Dear Friends,
Just a note to let you know that I’ve posted a short essay on my second blog, Matters of Conscience, which has been happily inactive for some time now. If you’re interested in my thoughts on politics, please follow the link.
Peace,
John Coleman
We We We Could Hold Hands
I’ve been sad off and on for a month now, but let’s not dwell for long on why. Let’s just say that the land I love is different now. Values, principles and manners that ground life and give it sweetness have been flogged, and I’m confused. What rules will we live by from here on? And will these rules call forth our best, not our worst?
If you can’t imagine what’s got me down these days, reading further will be a waste of time. But if you sense where I’m coming from, please accept one premise: You don’t need to agree with the reasons for my grief to accept it as valid.
The master teaches the disciple. Lesson: Lick the frosting off first if that’s what you like.
If you can appreciate the distinction I’m making, you might also be interested in a chilly, rainy walk I took with my grandson Cole a couple weeks ago.
My mission was to occupy the three-year-old with sparks flying from under his sneakers so that Grandma Kathy and son-in-law Matt could do home repair and daughter Elena could mind grandson #2, Killian.
Cole and I were supposed to go to the corner and back, but when we got there, he pointed to the next corner and said, “I I I want to go to there.” (Cole’s speech can’t keep pace with his brain, so he repeats the subject until the rest of the sentence reaches his tongue.)
Sure, why not? When we reached the next corner, he pointed across the street and repeated his previous request. I could see his point. West 4th Street beyond Beverly Drive is missing some sidewalk, giving the passage a winding charm.
“But, Cole,” I said, “that’s across the street. We can’t go there.”
He thought for a few seconds, then looked at me: “But we we we could hold hands.”
“Ah ha,” I thought, “school is in session.” That’s how being a grandfather is for me. I’ve learned to recognize instantly when Cole has something to teach his lazy Pop, and his instruction is always edifying.
So off we went, looking both ways, his cold little hand in mine. He had tree climbing on his mind, but the neighborhood maples are matriarchs that haven’t had branches or footholds within reach for decades.
I explained and explained, the mist puffing from my mouth. “They’re too big, Cole. There’s nothing for you to hold on to.”
Finally, good sense caught up to me. “Okay, pal, give this one a try.”
He ran to the rooty base of a smooth-barked giant shiny from the weather. As he hugged the trunk, he was as confident in his ability to succeed as I am when approaching a cashier to pay for a loaf of bread. No sweat.
He rubbed around to check for some advantage and marched as if the wood might reach out to him as a staircase.
If there were nothing else in the world to behold, this face would teach me more than I need to know.
To Cole’s credit, no fussing he made. A concrete telephone pole fifty of his rapid mini-strides away provided another option. “I I I could climb that.”
“You think so?” I lilted.
“Yeah!” he said. I must say, my grandson makes that word into a one-syllable hoedown. His yee dances in the clouds, and his ahhhh takes its sweet time landing.
Alas, same result, followed by the same okey-dokey shrug.
Our next stop was a pile of pumpkins Cole insisted was a fire hydrant. I didn’t argue. What he proposed was fine with me.
Even validictorians get pooped out, though, so I tempted Cole to head back home with the prospect of spotting turkeys on South Shore drive, where hens and gobblers mill about the yards of Erie’s rich folk.
Not quite there yet, he spotted an old guy bundled within an inch of his life and riding a zero-turn mower. “I I I want to see.”
Well, certainly. We stood on the boulevard, Cole in awe over the machinery, me wondering about the enterprise of getting rained on, running over wet leaves and turning pirouettes. But maybe a man in layers of well-worn gray and earmuffs also had something to teach me.
He parked, hopped to the ground and walked our way, arms swinging akimbo.
Cole froze at the sight. I held his hand again.
“You can cut through my yard,” the man said, “and take my steps down to the lake.”
That was the last thing I expected to hear, as owners on South Shore have the reputation of being grouchy toward trespassers. I guess you just don’t know the truth about people until you know them.
We said thanks anyway and waved goodbye, off to find birds.
I used to understand that no journey from A to B with a little boy could ever be direct, but I had forgotten. Cole reminded me by insisting on bending through the undergrowth and shrubbery rather than sticking to the sidewalk.
He was having fun trespassing, and I didn’t really care if we got hollered at. (It’s taken me five decades to adopt such a criminal attitude.)
