COMMON SENSE INDIVIDUALISM
COMMON SENSE INDIVIDUALISM
Dorothy A. SeeseNovember 18, 2006 NewsWithViews.com
Whether the motivation is fear of being different, ridiculed, despised for daring to think differently than directed by the manipulators of public opinion, or whether it is genuine belief in all forms of media that are otherwise acknowledged to be biased, I have no idea!
I do know that Americans are not the same breed of humans with which I grew up, and as of this writing, I haven't changed the way I think because I look for the logic, the evidence, the sources, and try to weave them into a fabric called "times, trends and events." My ego won't allow me to think of myself as a journalist but merely as a communicator of what seems to me to be the obvious. As far as my own thinking, the title (if there has to be a label attached) is "an analyst of times, trends and events" and I write them down, hang them out on the world wide web and go my way.
One thing that seems more than obvious is a form of almost global irrationality. There are numerous, perhaps innumerable examples of humanity gone crazy en masse, none more obvious than formerly free and unafraid Americans fastening their tongues with a type of superglue to make certain that no one, absolutely no one, who isn't specifically exempt, is ever, ever offended by a thing called free speech. The media has set the tone and the trend at the behest of whoever controls media from positions of authority, and they are not necessarily elected officials. A few examples should set those who are so inclined to wondering, even thinking, about how certain influences have changed public life in America even when private thinking is just the opposite.
The Great Free Speech Massacre
If you were an adult in the 1940's to 1970's, you knew exactly what a "wetback" is. Gradually, not only their title has changed several times, but also their status in our society and their acquisition of "rights" as they, not citizens, demand and our leaders accept. First, the label used most was "illegal alien." That appeared to be natural enough, since anyone in this nation illegally is both illegal and an alien. However, some of these wetbacks were terribly offended at that designation, even though they were here illegally and are aliens. So they became "undocumented workers." But not all of them work, and "undocumented" had a rather unsavory tone (something like "illegal") so now they are immigrants. Not illegal immigrants, just immigrants, with the same status as those who came through Ellis Island with a few words of English, and an obligation to meet certain requirements or be deported. Some reports state they number in excess of 20 million, others lower it to 12-14 million, and unless a census were undertaken, it's probably quite uncertain how many there are living in this country with all the rights of citizens, including the right to vote if no proof of citizenship is required.
However, to use the term "wetback" is horribly unacceptable and absolutely no one dares use such a term in public, or even in private groups unless they are old friends who know one another's thinking.
Even among the people of all-European descent, one simply doesn't refer to French people as frogs, Germans as krauts, Poles as polocks, or Italians as wops. It's been many years since I've heard a Brit referred to as a "limey" but that is perhaps because there are almost as many Arabic peoples in England now as their are people of classic British descent (white, Anglo-Saxon).
In America, we have no more American Indians (except where the term is acceptable for Indian Gaming Casinos or Indian hospitals). We have Native Americans. Yet they trace their ancestry, in the west at least, to the Far East. But don't say to the Orient. There are no more Orientals, they are Asians. Oriental is reserved for labeling a type of rug. I am assuming the Orient Express went out of business decades ago, or changed its name. After all, its destination was never a rug.
The Great Constitutional Misconstruction
Separation of church and state is not in either the body of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, or any subsequent amendments, although there are news anchors who read their TelePrompters to state that such-and-such was a violation of the Constitution's requirement for the separation of church and state. Now, how many people will believe a news anchor speaks accurately, and how many viewers will question why there are so many biblical and specifically Christian symbols, phrases (in God we trust) and sculptures carved into or emblazed upon the buildings in Washington, D.C.? The late Justice Hugo Black of the United States Supreme Court and what we today would call a "flaming liberal" put that phrase into an opinon, having nabbed it out of a private letter from then-President Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptist Church in a question about whether any particular Christian denomination coud deny rights to other Christian denominations. The dispute was between the rights of Baptists as opposed to the infringement upon those rights by the dominant Congregationalists of the state in question.
The opinion of a Supreme Court Justice thus took precedence over the specific wording of the First Amendment. The First Amendment, in prohibiting Congress from making any law "with respect to an establishment of religion" (generally understood to mean a state church such as the Church of England) also states that the government shall not "prohibit the free exercise thereof" [of religion] which it most certainly is doing.
