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...
Tom Bevan, Executive Editor of RealClearPolitics:
“There Will Be No Apology”
By Tom BevanThose are the words of the mother of Matt Dariano, one of the five kids at Live Oak High School in the San Francisco Bay Area who were sent home for having the temerity to wear American flag tee shirts on the “Mexican heritage day” of Cinco de Mayo.
“There will not be an apology,” Mrs. Dariano told the camera crew outside the school. “Matthew is part Hispanic, OK? He’s an American. So, no, there will be no apology from any Dariano.”
Guess who else uttered the exact same phrase last year? James Crowley, the white Cambridge cop who arrested black Harvard professor Louis Gates, Jr. and was singled out in a nationally televised press conference by President Obama for “acting stupidly.”
On July 23 of last year outside his home, a reporter told Crowley that Gates had asked for an apology from him for his handling of the incident.
“There will be no apology,” Crowley replied.
After a beat, the reporter followed up: “Is this now and ever, ‘no apology,?”
“Yes,” Crowley replied flatly.
The fact is, Americans are increasingly fed up with the racially divisive, politically correct insanity pulsating through the country today. After years of being pressured and browbeaten by the left-wing PC police about what they can say, do, think, and wear, many Americans have had enough. And they’re especially furious with being asked to apologize for things that aren’t or shouldn’t be in the least bit offensive.
The idea that high school kids anywhere in America would be called the principal’s office – let alone that they would be asked whether they should apologize – for wearing clothes bearing the image of the United States flag, is a perfect case in point.
It’s the kind of insanity that rankles the sensibilities of millions upon millions of Americans, and has them cheering when someone – whether a Cambridge cop or a Bay Area mother – stands up, refuses to back down, and says, “there will be no apology.”
I wrote once that this habit of looking at ourselves, and at each other, making decisions based on what we are rather than on what we do, is the cause of everything that is wrong with the world.
It seems lately we have started a habit of trying to get people to apologize for this. For being what they are, rather than doing what they do.
I notice too, lately, we’ve got an awful lot of people walking around projecting an image of struggle — they’re just trying to get along, trying to make their own way, just wanting to be left alone to live life as they see fit. But when you inspect the details you see this isn’t true. They want to mold and shape the entire world around them into a certain thing, at least all of the world that is within their earshot and line-of-sight. The lesbian who just wanted to go to a school dance — but wanted to wear a tuxedo — that’s a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about.
Griping about an American kid wearing an American flag at an American school, in America, because it happens to be Cinco de Mayo, that’s another illustration. You don’t get to say “I just wanna be me and I just wanna do what I wanna do” when you’re griping about what someone else is wearing. Nor can you wear something, designed to communicate a message, or to advocate something, or to recruit to a cause. To air the complaint that people aren’t allowing you to live your own life, you have to maintain an apathy about the decisions of others, and you can’t be trying to influence them. Call me unreasonable, but I insist on this.
Can we make that an iron-clad rule? Please? It’s only logical. Either you’re practicing non-interference and asking that it be returned to you in kind…or you’re trying to foment change. You can’t have both of those, you have to pick.
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Oh there’s an apology due here, just not from the Darianos.
- Duffy | 05/07/2010 @ 07:18Can we make that an iron-clad rule? Please? It’s only logical.
If it were up to me, absolutely. It makes perfect sense.
The problem is – and you’ve nailed it – is that many of the aggrieved “victim” groups in society are not the least bit interested in mere equality, in being “left alone,” or righting of historical wrongs. There’s something else they are after – approval.
I wrote an essay on gay marriage some time ago, in which I said the following:
Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they argued that what they did in the bedroom was nobody’s business but their own. Despite the Biblical guidelines which I regard as the supreme authority in life, ultimately adherence to those guidelines is between a man and his God and nobody else. An adult’s moral obedience isn’t anyone else’s business unless the lack of such, harms others or takes away from their human rights.
The problem is that with this gay marriage movement, they’ve made it EVERYONE’S business by insisting that our popularly-elected governments grant legal recognition to their lifestyle by placing it on a par with traditional marriage. And I object to my leaders, whom I elected and whose salaries I pay, voluntarily or involuntarily recognizing anything which I find offensive. It’s one thing to say, “I live my life as I see fit and it’s nobody’s business,” but quite another to say, “You will look upon the way I live my life and call it good.” It does not work that way in the United States of America.
As you said, they want the world to work a certain way, and what so many of these groups – Latino activists, homosexual activists, and so on – want is not acceptance but approval.
- cylarz | 05/08/2010 @ 11:56