Gat Dayum Independent

I got called a hippie again this week. Twice, in fact.

I don't mind. I just find it funny. One group of friends thinks I am wildly liberal and another group lists me as its token fascist. "Well, you're young and artsy and like to paint and write, so you're probably liberal, that's all," I was told. (Young?) My fascist label is also based on my youth, meaning stuff I believed 20 years ago with zero world experience, without any regard or even knowledge of what I believe NOW. And if I ask either group to mind its P's and Q's and talk nicely, I further their beliefs. The conservative bunch thinks it is an example of how I'm a bleeding heart, and the other group says I'm curtailing freedom of speech.

Over the years a person's politics will change. It's been said that if you aren't a liberal when you are young, you have no heart, and if you're not a conservative when you're older, you have no brain. I don't know what idiot said that, but they were wrong. Because a person can be both liberal and conservative simultaneously. I took a quiz this week too. It was supposed to tell you what candidate matches best with you. My top two, statistically tied, were Rudy Giuliani and Barak Obama.

A person is allowed to stand for things that are considered both liberal and conservative. You don't have to pick only one side. It's OK for me to think that gay people should get to be married too. It's OK for me to support government subsidized stem cell research. And at the same time, I can support the war in Iraq, believe in capital punishment and NOT hate rich people or want them taxed more.

And just like you are free not to, I don't have to make an excuse to anybody for what I think. I don't have to explain how I can believe all those things at the same time, unless I just want to remind people that I'm a card-carrying American. I am a God Damned Independent. I don't have to accept anyone's label, and I don't have to be ashamed of what I think. And neither do you. In return, I'll try not to label anyone else either.