Of course, we didn’t get chased off. We didn’t see any turkeys, either, but Cole jumped off of low stonework a few times. His wide eyes told me he knew the miracle of flight.
I’m not going to lie, I was glad for class dismissal when we got back home. My cheap black sneakers with elastic at the instep were soaked.
Whenever you’re ready to teach me, Killian, I’ll be ready.
I want to be honest about something else, too. Years ago, as a young man, I wouldn’t have figured a walk with a red-headed boy could lead me to a better place. I would have considered the notion mushy.
Still, being a Pop will have everything to do with how I pass through this season’s mournful valley and grow as a man committed to kindness and compassion. Call this truth what you will.
My grandsons have the wisdom I need. I can feel it. Until their next lesson, I’ll use what Cole taught me on our walk in the rain.
I’ll I’ll I’ll remember that we can hold hands, climb even when the effort makes scant sense, and look for teachers who spin like fools.
Most of all, I I I won’t give up on love.
American Lament
Dear Friends,
I just posted an essay called “American Lament” on my buzzkill of a second blog, Matters of Conscience. This primary blog, A Napper’s Companion, will probably be quiet a little longer–until I can write about beauty again.
I alert my Nappers to this lament because I know some of you will be interested. But I’m not encouraging or asking anybody to read. This was something I felt compelled to write.
Peace and love,
John
Grandson Cole
Dear Friends,
I’ve written a letter to my daughter that some of you might appreciate and posted it on my other blog, Matters of Conscience. Although what I have to say is ultimately hopeful–I think!–it’s dark enough that I don’t want it casting gloom here on A Napper’s Companion.
Please click here if you would like to read the letter.
Peace, love and best,
John
Elena and Killian–in his Halloween viking fur!
Dear Friends:
I’ve been thinking for a while of starting a second blog in order to keep my buzzkill social and political posts from skunking up A Napper’s Companion. Today I finally took the leap and set up Matters of Conscience.
It’s a work in progress, so if you’re interested in reading, please be patient as I work out the kinks. If you’re not interested, then please know that I value your opinions and made this move especially for you.
You may notice that I removed a couple of posts from this blog and sent them to the new digs. If you’ve been meaning to check out a post and can’t find it here, please try Matters of Conscience.
Peace and love,
John
The “cover” photograph for Matters of Conscience
Dear Friend:
If you came here looking for my defense of Hillary Clinton, I’ve moved it to my new blog, Matters of Conscience. Please follow the link to get there.
Peace and best,
John
Yesterday at 5:35 p.m. I lay down in my air conditioned bedroom, set the iPhone alarm for 6:30, and closed my eyes. Naps after 5:00 are rare because they can mess with night sleep, but I was tired, boss, dog tired. On top of all the usual bothers that wear a soul out, a catchy promise had been attacking me repeatedly: no boots on the ground—namely, Syrian ground. Please, enough with the no boots on the ground. Shut up! I preempted the alarm at 6:27 and got up.
A perfect addition to the “boots on the ground” campaign. (Credit: Catherine Leblanc)
For the record, I’m for putting boots on Syrian ground, millions of them if that would solve the toxic problem. I don’t know the specifications of combat boots these days, but let’s start with a million of those. We should also have a million of those trendy powder puff boots girls now wear even with shorts. If the ground is going to be dusty, a couple million should be cowboy boots. To jazz things up, I’d like to see 750k red stiletto boots. What the hey?
I love the idea of boots in the Middle East, but if we put any soldiers in them, I’m slipping on my old guy gardening sneakers and marching with a “Make Love, Not War” placard. No boots on the ground is horse crap for two reasons: 1.) Yes, it’s fun to say, especially if you add a cackle and W-style grin. But we’re not talking about boots; we’re talking about human beings. So stop calling them boots. It’s like calling a woman a skirt. 2.) Remember H. W.’s “Read my lips. No new taxes”? Careful what you promise. How wise is it to rain Tomahawk missiles on Bashar al Assad while assuring him that you won’t follow up with troops if he doesn’t get the message—even if you don’t intend to? In football terms, quarterbacks shouldn’t telegraph their passes.
I propose a new promise in place of the boots deal: No Tomahawks in the sky. I voted for Barack Obama and generally support him, but come on, let’s get a clue. Expecting violence to promote peace is madness. My astute ten-year-old neighbor Patrick, who has Down’s syndrome and doesn’t bother with state-of-being verbs, describes how well shock and awe ends conflict: It not working!
