My firm grasp of the English language notwithstanding, I often have a difficult time putting my feelings into words. Trying to do so often feels like trying to describe the taste of salt without using the word "salty," and the result rarely feels adequate.
Even so, it would be wrong of me to let August 28, 2010 pass by unmentioned, because it was a day that marked a profound change in me.
I was not one of the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in Washington, D.C. to participate in the rally. Though I dearly wished to be a part of it, it would have required a miracle to make it possible, and I am not now at a point in my life where I can demand personal miracles of God. My miracle that day was a shared one -- the miracle of being able to watch an event as it was happening on the other side of the country.
I'd say I woke up early to watch, but that wouldn't be accurate, as I couldn't sleep at all the night before. So I sat up, and half an hour before the rally started I logged in to Facebook to start the live feed. I was not alone in this; more than 10,000 other people had the same idea. I had suspected that mere tissues would be inadequate, and was proved right when the rally started. I had a towel handy instead, and it served me well.
The speeches and music were moving and uplifting; the sheer goodness of both those on stage and those in the crowd was palpable, stretching the thousands of miles between Washington and little me, alone on my couch in the early hours of the day. By the end of the rally, I found myself no longer so much regretful at not having been there as I was profoundly grateful that I, along with over 125,000 others on Facebook alone, was able to participate at all.
The spin and the outright lies started up right away, as we knew they would. The event was preceded by wild claims of malicious intentions, and possibly the end of the world, by people who clearly had no idea what they were talking about. After the rally, the stories were mainly gross underestimates of the crowd, as well as a massive exercise in groupthink in which "reporters" repeatedly indicted the crowd for being "mostly white," mainly because that was the only potentially offensive thing that the crowd had done -- or, rather, been. (Nice to know that those JournoList contact sheets haven't gone to waste.) Apparently the irony of seeing nothing but the color of the majority of the crowd (hint: it's also the color of most of the U.S.) at a rally on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech was lost on these people.
Ordinarily things like this would have me spitting mad. I admit, it was a rather rude awakening when I initially found out that America's "trusted" media sources were not to be trusted at all, and I found myself seeing red at all of the injustices I had wakened to. "How could they do this?!" was my common refrain, and no matter how many times it was calmly explained to me our "fourth branch" of government is largely populated with Alinskyites, it rankled.
So imagine my surprise when, upon hearing all the nonsense spouted by media types in the aftermath of the Restoring Honor rally, my dominant emotion was not ire. It was amusement. Wry amusement.
Something clicked into place on Saturday, and solidified its position in my head even further the next three days -- it doesn't matter. More specifically, they do not matter. If people want to lie, to libel, to slander, to write and report the things they wish had happened rather than the things that did ... well, that's their lookout. Sooner or later the lies will get so ridiculous that no one will believe them anymore. That much has started already. Our revered Fourth Estate have sold their credibility for a mess of pottage that is heavy on the mess and lean on the pottage. The 8/28 rally could not have possibly made it any more clear that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" as the line between the two sides was thrown into stark relief. This struggle is not about parties; it is about being able to choose how to live our own lives in whatever way we see fit, and allowing each of our fellow human beings that same courtesy.
Make no mistake -- my change in attitude is not one of becoming apathetic. Far from it. 8/28 strengthened, at least doubled, my resolve to fulfill whatever role it is that God has for me here. My change in attitude is rather the result of seeing clearly, even second hand, where true strength lies, and the stark weakness of the self-storied "giants" of our time. Some people would call this "getting perspective." Those people are correct. What others say about or against me does not define me, it defines them. And all the slings and arrows of the world are of little use if I stand where God tells me to stand.
Thank you, Glenn. I, too, will pick up my stick.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Eric Holder and Race Relations
I mentioned earlier that I tend to mentally chew on things, and the process can take some time. This, I think, is mainly because I'm really not used to questioning with boldness. It's one of the unfortunate side effects of leftist thinking, which often requires shutting one's brain off.
I mention this because what I'm thinking about today is a statement made about a year and a half ago, and one that has been stuck in my craw ever since: "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."
