I Agree With Aristotle.
Mamacita says: There are many things that are wrong with and in this country – many, many things. Open a newspaper, watch television, listen to the radio, surf around the blogosphere, pretty much all we hear about are the things that are wrong.
We SHOULD be hearing about them, too; if we don’t hear about them, we can’t work to make them right. One of the many things this country does do right is allow its citizens to talk about what it does wrong.
Making wrong things right is what we do here. It’s what this country was founded for. We’d still be a British colony if it wasn’t important for us to work hard to make wrong things right.
Any time more than four people get together for anything, one of them is going to want to do wrong. The other three have to help that one wrong person do right, but it actually goes deeper than that.
It has, sadly, become the responsibility of the other three to help that one person WANT to do right. Doing anything without understanding, and against one’s will, isn’t progress of any kind; doing anything without understanding, and against one’s will, is a kind of slavery. Uneducated people sometimes have to be dealt with in this way, and that is a shame, and that is also entirely their own fault. Everyone has access to education in this country. Some schools are better than others, but any of them will at least teach a child to read if that child lets it. and whether or not a child lets it is the responsibility of the child and the child’s family. A family that does not allow the school to teach its child to read is a bad, bad family.
This country has always valued education as the means to promote the understanding that would help a person realize that. It used to work, too, until education was forced to include things that the family unit is supposed to teach and provide, as well. We are fast becoming a welfare state, and that is a definite downgrade from being an education state.
And why is the family unit not providing and teaching what it’s supposed to provide and teach, these days? Most family still are, but many families prefer to mooch off the government rolls. They have chosen to give up their independence and become the permanent poor relations, supported by those citizens who do still work. This was supposed to be a temporary fix, and people are supposed to be just a little big ashamed of being in this position. Welfare is supposed to be a somewhat embarrassing short-term episode in a person’s life, preceding a wage-earning job and giving a worker some income while he/she is seeking full-time work. We’ve removed all the embarrassment in the name of self esteem, and that was a mistake.
But you really don’t want to get me started about the self-esteem movement. I consider it to be like most other movements: full of the same sort of fecal matter.
Every day, more and more people join the welfare rolls, and for many it’s not the temporary helping hand it was meant to be. For many, it’s now a way of life. Some people believe that the welfare way is a right, and other people SHOULD be supporting them, sometimes forever. This was not the intention of welfare. It was intended to be temporary. It was never meant to be permanent.
An uneducated, or undereducated population is a dangerous thing. It quickly becomes a parasite, not an asset, sucking the lifeblood out of resources that really ought to be aimed elsewhere.
Ronald Reagan, who was not perfect, but then, neither are any of us, said “We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.” In this, he was right.
This country was founded by hard workers. This country has, as one of its foundations, education for the masses. It’s there, for free, for anybody who lives here to take full advantage of. To become an adult in this country and still not know how to read and write and support oneself is a disgrace, and that disgrace is not the country’s disgrace; it is a personal disgrace. In other words, if you do/did not take advantage of the opportunity to go to school; if you let yourself grow up without acquiring a single useful skill; if you allowed yourself to become an adult and did not learn how to support yourself, shame on you. I can’t think of a worse epithet for you than that. I know that shame is now politically incorrect, but that’s ridiculous, as are most political correctness attempts. Without shame, many people will never make themselves get up, walk out the door, and start earning their living themselves. Parasites are ugly. Parasites add nothing; they only subtract. Parasites destroy beauty. Parasites steal from others to enhance themselves without effort.
Those who are able-bodied and able to work, should work, for to take charity when one is fully able to do without it is a shameful thing. NO job is too menial if you don’t have one. No job is too menial if one is truly determined to do what is right. And what is right is to support oneself and any dependents one has acquired along the way.
Some of our immigrant ancestors were doctors and lawyers and professors back in the old country; they came here and took jobs as janitors and scrubwomen so their children could have the benefits this country offered. And since their children learned to speak the language, their job horizons were brighter than those of their parents. It is still so, today. Those who are educated have more options. They deserve more, too.
People who choose to take charity when they are perfectly capable of getting up and getting a job are to be despised for the societal leeches that that are. For every adult who uses welfare money to buy cigarettes, there is a little child somewhere NOT getting milk because there wasn’t any more money. The degradation of these adults is earned, of their own free will and decisions, and they deserve every bit of the disgust they receive.
