gentle musings...

I want to share with you something I came across in my junk email a while ago that caught my eye. Please Note: I did not write this. It's an editorial from a Michigan newspaper...

What has America become?
Editor,
Has America become the land of the special interest and home the double standard?
Lets see: if we lie to the Congress, it's a felony and if the congress lies to us its just politics; if we dislike a black person, we're racist and if a black person dislikes whites, its their 1st Amendment right; the government spends millions to rehabilitate criminals and they do almost nothing for the victims; in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word God in the process; you can kill an unborn child, but its wrong to execute a mass murderer; we don't burn books in America, we now rewrite them; we got rid of the communist and socialist threat by renaming them progressives; we are unable to close our border with Mexico, but have no problem protecting the 38th parallel in Korea; if you protest against President Obama's policies you're a terrorist, but if you burned an American flag or George Bush in effigy it was your 1st Amendment right.
You can have pornography on TV or the internet, but you better not put a nativity scene in a public park during Christmas; we have eliminated all criminals in America, they are now called sick people; we can use a human fetus for medical research, but it's wrong to use an animal.
We take money from those who work hard for it and give it to those who don't want to work; we all support the Constitution, but only when it supports our political ideology; we still have freedom of speech, but only if we are being political correct; parenting has been replaced with Ritalin and video games; the land of opportunity is now the land of hand outs; the similarity between Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill is that neither president did anything to help.
And how do we handle a major crisis today? The government appoints a committee to determine who's at fault, then threatens them, passes a law, raises our taxes; tells us the problem is solved so they can get back to their reelection campaign.
What has happened to the land of the free and the home of the brave?

-Ken Huber, Tawas City


Every once in a while, there seems to be a surge of Op-Ed pieces floating around in the news, usually as an event or controversial vote triggers the previously dormant thoughts of bored wives or distracted businessmen. The uproar lasts a little longer than necessary and then gets pushed aside, to be discovered later.

This particular piece caught my eye, as it spoke honestly and without fluff to our country right now. We often feel like we have to explain ourselves, or go into huge detail why we believe what we do, only in hopes passersby judgement isn't cast ignorantly. At least I fall into that trap. I want all of my blogger friends to like me. (Insert sheepish smile here)

Which then turns into a stuttering excuse for my apathy. I'm not going to attempt to explain my "views" on what this Op-Ed touched on, what I think about Don't Ask Don't Tell in the military, gay marriage, border control, or abortion. Not because I don't have an opinion on those issues (trust me, I do) but because that goes against the point of what I'm trying to say here.

Rather, I just hope to open my eyes (and maybe yours) on what I (we) keep letting slip through the cracks. In the long and arduous fight for Equality for All, we have discarded and trampled on the authority our Founding Fathers demanded. Over the course of the Equality Trek, we have made great strides for minority groups. Not a single person can deny that. As we look in the rearview mirror, however, who have we left behind? What have we left slip between the cracks? The prayers and morals our country was founded upon are now discriminatory. How did that happen? Oh well. These thoughts and my writing about them could go on forever. Which maybe is part of the problem.

I might as well go on thinking about how great our 60-70 degree weather feels compared to the usual 90-100 degrees. And how much I love autumn. And football games. And my husband. And what I'm going to cook for supper tonight. :)