Idiot of the Month

Ok... who is the idiot of the month?  Is it the parents who almost killed their 2 year old by giving him methadone (other two kids are now in CPS custody because parents have no common sense), the gym teacher that had sex with a 14 year old student, or the lady who set her "former friend's" house on fire because she defriended her on facebook?  Bunch of numbnuts!

A Cry for Justice

We are too lenient with criminals in America.

All murderers should be executed immediately after being found guilty.  Why do they go to prison for life or sit on death row for 20 years and become a burden on the countries taxpayers?

Any adult who rapes a child.... 12 years old or under.... should be executed.  And the family should be able to flip the switch if they want to.  All other sexual crimes should be punished by castration.

If you steal something, you have to pay restitution ten times the amount.  Second time you are caught stealing you lose a hand.

It doesn't make any sense that we just send all these people to prison where they can get an education and free health care at the expense of taypayers.... not to mention what it costs to keep them locked up year after year.

I hate it when I hear people talk about criminals as if they should have rights.  How does it make any sense to say that someone who took a life has the right to live?

CEO Salaries...

Does anyone else see anything wrong with the CEO of JP Morgan Chase making $42 million a year.  He is the highest paid bank executive in the nation.  And they couldn't work with me on refinancing my home?

Government Collapse

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." - anonymous

The U.S. is a democratic republic, not a democracy, but this is still thought provoking. Our government just keeps getting bigger and regulating more. Every month we spend more than we take in. If it were a corporation, it would have gone under long ago. It is just a matter of time before it collapses.

There are way too many Americans who are too stupid to see this and vote for politicians and laws that give them more and more from the "public treasury" for doing nothing. They vote for bigger government and more regulation. We are moving toward a nation dependent on a government that cannot stand forever if we continue to let it overtake every aspect of our nation. When our government is so closely tied to our economy and provides for so many dependent people, what happens when the government collapses? We are in trouble!

Death of Common Sense

Obituary of Common Sense !


Today, we mourn the passing of an old friend by the name of Common Sense.


Common Sense lived a long life, but died from heart failure at the brink of the Millennium. No one really knows how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He selflessly devoted his life to service in schools; hospitals, homes, factories and offices, helping folks get jobs done without fanfare and foolishness.

For decades, petty rules, silly laws and frivolous lawsuits held no power over Common Sense. He was credited with cultivating such valued lessons as to know when to come in from rain, the early bird gets the worm and life isn't always fair.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn), reliable parenting strategies (the adults are in charge, not the kids), and it's okay to come in second.

A veteran of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Technological Revolution, Common Sense survived cultural and educational trends including feminism, body piercing, whole
language and new math.

But his health declined when he became infected with the "if-it-only-helps-one-person-it's-worth-it" virus. In recent decades, his waning strength proved no match for the ravages of overbearing federal legislation.

He watched in pain as good people became ruled by self-seeking lawyers and enlightened auditors. His health rapidly deteriorated when schools endlessly implemented zero tolerance policies; when reports were heard of six year old boys charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; when a teen was suspended for taking a swig of mouthwash after lunch; when a teacher was fired for reprimanding an unruly student. It declined even further when schools had to get parental consent to administer aspirin to a student but couldn't inform the parent when a female student is pregnant or wants an abortion.

Finally, Common Sense lost his will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband, churches became businesses, criminals received better treatment than victims, and federal judges stuck their noses in everything from Boy Scouts to professional sports.

As the end neared, Common Sense drifted in and out of logic but was kept informed of developments, regarding questionable regulations for asbestos, low-flow toilets, smart guns, the nurturing of Prohibition Laws and mandatory air bags.

Finally, when told that the homeowners association restricted exterior furniture only to that which enhanced property values, he breathed his last.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son Reason. His three stepbrothers survive him: Rights, Tolerance and Whiner.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

Author Unknown

Mormons are a cult?

As we all know, Pastor Robert Jeffress, a Rick Perry supporter, recently stated that noone should vote for Mitt Romney because Mormon's belong to a cult and are not Christian.  Does he realize that the Mormon's belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?  That is the official name of the mormon church.  "Mormon" is a nickname that was given to the members of the church because of the Book of Mormon.

Anyone who worships Jesus Christ is called a Christian.  Apparently, part of the evangelical argument for Mormon's not being Christian is that the "founder" of the Church is Joseph Smith.  Actually, the founder of The Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Jesus Christ.  And even with that argument, that would mean Lutheran's are a cult as well because they were founded by Martin Luther.  Ridiculous!

If believing in the bible and Jesus Christ, supporting the family as the basic unit of society, and trying to be law abiding citizens makes Mormons a cult - so be it.  Call 'em whatever you want.

Noone should vote for Rick Perry!  He should have distanced himself from this pastor and clarified his statement immediately.

Doggonit

Apparently, the 2010 census revealed that there are now more households in the U.S. that have dogs than children. I'm all for pets adding to our quality of life.... but for all those people out there who chose to have a dog instead of a child - you are missing out! Are we really putting having dogs above having children? Scary!

Moral Relativism / Emotivism

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/opinion/if-it-feels-right.html?_r=1

Op-Ed Columnist

If It Feels Right ...

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: September 12, 2011

During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. The interviews were part of a larger study that Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, Patricia Snell Herzog and others have been conducting on the state of America’s youth.

Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.

It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.

The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, which Smith and company recount in a new book, “Lost in Transition,” you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.

When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.

“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”

Rejecting blind deference to authority, many of the young people have gone off to the other extreme: “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.”

Many were quick to talk about their moral feelings but hesitant to link these feelings to any broader thinking about a shared moral framework or obligation. As one put it, “I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.”

Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and
nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America.

Smith and company are stunned, for example, that the interviewees were so completely untroubled by rabid consumerism. (This was the summer of 2008, just before the crash).

Many of these shortcomings will sort themselves out as these youngsters get married, have kids, enter a profession or fit into more clearly defined social roles. Institutions will inculcate certain habits. Broader moral horizons will be forced upon them. But their attitudes at the start of their adult lives do reveal something about American culture. For decades, writers from different
perspectives have been warning about the erosion of shared moral frameworks and the rise of an easygoing moral individualism.

Allan Bloom and Gertrude Himmelfarb warned that sturdy virtues are being diluted into shallow values. Alasdair MacIntyre has written about emotivism, the idea that it’s impossible to secure moral agreement in our culture because all judgments are based on how we feel at the moment.

Charles Taylor has argued that morals have become separated from moral sources. People are less likely to feel embedded on a moral landscape that transcends self. James Davison Hunter wrote a book called “The Death of Character.” Smith’s interviewees are living, breathing examples of the trends these writers have described.

In most times and in most places, the group was seen to be the essential moral unit. A shared religion defined rules and practices. Cultures structured people’s imaginations and imposed moral disciplines. But now more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.

These young adults don't know what a moral dilemma is? But they're smart enough to use thier feelings as a basis for making decisions? "Winners!" as Charlie Sheen would say.

What is up with this nonsense about moral individualism/relativism, and that the basis for ones morals is ones "feelings." I'm all for ones feelings (I'm a social worker!), but give me a friggen break. This is our world's guide for determining what is right and what is wrong? Does anyone else see a problem with this?

Does anyone out there have parents who teach them right versus wrong?... or what the word "moral" even means?