From First to Worst

My parents generation had a lot to live up to when the torch was passed to them from their parents. You see their parents were of the greatest generation. They were children during the depression, and they grew up to fight WWII. They did many great things in the time that they were the leaders of this country and they should be commended for a job well done.

Then it came time for our parents to take over. Wow. What a failure they have become at running the country. We are in a time of record debt and deficiets, we are fighting a global war with a military that is spread way too thin and can't recruit to save their lives, most of the states have financial wows of their own, and all they seem to care about is gay marriage. This generation risks being the only in the history of America that leave the country worse than they found it. They are truly making a huge mess that we are going to have to clean up and I fear that if something doesnt happen quickly, the damage will be too much for us to ever repair.

My parents generation has truly been the biggest failure in American history. I hate to say that, but it is undoubtedly true.

Allies to the cause...

Whenever there is a major political movement, one might find it interesting to take a look at the allies that are behind it. You can get a true feel for the motivations behind something if you know who supports it. So today, it seems as though one of the biggest political movements in our country is the one to restrict the rights of homosexual Americans. Lets take a look at who might be on the side of the christian right.

Pat Robertson - I know people love him and think that he is the perfect little God-fearing Christian, but let us not forget all the times he has called for minorities to be rounded up and sent back where they came from. Wow!! What a Christian.

KKK - You just gotta love this organization. If you think that they are a thing of the past, just look around the nation. They can be found at several events around the country at "pro-family" rallies opposing the extension of equal rights to gays and lesbians.

Hitler - What an example. At the very least, you can give him credit for acting on his hate. With the Jews he rounded up homosexuals and sent them to the death camps to die together, with everyone that he hated.

Now lets turn the coin and look at the other side. Let's see just what it is the homosexuals and their supporters are asking for, so we can get a feel for the demands.

Civil Marriage - Seems fair enough to me. I mean the argument that someone elses marriage will affect yours is truly stupid. Not even the people that still spout that idiocy think that just because Brittney was married for 55 hours means that they need to get divorced to.

End to Don't Ask Don't Tell - Let's not forget that there are an estimated 60,000 gays on active duty. What would you do if they all came out? Kick them all out at once. In a military that is already spread thin and facing recruiting short falls, that doesnt exactly seem practical.

Adoption Rights - Everybody can agree that kids are better off almost anywhere than in America's broken foster care system. There are millions of gays out there than can provide loving and stable homes to children, and would love to adopt, but they either have to lie, or are turned down. Seems a little ridiculous to me.

Anti-discrimination laws - We have them for just about everything you can think of. Race, gender, religion, however you rarely find them for sexual orientation. Who can logically have a problem grating an anti discrimination statute.

Homophobia is on the way out. One day (hopefully soon) you will be seen as the idiot you are if you hate people based on their sexual orientation. The tides are changing for good in this country. People are begining to realize that there is nothing Christian about being a bigot. I just hope that the christian right doesn't do too much damage before the change arrives.

Fundamentalist Christianity

There is truly no more motivating of a force than religion. I tend to think that if you want to make real change in the world you must first have a poular religion on your side. Everybody in the civilized world today will tell you that Islamic fundamentalist who use their religion as a justification to commit various terrorist acts around the world are clearly extremists. Often we hear rhetoric from American politicians saying that these people are distorting the true teachings of their religion to justify hate and terror. After all, they hate Americans just because of our way of life. Hmm. Do good God-fearing Christians hate any group of people just because of their way of life?

I am not in anyway comparing modern day Christians to Islamic extremeist terrorists, Im merely saying that we are certainly on the right trail to getting there if something isn't done now. Homosexuals have always been, and remain to this day a target of Christian abuse. It's almost amusing if you think about it. You see, the Bible refrences to homosexuality 9 times throughout, and even some of those references are a stretch at best. Both Adultry and Divorce are mentioned more than that. Hmm....why arn't Christians targeting adulterors and Divorced people?

All things in history start at a small level before they develop into something more serious. In fact, that is usually why they are not stopped. People view them as irrelevant because it isn't a big deal, and then they do nothing until the problem becomes much more widespread. No, Christians arn't rounding up gays and locking members of the community in concentration camps, and I'm not even suggesting that we will be there soon, but they certainly have convinced the vast majority of their following that gays are to be hated based on their sexual orientation. I guess the verse in which Jesus endorsed hatred escapes my mind at this time.

