things are sometimes going on.

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