Tag Archives: The Audacity of . . . Stupidity

What, REALLY?

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Mitch McConnell,

the most recent face of resident evil since Dick Cheney left office, wants to have hearings on the meaning of “born” in the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. 

(See article http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gqnOBf_QRibbHZe0ieJDDRnvWxRgD9HC9ESG2).

Ok, my head is spinning.  Here’s a guy who says he thinks that the Constitution is sacrosanct.  Now he thinks we ought to INTERPRET this document? Ahhh, it is sacrosanct . . . . until it’s not.

WAIT, I get it.  The Constitution is crystal clear about an individual’s right to bear arms (see the muddy Second Amendment)

“Amendment II —  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Um, wait, doesn’t the Second Amendment mean that you can bear arms as part of a well regulated militia (i.e., sanctioned by a governmental entity)?

BUT Resident Evil finds it very confusing when it comes to the meaning of “born“:

“Amendment 14 Section 1: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.  No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Hmmm.  What is the plain meaning of this?  If you are born here, you are a citizen whose rights of citizenship may not be infringed upon.

Ok, this Amendment was not written by our Founding Fathers.  It was written in the aftermath of Civil War as a nation needed to heal and learn to be citizens of one nation for the common good and to protect the children of newly emancipated slaves.

So, we have to have hearings on what “born in the United States” means.  If McConnell and his ilk weren’t talking  about people’s lives and the very meaning of a free and open society, it would almost be a humorous riff on Bill Clinton’s “depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”. 

But it is not funny at all.

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Uproar over a mosque? Really?

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Why not a mosque near Ground Zero?

If we cannot separate out bad actors from an entire religion, then we are the evil bigots in the propaganda.

AND, we have to look in our collective mirror and see that we are not the people or nation of freedom and “ill-will-toward-none” that we would like to believe (and have others believe) we are.

Ok, so no mosque at Ground Zero.  Then what logically flows from that statement are:

  • All Oklahomans should be barred from national monuments because Timothy McVeigh, our HOMEGROWN terrorist, was from Oklahoma.  In fact, Oklahoma is so close to those other states (help me out here) that they may harbor terrorists or may have recruitment camps.  So, let’s ban them (once I look at a map and figure out who they are).  Also, are they practicing Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians or some other Protestant sect?  If so, then none of those churches can be erected near national monuments.  No, sirreeee.   [It would be kind of funny if only ashrams, synagogues, Sikh temples, Hindu temples and Buddhist temples could be built on Ground Zero.]
  • The good ol’ USA is a rogue nation.  We are the only country that has used nuclear weapons.  We have not renounced them (like New Zealand — ok, not a newsmaker, but a start).  And bombing Nagasaki after we obliterated Hiroshima makes Kim Jong Il seem like just another weird guy with a bad haircut, wearing woman’s sunglasses.
  • Lady Liberty,  the welcoming beacon in our Harbor, has to be renovated so she can raise one hand with a sign or she can fling people back out to sea (see video, too crazy:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BE6GyHcASE&feature=related) because we forget that EXCEPT for the Native Americans, whom we decimated under the theory of “Manifest Destiny” (oh, yeah, add GENOCIDE to our nuclear bad acts), we all descend from immigrants.

I am glad my grandparents and my mother never lived to see this day.  Their America was the beacon of hope and the fulfillment of their dreams.  To them, this was a great country where whoever you are and from wherever you came, you could make a life for your family.  Maybe people didn’t like them because they were Jews but people left them alone.

That was America.  This, this, this is a place I don’t know or understand.

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