I talk a lot about the aburd things Letists think and do, and even explain why they do those things via studies and scientific evidence, as long-time readers will attest. What I don't often point out-- and maybe I should-- is that there are a lot of great Lefties out there too.

Check out this interview with Robert Kennedy Jr. I got so wrapped up in it, that I listened to all two hours and twenty minutes of it. I went in extremely skeptical, having previously not been particularly impressed with Judy Mikovits-- but instead found him to be eminently believable.

As a walking fact book, he made probably two hundred claims in the video, and while I haven't and never will be able to cross-check all of them, what impressed me was how balanced his views are, and how independent of a thinker he very obviously is: this guy strikes me as someone like myself, who neutrally does their own research on every issue one at a time, and comes to their own conclusion.

I don't sense any particular axe to grind. Nor was or is he opposed to vaccines, generally speaking. Nor does he dislike people like Bill Gates, about whom he had effusive praise-- I might write a blog post about that topic specifically, because in my opinion he's flat-out wrong in that praise. But back to the point, he's clearly not ideologically-motivated; rather, he simply went where the evidence led him.

He's also nominally a Democrat, but I picked up on opinions from all across the political spectrum, including Libertarian. In fact, the author even delves into that topic a bit: "you don't sound like a Democrat." He also covers his family: I had a vagely negative notion of the Kennedy family, having grown up in a Republican household-- but it actually sounds like there was a lot of great things about them, and the way they raised their many kids.

In summary then, I probably disagree with him about many things-- but he's one of those people about whom I completely respect their opinion and thought process, even if they arrived at different conclusions than myself.