The public bashing of Joe Ricketts in a free society

I think it’s time to end the public bashing and shaming of Joe Ricketts.

Islam is not a race; it is a religion.  To call him a racist for having problems with Islam is irresponsible. 

Islam is a religion that has been around for almost 1500 years.   If that is not a proper subject of discussion or criticism in a free society, then our society is no longer free.  And Ricketts’ comments were not even public comments.

 

If we are to be condemned publicly for things we say in private, then indeed we are no longer a free country.

today's newspaper and today's society

I saw 4 articles in the paper today (May 9) that spoke volumes about what kind of society we have become today, and it’s not pretty.  At least in my mind.

The headline, the most important story of the day, was about someone who made a hand signal that was deemed to be offensive and hateful.  This person had to be banned from Wrigley Field for life. 

I’m going to guess that this person, if he was indeed a hater, continues to be a hater after the ban.  As a society, we can’t fix hatred as we currently conduct it, so we just ban various expressions of it and somehow we pretend that we fixed the problem.

Then there was an article about a police officer who touched a woman on the butt, gave two women hugs, and a third he actually held her wrist and raised her arm, all without the women’s consent.  And for this he was charged with three felony counts of official misconduct and one felony count of aggravated battery?  Really? 

Reading the whole story, I would say the man could be fired for conduct unbefitting a police officer.  He clearly intimidated the women without just cause. 

I’m not minimizing sexual misbehavior it, but our society has exaggerated it beyond any norm of common sense

Which brings us to the neverending Russell Addison saga.  He was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife a long time ago.  Why is the date important?  Because if he had broken the law, that should have been resolved by now.

 

It seems domestic violence is the new unpardonable sin, and Russell Addison must be punished forever, or at least until he loses any chance of making a career from the one thing he is good at.  Is that the goal here?

And lastly there is, again, Joe Ricketts, blasted again, because he thinks Islam is a danger to Western Civilization.  You may disagree with that assessment, but you’re wrong to try to shame him with such words like bigot, racist, or Islamophobe. 

Is there a common theme here?  I would say yes.  Our society has elevated certain values beyond what they should be, and then it quickly and severely seeks to punish the offenders, but it is incapable of solving the underlying problems.  It just tries to stifle any expression of it and thinks we’re a better society for it.

We don’t know how to teach love instead of hate.  We don’t know how to teach kindness and respect for women, only the need for consent.  We don’t know how to forgive people.  We will dig things up from the past and never expect a person could ever change.  And we try to shame people we disagree with without trying to understand what they are saying.  We need to do better as a society.

Suicides in Kids

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for U.S. teens (Study: Kids’ suicides spiked after Neflix’s ’13 Reasons,’ Chicago Sun-Times, May 8). 

The article didn’t have much to say what we can do about this except starting a conversation and encouraging adults to connect with young people.  Ask them how they are coping with the ups and downs of life.

And then what do you tell them?

We have been told for years that we are a secular country that can’t discuss religion in public for risk of offending someone or causing anyone to think that our government might have a recommendation here.

The fact is that our country was founded on Christianity.  Yes, it’s true.  The Declaration of Independence says that our Founders wanted to create a new country founded on 5 beliefs, one of which is that God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  The other four are important, but this is clearly the linchpin.

But the belief that God gave unalienable rights to human beings is unique to Christianity.  Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights you don’t have the United States of America.

But as for 13 year olds who might be considering suicide, I would think it is a lot better to tell them that they are uniquely created by God in God’s image and that God loves them more than they will ever know or understand than that human life is an accident of nature, and that people are nothing more than chemical reactions. 

We need to restore our country to its founding roots, first to restore us to what we were created to be as a country, and to restore our people to wholeness where they can find value in their own lives and the lives of others.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Have you noticed?  Everything Congress wants to do has to be comprehensive.  If a bill is less than a thousand pages, it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble.

There are a number of problems with this approach:

1)         Few people read the whole bill.  Just too long, and there is never enough time to do it.

2)         When a bill is this long, how can you debate it?  You can’t.  There are just too many issues that need to be discussed, and there isn’t enough time to do it.

3)         You end up with a lot of things you don’t like.  They call it compromise.  I call it chicanery, or just another form of deception.  I see it a lot in local politics.  You want five, so you ask for ten.  They give you your five, and everybody is happy.   Except that you didn’t want that five in the first place, but you felt you had to do it as a compromise just to get something that you wanted. 

If all this seems a suitable way to do business in government, please, go do something else. 

You don’t trade things you don’t want to get things you do.  You debate each item on its own merits.  Bills should be short enough to read and to debate.

Having said that, there is an issue that can and should be resolved in a similar manner:  DACA.

And here’s the offer:  We will allow all those people who have been brought here as children by parents who entered the country illegally to become legal residents with a path to citizenship under these conditions:

1)         This offer will not apply to anyone who enters the country after this offer is made public.

2)         The border must be secured first.  If the Democrats have a better plan than the President, then we give them, say, four months to do it.  The time is negotiable.  They don’t need to build anything, so it shouldn’t take that long.

 

If the border is not secure in that time, then the President gets full funding for his way of securing the border.