This is, of course, from the man with the most amazingly selective eyesight I've ever seen, Attorney General Eric Holder. He said this in February of '09, and the uproar was immediate. My knee-jerk reflexes kicked in (I am, after all, a work in progress) and I joined in the furor in my own way, but there was then and still is now a part of me that agrees with the essence of that statement: too many people in America are afraid to talk about anything racial. And it is a sad state of affairs. We shouldn't have to pussyfoot around each other, terrified that some offhand look or remark might send a total stranger into a frothing-at-the-mouth conniption fit.
Unfortunately for Mr. Holder, this is where his moral authority ends. For Eric Holder to bemoan the abysmal state of race relations in this country is like a heroin dealer complaining about how there are too many drug addicts in the neighborhood, or an OPEC executive ranting that he's paying too much at the pump. The reason race relations in this country are nowhere near as good as they should be is because of people like Mr. Holder and his cadre of race-baiting hucksters who insist upon seeing racism where no sane person would. People who insist upon opening up old wounds and pouring in salt, and people who insist on continuing to collect on a debt that has been long since paid.
If you owed a man money, and then paid it off with interest, you would be more than justified in calling the police if that man's son tried to shake down your kids to pay him the same amount you had paid his dad, claiming that your kids were "guilty by association."
Yet this is the state of race relations in America, mainly because self-styled leaders of the "black community" (whatever that is) know that perpetuating this false sense of guilt will directly lead not only to very comfortable homes and expensive cars, but also to power. Lots of power.
And therein lies the disconnect: There's no way a man like Eric Holder is going to throw the brake on this gravy train. I don't think anyone is buying the idea that the man who dropped an open-and-shut case against the New Black Panther Party for racially motivated voter intimidation, while pursuing a lawsuit against Arizona SB 1070, is secretly pining for an America where unfounded accusations of racism would be met with eye-rolling derision. Mr. Holder's motivation in this 18-month-old speech was not to reprimand, but to gloat. And why shouldn't he? His cushy new job was a direct result of his new boss's old Republican opponent throwing the election, and of (so-called) news outlets outright ignoring Barack Obama's less savory connections -- all for fear of being called racists. Prominent media figures scrambled over the tops of each other in a never-ending quest to prove just how truly open-minded they were, and anyone who had the audacity to question the halos that photojournalists kept giving the Democratic candidate was quickly branded a heinous bigot. In short, the entire '08 presidential campaign was a race-baiting grievance-monger's wet dream.
Is this still relevant? You betcha. The Leftists currently running this country are still operating out of the same bag of tricks that worked so well for them in 2008, and, as it's all they really have, they will work that ugly little bag for all it's worth. Fortunately, the rest of us are now a little wiser.
Tammy Bruce has said that when someone calls you a racist, act as though he has called you a cocker spaniel, because it's just as likely to be true. Thanks in large part to the Left overplaying the Race Card to the point that even Jon Stewart thinks it's been maxed out, more and more Americans are taking this approach. We need to continue this trend. Repeat after me: The debt of slavery has been PAID. The debt of Reconstruction and segregation has been PAID. Any further offenses, by a person or persons of any amount of dermal pigmentation, are the sole responsibility of the perpetrator thereof, and cannot be tacitly applied to a group of people arbitrarily boxed together due to an accident of birth. (That last one was a little wordy, sorry.) There have been some truly ugly chapters in American history due to a widespread acceptance of racism at the time; this attitude is no longer prevalent, nor is it acceptable to the vast majority of Americans. Any people who are somehow still stuck on injustices that, in many cases, they've never actually experienced, should cease the endless navel-gazing and go quietly help someone in genuine need.
I mention this because what I'm thinking about today is a statement made about a year and a half ago, and one that has been stuck in my craw ever since: "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."
This is, of course, from the man with the most amazingly selective eyesight I've ever seen, Attorney General Eric Holder. He said this in February of '09, and the uproar was immediate. My knee-jerk reflexes kicked in (I am, after all, a work in progress) and I joined in the furor in my own way, but there was then and still is now a part of me that agrees with the essence of that statement: too many people in America are afraid to talk about anything racial. And it is a sad state of affairs. We shouldn't have to pussyfoot around each other, terrified that some offhand look or remark might send a total stranger into a frothing-at-the-mouth conniption fit.
