Hypocrisy 101
Mamacita says: Today I wish to discuss hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of some people’s ancestral pride.
Oh, the hypocrisy of some people’s ancestral pride!
So many people are interested in and curious about their DNA origins, paying out good money to be analyzed and labeled. . .it’s a fad right now. I just saw four commercials about it this afternoon. People are excited to discover their roots. . . and so many people interested in keeping out the people with that same DNA lest they contaminate the nation. This seems more than just a little bit hypocritical, yes?
We are all descended from immigrants. Where would we be if those immigrants had been denied entrance? You. Where would you be? You would be speaking another language, probably one you profess to mock today. You would be wearing different clothes, clothing that might set you apart from the crowd you hang out with today. You might be eating different foods, ETHNIC foods, that you either claim to dislike or that you pay a lot of money to experience. “Hey, let’s go for some Thai/Mexican/Chinese, etc, but let’s not admit that the cooks or servers are on our level.” “Listen to that guy with his broken English trying to check out at Walmart!” says the guy who can’t even manage to speak ONE language properly yet he mocks a guy who speaks two. High school dropouts mock hardworking guys who stayed in school and are reaping the rewards of it.
Rich people advocate deportation because they fear, oh, I don’t know. Being outclassed? Being outsmarted? Somebody else earning some money? A nickel coming in and them not there to squeeze it?
Poor people advocate deportation because they fear, oh, I don’t know. Someone else getting a job? Someone else getting, well, anything?
It all smacks of people kicking away the ladder after they and theirs climbed up it, and they don’t want to share whatever they found at the top.
The atmosphere in our nation disturbs me greatly. This atmosphere of intolerance and bigotry and selfishness and being afraid of what we don’t understand. Hey, a little education might help with that last one.
No one race is better than any other race. We are all human beings, equal in the sight of whatever God, or no God at all, any person believes, or doesn’t believe, in. We all share this one planet. There is room for everyone. Everyone. Not just you.
And how would you like it if you were treated as you treat others?
Remember, I taught about the Holocaust for over twenty years. The similarities are frightening. Horrifying.
Then again, if some people’s ancestors had been denied entrance all those years ago, perhaps some of those people would have embraced education anyway, finished school, gone to university, become doctors, surgeons, scientists, educated people and clear strong thinkers. Some would do that, and some would not. Every day people defy the odds. It’s just easier to do so here. Some of your ancestors did that, and some did not. Did you? Are you an educated person and a strong thinker or do you just follow the crowd?
Are you a person who does what is easy, or what is right?
My doctor is an immigrant. Perhaps yours is, too. Your child’s life may lie in the hands of someone for whom English is not the first language. You. You are not a surgeon. Stand back and let the trained professional work or your child, left in your untrained hands, will die.
Now, march, march, march, and demand that this surgeon be deported because he is not as good as you and does not deserve to live in a nation where his skills just saved your child.
Your ancestors arrived here and were admitted. That you would dare to presume that you or anyone else has the ability, the unmitigated gall, to say who will go and who will stay is mind-boggling. How dare you draft yourself to be the judge.
How dare you.
I’ve had many foreign students in my classes, and most of the time their English was much better than most of my other students. Their essays were about gratitude, and education, and pride. Not one of them wrote about gettin’ it on with a little filly a’standin’ yonder at the end of the bar, or LOLing at the bowling alley that one time. You know, like you did.
Choose goodness. Choose mercy. Choose honesty. Choose nobility. Choose generosity. Defy all who would encourage you to choose otherwise. Defy. All.
I speak too much. I am not on your side. I am on their side. Bring it on.
The Challenger: Never Forget
Mamacita says: I repost this every year on the anniversary of the Challenger explosion.
My school was excited beyond all measure about the Challenger. A TEACHER was going into space, and this was unheard of. The students were thrilled to think of the possibility that perhaps some day, mean old Mrs. HagTeacher might be launched out into the vastness of space, never to give a pop math quiz again.
My community is proud to boast several astronauts, and there are billboards with their pictures and names in several places all over the county. My students were familiar with the concept of “astronaut,” but 
most kids really knew next to nothing about the realities of being one. A teacher, on the other hand, was someone they were familiar with. They knew what a teacher actually did on a daily basis – or thought they knew. That a teacher might also be an astronaut, of sorts, was a brand new concept. If a local person could be an astronaut, maybe it was a possibility for the students, but if a teacher could go into space, then the chances that a student might someday go into space suddenly got even better odds. The next astronaut might even be someone from our school. My school took this enthusiasm and ran with it.
