Don’t Tell Me It’s Raining While You’re Pissing down My Back

I have no delusions of grander regarding this blog, I get on average 22 visitors a day, I know that I am by no means a staple of the Masonic on-line community. I don’t have a podcast, a following of people that love me or hate me. I am just me, and really when people make blogs or post in them they sometimes take an aspect of their personality that they are not comfortable with and amplify it, that really isn’t me or the point of this blog. This blog is a correct representation of who I am and my journey as a Mason from EA to MM and beyond. When I walk into a lodge other than my own and tell the brothers my time in Masonry, I am usually regarded as a “Newbie” and that’s fine, and really the truth.

That being said, I heard the latest Podcast from X-Oriente and I have to throw out the bullshit flag. Now I enjoy the show very much, but this last one left a bad taste in my mouth, mainly that Brother Eric quoted a politician who wrote a book about his opponents. I like Al Gore and believe that he has conviction in what he believes and honestly if Gore ran today, I would seriously consider voting for him. The problem is that today we have everyone on the left and the right writing books about how the other side is destroying our great nation. If you listen to the right, it’s the left and their lack of traditional values, high taxes and socialized government, if it’s the left you believe that the right is creating a police state, fighting wars that we have no business fighting, and destroying our environment, all while in bed with big corporations.

My point is that when someone who has a clear agenda and writes a book called “Assault on Reason” and then someone else presents it as an unbiased factual book, sticks in my craw. If you want to talk about critical thinking, then read from The Philosophy of Anything: Critical Thinking In Context or Critical Thinking: Basic Theory by Richard W. Paul published by the Foundation for Critical Thinking. Heck, if you want to get even more in the mud then talk about Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or Critique of Judgment or Logic. But for the love of God don’t quote Al Gore, who has an agenda and an axe to grind as somehow a bastion of reason and critical thought.

If you want to make a political statement, than make it, don’t act like you aren’t making one when you are. By doing such you are violating one of the core concepts of Freemasonry that Dudley Wright put so eloquently “Freemasonry is a unifier, not a divider.” Masons can talk politics and Masons can disagree, but when people present a political argument then tell their audience not be upset by bringing up the subject, that is intellectual dishonesty and a dirty trick.

That being written, I don’t want people to think that I harbor any dislike towards Brother Eric, because he is a brother, and a Mason, I just believe his passions got the better of him.

I invite anyone who thinks that I am being over reactive to e-mail me or comment, but this is one of those things that I felt necessary to voice my opinion.