I was just thinking ...
March 16, 2003 ~ 6:33 p.m.
� why on earth anybody would entitle a column or entry in this manner. That major league moron Mike Barnicle would do that regularly in The Boston Globe, before he got fired for plagiarism, that is. But then you�d read on and see that his column was one long hodge-podge of ideas with no centralizing factor and suddenly you�d understand. Of course, you still wondered why Barnicle dared to use the word �thinking.� It was obvious that he let others do the thinking for him.
I was looking at photographs from the latest Maddas-kissing rally in Washington, D.C. and the sight that truly disgusts me most, out of the several that I could mention, is the mothers who have pinned anti-war buttons to the lapels of their little children�s coats and given them balloons to hold that proclaim the same drivel.
Now then, do you care to talk about a flagrant violation of free speech? How much more abusive of the right can you get by forcing a small child, who has no capacity to decide for him or herself what position to take on the war and cannot fathom the politics behind it, to take part in anti-American demonstrations? How conceited can you be than to decide that, just because you oppose the administration trying to save your lives and make this a safer world to live in, that your young child must automatically feel this way too?
I can pour boiling water over my hands and only emit a barely audible hiss, but if I were to discover pictures of me, aged two, at an anti-Vietnam rally from 1971, with my mother forcing me to sport propagandist paraphernalia, I would scream. Scream to wake the dead. I wouldn�t thank my mother very much for the sudden heart attack at the tender age of thirty-three. Thankfully, it turns out that my parents were members of the level-headed Moral Majority and so this cruel fate will not become me.
But let�s imagine for one moment that my Dad went around sticking flowers in the Marines� rifles instead of being a Marine himself and that my Mom was the spitting image of Hanoi Jane. And that this was the upbringing to which I was subjected. Now, further cast your imagination to the author at the age of 23 when he was a college sophomore and giving conservative thinkers an honest chance for once instead of automatically rejecting them just because the political spectrum in which they resided began with a �C.� I would have to keep my College Republican membership a well-guarded secret for fear of dissing Mom and Dad. I would wander the corridors of my school, the very picture of pain and confusion, as I tried to reconcile my right to believe in what I wanted against the wishes of my parents. Father Hippy and Mrs. PTA-With-A-Vengeance would be so disappointed if I ever came out of the conservative closet. Massive amounts of antidepressants and psychotherapy would soon augment my studies.
So, fellow Americans, if you�re concerned about your children, leave them at home the next time you burn an American flag in the street. Let them grow up with a mind of their own. Bad enough the schools rob the youth of America of an individualist mindset, but for the parents to inflict the same damage is abuse of the highest order.
I was just thinking � what an awfully rare thing these days!
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
AMERICA FOR TRUE AMERICANS!