Lots of issues draw emotional reactions whenever brought up in communication, but perhaps none more heated than the issue of abortion. Despite my experiences of angry lashings-back, of accusations or religious and/or moral consequences, and of frustrated resignation that there are no solutions to the impasse the issue creates to all forms of communication, I […]
This is the third installment of dealing with the issue of gun violence in our country, especially that which has taken the lives of so many of our innocent school children. In Part The First, my reasons for my position on Second Amendment issues were given, and in Part The Second I tried to spell […]
As with every high school in the nation, public or private, certain student traditions develop over the years outside “normal” student athletic, band, club, and social activities — “unofficial” traditions, if you please. I don’t know if it has been studied, but as far as Texas high schools are concerned, I’ve found no unofficial traditions […]
In the first part, entitled “Guns, ‘Gun Control,’ and School Massacres (Part The First)” I tried to give the background reasons upon which I take a position on the issue of guns neither conservative nor liberal. Failure to do something substantial toward reducing the probability of the shedding of the innocent blood of our children […]
The tragedy at Newtown must be responded to in the hearts and minds of everyone everywhere. Nowhere is this individual response more significant than in the nation wherein the tragedy occurred, along with so many other similar events — our own beloved USA. Emotion-driven rhetoric erupted right after Newtown, as it did immediately after the […]
In addition to the destruction of the political professional class [Citizens! (I) Call For the Destruction of the Political Professional Class] and the redistribution of wealth [Citizens! (II) The Redistribution of Wealth] we citizens have to come up with a better way to elect our officials, particularly the election of President. We have just witnessed […]
A paraphrase of part of an article in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram in the wake of the Aggies’ great 41-13 win over Oklahoma in the 2013 Cotton Bowl goes something like: A&M finally settled its divorce from the Big 12 — the Aggies got the house, the kids, the car, the summer home, the money, […]
This second installment of the “Citizens” series (see part one) deals with a phrase probably even more misunderstood than the word “liberal” or “socialist” — the phrase “the redistribution of wealth.” My first presentation of this phrase on e-mail to ultra-conservatives brought a hilarious reaction: they thought I was talking about “robbing Peter to pay […]
I have become used to being unfriended on Facebook or being cut off from communication on the internet by individuals frustrated with my self-imposed crusade to bring content to cyberspace exchanges — to accompany facts and information with well-argued positions and opinions, to explore the possibility that the social network can be a meaningful medium […]
Once more, for a third time, the same sentence from Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience is partially quoted to help critique the modern American conservative movement — the “it” in the quote, though originally “it” meant the ultra-conservative government in power in the US in the 1840’s: Why does it always… excommunicate Copernicus and Luther…? I […]