The Tenth Amendment states that any powers not specifically delegated to the federal government shall remain with the states, which is generally referred to as the "states rights" amendment. It was an expression by all the states, at that time, of how limited federal powers should be. To supporters of a strong federal government and the risk carried by such a powerful body of enacting and enforcing tyrannical laws and abridging the freedom of the people, the states rights amendment had to be abrogated somehow. Now, it has been abrogated to the point that the amendment has been effectively rescinded, and that without any amendment to support such actions. But such is tyranny.
And where was the public outrage? Missing. Where were the defenders of free people with rights rather than a subservient people dependent upon privilege? Few and far between, finding almost no expression until the advent of the internet.
The Abuse of the Superpower Myth
A true superpower has to exercise humility, discretion, and care never to abuse the military might and economic power at its disposal. It also has to be exemplary in conduct and respect for law and order, or the rule of law, or it is nothing but a tyrant by whatever name it calls itself. The United States has never been a paragon of virtue, but it most certainly had a general public respect for the Puritan work ethic and biblical standards of morality as the norm for public conduct and the upbringing of children. The decline in all moral and ethical standards has been astonishing. Where public outcry did rise, the power of the minority in administrative, legislative and judicial quashed it through the power of the courts and the aid of the press. Conversely, when world opinion gauges fell to near-zero for American behavior, the same spokespersons and opinion makers learned to do a seamless about-face and condemn that which they previously condoned. This would lead to a more appropriate title of SuperHypocrites.
One interesting example is provided by a look at the films and television programs of a few decades ago and a comparison with the problems facing America today, including an apparently unpayable federal debt and rampant anti-social behavior ranging from school shootings to road rage to gay rights parades and demands for equality as a third gender.
The America that had general respect throughout the civilized world also had accepted codes of conduct for most forms of public entertainment media. This can be seen in classic films and videos of old television programs. Prayer before dinner was often shown in family scenes. Children spoke to parents with respect, and parents were diligent about the upbringing of children. Actors who were homosexual kept it well hidden. The media gave news, not tabloid garbage. Extra-marital sex was shown as sinful conduct, not a form of free expression of one's inner self or some other trite phrase. Murder mysteries were able to convey a homicide without graphic violence and repulsive gore. People were praised for self-restraint. Now, the more violent, the more immoral, the more diabolical the story, the more publicity it receives.
In those same films, adults were shown lighting up cigars, pipes and cigarettes and no one objected, no one was offended other than some with particular religious convictions. The general public was not phobic of the use of tobacco any more than it is now afraid of the use of hundreds of new drugs, many of which have had to be pulled off the market for their deadly side effects. For this generation, nearly everything is acceptable other than tobacco use, but the quality of American morality has nosedived. Sex for consenting children is fine, they're almost expected to play with recreational drugs and sex.
Single women can have children without guilt or expectation that they should be married and living in a nuclear home, but heaven forbid someone should light a cigarette within fifty feet of the nearest window, door or fire escape. So the moral America had few restrictions and no social taboos on tobacco use, but the immoral one is fighting tooth and claw to wipe out all vestiges of tobacco use. That is one curious turn of events, particularly with so many people alive who are over age eighty and a growing number in their nineties, all of whom had to live through the age of unrestricted tobacco use. That is a peculiar turn of events.
Somewhere, behavior and evidence are not linking up. The American public, perhaps eager to find some outlet for the loss of their Constitutional rights, privacy, due process and other former guarantees under a rule of law, strike out at things once generally accepted. Instead, they have repudiated the standards by which our nation grew into the status of superpower, including humility, restraint, distaste for unbridled greed, immorality and the home as the basic unit of society, and have linked onto the gay parades as if to advertise that they are not tolerant of all those old-fashioned customs that built an unhyphenated America.
The first border to be flung open was the one that led this nation out of common sense into political correctness that espouses old Marxism wearing a new hat called liberal in the worst sense of the word.
If one has to make a eulogy for the loss of common sense, there is a bitter irony to saying that it lies under the monument to the World Trade Center that imploded upon itself where other buildings struck with outside force have toppled. There is no "rest in peace" for either, just loss.
© 2006 Dorothy A. Seese - All Rights Reserved
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Dorothy Anne Seese has been working since she was three and a half years old, but not as a journalist.
Her career began as a child actress in the 1939-1942 "Five Little Peppers" film series produced by Columbia that mercifully ended with the nation's involvement in World War II, although she did do small parts in a few films until 1953. By that time, she was a student at U.C.L.A. where she received her liberal arts degree in Political Science.
