This is my friend Dana, competing in the Bassman Half Ironman triathlon in Tuckerton, New Jersey last weekend. She swam 1.2 miles, biked 56 miles, and then ran 13.1. I can't even begin to imagine doing that to my body, or what it would do to me if I tried. But I'm so impressed with her I just had to post her pic. Hope she doesn't mind! :)

It's been a week since my last post (Wow - that sounded kind of Catholic), so this one may be kind of long. It's not that I haven't been pontificating. Just no time to sit down and spew my thoughts.

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said, "It's a shame closed minds don't come with closed mouths." I was struck by how ridiculous that statement is. Because, isn't the common understanding of "open-mindedness" that everyone should be free to speak their views? I guarantee (based on the other bumper stickers the car was boasting) that the driver of that vehicle and I would agree on very few things. I'm sure they would consider me closed-minded because I disagree with them. Kind of hard to call yourself open-minded if you don't want to hear my side, isn't it? But that's logical, and there is no logic in liberalism.

When I was in the 10th grade, my history teacher assigned a project. We were to design our version of a Utopian state. Everyone was given the freedom to come up with whatever we thought would be the perfect society, write it up and map it out.

As a 15-year-old living in a very intellectually enlightened community, it didn’t take me long to figure this one out. I designed a community where everything was equal. Everyone worked a communal land, and everyone got an equal share. There were more details, but this was the basic gist of it.

A week or so after we turned in our projects, my teacher gave them back to us. He told us that we had all come up with pretty much the same ideas. Then he informed us that what we had just envisioned as the perfect society was at least socialism, if not downright communism.

I was stunned. It was 1988. Communists were not good people. How could I have come up with this?

As we began to study communism and why it doesn’t work, I realized that equality for all is a nice dream, but will never become reality on this planet. Inherent within communism is the inevitability that the elite few will become wealthy and powerful, while the masses will be left to misery and starvation. In order for socialism to work, everyone must produce on an equal level. If you get the same amount no matter how much you work, no one will be inspired to work hard. Apathy becomes the rule of law. Everyone is miserable.

The colonists tried this when they first got to our great land. Captain John Smith realized that the only way they would survive is for the people to have ownership over something so as to give them pride and a reason to produce. Thus, his famous "He who does not work, does not eat." This is what makes America great today. Anyone – ANYONE – who is willing to work really, really hard can pull themselves out of a situation of poverty and create a life for themselves.

Now, the left in this country would never agree to that sentiment. They believe that the only way for the poorest among us to survive is if we redistribute wealth. They want higher taxes from the working classes to subsidize government programs for the weak and downtrodden. The dirty secret is they rely on those weak and downtrodden to keep them in office. So the worst thing that could happen to them is for their voting base to achieve success.

Hillary Clinton wants national healthcare. As a matter of fact, all of the Democratic candidates want this. Even the Republicans are afraid to call it what it is. But the policies being put forth by the left are pure socialism, and they are doomed to failure. Unfortunately, they can not fail without putting our economic vitality in danger.

The latest program that the Dems and W. are fighting over is the SCHIP program. This is supposedly going to afford healthcare to our nation’s most vulnerable, the children. The problem is that the program as it was initiated was to be offered to poor families making all the way up to $85,000 a year. Our President found this excessive, thus, the veto.

Yes, I think healthcare costs in this country are out of control. I wish there was a way to return to some common sense. Spending the night in the hospital should not cost $500 to $1000 just for the nice linens and yummy dinner alone. But because of trial lawyers and insurance companies, this is the situation we are in today. Healthcare is a choice, just like anything else we buy. It should not be a government subsidy.

I guess I am just really troubled by the direction my liberal counterparts would have us go. Granted, I understand the idealism behind their policies, as I proved as a sophomore in high school. But I’ve learned enough over the past 20 years that I know idealism doesn’t necessarily make good policy.

Socialism and communism have been put to the test. There is clear, factual evidence that they are incredibly poor choices. Please let’s not put someone in office that wants to take us down that road. It would be a disaster of astronomic proportion to our great nation.