Credit: blog.orlandoweekly.com
Photographs of dead Syrian kids make lots of us want to take a vintage tomahawk to Bashar al Assad and company. I can even understand those who say in frustration, “Just bomb them off the map, all of them,” though this is a curious response to indiscriminate gassing in which children are collateral damage.
Just as America’s collective outrage twelve years ago at precisely this time was warranted and righteous, so too Assad’s saran gas ought to have us bloodshot with anger. If we want to make ourselves less pissed off, then bombs and boots might do some good. But if we want to make the world more peaceful, then we have to find within ourselves forms of bravery and valor that at first glance look like impotence.
You’ll ridicule me all the way to Damascus, but I believe an invasion of presence would be a much more effective response to Assad than weaponry. Instead of launching missiles, what about sending citizens? I’m not kidding. Let’s not put boots on the ground, let’s put loafers and sandals. Instead of guns, let’s carry cell phones and camcorders. Instead of Kevlar, let’s wear luau shirts.
Birmingham, 1963. (Credit: Charles Moore)
Our mission? If we really want to stop tyrants from massacring their people with gas and machetes—I mean want to stop them enough to risk personal harm—then I bet thousands of civilians from dozens of countries standing beside vulnerable children and their parents and grandparents would deter brutality much more decisively than military action. Obviously, the danger would be enormous, but nothing magnifies the rotten face of violence like witnesses and testimony. Remember the fire hoses of Birmingham? Or Gandhi’s march on the Dharasana Salt Works? Mindful, strategic non-violence can be effective.
The trouble is, peaceful invaders have to be willing to inhale saran gas. Or maybe we can just bring gas masks for everybody. Forgive me; I haven’t fleshed out all the details of this campaign.
Somebody has to wear the boots. (Credit: Tim Wimborne)
Go ahead, call me naïve, a crazy pinko. But I challenge people of conscience to speculate about the pragmatism and morality of a Syrian invasion of presence. How can the United States and other countries best demonstrate that Bashar al Assad’s use of chemical weapons on his own people won’t be tolerated? What speaks with the greater clarity and wisdom: Tomahawk cruise missiles and no boots on the ground or thousands of courageous warriors armed with their eyes and voices? My money’s on the eyes and voices.
Blogger’s Note: Winston Churchill sang the praises of blessed oblivion (a nap) in the afternoon. Of course, not all oblivion is blessed. Some oblivion is deplorable, and some naps are a dereliction of duty. Some naps are insanity. Yesterday the United States Senate proved that it continues to be taking a long, nightmarish, irresponsible nap when it failed to pass even the most timid gun control legislation: tightening of background checks and limits on high capacity magazines. I finished the essay that follows about two months ago. It articulates my frustration with what I see as a root cause of America’s growing litany of massacres. What I have to say doesn’t deal with napping. I’m talking about sanity and our national inability to practice it.
The Monsters, the Lunatics, and Me
In late January of this year, a boy’s stunned, pale face greeted me on msn.com along with this headline: “Teen: horror movie inspired crime.” “Here we go again,” I thought, but clicked on horror anyway. If you don’t want to feel sick, don’t read on.
Photo Credit: jiji-bean
On October 3, 2012, Jake Evans (17) killed his sister Mallory (15) and mother Jami. In a four-page confession, Jake explained that he’d watched Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween several times earlier in the week, and the movie got him thinking. “While watching it I was amazed at how at ease the boy was during the murders and how little remorse he had. Afterward, I was thinking to myself it would be the same for me when I kill someone” (dailymail.co.uk). He planned to use a knife, but he thought some more: “If I were to kill my mom and Mallory, I wouldn’t want them to feel anything, so I decided to kill them both with the .22 revolver I stole from my Grandpa.”
Since Jake’s aim was sloppy, his sister died hard. He told the 911 dispatcher, “This is really going to mess me up in the future” and “I’m really worried about, like, nightmares and stuff like that. Are there any times [sic] of medications, and stuff?” Jake ends his written confession by summarizing all his stuff: “I know now though that I’m done with killing. It’s the most dreadful and terrifying thing I will ever experience. And what happened last night will haunt me forever” (dailymail.co.uk).
