linesfromlinden

We keep hearing “Black Lives Matter”, but I cannot help wonder exactly what that means in the black community. We had some young ladies disrupt Bernie Sander’s campaign speech in Washington state; and what was their reason for protesting one of the most openly left-leaning socialists we have every had running for public office?

Oh yes, “he should have done more to end violence against blacks”. They attack the guy who is on their side and tell him he “hasn’t done enough”. What are they suggesting? What specifically did they want him to do? What action? What legislation? What words did they have in mind? Well that is easy, NONE.

It is so easy to protest and disrupt, but so difficult to put together and articulate a reasonable, effective and generally accepted policy statement or legislation.

I particularly enjoyed their condemnation of the audience who tired of their disruptive behavior and immature ranting, booed them. What was the assessment of these young black women? The entire audience had just proved that they were all racists because they objected to the fact that the event that they were attending had been hijacked and the speaker forced to leave in disgust.

Yup, they were all racists, not just people annoyed by having to listen to self-important young people with no clear message and no offer of any solution.

When I see the slogan “Black Lives Matter” quoted in various news articles both in printed and on video, I can’t help wondering what those black protestors make of the black man who slaughtered his former girl-friend and what, four or five black children?

If black lives really matter to members of the black community, then perhaps it is time for that community to take inventory of what they might do to mitigate the violence against blacks, particularly young black men.

Here are some suggestions: 1. When approached by a police officer: stop, don’t do anything threatening, answer his questions truthfully, keep your hands in sight, and if you are doing or have done something wrong admit it.

2. If you feel the stop was inappropriate, improperly conducted, or baseless, take the officer’s name & number (the name is usually visible on their uniform), file a complaint with their precinct and if all else fails file a lawsuit.

3. Teach young people that venting their frustrations over their life situation by vandalism and theft is not the way go, particularly what it takes place in their own community.

4. Get some education, finish high school (however poor the school, the teachers certainly know more your children). Read books, almost any kind of books and a wide variety of books.

5.  Take some personal responsibility.  Stop blaming everyone else for the difficulties in your life and try to first fix what you can, second help others in anyway that you can, and third try to make reasonable and useful suggestions for change.  Live a good life, work towards a good community and vote to get the people in office who will take action on things that are important to you.

6.  Read  about what is going on the world and listen not just to the people you agree with, but most particularly to the ones you don’t.  You will never broaden your horizons if you don’t first broaden your knowledge base and level of tolerance.

 

 

 

A local judge in Colorado has decided that the baker MUST bake a wedding cake for everyone if he bakes one for anyone.  So what next, a customer demands a marijuana cake, the baker refuses on legal grounds so the judge tells him he MUST bake such a cake if he bakes chocolate, white and carrot cakes??

You may say this is a bit far fetched, but think about a Vegan ordering a cake and demanding a change in the standard ingredients.  No eggs, no animal based shortening, and then complaining because the cake had not risen or was not really “tasty” or by the way, cost more.  Again, you may say too far fetched, but really??  Think about it, who would have believed a year ago that you could use the law to force a baker to bake you a cake.

I have said this before and will say it again; businesses are in business to make money.  To turn down a client means they lose business.  Turn down too many clients and they are out of business.  This business logic will either force businesses to change their rationale for declining to serve a particular class of customer or allow them to survive with a smaller customer base and a smaller income.

I detest smoking.  I tried cigarettes when I was 16 and quickly decided I did not like the taste nor the way it made my clothes smell (Oh and by the way, I never learned to inhale.)   I object to cigarette smoke in my house and business.  Just as much, I hate picking up the butts clients leave in my parking area when they comply with the “no smoking” rule.

However, I think we have stepped way over the mark of reasonableness when we don’t allow ANY restaurant or bar to permit smoking.   That is a business decision.  If a local bar allows smoking, and their customers complain or stop frequenting the establishment, very soon the bar owner’s will ban smoking on their own.

But, if the bar is frequented by smokers and everyone smokes who comes there (or at least no one objects to the smoke), then why not allow an establishment to cater to the “smoking” crowd?  Ah ha, because it is not healthy and because the government cares.  Yes well, did anyone imagine when the “smokeless restaurant” policy was established to protect us from our bad habits that the next step would be to protect us from obesity by forbidding oversize drinks or controlling what goes into hamburgers?  What is next, mandated exercise programs with special caveats for the elderly or disabled?

Surely we still have people in government who remember reading about prohibition.  What was the result of that dreadful  experiment that created an entirely new criminal class and industry?  After thirteen long years it was discovered that “you cannot legislate morality”.

We are still trying to control our citizenry beyond the bounds of anyone’s imagination a few years ago.  The new socialists gaining power want to legislate everything we do, every decision we make and now, every opinion we hold.

How and where this will end I don’t know, but pretty soon this will not be a country in which we have any freedoms at all.

I have never known so many people who are so offended by the actions and words of so many others.  Sometimes the actions that so offend are completely inadvertent by the “offenders”.  I understand that on college campuses there exists an entire vocabulary of verbal “triggers” that should be avoided for fear of offending “someone”.

Am I the only person alive today who remembers the childhood taunt “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”? (Please note the perfect grammatical construction of this quote, use of the word “may” implying possibility rather than use of the word “can” implying permission.)

Never have so many people been so offended so often by so much trivia to twist Winston Churchill’s wartime message.

We have teachers upset and demanding an apology because Christie said teacher’s unions deserve a punch.  My goodness people, the man is from New Jersey!  This was a very mild censure from a guy from New Jersey.  Just watch “Jersey Boys” if you don’t believe me.

We have women in fainting spells taking offense because Jeb Bush thinks 1/2 billion dollars is too much for exclusively female health issues.   I think that is too much money for anyone’s health issues, but at my age I know not much will be spent on my needs, so what do I know?

