Y'know, I've been really trying to stay away from politics and culture. It's been difficult, but I did make the promise to myself. Success has been hit-and-miss. This time it's been a BIG miss.
I'll begin with this: Everyone (at least everyone I know) gets pretty rankled when someone proposes to make a choice for them or to speak for them. "Everyone" includes me. I don't care much for people preaching at me either, most especially when they insist that what they're proposing or doing is for "my own good". I'll make my own choices, thank you. You get to make your own choices too. We're responsible. Aren't we?
In a much earlier post, I opined that the Age of Majority should be taken more seriously; that it may prove out that treating minors as "full citizens" has been unwise. Kids/children know what they're told, and understand what they understand through the filter of experience and their interpretation of the outcome of that experience. Interpretations of the young are derived from an incompletely formed and uninformed understanding of the greater world, how it works, and their relationship to it. It's okay if you laugh, scream, cry, or whatever at my having said that. Freedom of Speech, remember?
There's a
link to a story that troubles me. The State has acted to remove a child from the home of her parents because of the views that she's adopted from them. It takes place in Canada, whose constitution is very much like ours with its rights and guarantees. It's not much a stretch for me to envision something like this occurring in the USA, and perhaps it already has. The subtext (to my perception anyway) is that, without regard for various prophecies, it appears that we're en route to self-annihilation. The prospect of destroying the Earth is ludicrous, but the possibility of destroying the Earth's capacity to support us is very real indeed. If we do go farther down that road than we already have, the outcome will present from not only the contents and meaning of the attached story, but also thenature of the response, the counter-response, the counter-counter-response, etc.
I think I'll take up regular naps, because I may not get another decent night's sleep for a while.
Comments (2)
The idea of the state taking away a girl from her parents like this is troubling with me as well... but it's equally troubling that she was taugh that black people should die and not just that, actually how to kill them. Talk about shock value... wow.
I have been troubled by fellow religious people who want to limit everyone's free speech but their own. Case in point, the capital here in WA last year had an athiest display up at Christmas time. There were other religious displays up at that time as well. But oh the stink that was put up by the religious folk! The problem here is, if we limit the athiest right to speech, there is then precedent to also limit religious speech. To me, it is offensive to refuse anyone the right to speak, that to me makes much more sense than getting offended at other's thoughts. But teaching someone to kill others... maybe that's over the top.
Good catch. Paradox is a funny thing, and can be the potential undoing of anyone and anything. I'm seeing the racist aspect of this story as some variety of mental illness. There's a family I've known since I was small whose parents both served in the German military during WWII. I never thought very much about it until a few years ago when I saw the daughter and one of the sons on TV at a white supremacist rallies. The vile nature of the message was bad enough, but to see people of my own acquaintance present at the event carrying such signs as they were carrying and shouting such slogans as they were shouting was like a body blow. There can be no abridgment of any of right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and to engage in like-for-like reprisal is as abominable as the original offense. It's a tornado of sorts, but one that won't subside anytime soon.