OK, so this morning I went to a groundbreaking ceremony in Lawrence, Kansas. For those of you not familiar, Lawrence is the home of my alma mater, the University of Kansas, Despite also being the home of the Dole (as in Sen. bob Dole) Institute for Politics, it remains a vast wasteland of liberalism - the school and the town. The groundbreaking ceremony was for a community co-housing project, itself a micro-scale model of communism. However, I have a couple of friends who have been very active in bringing this project to fruition, and although the type of project they have created is not really my cup of chai, I was there to support them.

One of the other major supporters of the effort, and an immediate neighbor of the project, is a woman who is currently on the ballot for state senator. During the open-house (well, open-empty-lot-where-houses-will-soon-be), she was kind of trolling around looking for supporters. I was kind of prepared to address her plea for my support on two grounds: one, I don't live in her district and two, my politics are not in line with hers. I was really prepared to deal with this in an objective and adult manner.

Well, the opportunity never came. Now, she may have been tipped off by my friends that her time would be better spent recruiting her fellow leftists, or she may have just sensed that I was not going to pay off for her. I don't think I necessarily gave any particular visual indication that I was not a leftist, except perhaps for the fact that I was clean and, while dressed in typical Saturday super-casual attire, was at least so attired in clean clothes. Similarly, my two daughters who accompanied me were clean, well-groomed and polite, in some degree of contrast to the unrestrained hellions of the leftist attendees.

And she wasn't the only one. I was making casual polite conversation with many of the attendees, whose political affiliation was clearly obvious either by their Kerry/Edwards t-shirts and bumper stickers, various garb advocating "diversity", or other such indication. None of them seemed to be particularly willing to pursue any kind of political discourse. Of course, out of common courtesy, I didn't go there looking for a fight, and I was emotionally prepared for the leftist onslaught that would be laying in waiot in Lawrence. However, on this, the third anniversary of the day that Muslim terrorist chose to sela their fate by waging their particularly cowardly brand of war on US soil, I really thought more of them would have been just itching for the chance to spout some of their disgusting anti-American psychobabble. It didn't come.

It's just as well, I suppose. I would not have liked to been party to any type of confrontational exchange on the day that my friends were gathered to celebrate a new beginning for their project.

So, although their political views range from the merely odd to the patently absurd to the downright anti_American, the Liberalus Midwesticus does posess enough instinctual ability to not taunt or provoke that which will seek to bring it down.

Incidentally, the hired balloon guy was really cool. He made a boss pink dragon, complete with "fire" and "Sky" to hold him up for one daughter, and a little white mouse with a pink cat to chase it for my other girl. If someone needs a balloon guy, let me know!

They are calm among their own kind.....