I was in London in late fall of 2004 with a group of friends that were all in one way or another a part of a worship concert to be held at a church in Central London later that week.  We had finished rehearsing for the day and had decided to all go out together for dinner that evening.  
You went all the way to London to do a worship concert? And you're going to talk to me about starving kids in Malawi? How many Malawi meals could your plane ticket alone have bought? 
          Ummm... that's my conservative "friend," who sits on my right shoulder and will appear from time to time in this book to ask a question, make a point, or just generally give me a hard time.  He really wasn't supposed to make an appearance in the first paragraph. 
          ANYWAY, there were seven of us in all at dinner: My 17 year-old son Adrian and I, and five other people. These were people that I would consider good friends–either musicians, or business associates that I have known for quite some time and find the conversation with easy and fluid.  We were well into the main course when someone made a comment about Iraq.  I had learned through painful experience that to say anything at a time like this was to say too much.  I knew that besides my son, I was sitting at a table of conservative Christians who most certainly supported President Bush and the war in Iraq.  We were having a nice, pleasant evening and I had had too many of these types of situations turn from nice to ice over politics, and anyways, I frankly didn't have the energy to debate the issue.  So I kept my mouth shut between bites of pasta. 
          One of the people with us knew well my position on the war, and thought it would be good fun for me to "tell the table what I thought."  I politely demurred, and then, when egged on further, I more strongly resisted. This in turn roused the person next to her, who also thought it would be "all in good fun" to hear what Brent, the village lefty, had to say. These kind of things almost never end well, but after even further baiting, I, weakly, took the bait, and fell into a debate with a guy that up until that point I thought I had a lot in common with.  This debate got louder and louder, and shriller and shriller, until at one point this guy, who I consider a friend, was turning a bright red and pointing his finger sharply at me, and yelling, "You don't know WHAT you are talking about!!  All the Iraqis that I know support this war, and until you have met as many Iraqis as I have, and you have asked them how they feel about it, you should just shut up about it!!” 
          Well... there it was, another good dinner spoiled.  Believe me, it was longer and worse than I have described,  but I remember my son on one side of the table calmly taking on two or three people while I was much less calmly trying to take on the rest.  I went back to my room that night deeply... disturbed.  Deeply challenged. Deeply impressed.  Impressed, as in, "I can't get this feeling out of my head; why do I feel so strongly about this and so many other political things, and almost no one that I know that I share my faith with, with the exception of my poor son, feels anything close to the same way I do? We all love the same God, all believe Jesus is who He said He is, and all read the same Bible, but we sure don't see the world in the same way."  Disturbed, as in, "When I get in these debates, I almost immediately feel like I'm in over my head; I know how I feel, but I always feel like I'm grasping at straws for the nuts and bolts of why."  Challenged, as in, "I've had it! I am not going to be one of these people any longer who purports to have strong political opinions and views but behind the opinions lies a shallow but wide puddle of knowledge; I know a little bit about a lot of things, but not enough about anything." 
          Over the next few weeks I wrestled with these feelings, and then one night I started to write. I was reading and writing and writing and reading. I had already accelerated my political science reading over the last several years, but now I had a purpose. So, almost a year-and-a-half and one hundred-plus books and hundreds of websites later, here I am, feeling much better informed; there is every reason to fear me now around the dinner table. Actually, it has been the process of getting informed that has been so wonderfully enlightening to me and is really one of the main things that I hope to share with you; this is, in essence what this book is about. I am excited about all of the things that I have learned; I am more than aware that there is so much information out there that I haven'tread. It frankly makes me nervous to ever finish this book because I know that the day that I finally turn it in for the last time, I will read something else that will send me careening to my computer, making more revisions.   
          
          This, then, is my declaration of political independence.  I am no scholar; but then again, neither are so many of the pundits that try and play one on TV or the radio.  They are only one chapter ahead in the manual.  Remember this when you are listening to them pontificate; remember this the next time your pastor goes off on some political diatribe–he's most likely just read this week's US News and World Report, or a best-selling book. There is no substitute for doing your own research. 
          So go ahead, agree with me, or disagree with me–get angry, get insulted–as long as you get engaged, and then get informed. If you don't like what I am saying in this book, then you know how you feel. Try and find out why you disagree, and if these arguments are built on a strong foundation of facts. Test your arguments against all sides of an issue, not just the ones that support your side. Prove me wrong–please! That would mean that you took the time to read, or to research. And hopefully, that means that you are on your own road to political independence.