A Weekend of Heroes

Hero: a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.

I hope you all found something worthwhile in your Memorial Day Weekend.  I know I did in mine.  It was busy, and it seemed like I spent much of it on the run, but I still found time for the sober reflection that is the reason for the holiday, and heard an excellent sermon on Sunday about reflection and remembrance, the latter being important enough to be mentioned in the Bible more than 100 times.

Then later that evening, I got to watch Courageous, a movie about heroes who made a decision and a committment to be the heroes that every man should be.  My oldest son watched it with me, and we had a very good discussion about the various topics raised in the film.  It won’t be a candidate for an Academy Award, but I appreciate the fact that people like the producers of this film, and people like Tyler Perry are willing to make movies with small budgets, and short timelines to tell a story that encompasses values no longer embraced by the larger studios.

Then, Monday morning, we finally went to see The Avengers.  It didn’t disappoint, but then with Joss Whedon at the helm, it would have been an unpleasant surprise if it did.  What did surprise me was the insertion of some lines, and story developments that reflected some values that Hollywood hasn’t been too big on in recent years.  I suspect that this was allowed to happen because it was based on comic book heroes, and therefore. those values could be mocked by those who felt the need as childish or simplistic.  Sadly, I doubt the message will be received by the rest of Hollywood, much of which chalked the success of The Dark Knight up to “making the character dark”.  After all, the truth doesn’t fit the narrative.  It was an exhilarating experience to see a story unfold that allowed for sacrifice, determination, and redemption in the characters that didn’t leave me feeling as if the dreams of childhood were retconned by a society that feels an overwhelming urge to “reimagine” and redefine that which it finds itself opposed to.

It was a good weekend that was a celebration of the things that it should have been about, and I felt relaxed and ready when I went to work today.  Then I read about Chris Hayes’ shallow pontification over the weekend.  If, like me, you were busy having a good weekend, and decided not to shave points off of your IQ by watching MSNBC, let me fill you in on what Chris said in his show “Up With Chris Hayes” :

“I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war,”  he added that “there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers,” but that “it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic.”

I know what you’re thinking.  I didn’t know that Butch Maddow had a brother either.  Yes, “Up With Chris Hayes” is a stupid name for television program, as it evokes images of this, which doesn’t really get me thinking “serious credibility” but in its own way, does make a certain sense.

The apology, as predictable as an afternoon rain shower in Florida, came less than 24 hours later, and underscored his focus and the true target of his remarks, demonstrating that he still didn’t understand why what he said was wrong. (Yes, Rutherford, I said “wrong” and not “offensive”.  Deal with it.  Or don’t.)

Regardless, Hayes issued an apology for his comments on Monday, saying that he was “deeply sorry” for the remarks. “As many have rightly pointed out, it’s very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots,” Hayes said in a statement. He said that he had made a mistake by conforming “to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war.”

While its fine to oppose war, secure in the knowledge that other will still join the military and lay down their own lives to keep yours safe, to fail to recognize that sacrifice for what it is, and deny them the very basic respect they deserve simply for having made the decision that you wouldn’t (for whatever reason) is the mark of an ingrate.  You don’t have to have done it yourself to recognize that signing up (or accepting selection) into a service that will take you far from home and most certainly put you in harm’s way to protect your nation and your loved ones, or to be a part of something much larger than one’s own self-interest and benefit is an act requiring the kind of courage that not everyone choses today.  The fact that one would choose to do it, either in the previous administration, or this one, indicates to me that they clearly see something obscured to the Chris Hayeses of the world, and reminds me of a famous movie speech delivered over a decade ago: 

“Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to. “

There are many ways to be a hero.  Some will cast much longer shadows than others.  Some will do it by living up to their responsibilities, no matter how much they would prefer an eternal adolescence, and some will do it by exhibiting valor and great sacrifice, up to and including the one life they have to give, for their country, or for their fellow man.  That doesn’t always have to be a conscious decision to charge a machine gun, or exposing yourself to fire, because the first act comes with the decision to serve, and to be a target so that others won’t.  It isn’t glamorous, but then, it doesn’t lack conviction, either.