Unfortunately for Mr. Holder, this is where his moral authority ends. For Eric Holder to bemoan the abysmal state of race relations in this country is like a heroin dealer complaining about how there are too many drug addicts in the neighborhood, or an OPEC executive ranting that he's paying too much at the pump. The reason race relations in this country are nowhere near as good as they should be is because of people like Mr. Holder and his cadre of race-baiting hucksters who insist upon seeing racism where no sane person would. People who insist upon opening up old wounds and pouring in salt, and people who insist on continuing to collect on a debt that has been long since paid.
If you owed a man money, and then paid it off with interest, you would be more than justified in calling the police if that man's son tried to shake down your kids to pay him the same amount you had paid his dad, claiming that your kids were "guilty by association."
Yet this is the state of race relations in America, mainly because self-styled leaders of the "black community" (whatever that is) know that perpetuating this false sense of guilt will directly lead not only to very comfortable homes and expensive cars, but also to power. Lots of power.
And therein lies the disconnect: There's no way a man like Eric Holder is going to throw the brake on this gravy train. I don't think anyone is buying the idea that the man who dropped an open-and-shut case against the New Black Panther Party for racially motivated voter intimidation, while pursuing a lawsuit against Arizona SB 1070, is secretly pining for an America where unfounded accusations of racism would be met with eye-rolling derision. Mr. Holder's motivation in this 18-month-old speech was not to reprimand, but to gloat. And why shouldn't he? His cushy new job was a direct result of his new boss's old Republican opponent throwing the election, and of (so-called) news outlets outright ignoring Barack Obama's less savory connections -- all for fear of being called racists. Prominent media figures scrambled over the tops of each other in a never-ending quest to prove just how truly open-minded they were, and anyone who had the audacity to question the halos that photojournalists kept giving the Democratic candidate was quickly branded a heinous bigot. In short, the entire '08 presidential campaign was a race-baiting grievance-monger's wet dream.
Is this still relevant? You betcha. The Leftists currently running this country are still operating out of the same bag of tricks that worked so well for them in 2008, and, as it's all they really have, they will work that ugly little bag for all it's worth. Fortunately, the rest of us are now a little wiser.
Tammy Bruce has said that when someone calls you a racist, act as though he has called you a cocker spaniel, because it's just as likely to be true. Thanks in large part to the Left overplaying the Race Card to the point that even Jon Stewart thinks it's been maxed out, more and more Americans are taking this approach. We need to continue this trend. Repeat after me: The debt of slavery has been PAID. The debt of Reconstruction and segregation has been PAID. Any further offenses, by a person or persons of any amount of dermal pigmentation, are the sole responsibility of the perpetrator thereof, and cannot be tacitly applied to a group of people arbitrarily boxed together due to an accident of birth. (That last one was a little wordy, sorry.) There have been some truly ugly chapters in American history due to a widespread acceptance of racism at the time; this attitude is no longer prevalent, nor is it acceptable to the vast majority of Americans. Any people who are somehow still stuck on injustices that, in many cases, they've never actually experienced, should cease the endless navel-gazing and go quietly help someone in genuine need.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Free Speech vs. Hate Speech: A Pictorial Comparison
There seems to be a bit of confusion of late as to where the line is between "free speech" and "hate speech." So here's a handy guide you can use if you get lost in the jargon:
Friday, August 20, 2010
The Story of Jim: A Modern Parable
I am terrible at thinking on my feet.
Sure, I've uttered my share of witticisms and even profundities, but far more often than not they have been the result of past conversations or debates that I'd had wherein the other party left me dumbstruck or unsuccessfully scrambling for an answer. I'm the person who has the perfect comeback . . . five minutes later. In short, I am one of the last people you want spearheading your side of an argument in an impromptu debate.
A couple of months ago a dear friend of mine posted on his Facebook page his belief that a large (and growing) federal government has given us, as Americans, more freedom than the much smaller and limited one that we started with. This felt profoundly wrong to me, but pontificate as I might (and did), I still couldn't put my finger on why his reasoning was flawed. I've been chewing on the matter ever since; what follows is the result of my ongoing mental mastication.