The people who are the true citizens of this country, the true patriots, are those who made sure they had marketable skills and the ability to read, write, and generally take care of themselves and of others.
There are many people living here who claim to hate this country, and who work to bring it further down. There are people living here who rejoice in the streets when bad things happen to this country. I suggest that these people leave and leave now, and live elsewhere and see if any other country would put up with their whines and violence and gleeful reactions when others get hurt.
Those who insist on living here, yet reject the education, the opportunities for supporting themselves, and who feel justified in spending other people’s hard-earned money, are not the true Americans. They are parasites, and they are killing the rest of us.
Yes, this country has many faults. I defy anyone to name any other country that would put up with some of yours, or mine.
Freedom. Independence. Education for the masses. Rights. Responsibilities.
That is what we are. Take advantage of these things, if you have the guts and the brains and the heart and the decency. Ignore them if you don’t. That’s the freedom part.
Understand, though, that the hardworking educated population is getting very tired of supporting those who choose not to work, choose not to be educated, and choose not to behave themselves properly. We are also very tired of supporting anyone who does not understand that the right to swing his fist ends where the other person’s nose begins.
And those who claim their rights had better be prepared to stand up to their responsibilities as well. You can’t have one without the other, and keep either for long.
This country has learned many lessons: slavery is gone, discrimination is legally gone, although many people still have some lessons to learn (EDUCATION! DECENT FAMILIES!) Europeans came here to an already populated country and took over, without regard for people who had lived here for hundreds of years and already had well-established civilizations. Think how you would feel if aliens landed in spaceships and took over this country, completely disregarding your prior claim to your home and demanding that you leave immediately so they might build their culture on top of yours, and labeling and treating you as some kind of violent savage if you protested and tried to defend your property?
The point is – and I do tend to ramble late at night and other times as well – we made, and make, mistakes. Big ones. We must use our education to help right those wrongs, and help the nation aim for other and better goals. Learning from the past is what educated people do; dwelling on the past, not so much.
Aristotle said, “Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men, as the living are to the dead.” He was right.
Those who care only about themselves are not much good in any other circumstance. People who become accustomed to getting something for nothing become pretty much useless, too.
We must all get up, get to work, get cracking, get learning, get smarter every day. When we stop learning, they might as well bury us, as Lucy Maude Montgomery once said. (Quick! What did she write?)
Nowhere in the world is there any other country as free as ours. Nowhere else can everybody be educated. Nowhere else can we all go where we want, when we want, wear what we want, say what we want. . . .
In some countries, even if you have the money you still can’t have some things or go some places; it’s all about social levels.
If I said we didn’t have social levels here, it would be a joke because everybody knows that we do, even though we’re not supposed to. But here, our social levels are pretty much determined and evaluated by our education and behavior, not who your daddy was, or wasn’t.
In this country, we have equality of opportunity. If you think we don’t, you aren’t looking hard enough. Opportunity does knock, but you have to be smart enough to answer the door when it does, and to recognize it for what it is when you see it. That’s the education part.
Edison nailed it when he said that “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ”
Everybody gripes about the state of the nation. You do; I do; everybody does. There’s a lot to gripe about. But I honestly believe that there is even more to rejoice about, and to be grateful for, and to appreciate.
If everybody swept their own front steps, the whole world would be clean.
I don’t mind loaning someone my broom, but I do expect him/her to do his/her own sweeping.
I’m glad I live here. I’m glad you do, too.
But it is a crying shame that so many people don’t do their fair share and expect us to do it for them. Sweep your own steps. It’s not rocket science.
Have a safe and enjoyable Independence Day. Watch out for aliens; they shoot to kill. I seen it in a movie oncet, with Will Smith. It were cul.
July 4 Weekend Is Here!
Mamacita says: Sunday is Independence Day! And, if you do not believe in that, then, Sunday is the Fourth of July.
Deny it if you will, but you will be wrong. You have a fourth of July. Everybody has a fourth of July. It’s right there between the third and the fifth, so none of your lip now. If you live here, this country’s history is now your history, too.
