Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Time, energy, and a few more useful resources

Time and energy are both fairly limited resources. I note this, because it's quite true, and because my friend David recently wrote to me noting that there are times when he wishes he had more of both. I often find myself in agreement with this sympathy. I find that I have too many interests competing for my time and my energy.

First, there's my family and all of the mundane things and activities that good relations demand. Things like housework, yard work, quilting with my wife, planning family activities, and the like. I've never been fond of labor, and tend to procrastinate and worse where it's concerned. But I love my family and so I find myself engaged in such labors from time to time. And at times, there's nothing more important.

Second, there's my job. Not being independently wealthy, I cannot afford not to work. Therefore, I sell my intellectual labors to others in exchange for money, health insurance, and a bit of savings for that day when either I will no longer desire to or be able to work (may that day never come). Physical labor is something that, thankfully I no longer have to sell to others, as I don't really believe I'm suited to it.

And then, there's everything else (in no particular order); drag racing, camping, fishing (although I don't do much of this anymore), recreational software development, reading, television (mostly Dr. Who, various movies, “science” programming, and The History Channel), photography, and blogging. That last, blogging, really takes up a lot of time. I try to visit most of the blogs in my sidebar at least once a day, although I don't always have much to say about what people write. I also try to keep up with the news, mostly through the online news sites, particularly through their newsfeeds. Writing a decent blog post can take hours, especially when you consider the time it takes to do the research to make sure that I have my facts straight.

That doesn't leave a lot of time for much else though.  As a result, my television time has suffered a lot. That's not really a bad thing though, I've seen all but one of the new series Dr. Who episodes multiple times, I usually turn that on to turn my mind off. I typically fall asleep watching movies. The “science” programming that's on anymore is anything but science — it's often more pseudo-scientific speculation or promotions of various technologies (particularly the  politically correct so called “green” technologies) than actual science. The pseudo-scientific, moralistic trend in science programming really took off with Carl Sagan's “Cosmos” and hasn't stopped since. The days of programs like “Watch Mr. Wizard” are long gone. Those programs really encouraged scientific investigation, with experiments kids could do at home.

I believe I've noted before that I was a rather indifferent student of history in my youth. I was raised with conservative values, but rebelled against them in my teens and my twenties. I gradually rediscovered them in my thirties, but I never had a solid understanding of them, until I began actually reading our founding documents. I don't mean simply reading them, but reading them with a critical eye, seeking a deep understanding of them. I can read them fairly quickly. Actually getting at their meaning though takes a lot of effort.

This has resulted, in me at least, in a newfound interest in American History. I find that I need to understand who our founding fathers were, to know something about their lives and their characters, and the events that shaped their decisions. To carry on an intelligent conversation about where we are today and how we got here, I find I need to understand more about that turbulent time in our history when brother fought against brother and State fought against State over slavery and matters of Constitutional interpretation.

Hence my interest in The History Channel, and my dismay over the crap programming that is mixed in with useful programming there. Programs like “Ice Road Truckers”, which is hardly history programming, or “MonsterQuest”. I mean really! That might be entertaining to some, but it's certainly not what I'm looking for. Fortunately though, there's a lot of material on The History Channel that is useful to me. I've DVRed entire series like “The Presidents”, “The States”, and “The American Revolution” when they've been on, and rewatched them over and over. There are other programs that I like on The History Channel, but, as I said, my television time has become increasingly limited.

Still, television programming on science and history can't substitute for scholarly reference material. I've begun looking for good biographies of various persons in our history, like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and others. Recently, Dee at Conservatism With Heart posted a very brief review of David McCullough's book, “John Adams”. This is the same book that the HBO Miniseries was based upon. Dee noted that she's been listening to it on CD. Well, I happened to be near a bookstore this last Thursday, and stopped in and picked up the Audioworks unabridged CD set. It's about 30 hours long, on 24 CDs. I've been listening to it on my commute since I bought it. So far I've found it rather interesting.

I find that listening to a book allows me to multi-task, which is why I bought the audiobook version. I can listen to it as I drive, although I cannot give it my full attention, so I've only gotten through one and a half of the CDs so far. I re-listen to them because I really don't want to miss any of it and driving demands much of my attention (as it should). I'll probably also pick up the dead tree edition of the book sometime, but probably not until after I've listened to the whole thing a few times.

Quite naturally, if I'm listening to an audio book in the car, that means I can't indulge in my other favorite driving pastime, listening to talk radio. I've found that I like fewer and fewer of the talk programs anyway. Rush Limbaugh is always worth a listen, although I'm almost never driving for three hours in the morning. Thankfully, my dad bought me a Rush 24-7 subscription, and I've been downloading the podcast daily. I don't have one of those expensive MP3 players like the iPod though, just an ilo MP-556. This still does the job, cost a lot less, and lets me listen to Rush whenever I want. I also download every episode of the Mark Levin show to listen to whenever I want. And for you liberals reading, NO, I am NOT a mindless drone. I listen to both of these programs with a critical ear, and I don't simply accept everything that they say as Gospel.

In any case, talk radio, while entertaining and often informative is still no substitute for doing your own research. Getting back to my recently discovered (in the last five years or so) need to actually learn about our history in detail, I find that I also need to learn more about the foundations of the political thought that informed our founding fathers than I ever bothered to do in the past. And so I find myself with a need to study the works of John Locke, Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke and others. This very well is likely to involve me in many years of study, but I believe it will be well worth the time.

In my search for references, I've looked online, and found many collections of pointers to useful material, including the Constitution Society, the Heritage Foundation, and others. I've also found a great collection of public domain audio books, LibriVox. One of the nice things about this collection is that they also have links to the online text of many of them, including the e-text from Project Gutenburg.

There's a lot of good stuff out there, and not just from the  “conservative” point of view either. As long as I'm studying this stuff, I might as well take some good advice and get to know the  “enemy” as well. That's why I think it's important to also study the works of Marx and Lenin (no, not Groucho and John).

The whole point of all of this  is to understand the foundations of our Republic, and the directions it has turned throughout history, in order to better understand where it is today. So of course, I can't neglect current events either.

If only I had more time and energy. If only I had begun my studies in earnest in my younger days some thirty years ago…