Thursday, January 22, 2015

Basic Human Rights Revisited

According to "Encore in Iowa" by Mike Sherer, Time Magazine, January 26, 2015, Mike Huckabee is running for President again.  Per Sherer, he recently compared Americans with the Nazis  --  the ones who abort their babies with the ones who caused the Holocaust.  He stated that fifty-five million babies have been murdered in their mother's own wombs.


First, I've not had a lot of exposure to Mr. Huckabee, but up until this time, I've always been rather fond of him.


Second, I've no idea whether his figures are correct and don't intend to research it.  Fifty-five million? 


Third, find a new platform!  I just read and heard today that Republican women are taking a stand against the Republican position on abortion.  I don't know why Americans persist in telling each other what to do. It is an invasion of privacy, none of your business and extremely archaic.  It's almost as radical as Muslim extremists who stone each other for adultery.


Let me go on record once more!  I have never had an unwanted pregnancy.  I have never had an abortion.  I don't believe that any woman in my family has ever had one.  I know for a fact that we would welcome any children that God gifted to us and be grateful for them.  I am not a proponent of abortion, per se.  I am a proponent of a woman's  -  a couple's  --  right to choose!


You do not have the right to decide whether the Catholic couple next door to you has to keep the tenth or twelfth baby just because the rhythm method failed them.  You do not have the right to tell the Baptist couple next door that they have to feed an extra mouth when they already work four jobs between them and still have to use food stamps.


The federal government has no right to tell our citizens how they should behave concerning such personal and private matters.  As long as what one citizen chooses is not going to negatively impact the lives of her neighbors, nobody has a right to make his/her decisions for her.


Women do not plan on going back to the forties and fifties where unwanted pregnancies were aborted in back allies with dirty coat hangers.  They will not go back to an age where parents forced their daughters to give up their children to adoption.  You have no right to tell a woman she has to see a pregnancy to the end so that someone else can rear the child.  She should not have the health risks, the shortened energy, the financial and physical expense because of a mistake or failed birth control.  Most especially, no man on earth has a right to tell a woman she has to have a baby she does not want.  And no baby should have to enter this world to a parent who does not want it.  When men start carrying the kids, then they can decide.


Over and over, power hungry individuals reach out their tentacles in an attempt to control everything and everyone within their vision.  Greed for power over others is their main sin.  How dare they accuse another of sin before they cast the sin from their own lives.


And no man who likens a U. S. citizen to the Nazis of World War II should ever have the right to hold the highest office in this land.  Whatever are you thinking?  It certainly cost you any chance you ever had at getting my vote.


This issue is not just an abortion issue.  It is about who gets to be in charge of our lives and our choices.  Get it yet?  Duh!!!



The Politics Of Putting ALL CHILDREN FIRST

It isn't surprising when people who have lived under the thumbs of dictators and repressive regimes rebel against society.  We can understand that once they get a taste of power they would turn to controlling others and inflicting pain and destruction.  What is hard to understand is how someone who has experienced freedom of speech, press and religion, like we have in this country, could turn to a faith and calling that oppresses these freedoms.


What is it that pulls our citizens into lives of crime against humanity?  How can people who have had so much opportunity throw it all away?  Is it the attraction of the religion?  If so, why don't they join the groups of peace-loving Muslims across the world?  Most people who are Muslim claim that Allah and Mohammad spoke of a religion that did not support violence.


Is it the offer of many virgins once they have sacrificed themselves for the cause?  Have they asked themselves what good a thousand virgins would be once they have sacrificed their bodies for the spirit world?  With no bodies, how can they enjoy those virgins?


Or, is it just our failure as parents, teachers and citizens to include all of our children in activities appropriate to their ages, skills and interests?


Perhaps our failures occur, in part, because of our predilection for honoring sports figures and people who excel in the performing arts.   Maybe celebrity worship rather than the worship of God has pushed our teens and young adults off track.  Maybe our problems with the economy have exacerbated the rift between us and some of our young people.  If they can't even find jobs after school, at what can they succeed?


It is probably the same feelings of not belonging anywhere that creates both the religious extremists and the school shooters.  People, young and old, need to feel warmth and acceptance somewhere.  When they don't find it through usual channels, they strike out in defiance and violence.  They are saying to their fellow Americans, so, now you will notice me.  Take that and like or lump it.


People out there who teach or coach or lead church activities, reach out to all of our young people.  Offer participation to the shy and quiet.  Give love to the somewhat unlovable.  What you do for these young people can evoke change in their performance, their skills and their personalities.  Help them to relate.  Eliminate their needs to act out by giving them a chance to perform in group activities.  Think not we should win the game.  Think not what will people think of me.  Think what the child, the teen and the young adult needs to survive this world.  Help them to become fulfilled citizens and perhaps they will quit searching for notoriety in inappropriate ways.