This is the story of Jim. Jim was an average young man in an average American town. He earned above-average grades in high school, and went on to attend an average American college. Jim's parents, while not destitute, were in no position to help him with finances, so Jim worked full-time at an average college job to support himself, riding his bike to school, then to work, and then back to his far-below-average studio apartment to study, eat average college food, and fall asleep. The next day began the whole process again.
One day, while Jim was enjoying a rare free moment, his uncle paid him a surprise visit. Jim's uncle was a wealthy man, though no one quite knew what he did to amass his fortune. He entered the tiny rented room with a warm greeting, and sat on the edge of the bed. After exchanging pleasantries and small talk, Jim's uncle asked if there was anything he could do to make Jim's life easier. Jim didn't want to impose, so he politely declined. Jim's uncle pressed his point, saying, "Jim,I've known you for longer than you remember, and it pains me to see you having to struggle this way. Here," and he pulled a small black card out of his jacket pocket. Jim tried to refuse, but his uncle insisted. "Use this as you see fit," he said to the young man. They talked awhile longer about various family members and Jim's classes, and then, after affectionate goodbyes, Jim's uncle left.
Jim followed his uncle to the door, and shut it after him. He then turned over the small black card in his hand. It was a credit card. . . sort of. There was a sixteen-digit number on it and a magnetic strip , but no expiration date, no name, no logo, not even a signature bar. Just a wholly unremarkable, glossy black card. Jim wondered how it could even work, and then decided that he would not find out. He was determined to go it on his own, just like his parents had taught him. "Earn what you get, or there's no joy in having it," his father liked to say. Jim went to throw the card away, but hesitated. It couldn't hurt, after all, to have options, could it? That's really all he was doing, was being careful, he told himself as he put the card in his desk.
For months, Jim rarely even thought of the card. Then, one day he noticed a letter from the college in his stack of mail. Times had grown tough not just for Jim, but for everybody, and money was tight all around. Though Jim had carried his above average grades with him to college, they were no longer enough to maintain his scholarship. Jim sat crumpled in his chair, head in hands. He would have to delay his schooling and spend the next semester saving for the following term. The thought was not at all appealing -- hadn't he suffered enough? He worked his heart out and sacrificed so much; how could this happen? Suddenly, that little black card loomed large in Jim's mind. Surely it wouldn't hurt to use it for his living expenses. Not luxury items -- just the stuff he was already using. Then he would work even harder, improve his grades so he could get his scholarship back, and then put the card away. Other students lived on credit -- was it really so wrong?
Jim put his plan into action, knowing full well that he might regret it when the bill came. He determined he would cross that bridge when he came to it. He was a little nervous the first time he swiped the little black card, but it worked just fine. All he needed to do was sign. He stayed true to his word, using his credit judiciously. A month passed. Then two. Jim checked every day, but no bill came to him. Worried, he called his uncle. "Don't worry about it, my boy, it's all taken care of," Jim's uncle reassured him. "But..." Jim started to protest, but his uncle cut him off: "It's all taken care of. I meant what I said -- use it as you see fit. I'll tell you what: I'll arrange with your employer to automatically deduct payments from your paycheck, alright?" This eased Jim's mind, and he let the matter go.
In the ensuing months, Jim came to rely on the card more and more. He asked his boss to move him to part-time hours: With all his needs paid for, he could start focusing on his wants, and one of those was more leisure time. The money he earned could also go to wants, rather than needs. Jim felt as if the weight of the world had been removed from his shoulders. His wants, however, soon outstripped his income, and he found himself pulling out that little black card more and more often. The card seemed to have no limit; though his purchases grew progressively larger, the card was never declined.
Jim was coming out of the store after one of his larger purchases when he saw a man standing at a nearby intersection holding a cardboard sign. Jim walked over to talk to the man, and found that the man, Andrew, had fallen on hard times. He had lost his job, could not find another one, and had a family to feed, so he stood on the corner begging strangers for money. Andrew's story troubled Jim; he'd experienced hard times himself, and could not imagine having to face unemployment with a family to feed. Jim quickly told Andrew about his little black card, and offered to use it for Andrew's family's expenses as well. Andrew, overcome with emotion, threw his arms around Jim and sobbed thanks into his shoulder.