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When the Root of Dispair Is Your Own Tribe

 Dignity: bearing, conduct, or speech indicative of self-respect or appreciation of the formality or gravity of an occasion or situation.

There is no greater indication of just how muddled we have become as a society as when those who have every reason to know better say things that might reflect their opinion, but don’t really make sense.

Friday afternoon, I was in my office, perusing an email thread that was sent to us because we are part of the Elder Law email list-serve, and I read this exchange:

Lawyer One:  This is a moral issue as well as a legal one.  What I tell my clients is that Congress, representing the will of the people, has set up our health care system so that we all are responsible to pay for our own long term care unless we are destitute, i.e., have less than $2,000 in assets.  Under the law he is required to pay for his own care because he can afford it.  If he chooses to take steps to make himself eligible, then he is asking the taxpayers to support him.  Does he want to do that?

Most clients with resources to pay for their own care choose to pay for it themselves.

Personally, I’d prefer a universal health care system, but that’s not what we have in this country.
Lawyer Two:  My somewhat obvious prejudice is for some sort of moral and ethical answer to this dilemma: health and long term care and death with dignity, so that people don’t have to waste their estate.  So, I aggressively want to find a solution because our political/social will has not matured to this point. 

I am getting the drift that there is no current answer.

There is so much fail in this exchange.  From the point of expecting that the taxpayer will pay for long-term care for those who can afford to pay for it themselves, to the idea that a person’s self-respect and bearing can be purchased, and that others should be compelled to purchase it for them, I see a breakdown in logic and a fundamental misuse of the language that is our stock in trade. 

There are some simple truths that are ignored by both officers of the court:

1) Only you can give you dignity.  That is why it is a display of self-respect.  I’ve seen people who have this in the face of sure and certain disdain of everyone surrounding them.  When it is real, no amount of disrespect and derision from others will change it.

2) Compelling others to buy it for you is unjust.  It is not charity, as charity cannot be compelled.

3) I’ve worn my copy of the Constitution out looking for where it is for the Government to provide “dignity” to anyone.  I can’t find it.

4) People do not value what they do not pay for. This is the most pointed truth of them all, and I have seen it played out again and again with people who have the means to pay for their own care who self-impoverish to become eligible for government paid long-term care, as they frantically gift away their entire estate not out of love of the beneficiaries, some of whom they believe to be undeserving, but only to get the care on someone else’s tab.

I find it offensive to suggest that it is somehow “immoral” that we don’t offer long-term care for everyone, paid for by others who are compelled to do so.  I resent the fact that I am increasingly expected to bear this cost, and in so doing, keep less of what I labored to make for the benefit of my own family, while the people who I am paying for can, with planning, divest themselves of everything they have, allowing their own families to keep more of this benefit while taking from mine.

My profession does not do anyone a service when it presumes to confuse that which is permissible with being moral.

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Lies, Intimidation, Explosions, and Vexatious Litigation

No, it isn’t a new summer blockbuster movie.  It’s the story of Brett Kimberlin and if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of  hearing about him, he’s the convicted domestic terrorist who has decided to make threats and intimidation of those who tell the truth about him his reason for living.  His targets have included Patterico, Aaron Worth, and Stacy McCain.

His name is attached to all manner of interesting court cases, and today Glenn Beck devoted a nice on-air chunk of time to Mr. Kimberlin and two of his victims, as well as talking about the groups formed by Mr. Kimberlin and the people who fund them, allowing him to continue his ongoing legal jihad against anyone he deems a threat(or who tells the truth about him, since they seem to be much the same thing).

The Beck link has Patterico telling some of his tale of his entanglement with Kimberlin in his own words, and it is worth hearing.  I normally don’t do link-arounds, but this person apparently likes to use the legal system to abuse people, and that becomes a danger to everyone.  So instead of writing more, I’ll simply tell you that my friend and sometimes co-blogger, Nice Deb has a great list of links to all the blogs talking about this, some of whom have had personal experience with Kimberlin, and others who just happen to find his connections and his past to make interesting reading. 

