Amanda McRae is an activist championing women’s reproductive
rights and other human rights interest areas. She provides our opening
quotation this morning:
“As we grow up, we realize it is
less important to have lots of friends and more important to have real ones.”
Real ones. Real friends. The kind of friend that lends a
hand first and learns the reason later, if at all. They are the people who drop
what they are doing to help you when you need it. They are also the few folks
who actually listen to you when you need to talk and let everything out in the
open air. The good things and the bad things, the emotional pieces of your
innards as well as those things we don’t really want anyone to see.
Those friends know you need to vent. They know you need to
let someone in.
It is an honor to be the listener in such moments. It is an
honor to know someone cares enough to be that listener for you.
I wonder if politicians have real friends? They seem to be manipulating feelings, facts
and messages all the time. They do this on instinct to gain positive opinions
they can use as power blocs with other ‘leaders’. Politicians seem to
calculating full time. How to build wedge issues, who can be lured into a
partnership to gain votes for another special interest. You know the kind of
thing I’m talking about. These are the people who always seem to have an angle
to play. For their own interests or someone else’s interest that still benefits
themselves.
Politicians. People who speak many tongues on the very same
topic. You don’t really know where they stand.
How on earth can we count them as friends?
A headline in Sunday mornings news (6/22/14) announced
Louisiana Govenor Jindal’s claim that a political/social rebellion among American
citizens against Washington
DC
Seems to me this is a classic statement of opposites. Claim
the false statement as true so you can wage an emotional argument for the
opposite side.
The facts are quite different in Jindal’s claim. Public
education is being stripped of the federal regulations that hamstring direct
invention of new effective education methods. Schools have been weighed down by
so many regulations by warring ideological camps that educators now are cast in
the role of parent 24/7. While on school property they must exercise the power
to parent the child; and guard against those hours the child is no longer in
their direct charge. Policing behaviors that might harm the kid now belongs to
the school. Parents beware!
Obama’s White House has attempted to remove such strangling
regulations. They also wish to eliminate religious direction in schools. Those
directions are the proper role of parents, home and church. Public schools have
no role in such matters other than equipping students with the knowledge of
comparative religions and historical facts of how religion has played major roles
in building history in the first place. No attempt to state one religion is
better than another. No direction as to how the kid should live his life by
selecting a specific religious belief or creed.
Same with religious strictures on human issues such as
abortions, biblical interpretations, bans on teaching evolution and other
science classes. If a parent desires their child to have a religion-based
education they have the freedom to enroll them in an appropriate church school
or catechism. It would not be right, however, to teach those specific creed
points as fact to those uninterested in the religious institution. One is
freedom to choose; the other is imposition by others.
Our nation does not support any one religion. It rather
supports the freedom of each citizen to make their own decisions. That means
that others are not free to cram their belief systems onto others against their
will. The government has the responsibility to protect against such from
happening.
Freedom of religion, freedom of thought and print, freedom
of assembly – these are freedoms requiring personal responsibility. Individuals
exercising those freedoms do so for their own enjoyment; they have no right to
challenge the same freedom in the lives of others.
Just because Jindal claims there is a movement against
religion and education does not make such a fact. He has to prove it. His
arguments need to be made in open air. Rebellion? Against what exactly.
Perhaps there is a rebellion approaching, but I think the
Jindals of the right wing will be enlightened to learn it is against them, not
those who are trying to make sense of the real world.
Republicans are having trouble getting Americans to rally to
their view and candidates. Increasingly they grab at straws to alarm and frighten
voters into supporting their weak arguments.
Once again we entrust to the voter the wisdom to make the
better choices in the voting booth come this fall.
June 25, 2014
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