Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
The untoughening of our society — typically accomplished by lowering the pain threshold of our children, through an ever-expanding glut of useless, redundant, pain-in-the-ass regulations — is gratifying to some, reprehensible to others. Whoever comes by to read The Blog That Nobody Reads, and has been for awhile, likely knows full well what my feelings are about it. I do not wish to carp about it any further here, but I do intend to carp about how rare it is for it to be decided by those who ought to be in charge of it: The people who live in the state and therefore contribute to its culture, or lack thereof. Not serve in its legislature. Just live inside the borders, work, pay taxes, vote. The “Big We” do not get to decide what bloated, easily bruised pussies our kids become. We delegate that authority to our betters.
You know — maybe it’s time that one had a serious re-think. Maybe we’re past the point of no return, and I’d just get outvoted again. But let’s find out.
I Had yet another “I’ve Lived Too Long” moment when it was called to my attention that my son may very well be forced to take the bus when he attends middle school next year. Over a certain distance, bike-riding is not an option. Google Maps reports the one-way trip to my own middle school, all those years ago, to be 3.35 mi. I’m sure others my age rode further and over more challenging terrain. Never once, up to now, have I heard of some nanny-state law bursting forward intoning “Aw, da poor li’l boo boo” forcing kids onto the bus so that their greatest challenges in life can be putting up with bullies and getting off at the right stop. So that they can confront second-grade problems right up to their first year of high school. No, I still have vivid memories of that afternoon when I figured out my headgear was inadequate. The temperature was thirty-something, the winds rolling in off Bellingham Bay were turning my ears into ice and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it but pedal faster.
I wouldn’t want to subject a child to the same thing. But I wouldn’t want to deprive him of the experience either, because there is something else that concerns me about this. Someone, somewhere, is making decisions about this — I know not who — and they are not similarly concerned.
I’ve realized something about the Golden State, and I think it means something in other states too. California has more than its fair share of laws on the books that confuse “Kids Shall Not Be Forced” with “Kids Shall Not Be Allowed To.” Our children have to wear helmets, elbow pads and knee pads on their rollerblades. On their bicycles. Skateboards. Razor scooters. Swing sets. When walking up stairs. On a windy day. All right, some of this I’m exaggerating, but it is a tenderizing elixir from which we have been imbibing deeply. It seems to me…and I doubt I’m the only one…to be a good idea carried way too far, constrained by absolutely no mechanism whatsoever to ensure it won’t be carried still further.
Meanwhile, I’ve lived here for over sixteen years now. I vote whenever I can. Seven o’clock in the morning on election day, in the springtime and in the fall, I’m always there. I do believe I have seen every single ballot.
On which questions am I allowed to exercise my sacred right and obligation to participate in a democratic republic? A whole fistful o’ crap. Things that ought properly be decided by an executive who’s in charge of, or involved in, the process. Is two billion dollars over ten years too much to spend on a levee project? Should we issue this water bond? Medicinal marijuana. Gay marriage. Every now and then they’ll toss us a bone involving mandatory sentencing. It has the taste and feel of some real meat; but I’ve got a feeling it’s just bone.
In sixteen years I have never been presented with an opportunity to decide whether it should be legal for a fourteen-year-old to work four hours a day, or anything like that. A couple years ago we just did it again, to the grown-ups: Between your fourth and fifth hour at work, you’re required to clock out for lunch. Or your employer is required to force you to. Or something. We’ve got some bizarre overtime law that says overtime-exempt employees aren’t really overtime-exempt, and their employers can be sued for thousands of dollars retroactively — clearly functioning as, and I think intended as, a “gotcha” to punish those who had the audacity to risk their life-savings providing employment for others. And we wonder why we’re in financial trouble. Laws against making work too hard…legislated by those who’ve never known “hard work” a day in their lives. By the way, if you work in a high tech field, nobody really knows how this law impacts the agreements between you and your employer. It’s very much like the nation’s tax code: Vague by design.
So while we keep our kids carefully encased in sterilized and disinfected styrofoam mummy suits for their tee ball games, and clock out for our state-mandated lunch breaks, I’m given cause to wonder. How come my referendum-crazy state never seems to bring the untoughening laws to the referendum process? How come nobody knows what “The People” of California, whose word is supposed to be sanctimoniously final on so many other issues on which they/we don’t really know what they/we are doing…would say about this suffocating, hydroponic bubble in which our little ones are spending their childhoods? That seems strange, to me. I’m told I was born too late. I’m told I’d be outvoted. But I don’t really know that and neither does anyone else.
Instead I’m left to constantly ask the question every time I’m told about yet another thing California kids can’t do: Who decides this stuff? Where is this star chamber of pussies making rules for everyone else? Is it our legislature? I would think, if these rules are thought to make such a positive difference in who lives to see adulthood and who doesn’t, then someone would be popping up somewhere, more prominently than they are, to claim credit. “Yeah, I wrote that.”
Perhaps they are. But if so, it’s only within a select audience somehow screened to make sure all those in attendance have some appreciation for this systematic removal of toughness. They don’t want to shout it from too high of a mountaintop.
The untoughening laws have to realize universal effect. They have to impact all of us. This is by design. And yet, to make sure they are actually passed, only some of us are allowed to know about them when they are in the process of being ratified. After the laws are in effect, only a few of us are allowed to know who thought it was a great idea to get ’em written. Only those among us who would approve.
