The following is excerpted from Bill Peach's Random Thoughts: Politics, Preaching and Philosophy. Peach, above, is author of several books–including one by the aforementioned blog title. Peach is shown here at the 2009 debut of the anthology of local writers: Gathering: Writers of Williamson County, in which he is featured. This weekend he will be at the annual Southern Festival of Books on legislative plaza at the Williamson County Council for the Written Word booth. It will be one of those rare years that I miss this delicious Nashville-hosted event. I'll be attending the Nashville Nonviolent Communication conference: Adventures in Honesty–Living and Communicating Authentically.
"The Disadvantage of Minority Status," by Bill Peach:
[…]"We are all victims of a national frenzy of fear and distrust. Republicans have been distracted by the Tea Party movement, and the Democratic Party is split at least three ways. We now have at least five fragmented and frustrated minorities. Most of the anger that has been publicly demonstrated since January 2009 has been focused on President Obama, but it is a continuation of several decades of a cultural and economic feeling of disenfranchisement.
"Consequently, we have created our many demons and dragons—big government, Congress, big corporations, socialists, fascists, atheists, bigots, religious fanatics, liberal media, Fox News, Tea Party-ers, ACLU, Supreme Court, abortion clinics, pro-lifers, guns, peaceniks, czars, unions, foreign labor, Wal-Mart, China, Muslims, and the military industrial complex.
"I think it is fair and even expedient that anyone who purports to be a voice of reason should identify the bias from which he speaks. Friends on Facebook are usually willing to expose their minds and souls in their profile information and their pages of likes and dislikes to give predictability to status and commentary.
"I come under a banner of Liberal Democrat and Rational Christian, and a position of disadvantage of minority. As such, I may not speak for you. But, I hope that in a dialogue of ethics and logic, there is a common ground."
Bill Peach's blog is also featured in my blog roll, see left column of my blog here, and is one of only two blogs to which I subscribe by e-mail. The other is Velveteen Mind. (I view other blogs through various blog readers.) My friendship with this intelligent Southern gentleman, whom I prodded to get into blogging, began at a Williamson County Council on the Written Word conference. I stood before a crowd to read my 15-minute exercise in writing fiction and explained I wasn't reading it because it was good. I had no idea if it was good or not and I needed their honest opinion. See how the story turned out here. The afterstory is that Bill approached me, handed me his card and said I seemed like someone with whom he could be friends. He said he knew how to spot a liberal in a crowd. "What was the clue?" I asked, amused. He said, it was the term "fiction virgin." He said most conservatives would have not understood that entirely because "virgin" was not used in a literal context. We became fast friends and I am blessed by every blog of insight–which means every one of them he authors–that land in my inbox.
Nashville is about Art. Music is art. And melody accompanies words. And not all words are written by tunesmiths here. I live in rich company here–in the old and new traditions of the written, the visual and of the sound variety. I am in awe. And grateful….
