This Memorial Day should serve to remind us all of the price of Freedom. Too many people think of Freedom as a 'right' like the 'right to be forgotten.' Freedom is not a natural occurrence like gravity. It is an illusive human condition that must be earned and preserved through constant vigilance and sacrifice. The American Flag is the lone iconic symbol of that effort throughout the World. In San Diego, the City had the gall to threaten a local civic organization with serious fines for displaying the American Flag this Memorial Day without first paying permit fees. Admittedly, some of the dispute revolves around the placement and process of installing the poles, but the idea that a patriotic display to commemorate the lives of our brave military that have been sacrificed for all of us to live in freedom is appalling. It seems everything has been boiled down to money. Even when it comes to celebrating the memories of those who gave all, some power obsessed group wants to insert their will to generate a monetary benefit over their sacrifices! Our Flag is Sacrosanct! I have written an email to Congressman Duncan Hunter Jr. imploring him to offer some sort of legislation to ban the practice of charging fees for the proper display of an American Flag anywhere in the United States of America.... I think we can all live with that, don't you? Only an idiot would believe that the kidnapping of hundreds of school girls is anything but a sick, perverted act of hatred. Period. I don't care how you cut it, it is depraved. How we, as a civilized society, react to the heinous crime is a subject for discussion. I hope we can we agree on that. What stands out to me is the reaction to this crime. I know it is abhorrent to attack children, especially innocent girls! But why has this singular incident incited such extreme outrage? Could it be that the use of girls as a tool of terror has hit a nerve? The group responsible blames Western Education as the ‘crime’ these children were committing. Now they want to use them as trade bait, so are we to believe these maniacs really care at all about the girls? Of course not. They are getting exactly what they want, though. And that is a sense that the Western World is helpless. There have been thousands of extreme inhumane acts of kidnapping, murder, and torture since the Era of Fundamentalist Islamic Jihad began sometime back in the late 70’s with the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli Olympic Team. Obviously the world wide web didn't exist during the Palestinian Terrorists murder of the Israeli athletes so it played out live on Olympic TV coverage. The TV medium was a driving force coalescing world opinion against the tactics of terror, but it also proved to terrorists that using innocents was an effective tool of terror. During the Bosnian war, thousands of Muslim boys were summarily executed by extremists! They were dragged out of their homes and butchered in front of their families. Whole villages were slaughtered including newborn babies in Afghanistan because they were Coptic Christians! But little or none of those crimes received the publicity that modern day war crimes do. Besides, those events were seen as part of a broad civil war. Something that factions with long held hatreds exacted on each other. It was called Ethnic Cleansing, as though that made it any less rational. In every case, the inhumanity was couched in a fundamentalist religious fatwa. The perpetrators claim to be operating under the command of Allah. The Tide of Terror unleashed on the World by the many factions of Muslim Extremism has no shame in killing men, women and children who are non-combatants, innocent civilians, and even clergy. The Culture of Death permeates extremist fundamentalism like the Culture of Forgiveness permeates the Judeo-Christian ethic. The Boko Haram is simply a bunch of demented narcissists who use religion as a justification of their nihilism. Their acts of mayhem feed their compulsion to grab attention, show their anger and disrespect, to dispense sadism, pain and suffering and control every aspect of our lives up to and until they end their pathetic existence on this earth; the earth they consider corrupted because they can’t have their way. Yesterday, social media went ballistic after Michelle Obama posted a tweet showing a hashtag #Bring Back Our Girls!” My first impression was, how does advertising your empathy via Twitter help? To me, Twitter is just a giant network of digital advertising of self important feelings. It is a tool for self-aggrandizement. It is a digital billboard for patting yourself on the back. “Look at me, I just wanted you to share my rush!” Some, who criticized her were lambasted as jerks, because it was presumed the critics didn't care about the kidnapped Nigerian students (presumably because they were black). I don’t use Twitter, but it occurred to me that the criticism had more to do with the medium, not so much with the messenger or her message. Maybe the problem with the Twitter plea is that some people see Twitter as a singularly self obsessed indulgence. When it suddenly becomes a medium of activism, it may someday be effective, but it will have to wade through a ton of irrelevant blather before it reaches serious proportions. So the critics are simply suggesting that maybe we need to use something a little more ‘serious’ to project our outrage and to actuate change. The message “#Bring Back Our Girls” begs the question; who and how? When the First Lady is using Twitter to scream online ‘someone please help us!' it sounds a little desperate. She is, after all, the better half of the Most Powerful Man on the Planet, isn't she? If the President can’t "#Bring Back the Girls” how is crying out on Twitter going to accomplish anything? Maybe I am just naive. Maybe that is not the message Michelle was trying to send. I was flipping through the talking heads last night and caught a loud and boisterous argument about the botched execution in Oklahoma where a particularly disgusting and vicious murderer suffered an abhorrent mistake during his medical execution. What was intended to be a relatively quick, humane, and painless execution turned into a one hour long abomination as the prisoner went in and out of consciousness, suffered excruciating pain and ultimately died from a heart attack on the gurney.
