The Next Generation

Some days it would be better to just stay in bed. Yesterday there was a story in the news about 6 girls in Florida who got pissed at another girl for some perceived insults posted on a MySpace page.

After luring her to one of the girl’s house they proceeded to take turns beating on this girl. She was knocked unconscious, she received a concussion, and evidently one of her eyes was hurt from this beating.

The thing is, they didn’t just beat this girl up, they taunted her to fight back, which she refused to do, while filming the entire episode to post on the internet. They wanted notoriety for this brutal attack.

The 6 girls who did this had planned it well. They knew when the house would be empty, and they had a couple of their boy friends posted outside as lookouts. They are being charged as adults.

While I am glad they are being charged as adults, I have to wonder whose fault this actually is. The answer that comes to me is that it is the liberal mind-set that has brought us to this point. We refuse to allow absolutes in this world because absolutes create barriers. We live in such a nanny state now that barriers to anything are not acceptable.

Moral relativism. I remember hearing that term back in the 1970’s, the 10 Commandments had already been taken out of our schools and many teachers were afraid to read the Bible in class. While I did have a few who did read the Bible to her students every day, most either gave up the practice totally, or changed it to a period of “meditation” instead.

Parents were being hauled in front of judges for abusing their kids for giving them a spanking. They were supposed to appeal to the little tyke’s better instincts instead. What society failed to realize is that kids don’t have a better instinct. Our instincts tell us that whatever we do that is pleasurable and has no consequences must be good. So long as no consequences are imposed on our actions we have no reason to change a behavior.

Oh sure, science knew that, but if we just used “Positive” reinforcement instead of punishment our little darlings would gravitate towards better behavior. Unfortunately, some kids just like the fun of the bad behavior more than the reinforcement. What science forgot is that there is built into all of us a mechanism designed (by God) to help us to learn proper behavior. It is called the ‘Survival Instinct.’ Coupled with pain, the survival instinct will mold our children into fine upstanding citizens.

We need to take our country back! Give our kids a good spanking and help them to become decent citizens of this wonderful nation.

FAA a Model for Health Care

Over the past few weeks it seems like the FAA has been in the news just about every day.  Required maintenance has not been performed causing whole fleets to be shut down.

We put our lives in the hands of the FAA every time we climb into a plane, so it is somewhat unnerving to find out that they haven’t bothered to do their job.  It kind of gives you a warm feeling deep inside to think that this is the same type of bureaucracy that will be in charge of our health care if Hillary gets her way and is able to initiate universal health care.

Not only ineptitude will have to be contended with in the management of the program, but what happens if they actually mandate everyone see a doctor every year?  We can see what will happen if we take a look at the result in Massachusetts when they mandated such a program.

They system overloaded, too many people trying to see too few doctors.  Well, that sounds like we need to train more doctors doesn’t it?  That is true, but there is a small problem with that.  When the government controls the prices a doctor can charge the doctor  cannot make enough to justify the cost of medical school, admissions will drop and the situation will just get worse.

This is a disaster we cannot afford.  Let the free market operate and things will work.  Try to control them and you choke the life out of them.

The Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This past weekend marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination  of  Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis.  He had come here pursuant to the Sanitation Workers Strike in 1968 which was precipitated by poor working conditions and defective equipment.  Equipment which had claimed the lives of 2 men.

They were making a statement that needed to be made, they were, and are MEN, and should be treated as such.  There have been tremendous strides made in the area of Civil Rights.  We have a black man running for President this year, black men are serving in public office all across the south.  These are places that used to post signs telling blacks not to let the sun go down on them in this town.  A lot has changed.

Strangely enough, there are still people working here in Memphis for the Sanitation department who were working there 40 years ago when the strike took place.  The thing is, they can’t afford to quit.  There is no city pension plan for these workers.  The very workers Dr. King came and died to support decided at the time that they would take a lump sum bonus at the time rather than take part in the city’s pension plan.

These men sacrificed their future, on the altar of the immediate and are still paying the price for it.  Hopefully, the city will be able to work a plan to allow new workers to participate in the City’s plan, but it is too late for those who marched in 1968, it is too late for Dr. King.

Titles of Aristocracy

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: His Exalted Highness Duke Jacob the Furtive of Frome Valley Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

The First Amendment. It’s in there.