Jake still has family left, though he doesn’t want to see them. His father and two other sisters weren’t at home at the time of the killings. Red-headed Mallory looked like a cross country runner you’d see featured in the hometown newspaper. Jami appeared precisely forty-eight years old, probably wished God had given her more or a chin, and like many of us in middle age, carried a few surplus pounds; same with her husband. Jake looks like a lanky kid who’d help push your stalled car to the berm and say, “No problem.” His surviving sisters look like peas from the family pod. In short, the Evans were normal-looking, well-groomed white folk from the affluent Fort Worth suburb of Aledo.
Of course, something was amiss, with Jake if with nobody else. He had breathtaking mental illness. And yet, his 911 call and the last lines of his confession demonstrate a mindset that’s yanking America along as if by a nose ring: shooting his mother and sister was “dreadful and terrifying” for [Jake]; his sister’s screaming is really going to mess [Jake] up in the future; the experience “will haunt [Jake] forever.” The kid’s narcissism is glaring, but if we think the germ that was lethal in him isn’t making America sick, we’re kidding ourselves.
Eric Harris’s Senior Picture (Photo Credit: wikipedia.com)
Adam Lanza, James Holmes, Jared Loughner, Sueng-Hoi Cho, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold: the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre isn’t the only American who’s called them monsters and lunatics. It’s hard to blame folks for using these words, resonating as they do with our collective rage and dismay. The trouble with such labels, however, is they provide cover for us law-abiding citizens as we ignore our own inconspicuous lunacy. If we can put all Auroras at the feet of sick monsters with assault weapons, the rest of us can give ourselves a clean bill of health. Right?
I don’t think so. We Americans are rights junkies. Not all of us, of course, not even most of us, but the news is packed with stories of people who do lousy things simply because it’s their right. Many would argue that this addiction is healthy, even patriotic—Don’t Tread on Me! But rights, like all wholesome things, are best consumed in moderation.
Pizza! (Photo Credit: John Xydous)
Admit it: American’s don’t do moderation very well. We binge on practically everything. According to theweek.com, Americans consume 36,500 acres of pizza each year—that’s 1,327 Ellis Islands of pies; solutiondown.com spins the numbers differently, allotting each of us 23 pounds of pizza annually; we like fries even more, 29 pounds yearly. And we can’t get enough of ourselves either. Smartmoney.com notes that in 2010 Americans spent $33.3 billion on cosmetics and other beauty products; oprah.com has us spending $10,677,415,674.00 on cosmetic procedures that same year. It’s an odd curse: we eat like pachyderms, but can’t stop looking in the mirror. Is it fair to say we Americans can be stuck on ourselves?
In The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude, Dr. P. M. Forni of Johns Hopkins University explains what happens when stuck on myself evolves into sucks to be you: “When the healthy pursuit of self-interest and self-realization turns into self-absorption, other people can lose their intrinsic value in our eyes and become mere means to the fulfillment of our needs and desires.”
Jake Evans’ confession and 911-transcript are part of the story of extreme mental illness, but his me-me-me thinking poses questions to the rest of us garden-variety neurotics: Has “the healthy pursuit of self-interest and self-realization” in America turned into “self-absorption”? And have other people lost “their intrinsic value in our eyes”? I think so and suggest that our narcissism has combined with a lust for individual rights to create a super virus. What we the people are allowed to do with constitutional protection has become what we should to do with a clear conscience. The result: our sense of individual rights has become perverted.
Most of the studies I’ve come across on the rise of narcissism pin the problem on young people, which may explain why some of the mass murderers of late are committed by males in their teens or early twenties. The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement by Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, which received lots of attention when it came out in 2010, claims that narcissism is as prevalent among college students as obesity. And according to the American Freshman Survey, published yearly by the Higher Education Research Institution at UCLA, narcissism among young people is at a fifty-year high (dailycaller.com). Like Dr. Jim Taylor, however, I think our problem cuts across age groups. In “Narcissism: On the Rise in America?” he writes, “The indifference, egotism, disrespect and lack of consideration that are central to narcissism are also reflective of the increasingly polarized and vitriolic tone of our current body politic, recent unethical corporate behavior, the rise in cheating among students in school and the gamut of bad behavior among professional athletes” (huffingtonpost.com).
Senator Dianne Feinstein (Photo Credit: SS&SS)
The statistics may say that young people are this country’s leading narcissists, but as Taylor suggests, you need only look around to see that all generations are getting in on the fun. And by fun I mean, morally scurvy behavior that’s technically legal. The United States of America is by definition a country of freedom, which means that people who exercise their rights without a sense of responsibility are protected. So be it. Telling a child he’ll never amount to anything is free speech. I don’t think you’re legally bound to correct the waiter or waitress who leaves that shrimp scampi off your bill. You can invest in a company that makes life a misery for its employees—it’s probably profitable. We can’t go ten minutes without tripping over a right.
