Liberal Conservative or Conservative Liberal? Just American.

Most of the people who know me will tell you I am no bleeding heart liberal. I have great respect for the ideals that our country was founded on and believe the basis of what our founding leaders wanted was personal responsibility and freedom and limited goverment. I will admit, I was in the minority and didn't vote for Obama. I felt his foundational campaign was based on ideals contrary to personal responsiblity and led to a dangerous slippery slope of goverment involvement.

Since he was elected and sworn into office, I've been very quite on my typically open political views. I wanted to take a "wait and watch" stance to see what happened. My hopes were that I judged Prez Obama too harshly during his campaign. I wanted to give him chance to ignite "hope" into our nation again.

Billions of dollars later in bailouts... I have to say I am less than enthused, but not as disappointed in his leadership as I once feared. There is no doubt that he truly loves this country and wants what is best. I won't argue that, even if I don't always agree with his methods. Personally I think he got in office and probably said to himself "Whoa, what did I get myself into?!"

Ha. Well it's what I would have said to myself anyways.

He's done a decent job of balancing moderate change with re-evaluating his campaign promises to reflect more practical actions. That has been a huge relief to me, as a conservative.

And walking through our nation's capital last weekend, I see positive changes everywhere within our society... and most of them can be directly related to the liberal movement in our country. Energy conservation and the "Green" movement are both good examples. Do I enjoy recycling or unplugging all the appliances in my house when I am not using them? Not really. But there is a sense of accomplishment knowing I am doing something good for our world (and my electric bill is less of a sticker shock these days too - added bonus!). I am no "bleeding heart liberal" but I fully embrace this movement towards conservation and environmental responsibility.

Secondly, I won't get into religion on a public blog - but I am a traditional Protestant Christian. I believe in the Bible - and not in a symbolic kind of way, but in a LITERAL kind of way. However, I think God intended us to be forgiving and tolerant and loving of our fellow man and woman, no matter what thier choices and whether it was considered a "sin" or not. It's heartening to see people of different ethnicities, religious backgrounds, and sexual orientations able to live in harmony and openly in our world, without ridicule and abuse. We all know that wasn't the case even just a mere decade ago.

I can sit here all night and tell you how my conservative right-wing head has been softened by the sappy liberal side of my heart, but I will spare you. Instead I will say, I think deep down we can all find common ground - whether the topic is goverment & politics, religion or some other hot topic of the day. I wish we could all stop looking at ourselves by the labels we carry, but instead just see the heart inside and the good intentions.

Because at the end of the day, that's what the founding fathers of the U.S.A wanted... they signed a document declaring that we should each have the right to make our country what we need and wanted it to be and have a say on how to make that happen.