On Reese’s Pieces

During most of the 1970s, I lived in central Florida. Most of that was in Daytona Beach, known for excess partying during spring break, NASCAR races, and motorcycle week. Almost any time, for that matter. I will admit that I indulged on more than one occasion. What’s life at the beach without a keg?

I finally grew up in 1978 and moved to Denver, breeding ground for most of my family. I’ve been in the Rocky Mountain West since then.

The newspaper of record in Daytona was the News-Journal. Not a bad paper – I delivered it as a paperboy in the mid-1960s – but not the best either. The Miami Herald deserves that honor, with the St. Pete Times not far behind. The Orlando Sentinel was the best paper we could get delivered daily in Daytona. My father liked it better that the NJ, which he considered "a liberal rag." The Sentinel was more conservative, better suited to hawkish readers during the Vietnam War and the strange post-war period that followed the abrupt retreat from Saigon in spring of 1975.

My father’s favorite Sentinel columnist was Charley Reese. Reese tackled anti-war liberals, welfare cheats, government waste, "The Reds," etc. Kind of an old-school conservative – perfect match for my OSC Dad. Most of Reese’s wrath seemed genuine and came from sort of a middle-class middle-of-the-road point-of-view. I read the man’s columns in self-defense, lest I be unprepared when I walked into my family’s house. Most of the seventies was devoted to father-son battles over politics. We never did really agree. I even had a short debate with him as he lay dying in 2002. Our subject? Dubya and his obsession with Iraq.

I’ve been reading Reese’s columns the past few years at antiwar.com. Reese writes three columns a week for King Features and most of them end up on this Libertarian web site. One aspect (maybe the only one) I share with Libertarians is my opposition to foreign entanglements. Libertarians are opposed to government in almost all its forms. Conservatives are supposed to be opposed to big government (thus Bush must be a neo-Con and not a Con). Liberals like me are so helpless that we can’t brush our teeth without help from the Gubment. That might be a bit simplistic, but....

So I’ve been reading and appreciating Mr. Reese’s columns since about March 2003 and the invasion of Iraq. This one-time Army tank gunner makes sense and tells it like it is. I especially liked today’s piece on antiwar.com. Here’s his conclusion: "...use your common sense. Ask yourself just what it is that America's young men and women are dying for. To make Iraq a happy place? To make Israel feel safer? To help corporations with insider connections get richer? Not one of those reasons is worth the life of a camel, much less a human being."