Couple of weeks ago Arthur and I found ourselves at a Barbecue given by one of his flying buddies. This guy grills the best steak I’ve ever had in my life; eating it was like a religious experience. Better than Shula’s, better than Landry’s… it was the best steak in the history of steaks.
I have no idea how he does it, but it really doesn’t matter because I don’t own a grill.

ANYway, there were two other couples in attendance besides the hosts; people I don’t know and won’t come to know. They all seemed fine folk, and we drank, ate and indulged in quite a bit of conversation, as you can imagine.

One fellow, and this has been bothering me for two weeks, which is why I’m finally blogging it… this one guy kept saying: “the government should do something about that”. The talk had swung to Wal-mart at one point and he said it for the first time. I thought well… a lot of people don’t like Wally world. No biggie.
Next time he pronounced judgment was in reference to high gas prices. Again, I thought… a lot of people are just pissed about the price of gas and want something to happen; I’d be thrilled if we opened up drilling here.

Then, when someone else said something about Publix and high food prices, he said “the state should really step in and do something about them; they’ve pretty much got a monopoly here and are controlling the prices”.

With some effort I lifted my head from my plate and stared blindly ahead, like a cow suddenly deprived of her prime grazing land. He wants the government to do something about Publix? What about Winn Dixie, bud? Sedano’s? All the other grocery stores out there? And that’s when it hit me: He’s a damned Socialist. Sonofabitch, I’m breaking bread with that rare bird, the south Florida whiner.

I kept my mouth shut, just glanced over in his direction from time to time… and sure enough, right around dessert time it flew out of his mouth: “I’m a liberal Democrat”. As if someone had broken wind, nobody said a word; we all just kept eating key lime pie like nothing had happened.

That little episode illustrated something very basic to me… the nanny state ‘take care of me’ attitude of the liberals may be fine for them, but it’s antithetical to every principle conservatives hold to be true.

If I ever see him again, I’ll ask how the revolution’s going.