Word of the miraculous card spread quickly, and soon Jim was inundated with requests for help. Some seemed more legitimate than others, but who was he to judge? Jim accepted them all, and it seemed that in no time half of the town was dependent on the card Jim's uncle had given to him. Jim was thrilled that he could help so many people. Gone were his days of counting change for food; now, because of him, those days were gone for so many others, too. "This," Jim thought to himself one night, "is freedom."
Jim's philanthropic ventures weren't the only thing on his mind. There was a young lady he'd met in class. Sharla. She was beautiful, intelligent, kind -- everything Jim was looking for. And, though he could hardly believe it, she reciprocated his feelings. It wasn't long until he had a ring on her finger. Money no longer being an object, he made sure that their wedding was everything she had ever wanted. He thought nothing could have made him happier, but he had to admit he was wrong on that point on the day that Sharla gave birth to their first child, a darling baby boy who they called Sam.
Sam was just a few days old, sleeping in his mother's arms in their comfortable home, when there came a knock at the door. Jim ran to answer it and found a delivery man standing there with a package. Jim signed for the package, thanked the man, and went back in the house. He turned the box over to see not his name, or Sharla's, but Sam's. Thinking it was a gift for the new baby, he opened it. He was puzzled to find not gifts, but a stack of official-looking pages. He grabbed the first one and began to read.
Jim could feel the blood draining from his face. His hands began to shake. This had to be wrong, this could not be possible. He raced for the phone, punched in his uncle's number, and demanded that the old man get there NOW. Jim paced the floor while he waited, unable to continue perusing the pages in the box. Not possible. Not possible.
Jim's uncle knocked on the door in short order. Jim nearly wrenched the door off its hinges, grabbed his uncle by the arm, dragged him to the box, and thrust the first paper into his face. "How?" bellowed Jim. "How is this possible?!"
Jim's uncle stepped back, stroked his white goatee thoughtfully, and calmly said, "Jim, I told you it was taken care of. You never asked how."
Jim's eyes grew wide. "How could you do this to me? To him? My son, he's just a baby! How on earth can he pay this off?" Another thought gripped Jim, turning him paler still. "Half the town is living on this card! They depend upon it! I can't just cut them off! But if I don't..." His sentence trailed off as he stared in anguish at his son, who had somehow slept through Jim's outburst.
Jim's uncle nodded gravely. "I'll tell you what, Jim. I can help you with this problem as well." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out another card, just like Jim's, but with a different number on it. "Give him this when he's of age."
Jim was flabbergasted. "You cannot be serious," he said. Another thought occurred to him, and he grasped at it like a drowning man lunging for a piece of driftwood. "What about the payments that were being taken from my paychecks?"
Jim's uncle laughed. "My boy, surely you don't believe you made this much?!"
"Well, no," admitted Jim, clinging to this last tiny piece of hope, "but it's got to count for something, right?"
Jim's uncle laughed again. "My boy," he said again, slightly shaking his head from side to side, "how do you think I've made my fortune?" He stuffed the second card into his stunned nephew's hands, nodded to an equally stunned Sharla, and escorted himself out, leaving a horrified silence in his wake.
And now I will ask you the question that was surely running laps around Jim's beleaguered mind: If you have to steal from and enslave your own children to achieve it, can you truly call it freedom?
Sure, I've uttered my share of witticisms and even profundities, but far more often than not they have been the result of past conversations or debates that I'd had wherein the other party left me dumbstruck or unsuccessfully scrambling for an answer. I'm the person who has the perfect comeback . . . five minutes later. In short, I am one of the last people you want spearheading your side of an argument in an impromptu debate.
A couple of months ago a dear friend of mine posted on his Facebook page his belief that a large (and growing) federal government has given us, as Americans, more freedom than the much smaller and limited one that we started with. This felt profoundly wrong to me, but pontificate as I might (and did), I still couldn't put my finger on why his reasoning was flawed. I've been chewing on the matter ever since; what follows is the result of my ongoing mental mastication.
This is the story of Jim. Jim was an average young man in an average American town. He earned above-average grades in high school, and went on to attend an average American college. Jim's parents, while not destitute, were in no position to help him with finances, so Jim worked full-time at an average college job to support himself, riding his bike to school, then to work, and then back to his far-below-average studio apartment to study, eat average college food, and fall asleep. The next day began the whole process again.