Taking Offense

I truly get annoyed by people that take offense to mere words. To me, it demonstates a deep-rooted insecurity that is held in a specific area of someones life.

One subject that people take offense to quite often is religion. There are many people in this country that claim to hold a specific faith, and they may indeed truly believe it, however they are not the best practitioners thereof. I find it extremely funny when these people take offense when they are presented a different religious idea.

Political beliefs are another thing that people will often take offense to. When someone hears a political belief that differs from theirs they get angry and start taking offense before they even inquire as to why someone holds that belief.

You see, the main reason I get so annoyed by people that always get offended is that there is truly very little if anything someone can do to offend me. I don't want to sound as though I am ecpecting everyone to be like me (although just immagine how much better the world would be if they were.....j/k), what I am saying is that I truly see no reason why words alone have the power to offend. If someone presents a different view or life style then by all means, stand up and defend what you believe. However in defending your beliefs dont get so worked up that you get offended and put yourself in a bad mood. One who is confident in their beliefs will not take offense to the opposistion, they will merely hold to their beliefs.

This is America people. We are the land of the free. This is the place where differences are suppose to be seen as a good thing, and where at the very least they are allowed. This is the place that is suppose to accept that their will be other opinions in the world, and we will hear them from time to time. If you are so insecure with your beliefs that you have to be offended by opposistion, then you are stupid, and you are one of the leading causes of social problems in modern day America.

HAPPY PRIDE!!!!!!

Well Pride Month is here, and it is time for all of those who society rejects for living the life they were born to live to come together and celebrate the Pride that every member of the community holds.

An American State of Mind...

So I was reading my Time magazine last week, and I realized that I have at least to a little extent, an American state of mind. The issue had a series of photos taken of people in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. It was trying to bring attention to the fact that many are suffering while we here at home are living quite wonderfully. I flipped through feeling terrible about the people, and then when I got past the series I came to an article on horse racing. I don't watch horse racing, and to tell the truth it has never interested me. However in flipping past the article I noticed a picture of one of the horses legs breaking. I then had to read the article because the picture looked so horrifying. Apparantly the horse that broke his leg was named Barbaro and had won the Kentucky Derby earlier this year. Big deal in horse racing. Anyway, I realized that I had gotten my self all worked up and concerned by this horse that had broken his leg. I spent more time worked up about the damn horse than I did concerned about the people that I had just seen. Yes I know, I'm a terrrible person, and I felt terrible right after that.

Voting

Well, we have a new American Idol. Thats good. Now the country can move on to more important things like the nuclear crisis with Iran, the war in Iraq, and global terrorism. O but wait. Are those more important? You see, whoever won (and I'm not sure who did) got 60 million plus votes. Wait a second. I believe that is more than any American President has gotton....ever. I find it pretty sad that we can sit back and watch people sing, and call in our votes, yet we cant drag our ass to the polls to elect the person who will lead our nation for the next 4 years. Call me crazy.

I know I speak to the voting issue alot, but I just find it far too important to ignore. If everybody voted the Religious Right would not have as much power as it does, because I can assure you, they are not in line with main stream american thinking.

Not Ready To Make Nice...

So the Dixie Chicks want to make their return to center stage now and lead singer Natalie Maines (may be incorrect spelling) has decided that she is no longer sorry for having abondoned her fan base.

So here is a little history. The Dixie Chicks were a famous country and western band that sold many records. Being country music singers however, their fan base consisted of mainly conservatives. They go over to England when this country is on the bring of war and say they are ashamed of the President. O wait a second, nobody buys dixie chick albums any more. So then, when they were uterly destroyed in the country music media, she decided to apologize and say that the president deserves respect. This all took place in 2003. Then a few years later they come out with music that is more rockish-popish than it is country. Obviously, they now have a much more liberal fan base than they had previously. They suddenly find that they are able to sell music once again. So now Natalie Maines has decided that she is no longer sorry and came out with a statement saying George Bush deserves no respect whatsoever.

One of the songs on there new album addresses the happenings directly and is called, not ready to make nice.

I have to say that I was disappointed with the Dixie Chicks and I will no longer listen to their music, however there is some level of respectability in that song. I am a firm believer that we should be people who say what we believe and then we should not be sorry for it, no matter how people react. I believe that is truly one of the most important founding principles of our democracy. My only problem remaining with the Dixie Chicks is that they first apologized when sales went down, then when they had recovered, they decided that they were no longer sorry. I guess that means that the democratic party is the new home for flip flops.