When our kids were younger, we used to use our deck as a launching pad for bottle rockets. Well, the actual launching pad was a pop bottle, but who can find those any more? Now, we just jam the rocket between the cracks in the deck boards, light it, and stand back. Our deck is covered with black burn marks, but I kind of like that. It makes me remember happy summers with small children.
Oh, hush. We watched them carefully.
When the kids were older, we used to set off the big stuff in the back yard while the children sat safely on that same deck, watching. But I won’t go there in case there are any of those prissy types reading.
Our sidewalk is covered with black spots, too. That’s where we set off the coiling snakes. I’m still kind of partial to those. I like to look at the sidewalk spots, too, because they make me remember those giggling little kids, watching the coiling black snakes with big laughing eyes. The kids, not the snakes.
Nothing perfect can be truly beautiful. I’d rather have my spotty sidewalks and the memories than a pristine landscaped lawn. Good thing, too, since our grass is over a foot high in places the regular mower can’t go. The tractor’s in the shop.
How Well Do You Know Your Fairy Tales? Not Disney Versions; I Mean, REAL Fairy Tales?
Mamacita says: It’s quiz time again! This time, our topic is fairy tales, which were, as everyone once knew but few people remember now, never intended for children at all. Don’t get me wrong: I love the Disney animated fairy tales, but I’m also a fairy tale purist, and the cleaning up of those gory old stories took a lot of the “cool” out of them. Disney versions have happy endings, too, which few of the actual stories had.
Here’s your task: Read the first and last lines of each tale and see if you know the title. You might surprise yourself in more ways than one! (The first line will be first and the last line will be, duh, last.) Well, you know, some people require explicit instructions. Sigh.
1. There was once a young fellow who enlisted as a soldier, conducted himself bravely, and was always the foremost when it rained bullets.
In the evening, some one knocked at the door, and when the bridegroom opened it, it was the Devil in his green coat, who said, “Seest thou, I have now got two souls in the place of thy one!”
2. A soldier came marching along the high road: “Left, right—left, right.”
The wedding festivities lasted a whole week, and the dogs sat at the table, and stared with all their eyes.
3. One summer’s morning a little tailor was sitting on his table by the window; he was in good spirits, and sewed with all his might.
So the little tailor was a king and remained one, to the end of his life.
4. There was was once a woman who wished very much to have a little child, but she could not obtain her wish.
The swallow sang, “Tweet, tweet,” and from his song came the whole story.
5. A certain man had a donkey, which had carried the corn-sacks to the mill indefatigably for many a long year; but his strength was going, and he was growing more and more unfit for work.
And the mouth of him who last told this story is still warm.
6. Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess.
There, that is a true story.
7. The wife of a rich man fell sick, and as she felt that her end was drawing near, she called her only daughter to her bedside and said, “Dear child, be good and pious, and then the good God will always protect thee, and I will look down on thee from heaven and be near thee.”
And thus, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness as long as they lived.
8. Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above.
But when we see a naughty or a wicked child, we shed tears of sorrow, and for every tear a day is added to our time of trial!
9. There was once on a time a Fisherman who lived with his wife in a miserable hovel close by the sea, and every day he went out fishing.
And there they are living still at this very time.
10. Many, many years ago lived an emperor, who thought so much of new clothes that he spent all his money in order to obtain them; his only ambition was to be always well dressed.
And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.
11. There were once five-and-twenty tin soldiers, who were all brothers, for they had been made out of the same old tin spoon.
But of the little dancer nothing remained but the tinsel rose, which was burnt black as a cinder.
12. There was a man who had three sons, the youngest of whom was called Dummling, and was despised, mocked, and put down on every occasion.
After the King’s death, Dummling inherited the kingdom and lived a long time contentedly with his wife.
13. It was lovely summer weather in the country, and the golden corn, the green oats, and the haystacks piled up in the meadows looked beautiful.
Then he rustled his feathers, curved his slender neck, and cried joyfully, from the depths of his heart, “I never dreamed of such happiness as this, while I was an _____ ________.” (dead giveaway, sorry)
14. There was a certain merchant who had two children, a boy and a girl; they were both young, and could not walk.
On this they tried to seize him and pressed upon him, but he drew his sword and said, “All heads off but mine,” and all the heads rolled on the ground, and he alone was master, and once more King of the Golden Mountain.
