Sandra Neish
Jack Manhattan
Harvey Wallbanger
I have zero issue with faith. My only issue is when morons want their faith mixed with their politics. Let’s look at the history: Spanish Inquisition, Salem Witch Trials, witch hunts/burning throughout Europe, on and on the list can go.
I’m actually related to a few evangelicals – self-described evangelists, to be precise – and the one question on my mind is: why can none of them tell the truth? They are so good at telling others how to live and what morals should make up the entirety of morality the world over, but when it comes to telling the truth, they have issues.
Another problem they have is in knowing when to quit. Currently, a little town in Wisconsin is having an issue with some of these nut jobs and the local library.
Cue the bonfire, here comes the book burning. Yes, I’m serious. A fucking book burning in 2009 could actually happen in the United States! We aren’t talking about a third world country under the control of an uber-conservative/constrictive theocracy.
There is something of a censorship bug rampaging through America. Parents get outraged over cable tv shows or radio shows such as Howard Stern. I don’t always find Stern in the best of taste, but I exercise (well, I did prior to his move to satellite radio) my universal right to change the damned station.
Parents today seem to want everyone to raise their children but them. If I don’t want my daughter exposed to something, I make sure she isn’t. I don’t rely upon the government, retail stores or cable tv to raise her. That’s my job.
If parents today were actually interested in doing their job as parents, censorship would definitely have zero place anywhere. However, too many people get up in arms over the stupidest things.
Many are more concerned that retailers say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” or that their kids could read something in a book that the parents don’t approve of, or hear something on the radio or see something on tv when the parents aren’t around than they are about war, poverty, famine, the economy or any bill being considered in Congress.
Retailers are businesses trying to sell products to the majority of people, thus “Happy Holidays” covers a whole gamut of celebrations without singling out any particular one. And, for you uber-Christians out there, the pagans originated the Christmas celebration and the Catholic Church took it over in an effort to assimilate more of the population into the Church.
Parents, you aren’t going to be around your children 24/7. Kids are going to do things behind your back. It’s their job! They need to push the limits and figure things out for themselves. You can’t shelter them from everything!
Also, you can’t tell the rest of the population what they should or should not be doing for their children. You can’t get books burned or banned from public libraries and you can’t get everything slapped with a warning label just because you find it offensive. Others may find it tame.
In the case of the Wisconsin library, the people pitching a fit over the shelving of books and how they don’t have warning labels, have only taken the time to skim the books looking for certain words. They have to concept of context or how reading a book depicting the consequences of actions could help their kids grow up to be more responsible adults.
I don’t trust anyone who tries to censor the world around them to fit their own narrow view of life. I don’t trust anyone who tries to lecture everyone on morality and how to live when they can’t even tell a modicum of the truth. I don’t trust anyone who refuses to see anything but black and white when there are many, many gray areas.
The fact that these self-appointed arbiters of morality have sunk their poisonous fangs into one of the two major American political parties is very disturbing. Take a look at these nutjobs for what they are and do your best to vote the opposite of them. Only then will they finally become as irrelevant as they should be.
Unless of course, you would like to live in a society with no drinking, no dancing, no swearing, no books except the Bible, no music except gospel, women can’t wear pants or vote and we return to an insane patriarchal society headed up by people like John Hagee. Heaven forbid!