Dorothy A. SeeseNovember 18, 2006 NewsWithViews.com
Whether the motivation is fear of being different, ridiculed, despised for daring to think differently than directed by the manipulators of public opinion, or whether it is genuine belief in all forms of media that are otherwise acknowledged to be biased, I have no idea!
I do know that Americans are not the same breed of humans with which I grew up, and as of this writing, I haven't changed the way I think because I look for the logic, the evidence, the sources, and try to weave them into a fabric called "times, trends and events." My ego won't allow me to think of myself as a journalist but merely as a communicator of what seems to me to be the obvious. As far as my own thinking, the title (if there has to be a label attached) is "an analyst of times, trends and events" and I write them down, hang them out on the world wide web and go my way.
One thing that seems more than obvious is a form of almost global irrationality. There are numerous, perhaps innumerable examples of humanity gone crazy en masse, none more obvious than formerly free and unafraid Americans fastening their tongues with a type of superglue to make certain that no one, absolutely no one, who isn't specifically exempt, is ever, ever offended by a thing called free speech. The media has set the tone and the trend at the behest of whoever controls media from positions of authority, and they are not necessarily elected officials. A few examples should set those who are so inclined to wondering, even thinking, about how certain influences have changed public life in America even when private thinking is just the opposite.
The Great Free Speech Massacre
If you were an adult in the 1940's to 1970's, you knew exactly what a "wetback" is. Gradually, not only their title has changed several times, but also their status in our society and their acquisition of "rights" as they, not citizens, demand and our leaders accept. First, the label used most was "illegal alien." That appeared to be natural enough, since anyone in this nation illegally is both illegal and an alien. However, some of these wetbacks were terribly offended at that designation, even though they were here illegally and are aliens. So they became "undocumented workers." But not all of them work, and "undocumented" had a rather unsavory tone (something like "illegal") so now they are immigrants. Not illegal immigrants, just immigrants, with the same status as those who came through Ellis Island with a few words of English, and an obligation to meet certain requirements or be deported. Some reports state they number in excess of 20 million, others lower it to 12-14 million, and unless a census were undertaken, it's probably quite uncertain how many there are living in this country with all the rights of citizens, including the right to vote if no proof of citizenship is required.
However, to use the term "wetback" is horribly unacceptable and absolutely no one dares use such a term in public, or even in private groups unless they are old friends who know one another's thinking.
Even among the people of all-European descent, one simply doesn't refer to French people as frogs, Germans as krauts, Poles as polocks, or Italians as wops. It's been many years since I've heard a Brit referred to as a "limey" but that is perhaps because there are almost as many Arabic peoples in England now as their are people of classic British descent (white, Anglo-Saxon).
In America, we have no more American Indians (except where the term is acceptable for Indian Gaming Casinos or Indian hospitals). We have Native Americans. Yet they trace their ancestry, in the west at least, to the Far East. But don't say to the Orient. There are no more Orientals, they are Asians. Oriental is reserved for labeling a type of rug. I am assuming the Orient Express went out of business decades ago, or changed its name. After all, its destination was never a rug.
The Great Constitutional Misconstruction
Separation of church and state is not in either the body of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, or any subsequent amendments, although there are news anchors who read their TelePrompters to state that such-and-such was a violation of the Constitution's requirement for the separation of church and state. Now, how many people will believe a news anchor speaks accurately, and how many viewers will question why there are so many biblical and specifically Christian symbols, phrases (in God we trust) and sculptures carved into or emblazed upon the buildings in Washington, D.C.? The late Justice Hugo Black of the United States Supreme Court and what we today would call a "flaming liberal" put that phrase into an opinon, having nabbed it out of a private letter from then-President Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptist Church in a question about whether any particular Christian denomination coud deny rights to other Christian denominations. The dispute was between the rights of Baptists as opposed to the infringement upon those rights by the dominant Congregationalists of the state in question.
The opinion of a Supreme Court Justice thus took precedence over the specific wording of the First Amendment. The First Amendment, in prohibiting Congress from making any law "with respect to an establishment of religion" (generally understood to mean a state church such as the Church of England) also states that the government shall not "prohibit the free exercise thereof" [of religion] which it most certainly is doing.