One day, while Jim was enjoying a rare free moment, his uncle paid him a surprise visit. Jim's uncle was a wealthy man, though no one quite knew what he did to amass his fortune. He entered the tiny rented room with a warm greeting, and sat on the edge of the bed. After exchanging pleasantries and small talk, Jim's uncle asked if there was anything he could do to make Jim's life easier. Jim didn't want to impose, so he politely declined. Jim's uncle pressed his point, saying, "Jim,I've known you for longer than you remember, and it pains me to see you having to struggle this way. Here," and he pulled a small black card out of his jacket pocket. Jim tried to refuse, but his uncle insisted. "Use this as you see fit," he said to the young man. They talked awhile longer about various family members and Jim's classes, and then, after affectionate goodbyes, Jim's uncle left.
Jim followed his uncle to the door, and shut it after him. He then turned over the small black card in his hand. It was a credit card. . . sort of. There was a sixteen-digit number on it and a magnetic strip , but no expiration date, no name, no logo, not even a signature bar. Just a wholly unremarkable, glossy black card. Jim wondered how it could even work, and then decided that he would not find out. He was determined to go it on his own, just like his parents had taught him. "Earn what you get, or there's no joy in having it," his father liked to say. Jim went to throw the card away, but hesitated. It couldn't hurt, after all, to have options, could it? That's really all he was doing, was being careful, he told himself as he put the card in his desk.
For months, Jim rarely even thought of the card. Then, one day he noticed a letter from the college in his stack of mail. Times had grown tough not just for Jim, but for everybody, and money was tight all around. Though Jim had carried his above average grades with him to college, they were no longer enough to maintain his scholarship. Jim sat crumpled in his chair, head in hands. He would have to delay his schooling and spend the next semester saving for the following term. The thought was not at all appealing -- hadn't he suffered enough? He worked his heart out and sacrificed so much; how could this happen? Suddenly, that little black card loomed large in Jim's mind. Surely it wouldn't hurt to use it for his living expenses. Not luxury items -- just the stuff he was already using. Then he would work even harder, improve his grades so he could get his scholarship back, and then put the card away. Other students lived on credit -- was it really so wrong?
Jim put his plan into action, knowing full well that he might regret it when the bill came. He determined he would cross that bridge when he came to it. He was a little nervous the first time he swiped the little black card, but it worked just fine. All he needed to do was sign. He stayed true to his word, using his credit judiciously. A month passed. Then two. Jim checked every day, but no bill came to him. Worried, he called his uncle. "Don't worry about it, my boy, it's all taken care of," Jim's uncle reassured him. "But..." Jim started to protest, but his uncle cut him off: "It's all taken care of. I meant what I said -- use it as you see fit. I'll tell you what: I'll arrange with your employer to automatically deduct payments from your paycheck, alright?" This eased Jim's mind, and he let the matter go.
In the ensuing months, Jim came to rely on the card more and more. He asked his boss to move him to part-time hours: With all his needs paid for, he could start focusing on his wants, and one of those was more leisure time. The money he earned could also go to wants, rather than needs. Jim felt as if the weight of the world had been removed from his shoulders. His wants, however, soon outstripped his income, and he found himself pulling out that little black card more and more often. The card seemed to have no limit; though his purchases grew progressively larger, the card was never declined.
Jim was coming out of the store after one of his larger purchases when he saw a man standing at a nearby intersection holding a cardboard sign. Jim walked over to talk to the man, and found that the man, Andrew, had fallen on hard times. He had lost his job, could not find another one, and had a family to feed, so he stood on the corner begging strangers for money. Andrew's story troubled Jim; he'd experienced hard times himself, and could not imagine having to face unemployment with a family to feed. Jim quickly told Andrew about his little black card, and offered to use it for Andrew's family's expenses as well. Andrew, overcome with emotion, threw his arms around Jim and sobbed thanks into his shoulder.
Word of the miraculous card spread quickly, and soon Jim was inundated with requests for help. Some seemed more legitimate than others, but who was he to judge? Jim accepted them all, and it seemed that in no time half of the town was dependent on the card Jim's uncle had given to him. Jim was thrilled that he could help so many people. Gone were his days of counting change for food; now, because of him, those days were gone for so many others, too. "This," Jim thought to himself one night, "is freedom."