Michael Richards – Back in the day, people were not allowed to bring recording devices into a live performance. The performer had rights to his / her material not being distributed without compensation. Evidently, those days are gone as evidenced by the YouTube video of Michael Richards going off on some hecklers at the comedy club where he was performing.

 

Had that been the case here, we would probably never have heard of the incident where Richards went off on a rant calling the hecklers nigger and acting stupid on stage. As it happened though, someone video taped the incident, decided they were offended by what was said, and tried to get some money out of the situation (if not money, at least some notoriety).

 

Was Michael showing good sense in going off on the hecklers? Certainly not. Was it his right to go off on them? It certainly was. Who was hurt by the incident? Michael Richards. He is the only one who was damaged in the least by his words. Were the hecklers hurt? No, they were trying to goad Michael into acting stupid, evidently they were not enjoying his comedy routine, understandable, but does that give them the right to ruin everyone else’s evening by shouting him down? I personally don’t think so, but hecklers have been a part of stand-up since its inception, so maybe my opinion doesn’t carry much weight on this topic.

 

What about the person who video taped the incident? If they were offended, it was their own fault as comedy clubs are a place to expect rude humor and offensive language. They were actually harming Richards by taping the incident. We also have to wonder how much of his act they were taping, were they trying to make money off of his routine by selling bootleg copies of the performance? We will never know the answer to that question, but before throwing Richards under the bus, it is something to consider.

 

Personally, I don’t think that Michael Richards’ type of comedy translates to stand-up well, but that is not for me to say. I do feel that he has been turned into a pariah unfairly by people who weren’t even there.

 

Somehow we managed to go from Michael Richards to Don Imus without batting an eye. Don never even uttered the notorious “N word” in his remarks about the Rutger’s girls basketball team. Don Imus did what he was paid for, and very handsomely at that. He pushed the edge of the envelope.

 

Evidently, the envelope he pushed that morning was on the desk of the self appointed spokesman for blacks everywhere, Al Sharpdon. Al got his posse on the case and managed to bring enough political correct pressure to bear to cause NBC to fire Imus, without cause.

 

Imus had a contract that required him, as a condition of employment to push the edge and be controversial, but pressure from some self-righteous bigot got him fired. Here again, I personally don’t care too much for Don Imus, I don’t care for the edgy humor, but the man has a Constitutional Right to do it so long as he has a platform and a desire to use it.

 

People like Al Sharpdon want to call what Richards and Imus said “hate speech,” and want it prohibited. When we start shredding the Constitution and censoring free speech, Al Sharpdon and his ilk need to beware. His speech is as hateful or more so than anything Richards uttered, and much more hateful than what Imus said.

Free Speech

I guess if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll tell you, I’m a conservative. Yep, that’s right, one of those gun totin‘, hate mongers that you hear about on the news. I’m not as far right as some, but far enough to annoy some liberals.

There are a lot of things that bother me about the direction our nation seems to be heading, and it seems that a lot of it stems from this idea of political correctness. As I said in a previous post, we used to have free speech in this country. That speech has been eroded over the years and the rate seems to be accelerating.

Growing up, we learned hymns in church. Hymns like Alas and did my Saviour Bleed, with the verbiage that the writer put in, “Would He devote that sacred head, for such a worm as I.” Words that empathized the vast difference between a Holy God, and sinful man. Check it out now, in a new edition of the hymnal, I assume most any denomination will have the same changes, but now, instead of ‘worm’, it reads ‘sinner’. A huge difference? Maybe not, but neither is the difference noticeable when the Colorado river runs it’s normal course through the Grand Canyon, but the canyon itself is evidence of the changes wrought.

We have to apologize and qualify ourselves anytime we use a derogatory word, even if we are trying to chasten someone for using them. We just don’t seem to get it, the words are not bad, they are scratches on paper, dots on a screen, there is nothing inherently wrong with any word. Actions, on the other hand can be very wrong, and we have laws to protect us from the wrong actions of others. We cannot legislate morality, thoughts, or words. Certainly we can legislate actions, that is why you cannot yell ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre, we also have laws to prevent someone from inciting a riot. In the case of inciting a riot, there has to be intent in order for there to be a crime.

I am amazed when I see a movie on television where the word ‘nigger’ is bleeped out. It wasn’t used out of context, it was used in the way people hear it used everyday on the street, but to be politically correct, it is cut out, even when it is a major plot point. One scene comes immediately to mind from one of the Die Hard movies where our hero, John McCain is taken to Harlem and dropped off wearing nothing but a sandwich board which says “I hate niggers.” The words on the sandwich board were digitally blurred to blot them out.