Nancy Lanza was within her rights to amass the arsenal that her son put to sinister use. So were the Pennsylvanians who, according to pennlive.com, responded to Sandy Hook by purchasing 133,241 firearms in December of 2012 (versus 84,486 in December of 2011). No law stands in the way of Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween. Interested in making a great deal of money? Market a video game like Activision’s Call of Duty.
Call of Duty (Photo Credit: Farazsiyal)
There’s no proof that repeated viewings of Halloween enticed Jake Evans to kill his mother and sister. And while pilots frequently hone their skills on flight simulators, nobody can prove that Adam Lanza’s endless hours spent in his boy cave pretending to cut enemies down in Call of Duty had anything to do with his massacre of the innocents in Newtown (nypost.com). If you believe Wayne LaPierre, the solution to gun violence is more guns; all teachers ought to be packing.
Of course, in the middle of acres of rights exercised out of simple greed and selfishness, serious artists take heat for legitimately challenging us. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ was protested by theologically constipated Christians, but I found the film thoughtful and daring. Robert Mapplethorpe’s erotic photography unsettles me, but I suspect that was part of his purpose. Defending his “Piss Christ” photograph, Andres Serrano challenges Christians to consider the full horror of the crucifixion (guardian.co.uk.com). Anne Sexton’s poetry is graphic, but if ever I trusted that a poet was burning to get human beings to acknowledge her particular experience, I trust Sexton.
Barbara Hershey and Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ (Photo Credit: terminator)
I trust the authenticity of Scorsese, Mapplethorpe, et. al., but I don’t trust those who accept no responsibility in consideration of their right to free speech. That doesn’t mean I’m about censoring them. But trust them, respect them? No. (Point of clarification: if you could walk into a movie theater, kill twelve people and wound fifty-eight others with a poem, I’d favor some poem control. But the poets and serious artists I know aren’t the shrill voices in America’s rights-binge debate, and Mapplethorpe’s photographs, as far as I know, never led anyone to massacre others with whips and fists.)
Hadiya Pendleton (Photo Credit: treal magazine)
For reasons I don’t understand, reading about Mallory and Jami Evans so soon after Sandy Hook has proven my tipping point, my enough moment of dismay. Since I first saw Jake Evans, another young face has looked out from msn.com. Somebody please show me a sweeter-looking kid than Hadiya Pendleton, the fifteen-year-old Chicago honor student who was shot and killed days after performing with her school band at Obama’s inauguration. Michael Ward (18) and Kenneth Williams (20) apparently thought Hadiya was part of a gang trespassing on their turf, so Ward fired into her group of friends huddled in a bus stop, and Williams drove the getaway car (usnews.nbcnews.com).
It’s actually odd that these gangbangers were caught. According to nation.time.com, “In 2012, 506 people were killed in [Chicago]. Only 25% of those murders were solved.” Obviously hundreds of people with faces less lovely than Pendleton’s are being cut down, plenty of them kids who aren’t in school bands. And the trouble is, so many are dying coast to coast that we the people are at our wits’ end. It’s been about three months since Adam Lanza opened fire, and slate.com estimates that another 2,605 people have been shot and killed. (Update: as of April 19, 2013, the number stands at 3,526.)
The Violence Policy Center, a pro-gun control organization, notes that in 2012, there were “31,326 gun-related deaths nationwide” (slate.com). That’s 10.9 of every 100,000 citizens. So what explains the roughly 1,119 Sandy Hooks of various denominations we had in the United States in 2012? Nobody seems willing to contemplate, much less admit, any personal responsibility for or even indirect participation in the carnage.
Don’t blame the NRA. Wayne LaPierre and company are only protecting Americans’ Second Amendment rights. In 1999, the NRA ran an ad in USA Today stating, “We believe it’s reasonable to provide for instant background checks at gun shows, just like gun stores and pawn shops.” Now it’s Charlton Heston all the way: you can have my gun when you pry it “from my cold, dead hands.”
