What is Delaware Right ? To tell that story, we would have to tell a much longer story. They say you should begin at the beginning. So let’s!
“The small boy, around the age of three or four years old, wanted his pedal car. It was a bright hot, spring day. Of course the boy had no way of knowing what it meant to be hot, or what spring was.
All he knew was, he wanted his pedal car, from underneath the front porch steps, of the only home he knew. This would be his home for another two years, and home to his earliest memories, which he would carry as a grown man.
The wanting of the pedal car will be the very earliest memory, and as he grabbed the back-end of the car, and began to pull the hard rubber tires, from the soft, sandy soil they had settled into, over the past fall and winter, the boy realized he didn’t like the underneath of the steps. It was shadowy, and weeds with stickers grew under here, and it smelled sour. He had waited a long time, it seemed, for someone to pull the car out for him. No one had, and so he put his fear away and pulled as hard as he could. As he felt the wheels begin to turn, he heard a buzzing sound near his ear. The sound grew louder, and he felt a tickle, on the back of his neck, which became a hot match-head of pain.
Now, the pain was exploding in other places on his face and arms. The boy stumbled back, flailing the air, as if the very sunlight were burning his skin. And as he scrambles to his feet, and runs down the small hill, which is his front yard, the buzzing continues, but eventually stops as he out runs the wasp. He now is crying and rubbing the red welts rising on his arms.
His screams had not drawn the attention of any of his family, so he now must return back pass the steps, to reach the safety of his backdoor.
As he climbs the steps at the back of the home, one at a time, he realizes he doesn’t much like these steps either. It was just a few weeks ago his big sister had shoved him down them, and he had lost his first baby tooth a bit early. The memory he has as an adult will not include why she had shoved him. Maybe she was just in a hurry, maybe he had been a particular pain in the ass that day. He will never know why, since she never explained. Even though she would have been eight or nine, and should have remembered, even as an adult.
It seems all of his memories will include pain, and be incomplete.”
Oh, sorry, too far back? But you see, we all are who we are, because of who we were. And just because a couple of people once were in the same place, at the same time? Doesn’t mean they will end up in the same place at any given time in the future.
I can only talk for myself of course, not for others, who are, or have been associated with DR, they are free to add their perspectives to the tale. Or add their tails to the perspective.
For me, Delaware Right has been many things, and may still be many more. But the one thing it has always been? Is a place for conversation. To discuss ideas, sometimes just for the sake of the conversation. Sometimes just to pass the time, and sometimes because there is a real need for the conversation.
For me, there is nothing more enjoyable, than to have a discussion, of a topic, about which those discussing it feel passionate, who can explain and defend their positions, or opinions. Even if, at the end, we still feel we were right. But what we will have done, is to communicate. And while we may still disagree, we may also gain a level of understanding at least, why we feel the way we do and why others feel the way they do. You can understand an argument, and still disagree with the premise.
What I find appalling? Is a conversation with someone who will not answer direct questions, and who cannot ask honest questions. Who, when challenged to defend some assertion made, and can’t, resorts to labels. They attempt to minimize a person, in order to minimize their opinion. This is why it is always so important they know who is writing what. Once they can put a name to it, they can attack the person. Not based on actual actions, but based on a difference of opinion.
What I personally would like to see Delaware Right become, is a place, and a group of people, seeking to go beyond labels, to go beyond party affiliation, when seeking the truth. The truth does not depend upon who is saying it for validation. The truth is its own validation. And the truth is the truth no matter who speaks it. It is the honest one, who can recognize the truth, even when it is in opposition of one’s own feelings and beliefs, and speak it anyway.
There are a lot of attacks against Delaware Right for not being a “real”, “Republican”, “conservative” site. After all, what is real? People comment here they were somehow duped by the name of the site. They are so conditioned, and lazy, they can’t see beyond the word “Right”. And to be honest, in its conception? The Right in Delaware Right was intended to infer conservatism, and republicans. But that was a long time ago, things and people change. Those who would stagnate society and governance, to an idolized moment in history, have no faith in anything, beyond themselves. They believe they should somehow, set and fix society at that moment, even after they have passed on to what awaits us all. But things change.
I personally see Delaware Right, as a platform for conversation, not some closed little Facebook page, where the “guest” are vetted before being allowed entrance. Where an echo is the only answer to every question. You can almost hear it bouncing off the bare walls of their closed little minds, “you’re right!” Where they can have their “locker room talk”, and voice their “opinions” in private. Where they can attack others who can’t see or respond. They spread lies among their “friends”, without giving those they attack the opportunity to challenge the lies. But how often, does one of the “friends” leak some vile offering to the outside world?
Since I began to place myself, as an outspoken, public person, back oh so many years ago, either calling in to local talk radio, or writing on several blogs, I have always stood behind my words, I still do. Anything I have said or written over nearly two decades, I can honestly say, at that moment in time I believed them to be truth, as I knew it. I have always been an advocate at Delaware Right, for not blocking or banning anyone, except in rare occasions. We do not moderate comments, we do not delete comments, all are free to comment and participate. We do reserve the right to drive the conversations, to choose at least the jumping off point. But we also believe everyone has the right to demonstrate their intellectual vacancy.
So why is it? So many choose to not have a conversation, but waste the opportunity, and to hurl insults instead? Go back to your small safe spaces, and act like the children you are. Leave the real conversations to the adult table.
And now, I will address one other thing. For everyone who has only recently joined the GOP here in Sussex and Delaware, say in the last ten years or so. Please stop calling me a “Castle RINO”. You are only showing your own ignorance of Delaware politics. If you knew anything about my political history here in Sussex, and Delaware, and if you knew anything about 2010, you would know just how ridiculous that is. There are Castle RINOs sitting out there laughing their asses off at that, because they always called me the “Right Wing Nutjob”.
I have also seen comments from these dark page warriors, crying about recent events, whining how they won’t support the Republican Party anymore, how they should start their own party. I have a suggestion as a name, “QUITTERS”.
I have been a registered Republican since the 80’s, and yes that does matter. Because I have seen the high of Reagan, the slide of Bush, the short-lived respect of Bush the younger, and then the pure hatred of a war-time president, which I wrote extensively in support of President Bush. I have been called a “conservative zealot” and a “flaming liberal”. Tells me I am right where I belong, in the common sense zone. Now you, new to the game, Republicans are already talking leaving, and why? Because you got your nose bloodied in an intramural scrimmage. I have been a Republican my entire adult life, not a Republican of convenience.
You want to quit? See ya! But I’m going to stay here and try to make it better, I’m going to attempt to work with all people, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, men, women, white, black, Hispanic, born native, immigrant, it doesn’t matter, because we are all a part of the whole, not simply a nation, but a world. And we make it better by keeping our own little corners clean, and if we do that? We are all better for it.
I haven’t written much here lately, I hope to in the future. But know this, what I write? I write from a position of honesty, and I do so publicly, I don’t hide in small, safe, dark pages. Sunlight is our friend.
