David McElroy

There’s tremendous pressure in society to conform to what everyone else wants and expects. That might seem like a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your temperament and values. Are you a “conformity enforcer” or a “diversity generator”?

If you drove down my street, you’d have a pretty good indication that the people in one particular house aren’t conformers. While pretty much every other home on the street has closely cropped shrubs like something out of a landscaping magazine, this house has bushes that have been allowed to grow up almost to the roof of the second floor.

The yard is carefully kept and there’s a lot of other greenery in a side garden, so it’s obvious that this is intentional, not just a matter of being too lazy to cut shrubs. Is this a good thing or an eyesore?

It depends on your point of view. Personally, I don’t think I’d want my bushes that high, at least not with such a traditional style of architecture, but it doesn’t bother me in the least. I’ve talked to a couple of people on the street, though, who find it nothing short of scandalous.

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Every time the U.S. military (or U.S. taxpayer money) is used to knock off some government around the world, we’re told that it has to do with freedom or self-determination for the people or whatever else politicians think it takes to get us to let them have their own way. When will we learn that they’re lying to us?

Now that Libyan rebels have overthrown the dictatorial regime the U.S. opposed, members of the rebel groups are going around the country rounding up suspected sympathizers of the old regime. Read this account of people working for The New Boss going into a hospital and summarily executing wounded men who they believed worked for The Old Boss.

Is this what you want your tax money being used for?

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I did very few things in my political work over the years that I’m ashamed of, but one case sticks out. I was simply helping a client try to win a campaign — and I made $10,000 doing it — but it was just plain wrong. It’s done all the time, though, and most people don’t realize it’s wrong.

I’m not going to mention names because I feel as though that would be unfair to people who paid me to work for them, but the names don’t matter. I was doing some last-minute work for a state gubernatorial campaign. My candidate was the incumbent, but he was weak and expected to lose. Those around the campaign were desperate for ideas and willing to throw money at the problem.

Some in the campaign leadership were obsessed with tying the opponent to a bunch of ’60s radicals. They had very shaky grounds for doing so, but the facts didn’t seem to matter. I produced a direct mail piece that went to hundreds of thousands of people that was accurate insofar as the facts it stated, but was dishonest in the implications it made. I’m ashamed of it, but that didn’t stop me from cashing the check.

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