As the older/wiser kid with younger siblings we would, on a daily basis, squabble. I was told by my parents, grandparents, and the nuns at my grade school that “No one can MAKE you do something.” No matter how strong the attack or horrifying the threat, it always comes down to your own free will to act or react in every situation. Even if someone has a gun to your head or your child’s head. It is your lone decision in that moment as to what you will or won’t do. For better or for worse. Then the ball is in the opponent’s court, so to speak. Then the one instigating, threatening or attacking you makes the decision to continue or to carry out their aggression/threats. To say, “He/She/They forced my hand. I had no choice” is nothing more than admitting the time span in which to make said personal decision was limited and narrow, and beyond the boundary of sane patience of typical personal responsibility and you lead with emtions. Am I making sense? Every moment of our lives is an accounting of personal responsibility for our personal decisions. No matter how hard today’s appeasing and overly-rationalizing minds try to spin it in order to wave such high standards from others in the world. It is what it is. You’re attacked. You evaluate the worth and severity of the attack. You either respond or you let it roll off your back.
The main factor in a successful civilized society/family is to hold people accountable for their decisions, most especially if they directly effect other people. In a family situation it is up to the parents to evaluate the squabbles and reason with the parties involved as to why those personal decisions were made in order to settle differences. However, because of our busy lives and daily pressures of time and stress parents more often than not do not use the diplomatic approach, rather, they use the instant gratification of just punishing all involved (in my case even if I hadn’t retaliated against my younger sister’s cheap sucker punch because of something I’d said. “She made me do it!” was her defense). The parental reasoning in the blanket convictions and carpet-bombing the kids was, “Well, we anticipated/assumed you would hit back.” Anyone who experienced this parental insanity as a kid recalls the revulsion that bubbled-up in your gut at your parents for the injustice. (See: Ralphie Parker’s blind scene in A Christmas Story.) All that resulted was a false peace that festered with resentment, some for the parents but most for the sibling. At some point the guilty sibling not singled out for agression becomes emboldened, and it is all the more easy for the parents to keep persecuting the target of his/her agenda-driven aggression and be done with it. These same people that insisted “Nobody can MAKE you do something” just demanded “What did YOU do to make him/her do that to you?”
I am, perhaps, being overly simplistic in my analogy of what went down in this nation this week. Our country has been winding through one of those much heralded “teachable moments” our Professor-in-Chief likes to toss around.
I find it extremely troubling how our federal government basically ’strong-armed’ a Christian pastor of a small church out of his free speech rights. Yes, ’strong-armed’. To have the FBI invading his private property without cause, to have the WH and the Pentagon calling him … to have others in the administration come out and make public statements against this one American. It IS strong-arming. Yes, Pastor Jones sought attention, but those same parents instructed us to ignore people like that. The more attention you give such fools the more importance you build for what they are doing.
The Koran that Pastor Jones is/isn’t going to burn on 9/11/10 is his own legally acquired private property … being held on his private property. Just as a certain defunct Berlington Coat Factory building in Manhattan is private property. Both parties can do with those properties what they wish within the boundaries of our laws. We don’t have to like it. All one needs do is look at how these very same people in our government and in the media have argued for Imam Rauf’s free speech and freedom of religion rights regarding the planned Ground Zero mosque to see their hypocrisy here.
I do not agree with book burning. I believe bad books have value. They strengthen the worth of the good books. Hopefully the American people take a step back from the obvious disgust of a ‘book-burning’ act, and look at one very important thing here:
ONE religion/culture/ideology not only has dictated through the threat of MORE terror and violence the debate/discussion/speech/actions of one pastor in one small church in this country, but they have been willingly assisted by that man’s appeasing government in strong-arming him and stomping all over his free speech rights under the US Constitution they swore oaths to protect … all with the nauseating echo of foreign interlopers into this nation’s and one citizen’s rights by a NATO official and the Vatican. In the course of the last few days no Korans have been burned. Yet, the threats of terror have escalated and have even been carried out by this supposedly 21st century civilized world’s barbaric thought police. A religion of peace that by all empirical evidence is anything but.
THIS, ladies and gents, is the lesson in this teachable moment. We have officially entered into the Londonistan/Eurabia mentality of slapping down our own rights and laws to garner a false peace from an enemy that fully intends our death and destruction. An enemy that will never co-exist. We are all the more weak for this. One almost-ALMOST hopes Pastor Jones lights a match tomorrow morning … It may be the only way to save our sovereign Constitution from being burned … On 9/11/01 over three buildings, a field, four planes, and thousands of people burned … No Korans were burned on or before that day.