Now start reading, and tell your friends.

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How DID The Republic Survive As Long As It Did…

…without our self-appointed intellectual betters to tell us how we are just too stupid to see how enlightened they are?

From the finely polished turd file, we have this latest entry from New Age manure merchant and elitist twit, Deepak Chopra. 

Now, on the one hand, I’ve gotten used to people who would have trouble finding a clue if it was nailed to the back of their hand pretending to greater intellect and wisdom (based on the consensus shared by their peers, and rarely by any objective measure or observable criteria other than the sound of their own voice) than that possessed by my friends, associates, and myself.  They played this game in the last election, when it declared that opposition to Barack Obama was simply the result of our racism, and not his razor-thin resume, and record of making principled stands on nothing other than preserving a mother’s “right” to snuff her baby.

Well now, Mr. Chopra insists that Obama has the answer that we need as a nation in one word: “Evolve”.

Of course, the piece hits all the predictable points, such as Romney pointing out the uncomfortable truth about the President:

One foresees that a simple message may prevail over a complex one. The simple message, which Romney endlessly repeats, is this: The President is a nice guy, but he’s in over his head, and his wild spending has bankrupted the country.

Now keep in mind, Mr. Chopra chooses not to demonstrate the level of denial of many Obama supporters; he doesn’t refute this message.  He tries to recharacterize it as he extolls the virtue of what he thinks Obama’s winning message is:

The complex message, which comes from Obama in mixed, varied, and confusing in ways, is this: We must revamp America in order to meet the future.

The only thing that is complex about the Obama message is the choreography that we see performed by those who would have you believe that there is still HOPE and CHANGE instead of historic and unprecedented failure and decline at the hands of someone incapable and unwilling to change either.

Because Romney has blame, impatience, and angry frustration on his side, he may succeed in his uphill climb. Already most of what the pundits told us – that Romney had been damaged in the combative primary race, that the conservative base is opposed to him, that the religious right is suspicious of him – has proved invalid. Republicans are rallying en masse behind the simple message, while seething underneath is an irrational hostility to Obama that no sensible person can quite fathom.

What is overlooked or avoided in this suspect analysis is the fact that the President has had 3 and a half years to “revamp” America, two of which with majorities in Congress that should have gotten him all his little collective salvationist heart required to get these things done.  What it has gotten us less drilling on federal lands and in the Gulf of Mexico (and climbing gas prices to go with it), a coal industry facing annihilation, which WILL see electricity prices skyrocket (a promise kept), and the worst labor market since the great depression, with the historic and unprecedented benchmarks of no new net jobs and a downgrade in the country’s credit rating.  To ask for more of the same would be like being donkey punched by an entire football team, only to ask them to do it again.

And to allege that Romney has blame on his side is cheeky, considering that instead of correcting his failures during the last three years, the President, who asked us for the job, and was briefed repeatedly throughout the campaign, gave us excuses about what he “inherited”.  Any negative has always been someone else’s fault, usually his predecessor.  And while there is angry frustration and impatience with the failure that is this administration, I believe to say it is on Romney’s side is projection…it certainly exists, but it isn’t because of anything Romney has said or done.  This is the result of an administration that put a priority on regulation, making the engines of prosperity off-limits or so restricted as to be ineffective.  It also carries the taint of irony, as it was the undertone of the campaign of HOPE and CHANGE that the President ran in the last campaign.  Romney’s momentum isn’t for a great enthusiasm for his message thus far as much as a resignation to the understanding that he represents the lesser of two evils, and the prospect of at least retaining competent management for the economy for the first time since January 2009.  Given the record that the President dares not run on, the hostility towards him is hardly” irrational”, and to suggest that those who realize this, and aren’t willing to acquiesce to a brilliance that simply isn’t in evidence is insulting.  The fact is that despite a gradual dumbing down of the population which has been exploited by those who have decided that they are our betters because they have been “trained” to rule, the average person still has a better grasp on basic economic truths than any 12 graduates of Harvard Law or the Kennedy School of Government, if only because the finite nature of money is something that they can’t escape by printing money or raising taxes.