We have teachers suspending a child because he chewed his sandwich into the shape of a gun!!  Horrors!!!!  Just think, he could have chewed it into the shape of a grenade and they would have to have called the bomb squad!!!

Everyone is demanding an apology and guess what?  When they get the apology they don’t think it is sincere.  Really??  Remember the governor’s aide who used a perfectly good word “niggardly” in a perfectly correct application (that amount of money is so much less than is reasonable under the circumstances.)  You see, one good word takes the place of fourteen.  He was forced to apologize because a large number of people didn’t understand the word, couldn’t be bothered to look it up in the dictionary, and would not have recognized the difference in the old Norse root of “niggardly” as opposed to the Latin root of the “n” word to which all those who were offended thought he was referencing.

I don’t think his apology was very sincere, but I think we should forgive him because he was forced to apologize for other people’s ignorance.

Now we have a man who has for years worked in the political arena as a political commentator who is “made queasy” by Trump’s insult to Megyn Kelly.  I think Trump’s comments were in poor taste, but really, queasy? from a man who referred to Chief Justice Souter as a “(expletive deleted) child molester” and Michelle Obama as a “Marxist harpy”?  I would suggest to Mr. Erickson that if he is made queasy by Trump’s comments (made about someone else by the way, not about him) that he is definitely in the wrong career field!!

Members of the LGBT community were “offended” because someone didn’t want to bake them a wedding cake.  So their “offended feelings” took the form of a lawsuit that netted them $135,000.00 in damages.  Wow, was it that hard to find another baker?  I live in a very small town in a rural community and I can find at  lease nine bakeries or individuals who bake wedding cakes within a twenty- minute drive.

This was not a lawsuit based on the couple being “offended” by a disappointment over a wedding cake, this was a member of a minority group trying to harm a legitimate business because they did not endorse their lifestyle.

Businesses are in the business of making money.  Any business owner who refuses to do business with a potential customer is by that refusal losing money.  If they refuse to serve enough people, they will soon be out of business.  Surely this is their decision alone.

Remember when the LGBT community (a small minority of our society as a whole) tried to organize a boycott of Chick-Fil-A?  That didn’t last very long because the public (as in a large majority of our society as a whole) said NO in very large letters and endorsed Chick-fil-a and made them more profit in a single month than every before.  So what message did the LGBT community take from this response to their boycott?  Don’t go after big businesses with a large public following, single out the small businessman or woman who can’t afford to defend against such actions.

I have no feelings against members of the LGBT community although I must admit I don’t know any Bs or Ts (at least I don’t know any to the best of my knowledge).  However, when I was in college my roommate was gay (and that was a long time ago, and long before anyone publicly acknowledged their homosexuality.)   I subsequently had a number of acquaintances who professed to be so and I have had no problems in doing business  or attending social events with any of them.

I do object to anyone using bullying tactics to intimidate or force someone to take an action that they find difficult or morally wrong.   We live in the land of the free.  What everyone needs to remember is that your “rights” end where someone else’s “rights” begin.  Having the “right” to be LGBT means you have the right to live your life and to love as you see fit without fear of harassment or threat.

However, it also means someone else has the “right” to not approve of that decision.  So long as that lack of approval is expressed in legal and non-threatening ways (such as declining to bake a wedding cake) that is their right.

Freedom of speech means I am free to express my opinion freely and without constraint.  You have the right to be offended if you so wish.

If you are offended, give some careful thought to why you feel offended and then respond in kind if you wish.  However, your right to feel offended does not circumvent my right to offend!

 

 

 

 

 

 

B

I have been told that I was precocious as a child with strange ideas and interests nor considered normal in a child my age.  I remember when I was about five years old, my aunt was getting married and I was given to understand that she would now change her name to that of her new husband, my soon to be Uncle Tom.  I remember wondering how that happened.

The question in my childish brain was, how did the couple decide whose name they would take?  I remember pondering this question for some time until the obvious answer occurred to me.  Logically, the couple would take the last name of which ever of them proposed! This seemed so clear to me, so simple and reasonable that I held on to that premise for many years.

I remember when I was about seven, I happened to mention my thought to my mother that the couple took the last name of the person who proposed the marriage.  My mother, an unfriendly woman, ever willing to rain on my parade, sneered at me and asked me, if I was correct, why was it that all of the women we knew took the name of the male member of the couple?   I thought about that for a few minutes and quickly came up with the answer; because, I said, in our society it was normally the man who proposed, but that didn’t change the basic premise that the couple take the name of the person initiating the proposal.

Simple, logical and easy, a solution that should have charmed feminists before we began populating the world with hyphenated names that could have had the children of Mildred Parker-Gutowski and Jonathan Barnaby-Lieberwitz with the dreadful last name of Parker-Gutowski-Barnaby-Lieberwitz. God help the children of Mildred and Jonathan when they met up with and married a person with their own hyphens!

Fortunately, the hyphen seems to have gone out of fashion with the exception of a few interesting and recent cases.  The marriage and name changes of actor, Aaron Johnson and agent, Samantha Taylor come to mind.

The “name change upon marriage” issue has been solved by women simply keeping their own name when they marry.  This was a decision that I opted to do when I had one remaining child at home and married a man with two children of his own who would live with us.  My son didn’t want to be the only one in our household with a different last name and was proud enough of his heritage to not want to give his last name up.  Thus it was that I kept my former last name although not my maiden name.

I still think that the thought process I used in my childhood might have saved a lot of trouble to people in the ensuing years.  It would have been acceptable to feminists everywhere, and also avoided the difficulties of the fortuitously short-lived “age of the hyphen”.