The principal rented a big screen TV. Remember, this was back in the days when most schools, especially tiny ones like mine, did not have vast technological or media resources. We rented a big-screen tv, and 
scheduled a big convocation. The whole student population was going to watch a teacher go into space via a big convocation in the gym, all eyes on that one big screen. This seems ludicrous now, but back then it was cutting edge. BIG SCREEN. (45 inches, mind you.) BIG. One 45-inch TV for a gym full of kids to watch. There was no television access of any kind in the entire school, so one of the teachers brought in a satellite dish just for the afternoon. This was a huge deal. Huge.
We had essay contests about it. Trivia contests about it. We sent home newsletters with at-home things that parents could do with their children, about it. It was the biggest deal of the semester.
This is the newsletter that was sent home with all students a few days before the Challenger disaster.
I had hall duty that day, and couldn’t go with the students to the gym, to watch the teacher go into space. But as I sat there, and watched the children file past, in twos and threes, to the gym, I was filled with awe that they were going to see something never seen before: a shuttle launch with a teacher aboard. An ordinary person was going into space. A teacher. For the rest of their lives, they would realize that all things are connected, even outer space, to what we learn from a teacher in a classroom. And that teachers have courage, and are willing to do things most people will never be able to do.
I sat there in the hall and watched them go into the gym, giggly and happy and full of anticipation. Each child had a blank sheet of paper in his/her hand, and a pencil, to draw what they saw. There was going to be a big contest.
Only a few minutes later, I sat there in the hall and watched these same students file back into their classrooms. They were quiet, and their eyes were big. Nothing had changed for me; I was still sitting there in the hall, but for those children, a lot had changed.
I don’t even remember what we did in my classroom for the rest of that afternoon. I know that I did not envy the elementary teachers. What could they possibly be telling the small children about what they had seen? I just do not know. My own children were down there in the lower grades; they didn’t have much to say when we got home. My little son was affected the most, I think; he had always been obsessed with rockets and loud things that went “boom,” but this was a loud “boom” that occurred before his very eyes, and the rocket blew apart, and he was old enough to realize what it meant.
Later in the afternoon, I looked out my classroom windows and saw the men loading the rented big-screen TV into a truck. It drove away.
A few parents were upset that their children had been shown the explosion in school, but they were completely out of line, and I think even they knew it. But upset people are often illogical.
The media played up the ‘teacher’ part of this tragedy. My children knew all about teachers; both their parents were teachers. Teachers were no big deal to them. My children, small as they were, wondered why none of the other people on board that shuttle were mentioned much, on tv or in the papers. I wondered that, myself.
Quotation Saturday: Democracy and Government
Every Saturday: Quotations to feed your soul.
- Mamacita says: Democracy and government are much in the news these days, so Quotation Saturday is focusing on them.
- 1) America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. – James Bovard
- 2) War is just one more big government program. – Joseph Sobran
- 3) Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. – John Adams (1814)
- 4) They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
- 5) One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)
- 6) If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)
- 7) Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. – P.J. O’Rourke
- 8) The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus
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Scheiss Weekly: Democracy and Government
- 9) Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
- 10) No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. – Mark Twain (1866)
- 11) There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein
- 12) The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. – Edmund Burke (1899)
- 13) Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. – Thomas Jefferson
- 14) The triumph of persuasion over force is the sign of a civilized society. – Mark Skousen
- 15) A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)
- 16) The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. – John Hay (1872)
- 17) Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. – James Bovard (1994)
- 18) The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. – Thomas Jefferson
- 19) Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. – Thomas Jefferson
- 20) None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Goethe
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Quotation Saturday: Democracy and Government
- 21) When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence. – Gary Lloyd
- 22) Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. – H.L. Mencken
- 23) The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. – H.L. Mencken
- 24) It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. – Henry George
- 25) Where morality is present, laws are unnecessary. Without morality, laws are unenforceable. – Anonymous
- 26) Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater (1964)
- 27) Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end. – Lord Acton
- 28) The power to tax is the power to destroy. – John Marshall
- 29) [On ancient Athens]: In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon
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Excellent. It should be like this today.
- 30) Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis
- 31) Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. – Lysander Spooner
- 32) In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty. – Leo Tolstoy
- 33) There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand
- 34) If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. – Samuel Adams
- 35) If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. – Somerset Maugham
- 36) A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. – Alexander Tytler
- 37) A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. – G. Gordon Liddy
- 38) The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced. – Frank Zappa
- 39) Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. – Justice Learned Hand
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Scheiss Weekly: Democracy and Government
- 40) It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. – Charles A. Beard
- 41) A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. – Edward R. Murrow
- 42) The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. – Thomas Jefferson (1781)
- 43) The desire to rule is the mother of heresies. – St. John Chrysostom
- 44) Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter
- 45) It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. – Justice Casey Percell
- 46) No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. – Edmund A. Opitz
- 47) The government was set to protect man from criminals – and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. – Ayn Rand
- 48) The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. – Mark Twain
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Career Politician: Yesterday and Today
- 49) What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. – Edward Langley 50). A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw
I think we would all do well to remember these things.