Chopra goes on to list the factors that he wants the reader to believe that Republicans aren’t capable of addressing, while avoiding the fact that the only answers that Democrats seem willing to give are “Spend more, tax more, government more”.  These answers demonstrate a disbelief that the American people can and will come up with their own solutions if government is scaled back, and pulled off the backs of on whom the burden of making it all work.

It’s a tragic irony that the Republican Party has become the domain of white blue-collar workers, because they are the worse off and the ones who need Obama’s vision the most.  All governing classes come from the elite (after all, both candidates have Harvard degrees, just as all the leading contenders in 2004 went to Yale). The difference is that the Democratic vision is fostered by an elite that wants to retool our whole society for the benefit of the greatest number. The Republican Party wants to benefit well-off white males.

Of course, the governing class doesn’t have to come from the “elite”, and there are members of Congress who do not fit this classification thanks to the very same Tea Party that he holds in such disdain.  That is why the Republican Party is typically as hostile to it as the Democratic Party is.  And the desire to “retool society to benefit the greatest number” is nothing of the sort.  It is merely the latest incarnation of a “benevolent” spirit in government that looks to be generous with as much of other people’s property as it can, in order to purchase as much power from those voters as it can.  The elephant in the room is and always has been that entitlements have NEVER been the Federal government’s to give, and the longer that it has been able to engage in this generosity, the better it has been for government, not the subjects of its supposed benevolence.

Somehow, after forty years of reactionary conditioning, the working class has been persuaded to support rich white males while ignoring their own best interests.

  Or maybe they realize that all the left has offered is envy and gilded chains, and that isn’t in anyone’s best interests but the Democrats.

Abortion and gay marriage are typical red herrings, as are foreign wars and stoking mass fear about terrorism.

Or abortion is a crime against the nation’s charter and a betrayal of our most cherished ideals, and gay marriage is an insult to the struggles and sacrifices that characterize the real civil rights gains our country experienced in the last century, which cheapen that history, and pretend that the morality that its proponents pretend is neutrality is of greater benefit to society than what they want to replace.  But then, I doubt Mr. Chopra is sufficiently well-versed in American history, law, and the philosophy of law to truly grok the significance of that which he would trivialize.  And considering the man he is campaigning for got us into Lybia’s war, over the objections of Congress, and still has troops in Afghanistan, is waiving Osama Bin Ladin’s bloody dress to anyone who’ll  listen, GITMO is still open for business, and American citizens still have to consign themselves to nudie scans and being felt up by unionized government subcontractors when they fly around our own country, the cheap talk about the distractions of foreign wars and terrorism is just that.  Cheap and talk.

 For all that, America must evolve on all fronts.

Why is it that we keep having to suffer the self-righteous opinions of British twits like this man and Martin Bashir?  Seriously, if we wanted to live like EUROPEONS, we never would have fought and won two wars against the Crown.  If I wanted to know how to fail, I still wouldn’t ask either of them.  There are plenty of Democrats here who I could take seriously.

Obama realizes this quite clearly; hence his programs for alternative energy,

The wind power that is proving to be a boondoggle, to such a degree that its biggest cheerleader, T. Boone Pickens has bailed on the idea, and the generously taxpayer-funded failures like Solyndra , or the taxpayer money frittered away on foreign auto companies like Fisker, or the brilliant idea of subsidizing biofuels which are harmful to engines, incredibly inefficient, and perform the stupid government trick of turning food into fuel, making food that much more expensive for the very same people who Democrats keep purporting to help?

 a cleaner environment,

And all it will cost is energy bills that will necessarily skyrocket for the average consumer, and businesses who will either go out of business, or cut their work force, further depressing an economic already gasping for air because of choking regulations and the anticipated costs of ObamaCare.

 infrastructure repairs,

Which, shockingly, as it turns out, were not so shovel ready.  But, hey, since that wasn’t HIS money, its ok to laugh about it, right?

universal health care, and on and on.