The overpaid and self-righteous commentators were suffering apoplexy over the event and one in particular was characterizing American Culture of being equally guilty of murder as the now dead prisoner. Isn’t it amazing how, in this day and age of such advanced communications, highly sophisticated people who are supposed to be experts in their field of news reporting and social analysis, too often reveal themselves to be very dubious when it comes to understanding and using the English language. Let alone participating in a debate where it seems they are unable to separate relevant facts from emotional sideshows. Geraldo Rivera, who has managed to keep his job as a news correspondent and analyst for nearly four decades though he continually misrepresents or distorts information,and loses control of his emotions, completely missed the point. He was very upset because in his mind, this episode demonstrates the depravity of the death penalty. Society, he concluded, is lowering itself to the same level of immorality as the killer when it chooses to kill him instead of warehousing him for the rest of his natural life. My problem with all of this is that what happened in Oklahoma was an accident; a human error. The medical professionals who were administering the death inducing drugs screwed up; not on purpose. Yes, the intended outcome was death, but in a humane way. The subject should be, why did this happen and can it be prevented from happening again. Is there culpable negligence, and if so, to what degree. I don’t think the doctor(s) got up in the morning thinking, “ A Ha! Today I get revenge! I can hardly wait to see the look on this guys face when his blood pressure goes off the chart and his brain cramps! If I do this right, I can enjoy an hour-long show!” We can have a discussion about the morality of the death penalty, but it is a different debate. This was simply a medical procedure that went wrong. It happens! Of course we hope it never will, but humans are not perfect and neither is the practice of medicine. This was ugly, unfortunate, and nothing to be proud of. But the answer isn’t to use it as evidence of the decline of Western Civilization. I would make the case that high profile, news media professional’s misuse of language, confusing and conflating issues, and losing control of emotions when discussing important issues of the day is much more damaging to our culture in the long run. First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me. - Martin Niemoller, remembering his time in a Nazi concentration camp The fact that we Americans of the Baby Boomer generation have allowed our centers of education to morph into Indoctrination Centers for Radical Left Wing Ideologues makes me sick at my stomach. I have been railing about this since my last year at California State University at Long Beach in 1972 when I was subjected to a 'clinic' at USC hosted by some black panther-types, who terrorized me for 3 hours, screaming that I was a sexist bigoted white male whose ancestors had enslaved blacks and should repent by becoming an activist communist. Here we are 42 years later and my fears are being realized. After a school administrative decision to force their kids to turn t-shirts depicting an American flag inside out because it was too provocative, some parents protested and they were attacked as ‘racist a**holes’ by the Leftist American-educated parents of the Mexican students who were celebrating Cinco de Mayo on campus. The students who would theoretically be provoked to violence by any such counter display of nationalism, and who the administrators concluded, needed to be protected from reacting to the American flag because it ‘was a symbol of racial animus.” The school, it’s administrators and the American ‘educated’ (indoctrinated) parents are literally ganging up on parents who show allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. How sick is that? You must read this article because I believe it describes the most serious threat to our country’s very existence; the systemic effort to destroy our American Heritage by rewriting history, mischaracterizing every aspect of American pride as racist, bigoted and misogynistic suppression of minorities and women by rich, white, Christian males. They are coming for white, patriotic Americans now. Will we remain silent? Read entire article by Bill Unruh at www.wnd.com…... http://www.wnd.com/2014/05/americans-now-racist-for-waving-u-s-flag/#S44t0hJ4MoF82H6A.99 |
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October 2024
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