The Gospel of Grumpy Bulldog

Pier in Lexington, MI

It was about eight years now when I happened up to Lexington, which is a few miles north of Port Huron, which is seventy or so miles north of Detroit.  I went out to the pier you can see in the picture on the left and I sat on some of those big rocks there.  Which is a little scary if you think about falling so it's not for the faint of heart.

Anyway, like the Buddha or Isaac Newton I had one of those big cosmic thoughts while I was sitting there.  Right then I came up with the secret to how everyone could live in peace and harmony.  It's actually a very simple philosophy that can be summarized in one sentence:

You mind your business and I'll mind my business and we won't have a problem.

That's pretty much all there is to it.  You can be whatever religion you want, whatever political affiliation, whatever sexual orientation you want and so long as you aren't trying to force me to be the same then I don't give a shit.  Because really it's not my business whether you're Christian, Muslim, Hindu, other.  And it's not your business that I'm an atheist.  It's not my concern if you're a Republican and it's not your concern if I'm a Democrat.  You can put a sign on your lawn and a bumper sticker on your car and I can do the same and so long as you don't kick my sign over or peel the sicker off my car then it's fine.

I did realize while I was contemplating this that I need at least one proviso, which is thus:

So long as your business isn't hurting others.

Because honestly, you can't have a functioning society if people are allowed to indiscriminately kill, rape, etc each other.  Otherwise, I don't give a shit what you're doing in your house and you shouldn't give a shit what's going on in my house.

It all boils down to tolerance.  That's something that seems in short supply these days when everyone is wanting to force their agenda down the rest of our throats.  Perhaps the hardest part about tolerance is trying to tolerate the stupidity of other people.  Except they probably think we're the stupid ones for disagreeing with them.  That doesn't mean I get to force my values on them.

This simple philosophy might be too simple, though.  It gets more complicated once you get into particular issues like abortion or capital punishment or narcotics or taxes or welfare programs.  But Grumpy Bulldog has some thoughts on those too, inspired by Transformers and Star Trek--of course!