A Clarification of The First Amendment

There is a common misconception in this country of late regarding The First Amendment's right to free speech.  The Founding Fathers believed that free speech was foundational in creating a truly free society, and rightly so.  As such, they included protection of that right in the very first amendment to The Constitution.  It was an incredibly insightful, and truly radical, decision and has been one of the defining aspects of many of the brightest, and darkest, moments in our country's rich history.  But let's be clear about some things.

First, while The Constitution protects every person's (and yes, I said person, not just those of the American variety) right to say whatever it is they want to say, it has been ruled, time and again, that it only protects speech as long as it doesn't incite violence or harm.

Second, and this is the one that other people seem to have a real issue with in the light of all this Chik-fil-a stuff, while everyone has the right to say, in any forum, whatever they want to say, to express any belief in whatever way they choose, it does NOT protect them from any repercussions that those words have. 

In other words, if you choose to speak out against something with which you take issue, you must accept that there will be those who disagree and that those actions may have consequences and that they have just as much a right to respond as you did to speak out in the first place.  Read more!

A Thought: On Christian Persecution

When I heard someone the other day say, "It's getting to be very hard to be a Christian in this country," it took everything I had not to reply with, "Really? You ought to give being a Muslim or a Jew a shot." Read more!

Louis C.K. on Compassion

“The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough." - Louis C.K. Read more!

A Thought: On Political Symbolism

New law: Politicians may participate in one, only one, symbolic political gesture in their lives.  Not session, not term.  Life.  Stop wasting our time, then complaining that nothing's getting done. Read more!

A Thought: On Packing

A friend of mine commented the other day that one of the best parts of packing for a move is the purging of things which are no longer necessary.  After having moved as many times as I have, I have to agree.  It allows for the pulling out of memories, sometimes of things we've done, sometimes of people we've been.  We get to relive them, for a tiny fragment of our lives, to hold them again, remember, then either put back in place, if we can't yet bear to part with them, or let them go.  There's a joy, sometimes, in that brush with something that's come and gone and can never be again, or a catharsis, now and then both, that makes the whole exercise just a little more than the precursor to a shift in physical location.  It's a way of choosing the memories that will make up the foundation of a new home, hand-picking each, brick by brick, to form something more than what was left behind. Read more!

Hey, Media...

How's about you stop saying that a movie is causing these Aurora copycats and take some responsibility, because it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that you've done everything you possibly can to make the guy who perpetrated the original tragedy into an overnight sensation. Read more!

A Thought: On the Relevance of Appearance

I got an email this morning saying that my application to teach in a particular parish needed to be updated.  I went to the site and learned that the thing I was missing was a current photo.  Because what I look like is as vital as my resume.  I mean, you wouldn't want someone who was the wrong color or was lacking the kind of moral integrity that comes with tattoos or piercing teaching children, would you? Read more!

A Thought: On Hating the Police

People "hate" police officers for the same reason they hate traffic cameras, because they, at best, have the reasoning capacity of a three-year-old and can't see the possible effects of their actions beyond what they want right now and, at worst, because they can and don't care enough about the potential they have for hurting others, because what they want is more important. 

 

Even as a kid, I hated specific cops, because they were assholes, but I never hated cops, as a whole. The way I see it, if you're not doing anything wrong, you've got no reason to dislike those whose job it is to protect us from the thoughtless or callousness of those are are.

Read more!

A Thought: On the Glorification of a Killer

News media,

   If the tragedy at the theater the other night is really so appalling and sickening to you.  Stop giving it the same kind of press coverage you give to movie premieres and royal weddings.  Stop making the killer's face a household name.  Stop telling his story and let those truly effected rest peacefully.  Stop inspiring the next kid society's robbed of a life to get one himself by taking those of others.

Americans,

   Stop giving the news the fuel it needs to prolong and profit from suffering.  Don't just give those lives shattered a moment of your silence.  Give them all of it.  Read more!

An Open Letter: To Murfreesboro, TN

People of Tennessee who are protesting The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, on grounds that Islam isn't a real religion and that it is being built to create and train terrorists who want to overthrow The Constitution, this is for you.