I think, on any other topic, it would be generally understood that this is not a way to pass good laws. On the ongoing pussification of our society, somehow, we tend to be blind to this. We tend to continue allowing this star-chamber of soccer moms, whoever they are, keep on keepin’-on — the commoners decide what bond issues might result in a lowered credit rating for the state, and then the nameless faceless busybody elites decide what our evolving mores of decency have to say about kids losing their training wheels at too young an age. We’ve got it all a hundred and eighty degrees backwards.
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- philmon | 05/17/2009 @ 20:59I am totally lifting the demotivational poster graphic and passing it on.
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I think I hear Texas calling you, Morgan. Srsly.
- bpenni | 05/17/2009 @ 21:34Yeah. Either that, or California kickin’ me out. Lately the place seems to be on a mission to let me know I’m not welcome. Kinda like a soon-to-be ex-wife, y’know?
But the job is cool & awesome. So’s the lady, who’s somewhat invested here as well. Good job. Good woman. The boy, he’s kinda in my department…tired of the place, just kinda putting up with it.
- mkfreeberg | 05/17/2009 @ 22:51Yeah, sometimes I kinda wonder about the downside of living in the People’s Republic of California … the state of my birth, as a matter of fact … but I was born in the south end of the state which is much redder than the north end.
You know, relatively speaking.
My dad used to say they picked me up just north of the border. Coloring, you know. We got Portuguese and Italian in us, so we gots similar coloring and stuff.
Besides, hablo un poco español.
It’s a freakin’ beautiful state. Big Sur, Yosemite, etc. But that’s the physical, not the political.
Good to know we’ve got people like MKF fighting the good fight out there.
- philmon | 05/17/2009 @ 23:08Yeah, sometimes I kinda wonder about the downside of living in the People’s Republic of California … the state of my birth, as a matter of fact … but I was born in the south end of the state which is much redder than the north end.
Ehh…color me confused. The south end of the state redder than the north end? You’re telling me that Los Angeles is somehow more conservative than the likes of Redding? No, I think not.
California has a liberal government simply because so much of the population lives in the major population centers along the coast immediately north and south of San Francisco Bay. That, and the LA basin. The hinterlands (like the towns up north) are the red areas…as are the mountain communities. Sacramento for its part, appears to be evenly divided. (It’s at a crossroads between the liberal Bay Area and the conservative Central Valley.)
The state sends liberals to the US Senate, but you’ll notice that several of its Rep’s are quite conservative. I just finished listening to a townhall over the phone featuring Wally Herger, who represents the Mid-Valley regions. His rhetoric is indistinguishable from Rush Limbaugh.
- cylarz | 05/18/2009 @ 04:37A little further south. San Diego.
The Catholic end of the state. And no, Pelosi is obviously a CINO. Were I her bishop I might drop a few comments. Can’t belong to the club if you don’t follow the club rules, and all.
I don’t really belong to the club anymore, but I have a lot of respect for it and I do recognize that the Church is not a Democracy. Well, even Notre Dame is caving, so I suppose the fact that LA is lost shouldn’t be surprising.
Ah, for the days when the senate was not picked by popular vote, directly.
- philmon | 05/18/2009 @ 09:50Yeah, the Sacramento area, which seems to the out-of-stater to be the belly-button of California, is considered to be Northern. We don’t have too many people getting out of bed thinking “what is the most liberal thing I can do today?” like they do in, for example, San Francisco. But there is a lot of hatred for Republicans here. You don’t drive around with a “McCain/Palin” bumper sticker unless you don’t care about that car too much. And the place does have a serious case of “Can’t Blame Republicans There Aren’t Any.” Everything related to the city and county that can possibly suck, sucks, and the leaders in the next handful of years are only going to do a whole lot more of the same. It’s the same story. Tax the achievers, watch ’em leave in droves, doctor the statistics to make it look like that’s not what’s going on, and then say “oh well the money has to come from somewhere” and hike taxes some more.
Meanwhile, although most of what’s North of us is farmland, with a decent conservative spirit to go with it, you do have some citadels of common sense down south in Phil’s old San Diego area, and Orange County, and other spots. Really, if you could start somewhere around The Wharf and start disintegrating some acreage of land, persisting in banishing some portion of the state’s area to The Cornfield until California was ready to vote Republican — it is rather surprising how little you’d have to vaporize in order to accomplish this. A single-digit number of square miles would probably get the job done. Maybe five or less. It is, by and large, a conservative state with a handful of super-concentrated left-wing oases sprinkled throughout.
I regard it as a real-life lesson on the connection between liberalism and bein’-spoiled-rotten. People with real jobs, like growing fruits and vegetables and making sure they’re edible by the harvest season, facing starvation if they fail to do this, think about things soundly. People who just clock in, look busy, watch YouTube, threaten to file grievances with the union at the drop of a hat…look at the world in fuzzy, simplistic terms, because they can afford to.
- mkfreeberg | 05/18/2009 @ 10:15Ah, Progressives. Those peaceful champions of Tolerance™ and Diversity™.
I did see a smattering of McCain/Palin yard signs and bumperstickers around the Carmel area last fall. I was surprised.
I really want to put the “Socialism – trickle up poverty” bumpersticker on my car, but I am afraid of vandalism. I shouldn’t be all intimidated and stuff, but … sadly … I guess I am, somewhat.
- philmon | 05/18/2009 @ 10:53