An exercise in the usurpation of power that the Federal government was NEVER intended to have, which will drive up costs until private insurers are out altogether, and which will necessarily reduce the quality of care, and destroy the most innovative health care system in the world.  But given the fact that the Federal government has done such a bang-up job with the Postal Service, Social Security, and Medicare, I’m sure that we can count on that quality, efficiency, and careful stewardship of our money to carry over into this latest venture in to the nanny state.  After all, the NHS has done wonders in Great Britain, right?

Nothing offered by Romney is remotely commensurate. One prays that in his heart he is the moderate, sensible person that the extreme right hates and fears.

If the “extreme right” had the numbers and the power that our good friend Mr. Chopra would have us believe, there would be no doubt that Mr. Obama will not be re-elected…because he never would have been elected to begin with, as he would have had a competent candidate opposing him in the LAST election, and someone other than Romney facing him in this one.

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Having Surrogates Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry

The Blaze today has the story of Hustler’s photoshop of S.E. Cupp.  While this is emblematic of the REAL “War on [Conservative] Women”…the one that the usual suspects have no interest in talking about, it has been rightly pointed out that all though Hustler was both good enough to provide a disclaimer next to the photoshop…which will undoubtedly NOT accompany the image as it makes its way around the web, and was also good enough to be honest about the reasons for doing so, in creating this image, they have forever marked her in a graphically sexual manner over a political disagreement.

While the National Organization for Women has not yet issued a statement, it is not anticipated that it will offer anything more than a pro forma protest, if any.

The Hustler explanation states:

S.E. Cupp is a lovely young lady who read too much Ayn Rand in high school and ended up joining the dark side. Cupp, an author and media commentator who often shows up on Fox News programs, is undeniably cute. But her hotness is diminished when she espouses dumb ideas like defunding Planned Parenthood. Perhaps the method pictured here is Ms. Cupp’s suggestion for avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.

President Obama, who inserted himself in a similar controversy earlier this year when he personally called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law Student and Activist who was called a “slut” on air by Rush Limbaugh, has so far remained silent on this matter.  Fluke, despite voluntarily enrolling at a Catholic school, testified in a public hearing about the need for the school to offer health care plans that would pay for the birth control of female students, which she claimed could cost upwards of $3000 over the course of a standard law school attendance.  The number was claimed to be based not on a standard that would use either condoms, or “generic” birth control pills available at the nearest Target or Wal-Mart Stores, but upon the exceptions to the rule, who claimed the more expensive formulations were necessary to treat other conditions, an explanation not given until after the figure was criticized and ridiculed by Limbaugh and others.  For the school to offer such a plan , it would have to go against church teaching and doctrine on the issue of birth control.

So because Ms. Cupp opposes PUBLIC funding of Klanned Parenthood, an organization that has undoubtedly been of great utility over the years to a readership that was more than happy to avoid the responsibilities of fatherhood that would have been incurred by sport screwing and the objectification of women, she deserves to be photoshopped with a penis in her mouth…an image that will undoubtedly be seen one day by her children, and the rest of her family.

It seems a far cry from a January day in Tucson, Arizona when President mustered enough sincerity to say these words with apparent conviction:

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

But then talk is cheap, and Ms. Cupp’s conservative views and opposition to Klanned Parenthood undoubtedly make a similar intervention by the President in this matter quite impossible.

 

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This Isn’t Helping…

Pastor Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church has a problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2n7vSPwhSU&feature=player_embedded

As the nation grapples with this topic made newsworthy by the President’s desire to not have to run on his record, people on all sides of this issue seem to be stepping up the rancor and rhetoric.  Whether it is Expert Bully Dan Savage’s appeals for tolerance disguised as anti-Christian rants against school kids who dare to believe what their religion teaches about homosexuality, or pastors like this new subscriber to the Westboro Baptist Newsletter, there is an appearance of a desire to push both civility and understanding out of the discussion that we seem to be trying to have and not have simultaneously as a country on this subject.