15. Far down in the forest, where the warm sun and the fresh air made a sweet resting-place, grew a pretty little fir-tree; and yet it was not happy, it wished so much to be tall like its companions— the pines and firs which grew around it.
Now all was past; the tree’s life was past, and the story also,—for all stories must come to an end at last.
16. A long time ago there were a King and Queen who said every day, “Ah, if only we had a child!” but they never had one.
And then the marriage of the King’s son with Briar-rose was celebrated with all splendour, and they lived contented to the end of their days.
17. You must attend to the commencement of this story, for when we get to the end we shall know more than we do now about a very wicked hobgoblin; he was one of the very worst, for he was a real demon.
And they both sat there, grown up, yet children at heart; and it was summer,—warm, beautiful summer.
18. Once upon a time in the middle of winter, when the flakes of snow were falling like feathers from the sky, a queen sat at a window sewing, and the frame of the window was made of black ebony.
Then she was forced to put on the red-hot shoes, and dance until she dropped down dead.
19. It was terribly cold and nearly dark on the last evening of the old year, and the snow was falling fast.
No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her grandmother, on New-year’s day.
20. There was once a widow who had two daughters — one of whom was pretty and industrious, whilst the other was ugly and idle.
But the pitch stuck fast to her, and could not be got off as long as she lived.
21. There was once a merchant that had three daughters, and he loved them better than himself.
And that’s why, to this day, the castle is known as the Castle of the Rose.
22. There were once a man and a woman who had long, in vain, wished for a child.
Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again, and he could see with them as before, and he led her to his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented.
23. There was a king who had twelve beautiful daughters.
So the king asked the soldier which of the princesses he would choose for his wife; and he answered, ‘I am not very young, so I will have the eldest.’ — and they were married that very day, and the soldier was chosen to be the king’s heir.
24. There was once upon a time a poor miller who had a very beautiful daughter.
“Some demon has told you that! Some demon has told you that!” screamed the little man, and in his rage drove his right foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized the left foot with both hands and tore himself in two.
25. One fine evening a young princess put on her bonnet and clogs, and went out to take a walk by herself in a wood; and when she came to a cool spring of water with a rose in the middle of it, she sat herself down to rest a while.
They then took leave of the king, and got into the coach with eight horses, and all set out, full of joy and merriment, for the prince’s kingdom, which they reached safely; and there they lived happily a great many years.
26. There was once a poor widow who lived in a lonely cottage. In front of the cottage was a garden wherein stood two rose-trees, one of which bore white and the other red roses.
She took the two rose-trees with her, and they stood before her window, and every year bore the most beautiful roses, white and red.
27. In China, you know, the emperor is a Chinese, and all those about him are Chinamen also.
The servants now came in to look after the dead emperor; when, lo! there he stood, and, to their astonishment, said, “Good morning.”
28. Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant’s garden.
And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.
29. Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen.
And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.
30. Once upon a time there was a poor peasant who had so many children that he did not have enough of either food or clothing to give them.
As for the prince and princess, they set free all the poor Christians who had been captured and shut up there; and they took with them all the silver and gold, and flew away as far as they could from the castle that lay east of the sun and west of the moon.
I’ll post the answers in a few days, if you ask me nicely.
Highly recommended: go to the library this summer and check out a big thick book of UNABRIDGED fairy tales; the politically incorrect blood, gore, daughter-selling, youngest-son-mocking, parent-fooling, and poop-in-the-suit will entertain you for days. Don’t waste your time on abridgments; they’re watered down and a major disappointment, and that’s true for ALL abridgments. I loathe and despise the abridged version of anything.
Real fairy tales, though, are bloody awesome, and I do mean bloody. Of course, a lot of the action is perfectly understandable; I mean, who among us HASN’T, on occasion, accidentally cooked and eaten one of our children?
Come on, take the quiz. Who knows the real stories and who thinks Disney’s are the real stories? I’m always more than just a little bit horrified surprised at the people who really thought Disney’s versions were the real ones.
Blood bath! Cannibals! Dismemberment! Poop in your suit! Never bathe! Sell your babies! Hell, DEVOUR your babies!
I do love me some unabridged fairy tales.
“Good, by my troth, daughter broth!”
