Ideology vs Common Sense

Today is All Saint's Day (for you Catholics out there) and that means we have made it past another Halloween and are rushing headlong (54 shopping days) toward Christmas. In addition, the assault on fun holidays now shift toward the yuletide. For the past week, I've heard about Wiccans bitching because somebody put up an ugly witch. I've heard Sean Hannity (jokingly, I think) explaining that Halloween is bad because it reinforces the liberal ideology of begging for stuff. I've seen slutwear costumes for 4-year-olds. And then there's the whole unsafe products scare thanks to good ol' China. And of course, don't forget the school stupidity, either banning sweets, or costumes that might be construed as condoning something that resembles violence (i.e. any plastic weapons or severed anything), or the whole holiday because some whiny parent has a mindless obsession with stamping out fun in the name of their religion or ideology or personal issue. Whatever happened to the good old days when all you had to worry about was an occasional razor blade in a cookie or getting caught by the cops when you were busy egging the house where they hand out a pencil with a bible verse instead of caaaaaaandy? It's a holiday where a kid can dress up weird, maybe with a plastic axe in their head and copious amounts of blood, go get candy, and act stupid for the night. And we adults try to drag our bullshit into this fun far too often. I mention Christmas, because the fight over everything that might mean something has begun. I think there's an episode of South Park that covers it best. As for me, I'm sure I'll have something to say about it before I get wasted on eggnog.

Unfortunately, we are now a culture that values spewing out political ideology and lawsuits more than the use of the human brain. For everything that may bring joy, or peace, or even solace, somebody has to come along with a sign or a lawyer and piss on it. A perfect example is the Westboro Baptist Church in Maryland. This is the bunch that goes to the funerals of fallen soldiers wielding signs like "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags." Their excuse is that they believe the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq are a punishment from God because the U.S. is tolerant toward homosexuality. Thankfully, a Maryland judge awarded $11 million the father of a fallen hero whose funeral was violated by these morons. They have the right to their opinion and, under the first amendment, the right to spew it out there, but the whole concept of rights derive from the simple idea that your rights end when they violate someone else's rights. I guess these faith nazis forgot why they have their freedom, though. It's because young men go off and die to secure their rights, gay, straight, or otherwise.

Simply put, these are examples of people taking their ideas and shitting on our right to live the way we want because they have a MESSAGE to get out there. If they used their brains instead of drinking the kool-aid and marching lockstep in mindless intolerance, then we'd have time to pay attention to something important, or Britney Spears. But that's another post....