Dr. Forbush Thinks

One of the benefits of travel is the opportunity to empathize with people who live in different regions of the country or even different countries. I have seen a bit more of the country on my summer trip and I have come to the conclusion that there still is hope for our country.

I don't generally go out on the Internet and read papers from all over the country every day. The first reason that I don't do that is because most stories in the papers are from the AP or Reuters anyway. The second reason is because most newspapers require payment to read the entire column or story. The third reason is just the difficulty in finding different newspapers with interesting columnists.

While visiting Colorado I was reading some Denver Post editorials, opinions, and commentaries. The refreshing moderate writing expressed by these writers surprised me. The Denver Post had a conservative columnist writing about the perils of conservatives support for the Fundamentalist Christian agenda. It would be nice to hear this expressed on the national political stage.

David Harsani, a conservative expressed an interesting moderate view on flag burning were he writes that freedom of speech is more important than protecting our sensibility to the sacredness of the American Flag.

Diane Carman wrote a very interesting piece on Sandra Day O'Connor.

George McClure, a Liberal, wrote a sarcastic piece on FOX and the Liberal Media.

There were many more opinions too numerous to name, but all very different from the extremist views we hear too often today. It was nice to be able to read some top-notch insightful writing, which must be published on a daily basis.

All of these voices whether they were conservative or liberal came from a practical common sense perspective. This was much different than many of voices I have been reading over the last couple of years. In the past, before the Newt Gingrich take over of Congress these types of opinions were more common place. The extremists have always been around, and I am not saying that they didn’t exist in bygone years, but they were moderated with common sense views of those in the middle of the political spectrum. In some small towns across the country it has become worthy of a scarlet letter to express even moderate Liberal views.

After reading these very interesting and insightful opinions I’d like to challenge the moderates from around the country and use their imagination and creativity to at least match the columns that are being published in Denver.