First, The Constitution you're trying to protect, right at the beginning, says that people in this country can practice whatever religion they like. 

Second, you've apparently spent the last two years, between ignorant, bigoted, frivolous legal actions, committing acts of vandalism and arson, as well as the occasional bomb threat. 

I think we need to have a talk about the definitions of words like terrorist, hypocrisy and irony... Read more!

A Thought: On Yahoo Messenger

Yahoo.  It's like the postal service of internet messaging.  Your messages will always get there (probably...maybe...we're pretty sure), they just may not get there when you mean them to, or go where you mean them to. Read more!

Idealism and America

            I have often been called, in these increasingly politically divisive days, an idealist for expressing my beliefs that we as a nation, and as individuals, are capable of looking past ourselves, past our own immediate wants and needs, and doing what is right for the future of this country.  Well, perhaps I am a bit of an idealist, but at what point were we led so far off track that we became convinced that being so was a negative thing? 

            Looking back at this country’s incredible history, it’s clear to see that those who have had the greatest impact upon its creation, its evolution, have always been idealists. 

The Founding Fathers were a group of statesmen who looked at the way their colony was being run, saw the tyranny and oppression of imperialism, the suffering it was causing in the streets around them and, rather than step down, saying there was nothing they could do, or retreat into their parlors to rail in private against the unfairness of it all, but do nothing to stop it, chose to see a brighter future for America. 

No, they raised their voices, shared a dream of an America where everyone was given the opportunity to rise above the station into which they had been born, was given the tools, the education, the open doors and advantages that allowed them the ability to truly rise to their potential.  They saw a world that had never been and chose to believe, against great odds, that it could be and were willing to give their lives to make it so, because some ideals are more important than blood and pain and even death.

A century later, this country went to war with itself because many of its citizens still saw that the dream hadn’t been fully realized, not when many of those who worked to bring it to fruition were being held in chains.  So, again, those who believed in freedom, in equality and in our ability as a nation to be better than we had been, fought and died and created from the ashes of a dark past the foundation for a new and better future.

I know what many of you are thinking and you’re right.  While they were freed from one set of chains, those new, valiant Americans, many of whom had fought side by side with those who would see them freed, were then shackled with another, fashioned from the fear of reprisal for the injustice and ignorance that had been the core of their suffering. 

But, if anything, that was a failure of idealism, a failure to look at our fellow man and see that, despite difference and experience, they, too, could rise above what had been in the name of what could be, as so many did.  No, it is a testament to their idealism that, even in these newly-fashioned, more insidious chains, they believed that they could still be a part of this country, could one day stand shoulder to shoulder with their brothers and sisters in the dream of a nation of equality and prosperity.  And they were right. 

Though it took much suffering, and the deaths of many more brave men and women, they utilized the most powerful aspects of the dreams dreamt by those men who once believed that we could be a nation, to bring about true change, once again, not with violence, but with hope, with peace and with the voice they had been given by this great nation.

Today, we find ourselves once again on the precipice of darkness.  Our country suffers under the weight of inequality and, for the first time in a very long time, stands so divided that it may well break.  We rail against one another, tearing each other apart because there is no vision for a brighter future, there is no guiding light to which we can move and, without that, we are terrified.  And, like scared children, we scream and cry, without the understanding that we have the ability to chase off the monsters.

Now, more than ever, is the time for idealism.  But it must be tempered with realism.  It is idealistic to think that, given free reign, a business will look out for its consumers and the economy upon which it depends more than its own bottom line, to think that more weapons on the street will lead to less violence, to think that, freed from the burden of taxation, all Americans will instantly stand up to share the load on their own and do the things that must be done to hold this country together.  That, my friends, is idealism without the sobering voice of reason.

Certainly, we look at ourselves and say, without hesitation, “I would,” when asked if we can hold ourselves to those ideals.  But can you say you believe it so easily for those beside you?  What about those on the other side of the political line, those who, despite what the people in whose best interest it is to have to believe so, to keep you divided from one another and more easily manipulated, are only visionaries of a different sort, with a different idea about what this nation could be?  The words don’t come so quickly there, do they?