Jim's philanthropic ventures weren't the only thing on his mind. There was a young lady he'd met in class. Sharla. She was beautiful, intelligent, kind -- everything Jim was looking for. And, though he could hardly believe it, she reciprocated his feelings. It wasn't long until he had a ring on her finger. Money no longer being an object, he made sure that their wedding was everything she had ever wanted. He thought nothing could have made him happier, but he had to admit he was wrong on that point on the day that Sharla gave birth to their first child, a darling baby boy who they called Sam.
Sam was just a few days old, sleeping in his mother's arms in their comfortable home, when there came a knock at the door. Jim ran to answer it and found a delivery man standing there with a package. Jim signed for the package, thanked the man, and went back in the house. He turned the box over to see not his name, or Sharla's, but Sam's. Thinking it was a gift for the new baby, he opened it. He was puzzled to find not gifts, but a stack of official-looking pages. He grabbed the first one and began to read.
Jim could feel the blood draining from his face. His hands began to shake. This had to be wrong, this could not be possible. He raced for the phone, punched in his uncle's number, and demanded that the old man get there NOW. Jim paced the floor while he waited, unable to continue perusing the pages in the box. Not possible. Not possible.
Jim's uncle knocked on the door in short order. Jim nearly wrenched the door off its hinges, grabbed his uncle by the arm, dragged him to the box, and thrust the first paper into his face. "How?" bellowed Jim. "How is this possible?!"
Jim's uncle stepped back, stroked his white goatee thoughtfully, and calmly said, "Jim, I told you it was taken care of. You never asked how."
Jim's eyes grew wide. "How could you do this to me? To him? My son, he's just a baby! How on earth can he pay this off?" Another thought gripped Jim, turning him paler still. "Half the town is living on this card! They depend upon it! I can't just cut them off! But if I don't..." His sentence trailed off as he stared in anguish at his son, who had somehow slept through Jim's outburst.
Jim's uncle nodded gravely. "I'll tell you what, Jim. I can help you with this problem as well." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out another card, just like Jim's, but with a different number on it. "Give him this when he's of age."
Jim was flabbergasted. "You cannot be serious," he said. Another thought occurred to him, and he grasped at it like a drowning man lunging for a piece of driftwood. "What about the payments that were being taken from my paychecks?"
Jim's uncle laughed. "My boy, surely you don't believe you made this much?!"
"Well, no," admitted Jim, clinging to this last tiny piece of hope, "but it's got to count for something, right?"
Jim's uncle laughed again. "My boy," he said again, slightly shaking his head from side to side, "how do you think I've made my fortune?" He stuffed the second card into his stunned nephew's hands, nodded to an equally stunned Sharla, and escorted himself out, leaving a horrified silence in his wake.
And now I will ask you the question that was surely running laps around Jim's beleaguered mind: If you have to steal from and enslave your own children to achieve it, can you truly call it freedom?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Obama's Mosque Endorsement Sounded Vaguely Familiar
I discovered on Saturday, in the aftermath of President Obama's ringing non-endorsement endorsement of the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, that I had been holding on to a shred of hope that our President does not, in fact, despise this country.
I discovered this as I watched that last shred of hope shrivel up and die.
It wasn't what he said -- his carefully parsed words are perfectly true -- but how he said it. His speech can be easily broken into two parts: addressing 9/11 victims and their families, and addressing the issue of the Ground Zero Victory Mosque. Listen to his change in tone between the two parts. Part one sounds like he's reading out of a phone book; it isn't until part two that he really shows some real feeling, as if opposition to this building is something at which he is personally offended (which is likely not far off the mark). While his "let me be clear" pronouncement usually precedes obfuscation, in this case he was true to his word: he told us all that if you oppose this gross insult to the 3,000 people who were murdered by Radical Islamists at Ground Zero nine years ago, not to mention their families, then you are un-American and you hate the Constitution. And it was this part of his speech that sounded eerily familiar to me.
When I was fifteen, I had a good friend who was a bit more than that. He was quite naturally hurt when, as will happen with fifteen-year-old girls, my affections shifted. His reaction, though, was less natural, and I found myself in an emotionally abusive relationship for the next three years. He told me that I was the cause of every bad thing that was going on in his life, going so far as to give me details on an alleged suicide attempt that he told me was my fault. And I believed him. I believed every word, which made me feel obligated to stick around to "make things right," which of course let him continue his abuse.
