Great Minds Discuss Ideas ...

By Michael The Libertarian

… Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people”. That is the quote, attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.

I found a website, dedicated to tracking down quotes that asserts the original was written by Charles Stewart in his 1901 autobiography. I will include it here for purposes of proper attribution, but I will work with the apocryphal Roosevelt version for brevity and clarity.

“Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas”.

So, let's take the first part of the initial quote: “Great minds discuss ideas.”

Friends, that is exactly what I try to do here, for the most part. Even though I tend to gravitate towards issues of the day (events), I try to make the over-all tone about ideas.

Do I make jokes at the expense of public people? Of course. Do I speak with disdain about some of them. Guilty, but only by way of their ideas being repugnant to me.

I'm not trying to hold myself up to be a great mind, but I do believe I'm a little bit smarter than the average bear, Boo-Boo. I try to earn or maintain any amount of respect/gravitas I may have built up with you.

It is important to me to win hearts and minds. My “job” is not to convince, necessarily. It is to present a cogent argument that you won't hear from the mainstream media.

Make no mistake about it, I would much rather not be doing this. I would much rather that we could trust the people who are supposed to be our watchdogs, guarding against over reaching and encroachment by the government.

That reason; protection of our liberties, was why the press was given such great latitude (I know I've typed that, before, but I reserve the right to plagiarize myself) in the 1^st Amendment. They are supposed to hold all of our elected officials to account and yes, to give kudos to same, when appropriate.

That is not the press we have, today. The Fourth Estate has let us down. That's why I – and people like me – are pressed into service, doing what it is we do.

I promise you, no one pays me for my opinions, it's why I feel free to “endorse” the products I use. I wouldn't use them if I didn't think they were the best. Since no one pays me, I am beholden to no one and I can spread my brain droppings freely and without constraint of journalistic ethics.

That said, I do try to maintain those ethics, also. I will never reveal a source unless they allow me to. I will never post an accusation as truth unless I have three named sources (it's why I don't “break” many stories, anymore. People are scared to death of going on the record).

It's also part of the reason I've taken to opinion journalism. There's a contingent in this country that is bent on silencing any opinion that differs from theirs. They have a big “machine” and they're doing a pretty good job. If only their mission wasn't so antithetical to American principles.

When I speak of principles, I'm not talking about my take on what they are. Our Founding Fathers were quite generous and pretty good with calligraphy when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.

For any further fleshing out of the ideals they wished to instill in their new country, I recommend The Federalist Papers and the individual writings of Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Henry, Paine et. al.

So, I guess, what I'm really trying to say, here is I would like your help in keeping me on the beam. I want to, on the whole, discuss ideas and ideals. I want to be a journalistic North Star with which people can navigate the stormy waters of today's political climate.

- Michael