In the case of Mr. Savage, I can at least understand and rationalize his anger.  People sometimes get angry when they are being told they shouldn’t do something that they enjoy doing.  Anyone who knows an alcoholic who doesn’t want to get cleaned up, and has been on the receiving end of the anger and resentment that comes from suggesting it knows exactly what I am talking about.  Under that circumstance, I wouldn’t expect Mr. Savage to be a rational actor. 

Pastor Worley doesn’t have that excuse.

As a Pastor of a Christian denomination, he should fully understand that there is an Old Testament and a New Testament.  As a Pastor of a Christian denomination, he should fully understand that the New Testament gospel doesn’t preach hatred for the sinner.  The measure of undeserved grace that we ALL enjoy should be sufficient to remind any believer that we are all sinners.  This does not excuse sin, but is meant to motivate each of us to make the daily attempt to NOT do so.  Despite the clear and specific admonitions against homosexuality that are contained in the New Testament, that does not excuse any believer from the commandment to love one another…a commandment that I find myself struggling with in increasing frequency.  To do otherwise does not comport with this commandment.  To do otherwise does not comport with the book of Jude, which states:

¹⁷ But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. ¹⁸ They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” ¹⁹ These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

²⁰ But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, ²¹ keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

²² Be merciful to those who doubt; ²³ save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. [Emphasis Added.]

The Pastor does violence to the Word and the Spirit when he speaks like this.  Shouting with anger and malice doesn’t make the sin he condemns any more a sin than calmly saying so.  But it does make people defensive, and when they get defensive, they stop listening and start shouting.  And when he attacks the sinners for their sins, in hate and anger, he embraces hypocrisy, and becomes a poor ambassador for the one whom he claims to serve. 

I confess that my gut reaction was “If Dan Savage can take time out from bullying school kids for being Christians, then maybe he and the Pastor can have a cage match.  But the sad fact is that the Pastor’s rant only makes people like Savage feel justified in their own hatreds, and makes it that much harder for those who want to speak the truth to a world that sorely needs it.  I am ashamed of my Brother, and I apologize for him,  but I am glad that we have the same hope of redemption, forgiveness, and grace that are the hallmark of the Christian belief, and are what sets it apart from so many other faiths.

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The Kids Are Alright…

…it’s the teachers who are in need of correction.

Those of you who are familiar with my writing know that I’m not a big fan of unions, especially the unions that are in public schools, largely because they make no bones about their primary goal being making a better life for their members, and the students be damned.

But one of my major bones to pick with teachers unions is that they do not promote excellence, and often end up protecting bad teachers, who either have problems with fact, or who bully students rather than teach them.  Today’s Union Approved Mark of Excellence Teacher is the brilliant Constitutional scholar, Tonya Dixon-Neely, who after a contentious discussion with a student who dared to point out that if her “Fact of the Day” on the alleged Romney bullying story was a big deal, then so would the President’s story about he bullied a female classmate would also be a story, shouted that the student was “disrespecting the President” and that doing so was “illegal”.

http://youtu.be/vjpWaESn_9g

And what was the school district’s response to this display of belligerent ignorance on the part of its employee?  She is suspended with pay. 

No doubt she is thrilled.  Now she won’t have that pesky job thing getting in the way of her daytime television.

Our next contestant is Jay McDowell, an economics teacher at Howell High School in Howell, Michigan, who decided that it was appropriate to take a page out of Dan Savage’s book, and fight against perceived bullying by…bullying.

“I rasied my hand and I asked him what the difference was between him wearing a purple shirt and explaining that to us, but Danielle couldn’t wear her rebel flag belt buckle,” Daniel told the National Organization for Marriage’s Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance. “He asked me if I was really against the homosexual lifestyle and I told him that the homosexual lifestyle was against my Catholic religion.”

An altercation ensued, and Daniel says he quietly left the classroom after McDowell told him “we lost our right to free speech once we stepped inside his classroom.”