As Americans, it seems that we can’t agree on anything these days, and I couldn’t argue that we do, wouldn’t argue it, though not for the reasons you may think, not for the hopelessness, despair and desperation which seem to weigh down so many hearts in my troubled country.  No, I wouldn’t argue because I believe we need disagreement, were founded and kept alive and brought into power by those who disagreed.  We argue now because we are all visionaries, we all see a world that is better than the one in which we live, not only for ourselves, but for all of those who live within it. 

But there are those who would, who are, stopping us from realizing that vision.  Their ideals are not the same as ours.  They seek not to make a better world, but to better their own worlds.  And we have allowed them to do so, to divide us by our differences when we should be uniting beneath the ideals we share, the hope and the strength and the passion to be better than we have been.  It is within us, it is our birthright as citizens of this great nation, to rise up and take power back.

So call me an idealist.  I will wear the badge proudly.  My country can be great again, as once it was, and greater.  But do not doubt that I’m a realist, as well.  It will take sacrifice.  It will take some suffering.  And, more than anything else, it will take compromise.  It will take all of us giving without the instant gratification to which we’ve become accustomed. 

Instead, we will have to look to the long-term.  We will have to look around at the world and see it as it should be, not as it is, and, most importantly, to believe in its capability to become so with the same conviction as did those proud Americans who came before us. 

The greatest weapon of those who would keep us beneath their heels is hopelessness, is making us believe that things cannot change, that we should accept that this is how things have to be and that it is the fault of our brothers and sisters.  It is their voice in your ear that whispers that we should simply accept things as they are, that we must spend all our time and energy on blame, when it could better be spent on enacting change.  We must find hope in ourselves, in our ideals and, most importantly, in one another. 

There is so much in our history that proves we are better than those who would keep us down believe we are, that we are able to pull ourselves from this morass of despair and bring this nation back to where it belongs, to continue to forge the shining dream for which so many have given their lives.  We can be more.  We can be better.  We can be idealists and realists.  We can be Americans.

Read more!

Batman supports Obama...apparently

So it turns out that Rush Limbaugh, obviously not much of a Batman fanboy, has decided that Christopher Nolan and the other Hollywood liberals have created a masterful plan to undermine Romney's credibility by naming the villain of the new Batman movie Bane. 

Yep.  Here's how it works, according to Rush.  The evil writers of the new flick named the villain Bane so that when all of us, "brain-dead people," who rush to theaters hear Obama and his crowd bring up Bain (the company where Romney's allegedly done some questionable things during his tenure there), we'll all instinctively associate Romney with evil and villainy.  I repeat, we'll think Romney's evil, not because he may have done the kind of things that caused the economic recession, but because the company he worked for is named the same thing as the villain in a movie.

It should also be noted that the character of Bane wasn't created for the movie, but has, in fact, been around since 1993 and even made an appearance in the 1997 travesty Batman and Robin.  Does this mean the DNC has mastered time travel?  Read more!

Harry Potter Drinking Game: Patronus!

Everyone brings a bottle of Patron (or whatever tequila fits your budget, you cheap bastard).  Everyone starts taking shots and you don't stop until someone sees their spirit animal. Read more!

A Thought: On Sports and American Priorities

It would take a teacher, fireman or police officer just about 1,887 years to make what Drew Brees is going to make in five.  I've got nothing against sports, or Brees, but there's something seriously messed up about that.

It's also about a tenth of what was cut from Louisiana's medical and education budget for the coming year, and more than 100 times what was needed to maintain the public funding its public libraries are losing. Read more!

A Thought: On Those Working Hard Enough to Be Rich

The IRS released the tax statistics for the top 400 earners in 2009 (you can find them here).  These are the folks who keep telling all of us that the reason we're not rich and successful is because we just haven't applied ourselves or worked hard enough.  Anyone with a basic understanding of these graphs can see pretty clearly that all that hard "work" they're doing is bringing in less than 10% of their total income, on average.  The majority of it is from capital gains (things like stocks and speculations).  Most of which are taxed, if at all, at rates lower than your average lower middle class worker's salary, which, in most cases, accounts for more than 95% of annual income. 

