Non Sequitur: Do you love your job?

       I once told a manager of mine that, while I enjoy my work, it would never come before my family.  While this is typically viewed as career suicide, I have reasoned this out.  It comes down to defining love.  But first, lets look at my job.

       I work for a company so large, you are currently sitting where you can see something they made.  You may not know it, and I'm not going to say who they are, due to corporate policy.  Which is point one: rather than say you can't ever mention your job, or that you can't blog, or even that you are not allowed to speak ill of the company, they simply made a policy that you don't disclose precisely who you work for online.  A well-reasoned, smart policy, actually.

       Also, they pay above scale.  The benefits to the employee are simple: higher pay.  The benefits to the employer are manifold.  They gain higher morale, better productivity, (because someone is waiting for you to vacate that seat) and generally, a better class of employee.  This idea is so old, and so obviously beneficial to the company, that Henry Ford himself, notorious cheapskate, used it.

       My benefits package is what you would expect from a company that size, and my 401k is managed by better fund managers than yours.  Overall, they are a great employer who respects the workforce they have.  Yet I do not love my job.

       I enjoy my work.  I am doing the kind of work that is challenging, and for the most part, fun.  I am surrounded by like-minded people who enjoy the job at least as much as I do.  The conditions are good, the commute is less than the national average.  Overall I am happy there.  Yet I do not love my job.

       Love is not only a mutual exchange, it is something that has a clear definition.  It is putting someone else's needs before your own.  When you love someone, that is what you do.

       My employer does not love me.  They respect me.  I do not want my employer to love me.  I want them to respect me. They do not put their needs ahead of mine.  The benefits, pay, etc. are not examples of putting my needs first; rather they exemplify the acknowledgement of my needs.  Each of those benefits comes with an offsetting benefit to the company.  Mostly this takes the form of a better workforce.

       I do not love my employer.  I respect them.  (Well, as much as I'm capable of respecting anyone, or anything.)  My family, I love.  Love conquers all.

Ron Paul has lost my respect.

       Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that I am an ardent supporter of Ron Paul.  They also know that I have been since before I could vote.  The man has made some brilliant points about the need for less government intrusion in our lives and again, anyone who knows me knows that I feel much the same.  I have backed his efforts.  I have voted for him.  I have explained his positions to people, since the media seems to have forgotten that occasionally people with an ounce of brain run under one ticket or the other.  Or in his case, until recently, a third party.
         If you hadn't heard, we have recently fired a missile at, and killed, a terrorist leader.  There are those who would argue that this was a military action, not an assassination.  I am not one of them.  I will not shrink away from what this was.  I also will not pretend that it is somehow morally superior to have troops march in, at great risk to their own lives, and kill him with a bullet.  The end result is a dead terrorist.  How we killed him is academic.
       In referring to said removal of the newest terrorist leader by a long distance missile, there was his recent quote:  "and now we are told that assassination of foreigners, as well as American citizens, is legitimate and necessary to provide security for our people.  It is my firm opinion that nothing could be further from the truth."    
       Let's dismember that particularly asinine statement, just for fun, shall we.  Firstly, an American citizen who removes themselves from the country and leads an organization against America is by definition, an enemy combatant.  Otherwise Abraham Lincoln is our country's preeminent assassin.   Remember that Civil War thing.  Blue guys, grey guys, lots of guns.  Yeah that was a group of American Citizens who made themselves enemies of America.  (that's the way it's taught up here anyway.)  But assuming that Mr. Paul is right, then honest Abe is our greatest villain.  (He is not the good guy we were taught, by the way.  That is for another post though.)
       Moving on.  The assassination of the enemies of America is acceptable.  I could make an elaborate moral justification of this, but I do not need to.  If we can eliminate the enemies of America by a method that does not endanger the lives of Americans are we not obligated to?  That aside: If we have the ability to plant a missile in someone's teeth from so far away that they don't even know where it came from, should we not?  (I never know if question marks are appropriate for rhetorical questions.)
       Let's face it, the weak will of the American public and the consummate lack of testicular fortitude of our government has crippled the greatest military the world has ever known. The only thing we have that everyone fears is our ability to remove a threat to our way of life from a distance.  We should be able to, as the worlds foremost military power, cause a sudden eruption of liquid flatulence from every terrorist in the world, at the mere mention we are coming for them.
       So let's review.  Foreign or American born terrorists are enemy combatants.  Assassinating them is not only "legitimate and necessary", but preferable.  Ron Paul is not fit to lead, because he is not able to separate the idealism of his morals from the reality of running the free world.  So when Mr.Paul says that this was an assassination I say, "You're damned skippy it was."