Saturday, July 3, 2010

Dawning of Political Interest Quotes

More quotes from the previous author.  More clues...  Keep guessing.

This first quote could have gone with yesterday's, because it too, exhibits a little bit of that childhood nerdiness that tickles me.  But I saved it for the dawning of political interest post.
At the age of nine, I declared I was for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.  I got my hands on a Nixon bumper sticker, slapped it on my bike's wire basket, and rode up and down the block as if that alone would get him a vote.
The following two quotes are of those "blow my mind" types.  I am always a little bit in awe when I hear about someone who, not only was very bright in school, but who had ambition enough to put those brains to use in unusual and sometimes quite amazing ways. I just over year ago read the following book. 
At the age of thirteen...I had Goldwater buttons, stickers, and poster, a raggedy paperback copy of Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative, and even a bright gold aluminum can of "Au H2O," a campaign artifact that played on the candidate's last name.
And the two books listed in this final quote I still haven't managed to plow completely through.
Economics came on my radar screen when I was twelve or thirteen, When someone gave me a copy of Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman, one of the greatest defenders and advocates of capitalism....Reading Friedman led me to next plow through Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.  The pin maker, the division of labor, and the "invisible hand"--all of it made sense to me.
It makes me feel a bit under accomplished.  When I was thirteen, I don't really know what I was reading.  Nancy Drew, maybe.  Certainly nothing with any academic heft.  I always got good grades, but I was lazy enough to avoid any real work.  Shame on me!  But alas, that is perhaps why I will never be in the center of great world events. 

However, when I put on my "heavenly values glasses", raising a family is most definitly being in the center of a great world event.

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