Return of the Angry Middle

The original intent behind the Angry Middle was to create a book that talked about my politics, that is someone who values libertarianism but not at the expense of community. Someone who believes government can do great things, build infrastructure like health care, education, roads, and bridges and defend us from our enemies. While at the same time, staying out of American’s private lives and leave the opportunity for people to get rich and live the American dream. Someone that believes that my faith and my family is my business, I won’t mess with yours and you don’t mess with mine.

The idea that most people are content to be somewhere in the middle politically, but loudmouths and buffoons on the left and on the right seem to want to spend all their time and money forcing the issues to extremes when usually the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The idea that if I work hard, play by the rules, pay my fair share of taxes and generally am civic minded (hell, even if it’s just shoveling your damn sidewalk) that I can be successful, get to drink beers and eat ribs in the sun, retire, bounce some grandkids on my knee and die in a clean bed.

Yeah, a little bit Norman Rockwell, I guess or at least his poor Puerto Rican cousin from the nation’s capital. I think I feel the things a lot of Americans feel. I thought that I could write several chapters about national defense, economics, education, civil rights, workforce and business development and all that kind of stuff and write the policy wonk’s version of the great American novel. But you know, there are 162+ Red Sox games a year, at least 20 weeks of football and you know a family and work that are going to keep me from doing that so here I go.

I got inspired by work friends and colleagues to restart this thing. http://workingmomsblog.blogspot.com/ and http://generallybob.blogspot.com/ , both wicked smart people in their own ways and as a way to write stuff that is not in a few paragraphs of highly edited impenetrable, government, whatever the opposite of prose is.

So I’ll mix in stories about my now almost 10 week old daughter with certainly some bloviating about politics, the Red Sox, music, books, my house and garden, etc. And probably a lot of stories about bbq’s, beer and tomatoes now that spring will soon be upon us.