Bryan's Mind

I am a little late to the ball game, but I have been a little curious about Ron Paul lately. Someone in my apartment complex has their car covered in bumper stickers and has one of those “Pizza Signs” atop their car professing their support for Ron Paul. I figured one of two things could be the cause: 1) they were overly adamant about a candidate and now they cannot get those stupid bumper stickers off their car, or 2) they still want to profess their support even after the candidate was eliminated from running. I know that his supporters are fanatical, so I figured it was the former, but wanted to dismiss the later by informing myself. I knew he had an immense grass-roots following, and I wanted to find out why.

So I went out and watched some of his YouTube videos. I was impressed, so I went and bought his book, “The Revolution: A Manifesto.” I have to tell you: I am now a big fan.

Basically, his central ideal is to support the Constitution as it was written. Much of the legislation passed in the past dozen or so years (and some even as far back as 1913, if you include the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank) has been un-Constitutional. As the government keeps taking liberties from us that were guaranteed in the Constitution, they add more government to perform oversight…which raises taxes.

Dr. Paul has never voted against the Constitution or to raise taxes, among other things.

If you only read the Constitution and the history books, you won’t have the complete picture. If you read about why certain things were not included in the Constitution, such as a large central bank, then you will be amazed at how prophetic the Founding Fathers were, especially Thomas Jefferson. (I defer to his book for substantiation.) Also, our money isn’t worth anything, and he explains why we should return to gold- and silver-backed currency (which won’t happen unless the Fed is dissolved.)

Anyway, I agree with his less-is-more approach when talking government. Strangely, I thought otherwise as recent as a week ago, but now feel that the real “Change” should be “Change back to where we started in 1787.” And I understand why his supporters are so frenzied: there is a lot of work to do if we started yesterday, and we have not yet started.

Do yourself (and everyone in the US) a favor: Watch a couple of his videos.

The most remarkable thing about being a parent is having the privilege of observing a new personality form almost autonomously. As I have no real reference point for what to expect, since our daughter’s first couple of years were anything other than pedestrian, I did not know how the nature of her birth would effect her socio-emotional development.

Her behavior with us is consistent, though very difficult. She does not like to be told what to do, but can be coerced somewhat. She doesn’t communicate with us much, and coupled with her unwavering independence we thought it to be a detriment to her socially. As such, we were able to enroll her in a pre-Kindergarten for 3 year-olds that had speech and language issues. Over the course of the past month, we have already seen some improvement.

This morning, however, I saw that I really had no idea of her level of improvement. I was informed by her Pre-K teacher that Sophia is the leader of “The Princesses” and that all of the girls were saddened that she wasn’t able to come to school when I was in Maryland. My wife assumed that since this school only runs about 3 hours a day it was not a requirement and not worth the hassle of having to load up two kids in the car at 7:15 am to take her. As Sophia would never communicate her desire to go to that school (or anything else, for that matter), we assumed we could just skip it while I was gone.

Yesterday, I was very tired and running late, so I dropped her off and headed out quickly. Today, it was raining and I was even later. I walked her to the cafeteria, the gathering place in the morning, and started chatting with the teacher.

I saw Sophia walk very casual into the cafeteria toward the group of girls sitting together at the end of the table and they all exchanged pleasantries and then sat down and started chatting. I would have been less surprised if she sprouted wings and started to fly. I told the teacher that Sophia was not big on “girlie stuff” and never played with dolls and didn’t like to play dress up or anything. The teacher told me that Sophia was made one of the princesses and she had to buy another crown and that the other girls insisted that she do so. She also added that since Sophia was more independent, she tended to set the tempo and direct the play. When Sophia was out, the teacher said the girls were sad and that they said she should call me and tell me that I needed to bring Sophia. My daughter: the leader of the Princesses.

When the teacher said it was time to go to the classroom, Sophia was the first up, picked up the adult-sized backpack that I had assumed the teacher carried for her, slipped it on her back and stood around waiting for everyone else to follow suit, which they did. It was funny in a way, as the backpack hanged down to the back of her knees. The teacher said Sophia insisted on carrying it. I told her I had no idea (Sophia won’t even walk to the car from the apartment, let alone carry anything) and that I would get her a “more reasonably-sized backpack” this weekend.

I had seen her aping the teachers at her daycare when they would put a kid in timeout, where she would stand there and wag her finger and give them a good talking-to. I thought that she was just imitating the teachers, though.

It makes me feel a bit better, not necessarily because she has leadership tendencies or that she was quite popular, but that I could see my worrying was unwarranted. If her behavior is a sign of things to come, it should make for some very interesting teenage years around our house.

Well, among my list of fun tasks, I am going to Maryland to take care of packing up the contents of the house and putting it in storage. This is just a replacement for work, some of my “vacation.” I still have to do a lot of studying. So, if any of you in MD are upset I don’t call, it isn’t because I am having fun. Then I get to do “the drive” again. The upshot is I will have my car again. This sharing a car business sucks. It is like being a teenager again.

This “semester” is going pretty bad. I have overextended myself and there is no way out of it. The math class I’m in is experimental. We covered 250+ pages of Operations Research in a week, and have another dose coming up after we digest a Statistics/Probability book. In addition to my finance class, nonetheless. I really need a break, which is still pretty much a month-and-a-half off. Luckily, I don’t think I’ll be in class when I have to move. We are going to move to a larger apartment Nov 30th.

Hopefully I will make it through all of this unscathed…