| Created 01 Jan 99 |
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Modified 14 Jun 03 |
The
Owner
of this web site
Perhaps the best answer I can offer is to bid you look around my wee web site and discover for yourself. I've put a lot of myself into it, after all, so you'll find "the real me" almost everywhere here. The more you look, the clearer the picture will become. Answers to some fairly standard questions, however, appear in the STATISTICS and PROFILE below, and my VISION may give you some idea of those things I consider most important.
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 1995 |
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PROFILE: A BORN CENTRIST? |
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 2002at Cincinnati's Ault Park |
I'm a
middle-sized, middle-income, middle-aged census
statistic, born in Cincinnati, Ohio (yes, that seething
cauldron of mediocrity) a little before the middle of the
20th Century. I live in a middle-sized house in a
middle-sized Midwestern town —Middletown— with my wife and cat, my
daughter having recently acquired a husband and a home of
her own. Obvious champion of moderation that I am, one of my few concessions to the Great American Ideal of bigness is that I was employed by a large company —Ameritech— in nearby Centerville (no, I'm not making this up), as a Telecommunications Specialist (whatever that is) for nearly thirty years. Fortunately, this awkward situation was finally remedied by my retirement. |
| Personally,
I am a genial curmudgeon, an outgoing introvert, a
traditional iconoclast, a religious skeptic—in
short, a walking contradiction. Politically, I am
what might be called (in this strange era, in which
new-age anarchists and old-line reactionaries often find
themselves on the same side of the fence) a wild-eyed
moderate. I am a child of an age when such notions
as keeping poisonous crud out of the air and ensuring
equal opportunity for people of all ethnic and religious
groups were just catching on in many parts of the United
States. Health and justice seemed like pretty good
ideas back then. Despite some excesses and miscues,
they still do, as far as some of us are concerned.
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Ever the optimist, I am still hopeful that the rightward lurch of the American political system in 1980 was merely an aberration, and that saner days lie ahead. For if that hope is false, it seems inevitable that the United States will revert to an agrarian economy over the next several decades, as deteriorating general education and increasing pressure to conform dull the innovative edge enjoyed by previous generations of American leaders and workers. Just as anti-intellectual pressures have stifled creativity and fostered oppression in so many other lands, so the current anti-intellectual tide in America will, if unopposed, erode our nation's ability to compete in manufacturing, technology, and finance. Eventually we will surrender our long dominance in those lucrative fields (just as we have already ceded our erstwhile preeminence in public health) to those countries which still value education, science, culture, and health as national priorities. Perhaps, if enough of us care, America will recognize the peril of its present course, and return to the relatively rational and progressive principles which first propelled it to prominence as the most prosperous and free nation in history. If it does not, we can only hope that those nations which inherit the responsibility of world leadership from us are prepared to exercise it more wisely and justly than we. =SAJ=
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