3)         Any person who receives permanent legal status will count against the total number of legal immigrants we allow into the country.  A highly qualified immigrant from another source will take precedence over a less qualified DACA recipient.

4)         All DACA recipients will be screened individually for health, criminal background, and functionality.  Meaning, will they be an asset to our country or a liability?  We should have a right to refusal.

The Bigger Problem with a Graduated Income Tax that Nobody is Talking About

Do you shop at 4 different grocery stores, because one has cheaper milk and another has cheaper produce?  Does it bother you that the rich pay the same as you for a gallon of milk?

What?  Oh, you hadn’t thought of that?

Everything in life costs the same to everybody except it seems for government.  Here they want to charge you according to what they think you can afford. 

So everything in life is a heavier burden to pay the lower your income is.  A hundred-dollar food bill hurts you more if you’re making $400 a week than if you were making $800 a week. 

So while this is a reality in every area of life, the government of Illinois wants to change this with regard to taxes.  Five per cent of your income for taxes is a heavier burden to bear the less money you make.  For a richer person, it’s more of a minor inconvenience.

There is a problem here though. 

When we have a graduated income tax, the government decides how much of our own money we get to keep.  The government decides if you have made enough money.  The government decides if you have too much money.  The government acts as if the money belongs to them, and they decide how big your allowance will be.

We have turned freedom on its head, and it’s no longer We the People whom the government serves, but it is we who serve the government. 

We are slowly, gradually giving away our freedoms to the government, but because it is happening slowly, nobody is alarmed, nobody is concerned, it all seems so inevitable.

government involvement with businesses

The Chicago Tribune printed a letter (May 6) which it clearly endorsed that advocated that government tell businesses how to run their business.  No, it wasn’t a government mandate yet on the day-to-day operations of businesses, but the writer believes the government has the right and the duty to require Illinois-based companies to put more women and minorities on their corporate boards.

Is there a problem with this?  Well, yes.

I can think of several. 

First of all, the article asserts that corporate board diversity is good for business, and we need a law to see that they do it.  If it is good for business, you really think they don’t want to do it because they don’t like women or minorities?  Or do you think they just don’t know it’s good for them, and they need the government to do for them what they are unable to do for themselves?

A business has no guarantee of a future.  It must constantly evaluate what it’s doing and adapt to changing circumstances to stay in business.  And the government thinks it knows what’s best for the companies, something they just didn’t think of before, or just rejected against their better judgment, because of what, prejudice? 

What makes people in government so much smarter than the people who are running the businesses on how to run a business? 

And, secondly, it’s not the place of government to meddle in private businesses.  More than that, government doesn’t have the right to meddle in a private business.  [The article specifically mentions publicly owned businesses, as if that should make a difference.]  If a business is breaking a law, selling unsafe products, or making employees work in unsafe conditions, then enforce the law.  But then, of course, don’t just make laws where you can meddle in someone’s business. 

Businesses start when people with ideas invest money in a new enterprise.  Eighty per cent of new businesses fail, and there is no money-back guarantee.  And even when a business succeeds, as in, makes a profit, expands, and becomes established, it has no guarantee how long it will be in business.  The last thing a business needs is someone who is not a part of the business telling them how to run their business. 

If government were a business, it would have been out of business a long time ago.  What makes them think they can tell somebody else how to run a business?

We are a nation of immigrants. So what exactly does that mean?

If you ever get into a discussion about immigration or read an article about it, you will soon encounter the expression:  We are a nation of immigrants.

 

The question has to be asked: Just what exactly does that mean?

To me, it can only mean one of three things. 

1)         We are a nation built on the premise that we invite everyone to come here, and our nation continually evolves as everyone from all over the world contributes their own unique perspectives to the whole. 

The problem with this is that you would expect something like this to be spelled out in our founding documents.  It’s an interesting idea, but where did it come from?  It’s a statement that goes to the heart of what America is, so you need to have some government founding document to support that.  There is nothing in the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, or the Declaration of Independence that gives any clue to such a concept.

2)         The second option is the idea that the only true Americans were the Indians who lived here prior to the arrival of the Europeans.  Anyone else who came here plus all their descendants are all immigrants.

OK, but this was an English colony for 150 years prior to the Revolution.  I don’t know how many people from around the world wanted to flock to an English colony.  Then the Founders went to war with England in order to form a new government.  Well, what exactly was this country that they went to war in order to be able to create?  Was it a nation where everyone would be encouraged to come here and bring their culture so we can create a culture that combines the best of all of them?

If it was, I would think it would say so somewhere.  So what do the founding documents actually say what our country is all about?  See the third option.

3)         The third option, which does explain the statement, is that our nation was unique among the nations, and it was attractive to millions of people who then wanted to come here.  They wanted what we had and knew that we welcomed new people.

But what exactly was it that we had?

What we had were unalienable rights.  And this came from the Bible and the moral code necessary for having a country where everyone had unalienable rights also came from the Bible.  You cannot have great freedom without great personal moral responsibility. 

So the freedom is what attracted the millions of people to come here, and when they came, we taught them the founding principles and the moral code.

We do neither today.  So frankly I would like to see a pause or a significant slowdown on immigration until we get our house in order.