The Tenth Amendment states that any powers not specifically delegated to the federal government shall remain with the states, which is generally referred to as the "states rights" amendment. It was an expression by all the states, at that time, of how limited federal powers should be. To supporters of a strong federal government and the risk carried by such a powerful body of enacting and enforcing tyrannical laws and abridging the freedom of the people, the states rights amendment had to be abrogated somehow. Now, it has been abrogated to the point that the amendment has been effectively rescinded, and that without any amendment to support such actions. But such is tyranny.
And where was the public outrage? Missing. Where were the defenders of free people with rights rather than a subservient people dependent upon privilege? Few and far between, finding almost no expression until the advent of the internet.
The Abuse of the Superpower Myth
A true superpower has to exercise humility, discretion, and care never to abuse the military might and economic power at its disposal. It also has to be exemplary in conduct and respect for law and order, or the rule of law, or it is nothing but a tyrant by whatever name it calls itself. The United States has never been a paragon of virtue, but it most certainly had a general public respect for the Puritan work ethic and biblical standards of morality as the norm for public conduct and the upbringing of children. The decline in all moral and ethical standards has been astonishing. Where public outcry did rise, the power of the minority in administrative, legislative and judicial quashed it through the power of the courts and the aid of the press. Conversely, when world opinion gauges fell to near-zero for American behavior, the same spokespersons and opinion makers learned to do a seamless about-face and condemn that which they previously condoned. This would lead to a more appropriate title of SuperHypocrites.
One interesting example is provided by a look at the films and television programs of a few decades ago and a comparison with the problems facing America today, including an apparently unpayable federal debt and rampant anti-social behavior ranging from school shootings to road rage to gay rights parades and demands for equality as a third gender.
The America that had general respect throughout the civilized world also had accepted codes of conduct for most forms of public entertainment media. This can be seen in classic films and videos of old television programs. Prayer before dinner was often shown in family scenes. Children spoke to parents with respect, and parents were diligent about the upbringing of children. Actors who were homosexual kept it well hidden. The media gave news, not tabloid garbage. Extra-marital sex was shown as sinful conduct, not a form of free expression of one's inner self or some other trite phrase. Murder mysteries were able to convey a homicide without graphic violence and repulsive gore. People were praised for self-restraint. Now, the more violent, the more immoral, the more diabolical the story, the more publicity it receives.
In those same films, adults were shown lighting up cigars, pipes and cigarettes and no one objected, no one was offended other than some with particular religious convictions. The general public was not phobic of the use of tobacco any more than it is now afraid of the use of hundreds of new drugs, many of which have had to be pulled off the market for their deadly side effects. For this generation, nearly everything is acceptable other than tobacco use, but the quality of American morality has nosedived. Sex for consenting children is fine, they're almost expected to play with recreational drugs and sex.
Single women can have children without guilt or expectation that they should be married and living in a nuclear home, but heaven forbid someone should light a cigarette within fifty feet of the nearest window, door or fire escape. So the moral America had few restrictions and no social taboos on tobacco use, but the immoral one is fighting tooth and claw to wipe out all vestiges of tobacco use. That is one curious turn of events, particularly with so many people alive who are over age eighty and a growing number in their nineties, all of whom had to live through the age of unrestricted tobacco use. That is a peculiar turn of events.
Somewhere, behavior and evidence are not linking up. The American public, perhaps eager to find some outlet for the loss of their Constitutional rights, privacy, due process and other former guarantees under a rule of law, strike out at things once generally accepted. Instead, they have repudiated the standards by which our nation grew into the status of superpower, including humility, restraint, distaste for unbridled greed, immorality and the home as the basic unit of society, and have linked onto the gay parades as if to advertise that they are not tolerant of all those old-fashioned customs that built an unhyphenated America.
The first border to be flung open was the one that led this nation out of common sense into political correctness that espouses old Marxism wearing a new hat called liberal in the worst sense of the word.
If one has to make a eulogy for the loss of common sense, there is a bitter irony to saying that it lies under the monument to the World Trade Center that imploded upon itself where other buildings struck with outside force have toppled. There is no "rest in peace" for either, just loss.
© 2006 Dorothy A. Seese - All Rights Reserved
Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts
E-Mails are used strictly for NWVs alerts, not for sale
Dorothy Anne Seese has been working since she was three and a half years old, but not as a journalist.
Her career began as a child actress in the 1939-1942 "Five Little Peppers" film series produced by Columbia that mercifully ended with the nation's involvement in World War II, although she did do small parts in a few films until 1953. By that time, she was a student at U.C.L.A. where she received her liberal arts degree in Political Science.
posted by shummer60 at Sunday, December 03, 2006
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