“As I was walking out into the hallway he came running out after me, calling me a racist and a bigot, telling me he’s going to get me suspended for bullying and harassment against gays,” said the teen. “When he started yelling at me, I was just kind of in shock, I didn’t know how to react to it.”

Got that?  How dare you have religious views contrary to the flavor of the month of the activistas!  You must be a hater and bigot and homophobe, and, and and…

I could be sarcastic about the incredible improvement that the teachers have made in getting the kids so well taught in what they are supposed to learn that we shout them down for not buying into the Obama worship, or setting aside their religious beliefs for the “acceptance” of a lifestyle that the pink swastikas have deemed our highest societal aspiration.  I could, but instead, I’d rather give the kids an “attaboy” for not backing down from bullies who want to strip them of their freedom of conscience, and the right to state the obvious without regard to how it fractures or wounds the worldviews of the very small ideologues who prefer reflexive rote conformity to actually teaching, and the thinking that occurs when viewpoints are discussed and actually defended.

If shame was still recognized as such, I would prescribe large doses of it for both, along with unemployment and a record indicating the complete unfitness for the job that they have thus far demonstrated.

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The Thing About Crying “Hypocrite”…

…is that to be correct, it should be done into a mirror.

Accomplished bully, and, oddly enough, paid spokesperson for the anti-bullying movement, Dan “Attack Dog” Savage , is just the latest example.

Savage, “famous” for a sex column and grabbing headlines for such brave and unbully-like acts such as naming gay-sex effluvia after Senator Rick Santorum, and statements about how much he wants to F**k Santorum, and how he wants all Republicans dead recently gave a Sheridan apology for his bullying of high school students at a recent conference in which he launched into a tirade on the Bible, and then call the students who chose to remove themselves from his 15 minutes of hate by calling them “pansies” as they departed from his expertly rendered discussion against bullying.

Now, for those who like some justification with their assertions, you’ll note that he cites little to support his claims of the Bible containing “bullshit”.  The Bible supports slavery, and was used to justify slavery?  Tell it to the abolitionists who were waiving it with equal committment, Mr. Savage.  Christians eat shellfish, and therefore are hypocrites, Mr. Savage?  Tell it to Jesus, who said

¹⁴ When He had called all the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear Me, everyone, and understand: ¹⁵ There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. ¹⁶ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!”¹⁷ When He had entered a house away from the crowd, His disciples asked Him concerning the parable. ¹⁸ So He said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, ¹⁹ because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?” 

^{Mark 7:14-19}

 There are also 6 other New Testament references that make it clear to anyone capable of reading and understanding, that this would be one of those taboos that isn’t taboo to a Christian, meaning, of course, that Mr. Savage was not correct when he decided to belittle the beliefs of a captive audience who did not have the opportunity to respond…much like bullies often do.

Missing the opportunity for demonstrating any real understanding, he recently apologized on his website, displaying the same tact and wisdom that has so recently put him back in the spotlight in an uncomfortable way:

I didn’t call anyone’s religion bullshit. I did say that there is bullshit—”untrue words or ideas”—in the Bible. That is being spun as an attack on Christianity. Which is bullshhh… which is untrue. I was not attacking the faith in which I was raised. I was attacking the argument that gay people must be discriminated against—and anti-bullying programs that address anti-gay bullying should be blocked (or exceptions should be made for bullying “motivated by faith”)—because it says right there in the Bible that being gay is wrong. Yet the same people who make that claim choose to ignore what the Bible has to say about a great deal else. I did not attack Christianity. I attacked hypocrisy. My remarks can only be read as an attack on all Christians if you believe that all Christians are hypocrites. Which I don’t believe.

No, Dan.  When you attack the basis for someone else’s beliefs, you are attacking those beliefs, and the difference between those whom you mocked when they shook the dust off their heels and departed, and you, is that they have read and understood that which clearly eludes you.  But then, with a plank in your eye that is the size of a redwood, I’m surprised that you can drive a car without running into anything.  But then, since people still hire you to talk about fighting back against bullying, my surprise is tempered with resigned disappointment.

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