Now, don't get me wrong.  Someone made that money somewhere up the line, and I'm not one to punish a smart investment, because re-investing is how economies grow, but when the vast majority of your income has little to do with the actual work you're doing, and is, rather, just a snowball effect, don't try and belittle those who are working just as hard, or harder, than you are and don't have the advantage of millions in the bank doing the work for them.

Also, it's a little scary that so few people realize that there MIGHT be a connection between the fact that the wealthiest people in the country, also known as those with the most political clout, as evidenced by the fact that at least half the election headlines in the last week have reflected not policy, but how much money the candidates are raising for their campaigns, are the ones in control of the economy. 

If you don't know how the speculation or stock markets work, go get someone to explain it to you, then, when they do and you're filled with horror and homicidal rage at the people who are ACTUALLY in control of the shitty economy they keep blaming on the president, who's actually trying to levy all those evil taxes on those collective billions they're making by doing no work and regulate all the practices that are driving up inflation with little to no oversight, keep educating yourself, organize and actually make some change.  Read more!

A Thought: On the Efficacy of Art

Art doesn't have to mean something to the world, as long as it means something to you.  The best art in the world doesn't have to make a grand statement, as long as it whispers in the soul of at least one person. Read more!

A Thought: On Music and Blissful Heartbreak

I hope to never outgrow the ability to have my heart broken by a song I've just heard for the first time. Read more!

A Thought: On Taking Solace in the Past

It's all well and good to take solace in the past.  That's why, left to its own devices, time will fade from memories the bad things and emphasize the good.  Just be careful that it doesn't become a place to hide from the present. Read more!

A Thought: On Healthcare and Priorities

I'd be more concerned that Obamacare is killing jobs, if lack of health insurance wasn't killing children. Read more!

A Thought: On Giving and Taking

Don't walk over to a starving man who's just been given day-old bread and take it from him, assuring him that he deserves better, but offering nothing with which to replace it. Read more!

Have no fear...

You can go to bed.  The birds will still be angry in the morning. Read more!

Highlander? Really?

Look, I like Ryan Reynolds.  I'll give a movie a shot solely based on the fact that he's in it.  He's witty, charismatic and has done some incredible acting.  Hell, I even hear he's a nice guy.  He's the perfect Deadpool and can carry a dramatic role with great intensity.

But I was reading IMDB the other day and came across the fact that they're remaking Highlander.  After I came out of the red haze of my rage at them daring to remake yet another movie that didn't need it, I was astounded and dismayed to see that Ryan Reynolds was attached as the lead.  Hollywood, seriously.  Stop.  Just...make new movies.  And if you ARE going to reboot old movies, please show that you have even the slightest respect and understanding for the original.  Thank you, not that you'll listen. Read more!

A Thought: On Gossip and Stress

You know, if you don't talk about people behind their backs, you never risk having them find out about it.  Save yourself the stress. Read more!

A Thought: On Global Warming and the Persistence of Ideology

In houses all over the United States, there are people without power, suffering through an extended record heat wave and drought, denying the existence of global warming. Read more!

A Thought: On Lifestyles and Excuses

"The lifestyle to which we've become accustomed" : A phrase found in flimsy justifications for doing bad things to keep from having to give up a lifestyle which no longer exists and adapt to the current situation. Read more!

A Thought: On Canada

I hear Canada's got pretty good health care. Unfortunately, I also hear it's currently under threat of a massive douchebag migration. Read more!

A Thought: On Love and Roses

Poets and writers are wont to compare love to a rose, beautiful, sometimes painful, and quick to fade.  It's a foolish, short-sighted comparison.  If you try to take love, sever it from the earth and sun which foster it, of course it will wilt. 

No, true love is like a rose bush.  It must be tended, nurtured, some blood will likely be spilled, but in the name of something astonishing, a unique dichotomy of fragility and resilience.  It will not always be in bloom, but with care and time it will, with each season, create a greater, more enduring bounty. Read more!

A Thought: On Parenting

In order to drive a car or own a gun, one must be licensed, because to attempt to do so otherwise could possibly result in harm to another.  However, anyone can, without any training or evidence of even the most basic skills or suitability, have a child.  And we're cool with that.  It's a strange world. Read more!