Pissed off Wiccan for Peace: 03/28/2004

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Personal responsibility.

My friend Judy brings up a very good point. This is something I have struggled with for a long time. I have very little faith and respect for the average human being, which is a SAD thing for a wiccan, humanist, pacifist to say. I have all the respect in the world for human potential and what I have seen in some people. But as a whole, they are a pretty nasty lot.

Take guns. I don't think more gun laws are the answer. I think outlawing guns period is the answer. Including the production and distribution thereof. In this instance, I have no faith whatsoever in people's ability to be personally responsible for themselves. The general population is represented by people who sue McDonalds beause they burned their tongues on hot coffee and MTV because Janet Jackson's breast ruined their marital relations. Even the current resident of the white house (as Joel is fond of calling him) passes the buck to whomever is most likely to take the fall for his screw-ups. Nothing is anyone's fault anymore. Kid's drive through residential neighborhoods shooting semi-automatic weapons out car windows, hit innocent kids playing on the sidewalk, and it's not their fault because they were beat at home or not beat at home. And the gun makers just rake in the change and laugh all the way to the bank! They say that the answer is to educate kids on guns. Teach them to respect guns and how to use them. Well obviously, that is just about stupid! They already know how to use them, they just killed someone with it! They already respect guns! They think guns are the way to GET respect! And our culture feeds that image. We have spent the last year invading a country because they pissed off our president by trying to kill his daddy. Violence begets violence. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Guns are violent. The sound is violent, the action as the charge in the bullet is released is violent, the damage done to the target is violent. There is nothing about guns that isn't violent. There is no alternate use for guns. There is no positive connotation to guns. Guns are used to damage and destroy things. Even when you use them for target practice, they tear up the target, the sound damages the eardrums, the powder residue is toxic.

So, in order to teach children personal responsibility toward their fellow man, should we be teaching them about guns? Or should we be teaching them about their fellow man? The answer to any violence is to teach non-violence. The answer to hate is to teach understanding, tolerance and love. Teach the children that the kind of respect you get from owning a gun is meaningless. They don't respect you, they respect the gun. Guns aren't just complex mechanical devices. They are symbols, they have a life and a meaning beyond the metal and oil. But as long as a person can get the immediate gratification, the feeling of respect by owning one, it is a distraction from what is real.

And at the same time, they need to be taught that their actions are their own. They need to own the fact that yes, they were beaten at home but that doesn't make their actions ok. My 5 year old will push his sister or take her toy or some other childhood transgretion and when he gets caught, he says sorry and he won't do it anymore. But when then he gets punishment he says "But I said I'm sorry!" like that's supposed to excuse what he did. And I tell him, "That's great, I hope you really are sorry, but that doesn't make what you did ok, you still have to get punishment for it." If children are never shown the effect of their actions in a way that is meaningful to them, they won't understand that they do have an effect. And they won't own the action unless someone makes them, teaches them that that's the right thing to do. Everytime a parent excuses a kid, gets a kid out of trouble, or tells them that something they did wasn't their fault, they contribute to this problem.

And in an ideal world, this would all be done every day by every adult with every child in the United States. But it's not. And so, we are now seeing the result. An infant is dead, and it's NO ONE's fault. Not the lady who did it, it was just an accident, not the parent's cause they have a right to own a gun and do anything they want to with it. Not the gun makers, hey they just sell the things, what people do with them after that is their own business. And we all sit around saying "We can't step on anyone's rights!!!" "Personal Responsibility!!" And another child goes in the ground. For nothing.

So. We are at the impasse I always come to. Where does your right to be an idiot NOT trump my right not to have your idiocy effect me. Do we legislate parenting? Force parents to properly raise their children? Do we legislate every aspect of people's lives? Become a state of micromanaged androids? The best thing I can come up with right now, is to pick the big things, the things that will harm the least amount of people and still do good. No one will be harmed by not owning a gun. There are several countries in which it is illegal to own a gun and they live their lives everyday without adverse effect. In fact there is some benefit in that, as the statistics show, they have much fewer child deaths by guns. If I have to choose between taking away a person's ability to exercise personal responsibility over owning a gun at the expense of saving even one 1-year-old from being shot to death in her own home, I think I can sleep at night.