If it is that offensive, just don’t show the movie for Pete’s sake! The writer and director put that in the movie for a purpose and now they are being censored. I am surprised that they let that pass without a fight. Ooops, I forgot, don’t step on anyone’s toes, don’t be a hate monger. Are we about to start taking words out of the dictionary to keep them from offending someone? That is the next step.

Barack Hussein Obama, a Delicate Flower

It has become a sorry state of affairs when a candidate for the highest office in the land and arguably the world wears his feelings on his sleeves and people in the media tip-toe around him to ensure they don’t hurt his delicate sensibilities.

It is not acceptable to call him by the name his parents gave him because it might have a negative connotation and turn off some potential voters. The main stream media are tripping all over themselves to accommodate his wishes. Anyone who doesn’t follow his wishes in this area is considered to be a hate monger or a racist.

Yesterday, Barack had to come down on his preacher, Jeremiah Wright. I don’t know about anyone else but I wasn’t blown away with his speech. I really didn’t like the way he dissed the founders for not stopping slavery, but that is another issue. He also didn’t distance himself from what Wright was saying, only that he now knew that these things were being said and he didn’t agree with them. That begs the question of why did he stay in this church if the values being espoused were so wrong in his opinion. Why did he not stand up to challenge the pastor’s rhetoric? I just don’t buy it.

You can’t unsee truth, you can merely deny it.

I believe that man has something of a truth-detector hard-wired into his makeup. I don’t mean that we cannot be hoodwinked or fooled, but once we see the truth, it makes us somehow uneasy with accepting contrary ideas.

Unfortunately, I also believe that this mechanism can be turned off by consistently denying the truth we see. The question becomes one of why would we want to deny the truth? That is a good question. Like a 5 year old who has broken a vase, and who blames it on the dog in order to escape punishment, we deny the truth when it is in our perceived self-interest to do so.

Notice that I said ‘perceived self-interest’. What we perceive as being best for us, may only be best in the short term, or at the very least cost us the least amount. In life the least costly short-term solution can often be the most costly long-term solution. I have often heard that someone has, “Sacrificed his future on the altar of the immediate.”

In a very real sense, our government has been guilty of this fallacious acting. Our social security is going bankrupt because we kept using the money for some ‘immediate’ need. I don’t mean to say that the need wasn’t real, but the money for it should not have come from social security funds. It has never been the government’s job to bail citizens out of problems, read the Constitution, it just isn’t in there.

We need to start making some hard choices NOW, or we will find ourselves living in the street wondering how we got there.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Well, it has been several weeks since my last post. If you are keeping up with this, I apologize. No reason really, possibly depressed with the choices that we are down to. It is easy to fall into the “What’s the use?” mindset.

I have been doing some reading though, and watching the news. Politicians are starting to jockey for position now with Mitt Romney throwing his support behind John McCain, and just casually mentioning that he would not be against the idea of being the Vice Presidential Candidate on the Republican ticket. Hillary supporters are pointing out that Barrack is black, which came as a total shock to me, I thought he just had a great tan!

Yes, the fighting is getting more intense as the conventions loom closer and closer, yet no one has said anything of substance in this race. Or have they? It is possible that they have already brought everything they have to the table and laid it out for all to see. In other words, they don’t have anything to offer the American People. Has it gotten to the point that no one who is qualified and who has a vision of what this country can be is even interested in the job?

Personally, I am fed up with what I am seeing, and the more I think of it the more depressing it becomes. The one ray of light that I see is coming from a third party, the Libertarian Party. Typically, third parties don’t do well in our system, but that is also how parties evolve. When the two parties become so similar that you feel there is no difference in who you vote for it is time to examine what options are available.

Maybe it is time we looked at Wayne Allyn Root and his bid for the Presidency as the Libertarian Candidate. This is something that deserves a closer look.

Farewell Fred

Fred, you will be sorely missed! Our prayers are with you and your mother through her illness.

Thank you for your love of country and your devotion to your conservative values. Both of these were evident as you spoke and were a breath of fresh air to many of us who feel abandoned by our representatives in Washington. Personally, I feel better knowing that there are some true conservatives left who will stand on principle without wavering.

Thanks again.