I don't support a vaccine mandate for covid.
I would prefer that people, no matter their political ideology,
remain consistent.
What I mean is "
My Body My Choice" has to mean something for everyone
or it means absolutely nothing for anyone.
I don't agree with what Texas is doing with abortion laws. I particularly don't agree with the elements of the GOP that are against vaccine mandates but want to loophole Roe Vs Wade so that many women don't functionally have a choice anymore. Then again, I don't agree with elements of the woke radical left who scream out about social justice and equity but could give two ####s about Asian Americans being hunted down and targeted in the streets and the genocide of the Uighurs.
I believe all looters and rioters from 2020 ( and yes all the ones from 2021 too) should have their citizenship stripped, have all their assets taken and be permanently deported. But I also believe that the same should apply to everyone who breached the Capitol on J6. If someone is pro vaccine mandate but also Pro Choice, I don't want to hear anything they have to say.
Integrity only happens with consistency first. I believe all business owners and home owners, via Constitutional amendment, should be given full amnesty from any and all use of force once a protest has been officially designated a riot by local law enforcement. But that also means, to be consistent, if my godson decided to be a looter and tried to steal a pair of Nikes and got his head blown off with a shotgun, that I'd accept that also as a consequence of my stance.
Something I said back in 2006 here is always beware of those who are willing to treat people in a way and manner that they would not like to be treated themselves. I've seen people surgically split hairs on a number of topics to fulfill their tribalism, but if it was their families and their children on the line, they would want something different than their textbook partisanship.
Principles only matter and only mean something if you are willing to endure them even when it costs you. One of the people I've always respected the most in the FFA is johnnycakes. A few times he's talked about his battle with alcoholism. And he said there were certain kinds of people that he despised and didn't respect all his life, based on their character and choices and traits, and one day he woke up and realized he was one of those people. And that he couldn't escape it and that he couldn't make excuses anymore and that he needed to change for the sake of his children. I am not a very religious person by nature, but I am decently well versed in the Bible. The New Testament is predominantly about Paul. Not Peter, who was seen as the chosen one and favorite of Jesus Christ, but the reformed tyrant who used to persecute and hunt Christians. Paul was broken from the man he once was and didn't believe he should ever be forgiven. He became an enemy to all sides. Never trusted and always doubted and always abused. And Peter was the one to denounce Jesus when it counted the most. It was the outcast and the pariah who was the one who understood the meaning and cost of principles.
I'm not trying to steer this into a religious conversation, but I am saying political conviction and values mean little to nothing to me if I assess that it's coming from an inauthentic person. I won't take their free speech nor their free expression from them but authentic people are very consistent. They are self aware to understand that their is no joy and no benefit and no point to enabling cognitive dissonance.
Most people could not do what
@johnnycakes did. Most people would have made excuses for themselves and their behavior. Most people would have lived with the lie and punished everyone in their lives as causalities of that self deception.
Freedom to choose fundamentally means that you also might be choosing what ends up being wrong for you and have possible dire consequences. Free will is not some utopian boondoggle. But this is the price of actual self agency.
Your liberty, your freedom, your self agency, your free will was never meant nor designed to ensure the comfort of others around you. Some will see that concept as selfish. Except it stops being selfish when it becomes a two way street. When someone else's choices removes your comfort to ensure your right to do the same.
Nearly all of you were born into liberty. You were born into abundance. You were born into a wealth of actual choices. Nearly all of you have never experienced anything different.
It's why so many of you don't actually understand what real freedom means. That's the bitter irony for those whom have never suffered for one's free will.
Freedom doesn't die when you start lining up people against a wall for failing a purity test. It dies when a man who is trying to find his own voice is taught to hesitate before he speaks.
on my phone it looked like a devil or something. 