At least until a better idea comes along.

posted by Kimber at 10:53 AM :: ~#~

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Where has Thomas Jefferson been all my life? Ok, I know, he's been dead, but why wasn't I taught more about him in school? Aside from the fact that he was the second president and he wrote the Declaration of Independence, we were never taught much about him. At least not where I went to school. I know from later reports that he was a slave owner and had a fling with a slave and had children. Bad, very bad. But the words that he writes are AMAZING! And so very much needed today! He had a facinating insite into the human psyche that I would never have expected. Most people don't have that depth of understanding today. He was a devout christian but his belief system was more like a UU. If all christians were like this man, I would never say another word against them!

I am doing more research for my rant on spirituality and came across his Act for the Establishment of Religious Freedom. What a wonderful, unifying, humanistic piece of legislation! (surprisingly enough, that is NOT an oxymoron!)

This is the bit that truly impressed me the most because it makes so damn much sense even from a christian point of view:

...that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical;...

To put that in plain old, everyday American English, if god, who is perfectly capable of forcing every man to believe in him, doesn't do so, why should man, who is, by his very nature fallible, be allowed to.

This also addresses Faith Based initiatives: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical

If there was ever a more powerful and valid argument for the necessity of the separation of church and state, this is it. And it is written by a christian! By one of the original and most well-respected founding fathers of this country!! If anyone ever needs an argument for the "This is a Christian Country" line, this is it!!! If Jefferson knew "under god" was in the pledge of allegience he would have a heart attack, let alone that there is such a christian resistance to taking it out.

I am still working on my rant but this was so cool I had to run right over and put it in. I'm going to read lots more Thomas Jefferson too. :oD

posted by Kimber at 1:03 PM :: ~#~

Monday, March 29, 2004

CNN.com - Woman cleaning house shoots baby dead - Mar 28, 2004

You know...If there had been a gun lock on this gun... Or if they hadn't had a gun in the FIRST PLACE!!!....

But here is what burns my cookies... According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) "...To compare patterns and the impact of violent deaths among children in the United States and other industrialized countries, CDC analyzed data on childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death in the United States and 25 other industrialized countries for the most recent year for which data were available in each country (4). This report presents the findings of this analysis, which indicate that the United States has the highest rates of childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death among industrialized countries. "

Now where are the so-called "Pro Life"-ers here? Where are the "Protect the un-born" supporters? Here are the already born being killed everyday by guns!!!!!! Is a fetus' right to be born and a person's right to bear arms more important than a 1 year old's right not to get shot in her own HOME!?!?!?!?!?! Why are you willing to storm the capital building and camp out in front of family clinics to save a cluster of cells that has no feelings but when it comes to an 8 year old beeing shot in the face on his own street in Philadelphia, there isn't even a peep. No moral outrage at this wonderful potential snuffed out in it's very beginnings. No blood being thrown on the gun makers, dealers, or the NRA members who pay off the government to keep these abominations of violence on the streets!!!

Just another evidence of the hypocrisy rife in the entire conservative, pro-life, religious right infrastructure.

posted by Kimber at 11:04 AM :: ~#~

Bush Campaign Blasts Kerry's Bible Quote

Oh what a beautiful way to start the day and set the stage for the rant I have been working on. I tell ya.

``The Scriptures say, what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?'' Kerry said. ``When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the
works of compassion?''

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry's comment ``was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack.''

Kerry told worshippers in the largely black congregation that the country's leadership has served the privileged while ignoring people across America who live in neighborhoods like theirs.

The man can't STAND it that people would call him on the fact that he is using this "Praying President" "Compassionate Conservative" crap as a smoke screen. Even christians say he isn't living according to the teachings of christ!!!! And in view of this quote and the (over)reaction to it from the administration I would say they are very well aware of that fact and are just living in terror of the time their "Blind Faith" I'll-follow-him-because-he-follows-god posse realize it too.

It's a thing of beauty. More later.

posted by Kimber at 8:21 AM :: ~#~