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.