ANOTHER DAY - Ladyfisher - January 17, 2011

ANOTHER DAY

A week ago Saturday was just another day. Another catch-up weekend with lovely weather, time to get the chores done and hopefully spend a little time outdoors.

At the end of the day we came home and turned the evening news on.

Well said LF. Right on the money!

We'll put my dear and a big THANK YOU!

when the human race consisted of two people they (adam and eve) couldn't obey God's law. no way can billions be expected to obey God's law let alone those imposed by other humans. we've truly lost sight of judeo-christian beliefs when we seek revenge and blame rather than forgiveness.

Deanna, that was the finest editorial I have seen on the Tucson tragedy. Having spent more than 20 years as a copy editor/proofreader here in Florida, I have read the words of many a 'talking head'. You hit the nail precisely on its head when you suggested that what we need is self control. There is precious little of it in today's society - nobody wants to take responsibility for their own actions. Thank you for a delightfully well written piece.
Dispatchdave, Cape Coral, Florida

What happened in Tucson Arizona, is not something that is unexpected or unusual in todays worldwide society. Political assassination attempts, happen all over the World, the United States is not exempt from someone taking the law into their own hands, and creating mayhem, thinking they are justified in their actions.

Those of you who read the daily news reports in the local newspapers, know that violence is a give, at any time, and any place, with out cause or reason! It the events can happen any where, with no advance warning.

What happen in Tuscon, is just one of the symptoms of what has always been wrong in society. Individuals who think that they are allowed to take the law into their own hands, and dispensing their own form of justice out on those that they detest.

No law on our country's books, prevents these terrible situations from happening, and nothing can stop a person from their dastardly deed! The law can only prosecute and hold trials to determine the guilty or innocents of the person charged with the terrible crime.

What happened in Tucson, can happened any where at any time, and there is little that can be done to prevent the lone assassin from their mission. Only with everyone respecting everyone else's rights of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" spelled out in the "Declaration of Independence", and the reminder that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

SFC Steven H. McGarthwaite
U. S. Army, Retired, 1968 -1995

Deanna,

One of the things I noticed from the coverage of this tragedy is that Tuscon has its act together! AZ has been under a ton of political pressure lately from both inside and outside forces. It was a lightning rod waiting to be struck by everyone with an axe to grind. The worst of punditry and politicking was inevitible when the next major news event occurred.

But the emergency response network (bystanders, first responders, hospital, and law enforcement) performed beautifully. Tucson really does have a small town social fabric in spite of its size and complexity. Most of these folks responding to this crisis had just lost friends and neighbors in an unexpected horror. They rose to the challenge. Bravo! Right people, right place, right time, doing the right things. That's very rare in America nowadays!

Politicos always try to make hay while the sun is shining. They will dance on graves before the funeral is over. "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him," proclaimed Mark Antony to the Roman mob. They are shameless. They exist in all cultures and always have. Modern technology has given them a massive platform and unprecedented access to our lives. It was the President's recently-departed Chief of Staff who once advised, "Never let a crisis go to waste."

I think it was fairly obvious to most observers that it was the left side of American politics that immediately began using the shootings to attack their opponents, and that some of the conservatives they targeted were foolish enough to respond in kind. People see these sorts of things and they remember the general theme of who was naughty and who was nice. We'll see how all of that plays out in time. The gun-grabbers are getting nowhere on this one. The folks who want to lock up and/or medicate by force everyone whom they think acts a little "weird" are the dangerous ones right now! They may get some traction.

The so-called "intellectuals" in America have a very bizarre guilt complex. They seem to believe that any time something bad happens in the world it is somehow "our" fault, "we" should have prevented it, and "we" have to make some change in the way we live so that "something like this never happens again." They could use a healthy dose of "stuff happens." It's an amazing sort of arrogance that leads to such an over-developed sense social responsibility. And this over-developed sense of social responsibility necessitates a diminished sense of personal-responsibility, and the by-product is the erosion of liberty. They react this way to natural disasters resulting from earthquakes and weather! If they think "we" should be able to prevent that sort of stuff, they are certainly going to think we should be able to preempt any sort of negative human behavior. To think that way about either is extremely naive and arrogant. They could use a good dose of Judeo-Christian cosmology on that issue! Even the musician Bob Seger understands. He wrote the lyrics in the song Night Moves, when speaking of the romantic relationships between men and women, "Heaven opens up the door where angels fear to tread." And in the Book of Job God gave a pretty good lesson on man's capacities when he asked Job if he knew where the deer all laid down to give birth, if he could trace all of the lightning bolts across the sky, etc. He told Job that when he could do even ONE of these things that he would then have the right to challenge God's reasoning and/or motives. Whether or not we believe in the god of the Holy Bible, we could all do well to remember our place. Perhaps a good road trip to the Grand Canyon would help all of these folks. As Clint Eastwood said, "A man's gotta know his limitations."

The folks forming contemporary American thought are a bunch of yahoos. They've forgotten the basics and have their heads in the clouds. So they can't see straight. In the Book of Romans, Paul described such a scenario when he said, "And professing themselves wise they became fools."

Unfortunately, any time something like this happens, the fools crawl out of the woodwork to prove just how foolishly they can behave.

Well said, LF.
When I left South Africa in '85 we still had an hour of Bible study in school...everyday. It was the culture shock of culture shocks when I started my first day of school here in America, one I never got used to, sad indeed. It's terribly sad to me to see how our society has degraded itself to what it has become today, not that it's all bad, but there is such an easy sollution. It would be, however, an inconvenience to anyone with half a consience, because if they were to put God back into schools, people would have to hold themselves accountable for ALL their actions. Imagine that, I do all the time and wonder how much better things would be.

TT

What concerns me most is, Our country was founded on Christianity, thats our foundation, and whenever you tear out the foundation of something built, it collapses...If you don't think so, try it on your house sometime.

Well, you really don't have to dig very deep to realize we weren't founded on Christianity, per se. But we were definitely founded on a political philosophy that presupposed a strong moral and ethical social fabric rooted in Western thought, which is ethically dominated by Judeo-Christian values and cosmology (concept of reality). Most of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, various types of Christians in their religious backgrounds, but a few were atheists, a few key framers were Deists, a couple were Jewish, etc. Deists still basically believed in a Western concept of God. They just didn't believe he intervened in the lives of men or in nature. "The Great Clockmaker" is the phrase that gets used most often to explain Deism. He created it, wound it up, and then left it alone to run its course. Jefferson, the author of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was a Deist. But your point remains, however we refine the language.

You are indeed correct. When you rip any of the fundamental assumptions out of the equation of the American Experiment (as they called it), it begins to fail rather quickly. Several of the Founders wrote about these possibilities, too. Take an educated and informed electorate out of the equation and you have failure. Allow political parties to dominate governance and you have failure. Lose a strong moral fabric that keeps individual liberty restrained in its excesses and you have failure. They warned strongly against all of these, and we have raced down all three of these paths hell-bent for damnation.

I could not possibly agree with you more, Ma'am. People are not by nature all good, kind or sweet, and to takke away from that slender package any effort at a real morality is cultural suicide. It is hard to expect much when so much has been either removed or compromised in our society.