One of his favorite tactics was to use my own standards against me. Whenever I started to show signs of indignation at what he was putting me through, he would say, "Doesn't your church teach forgiveness?" The same sentiment was echoed when, later in our relationship, I told him how happy I was that I was finally starting to heal from all he had done. His reaction? "What, you're not over that yet?"
It was not difficult to hear that exact sentiment in Obama's finger-wagging scolding of the American people for having the audacity to not act like the doormats he thinks we ought to be. Just like my old "friend," he had no problem using that time-honored tactic of abusive dirtbags everywhere: insisting that their victims' blaring internal "injustice alarm" is simply a sign of said victim's own moral deficiencies. Adding insult to injury is the fact that he was saying this as President of the United States. It's one thing for an abuser to use those arguments; it's something else entirely to hear them coming out of the mouth of a man who has sworn to protect you. It would be like having your parents insist that you apologize to and get back with a spouse who deliberately put you in the hospital.
My own experience, while painful, was quite educational. I learned the same things that more and more Americans are coming to realize and/or act on: Forgiveness does not mean that I have to continue taking your garbage. Moving on does not mean forgetting. The proper synonym for tolerance is respect, which is a two-way street -- not obsequiousness, which is not. Righteous anger at out-and-out abuse is a far cry from unrighteous dominion.
And gross provocations of this nature are very rarely, if ever, accidental.
I discovered this as I watched that last shred of hope shrivel up and die.
It wasn't what he said -- his carefully parsed words are perfectly true -- but how he said it. His speech can be easily broken into two parts: addressing 9/11 victims and their families, and addressing the issue of the Ground Zero Victory Mosque. Listen to his change in tone between the two parts. Part one sounds like he's reading out of a phone book; it isn't until part two that he really shows some real feeling, as if opposition to this building is something at which he is personally offended (which is likely not far off the mark). While his "let me be clear" pronouncement usually precedes obfuscation, in this case he was true to his word: he told us all that if you oppose this gross insult to the 3,000 people who were murdered by Radical Islamists at Ground Zero nine years ago, not to mention their families, then you are un-American and you hate the Constitution. And it was this part of his speech that sounded eerily familiar to me.
When I was fifteen, I had a good friend who was a bit more than that. He was quite naturally hurt when, as will happen with fifteen-year-old girls, my affections shifted. His reaction, though, was less natural, and I found myself in an emotionally abusive relationship for the next three years. He told me that I was the cause of every bad thing that was going on in his life, going so far as to give me details on an alleged suicide attempt that he told me was my fault. And I believed him. I believed every word, which made me feel obligated to stick around to "make things right," which of course let him continue his abuse.
One of his favorite tactics was to use my own standards against me. Whenever I started to show signs of indignation at what he was putting me through, he would say, "Doesn't your church teach forgiveness?" The same sentiment was echoed when, later in our relationship, I told him how happy I was that I was finally starting to heal from all he had done. His reaction? "What, you're not over that yet?"
It was not difficult to hear that exact sentiment in Obama's finger-wagging scolding of the American people for having the audacity to not act like the doormats he thinks we ought to be. Just like my old "friend," he had no problem using that time-honored tactic of abusive dirtbags everywhere: insisting that their victims' blaring internal "injustice alarm" is simply a sign of said victim's own moral deficiencies. Adding insult to injury is the fact that he was saying this as President of the United States. It's one thing for an abuser to use those arguments; it's something else entirely to hear them coming out of the mouth of a man who has sworn to protect you. It would be like having your parents insist that you apologize to and get back with a spouse who deliberately put you in the hospital.
My own experience, while painful, was quite educational. I learned the same things that more and more Americans are coming to realize and/or act on: Forgiveness does not mean that I have to continue taking your garbage. Moving on does not mean forgetting. The proper synonym for tolerance is respect, which is a two-way street -- not obsequiousness, which is not. Righteous anger at out-and-out abuse is a far cry from unrighteous dominion.
And gross provocations of this nature are very rarely, if ever, accidental.
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