Charlton Heston (Photo Credit: devora.z)
Don’t blame James Wan, director of the 2004 film Saw. (In one scene, a young guy has sixty seconds to dig a key out from behind his eyeball or a mask of nails called a Venus Fly Trap will snap shut, with unfortunate results; I won’t ruin it for you.) Don’t be too hard on Tom Six for his 2009 First Amendment tour de force, The Human Centipede. (How are the three humans in this bug sewn together? Imagine the worst.) Rob Zombie was only commenting honestly when he said in a vanityfair.com interview, “I don’t think my movies have a lesson. Or if they do, I guess it’s that it’s a f—ed up world and you’re probably f—ed too.” Nobody in this genre of the film-making industry is at fault; watching folks lose their intrinsic value in tormented, demeaning ways can do viewers no harm.
Don’t blame Rockstar Games for producing Grand Theft Auto or Activision for Call of Duty or parents for letting their kids play with these killing simulators. The latter’s Modern Warfare 3 grossed $775,000 in its first five days on the shelves—that’s over ¾ of a billion sweet expressions of free speech (guardian.co.uk). And about the former, one video game enthusiast tells me that you—you being, say, an eleven-year-old boy—can hire a prostitute, have your way with her, shoot her, take your money back, then speed off to other adventures. No matter. The Entertainment Software Association assures us that “years of extensive research . . . has shown no connection between entertainment and real-life violence” (newyork.newsday.com). (So you don’t think I’m pretending to be guiltless, I’ve let violent games and movies into my home. I regret that.)
Photo Credit: Phil Renaud
Don’t blame citizens who reject outright the possibility that even the most miniscule limitations placed on weapons and magazines might save a life or two. Restrictions only punish law-abiding gun owners. Besides, any more gun control measures will shove America down a slippery slope, resulting in the Second Amendment falling off the constitutional cliff.
In short, as long as my DNA isn’t on the AR-15, I’m acquitted. As long as nobody can put me at the scene of the crime, I’m behaving like a responsible citizen. This is the epidemic logic of our time. It’s also the self-absorbed reasoning of a rights junkie.
It should not, however, be the reasoning of unselfish citizens of conscience. When deciding whether to exercise a right, I should consider how my constitutionally protected words or actions might impact others, whether I know them or not. Rights and responsibilities have to be held in healthy tension.
Bud McKelvey of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, strikes a nice balance. His February 7, 2013 letter to the editor of the Erie Times-News, two excerpts of which I share here, is encouraging: “When I bought my first pistol, I was told that there was a five-day waiting period before I could get my gun. The five days were to check my background. The exact words I told the gun dealer were ‘I don’t care if it takes you a month. I have nothing to worry about.’” And “I’m a firm believer in the Second Amendment, but when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they didn’t have weapons that could fire 600 rounds a minute, and at the time, the British had their soldiers quartered in the colonies. Naturally, they wanted everyone to be able to keep and bear arms. They didn’t mean for people to be able to slaughter their neighbors and groups of people.”
AR-15 Variants (Photo Credit: Arvin Banag)
Bud McKelvey understands that, to paraphrase an old high school Problems of Democracy teacher, his rights end where his neighbor’s nose begins. “And who is my neighbor?” It takes only a small leap of compassion to recognize that my neighbors live not only next door, but in Newtown and Aurora and beyond. “Am I my brother’s and sister’s keeper?” Bloody right I am! I envision the faces of my many friends and family members whose spiritual beliefs are all over the map, and while they may not agree entirely with my argument here, I bet they’d answer Cain’s question as I do. Most Americans probably would, too: I am my sister’s and brother’s keeper. If I have to ask whether somebody’s my neighbor, I already have the answer. Most Americans, not necessarily those with the loudest voices, know this.
At last, then, I land in a naïve, idealistic place. No matter what legislation sneaks through Washington, our body count will be disconcerting until our national rights binge abates. Before speaking freely, I ought to wonder whether my message might unnecessarily harm others. Before demanding unlimited access to weapons with frightening power, I could acknowledge that some limits are reasonable. It wouldn’t make for safe and sane roads if I could put a GE90-115B jet engine in my Mazda 4×4; a magazine with a 100-round capacity poses the same kind of hazard. Before doing anything at all, I should ask myself if my words or actions are in any way helpful, challenging, or constructive.
Patriotism (Photo Credit: TallestAmerican)
In land of the free and the home of the brave, our greatest patriots are often those who decide, for the sake of the common good, to refrain now and then from exercising their constitutional rights.
A Napper's Companion 