Is there anything more important than setting the right example, especially for young people, regarding what has REAL VALUE and VIRTUE in life? And let me just say from the start that doing so need have ZERO to do with organized religion and the Bible or the Koran. As a matter of fact, where is the virtue in teaching that your “faith” is the ONLY true faith, and that all other faiths are condemned but yours? I will return to this question in a bit.
WHERE IS THE VIRTUE IN ADVOCATING USING RECREATIONAL DRUGS? Young people may not listen to everything you say, but you can bet your life they WATCH everything you do like a hawk, and whether you realize it or not, your life is absolutely a role model for them at ALL times.
I had a friend not long ago who always wanted to advocate for legalizing recreational drugs, and he would say to me that he didn’t care about being a role model to young people. Suffice to say, unfortunately that resulted in our not remaining friends much longer. How can any adult look at themselves in the mirror, with such a sick attitude that doesn’t care about setting the right example for young people? I mean how can Bill Maher look in the mirror PERIOD for that matter??
Where is the virtue in running around getting high, ‘experimenting’ with drugs…wearing your marijuana leaf t-shirt while you’re holding your 8 year old’s hand on your family outing to the county fair….That is JUST as harmful as teaching your kids that your religion is the only one, and all others are condemned by God. There is ZERO VIRTUE in both behaviors. True virtue is not present in either extreme.
WHERE IS THE VIRTUE in thinking we should make STATE and/or FEDERAL PROFIT from legalizing and taxing recreational drug use such as marijuana? And once we do that, what’s next…taxing cocaine or heroin for government profit? There is no virtue in that, only yet another example of morally corrupt greed that is undermining our American culture. Only a stoner or doper hears such an idea and thinks it has ‘virtue’, because they have lost all comprehension of what real virtue is (that is if they ever knew what it was before they began using drugs for ‘recreation’.)
YES I AGREE…we have a huge problem already with alcohol and cigarettes…This is an area that again shows our American culture’s sick lack of virtue, that we legalized such destructive drugs and then sought to profit from them with government taxation. But we certainly don’t need to COMPOUND THE PROBLEM by adding MORE drugs to the list, FOR YET MORE REVENUE GENERATION!
We need to be learning our lesson from the unhealthy destructive damage that just just those legal drugs alone have caused in a major way to our society over the last several decades. But instead, we see the further erosion of American virtue to the point that we think we should TAX GETTING HIGH for government profit. WHAT MESSAGE DOES THAT SEND TO YOUNG PEOPLE?
Is this what our founding fathers intended when they wrote in the Constitution that one of our government’s chief responsibilities is to PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE? Are we promoting the general welfare to promote ‘experimenting with drugs’ for ‘recreation’ and government revenue building?
One of the most important reasons for laws in any democratic society is to set the right example in society…to often be a NON-DEMOCRATIC boundary that helps to define and represent virtue, and represent healthy community values. The Constitution, for example, from which we derive our laws, is NOT A DEMOCRATIC DOCUMENT.
Our forefathers went out of their way to design it that way, writing a lot about that in drafting the Constitution. They made it clear that it is important to guard against the “will of the majority” when it comes to our basic fundamental core American virtues and values, lest the “will of the people” turn in a destructive and/or unjust direction. A free democracy requires virtue and responsibility for it to endure, and we are rapidly losing those two things in our modern American society as we approach the 2016 Presidential election.
And on that topic…Is there any virtue in trying to elect someone to the highest office of our land who has strong and sustained reported business connections in his past with organized crime in the building of his casino empire? Someone who has repeatedly bragged about how much he loves “imminent domain” (the practice of using government power to force someone to sell and give up their private property), and who tried to use it to force an elderly widow to sell her property so he could build a limousine garage for his casino? This was an attempt by Donald Trump to use his connections and influence with local government to use imminent domain NOT FOR PUBLIC GOOD, but primarily for his PRIVATE GAIN. Is there any virtue in that?
Is there any virtue in supporting someone who speaks such vulgarity and hate that they would refer to Mexican immigrants coming to America as being nothing but rapists and violent criminals? Whatever you believe about how to deal with the border, you and I know for a fact that the VAST majority of Mexicans coming to this country are not rapists and criminals, but desperate individuals and families affected by the lack of opportunity in Mexico, seeking any opportunity they can find here in America.
This problem was caused largely by damaging trade policies such as NAFTA and CAFTA that have disproportionately hurt the working class not only in America in favor of the outsourcing of jobs and factories overseas, but it has also harmed the working poor in Mexico as well. Anyone who would refer to these destitute immigrants as mostly rapists and violent criminals is only showing a complete and total LACK of any human virtue, period. It is nothing but severe intellectual DISHONESTY, and the same can be said for those of you who buy into and celebrate such hateful rhetoric.
And while we are on the topic of politics…Is there any virtue in celebrating ABORTION ON DEMAND? Shouldn’t abortion on demand be at least limited to during the first, MAYBE the second trimester? Shouldn’t we understand that any termination of the pregnancy must be done at least BEFORE we can see a HEART BEATING??
I am pro choice, but let’s GET REAL LADIES, we have to require that such a decision be made and taken care of EARLY in the pregnancy. Not just anytime ON DEMAND.
During the last superbowl, there was a Doritos commercial that used an ultrasound of a fetus that was far along in late trimester, and the humor of the commercial was that the baby came out quickly upon hearing the crunch of the dad’s Dorito chip. Some over-reacting pro-choice advocates responded to this as a political attempt to “HUMANIZE” the fetus. You heard me right…they called this an inappropriate attempt to try to ‘humanize’ the unborn fetus! IS THERE ANY VIRTUE IN SAYING SUCH A THING?
The fact that it has an active independent brain, body and HEARTBEAT is what ‘humanizes’ it! IF A FETUS IS NOT HUMAN, what is it, an ALIEN? OF COURSE IT IS HUMAN IF WE CAN PHYSICALLY SEE THE HEART BEATING! And the virtue that gives us that kind of basic conscience and common sense was around long before the man-made organized religious institutions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. It is called “The Golden Rule”. The spiritual/human values that stem from the Golden Rule need not have ANY ASSOCIATION with organized religion. Again, that is because The Golden Rule predates the Big Three organized religions to the dawn of man.
So let me now return to my earlier question on this topic: WHERE IS THE VIRTUE in teaching that your “faith” is the ONLY true faith, and that all other faiths are condemned but yours? That is nothing but man-made hate, bigotry and elitism masquerading as “faith”, and all it does is create divisiveness in the world, with the built in disrespecting of all other beliefs, to the extent that one believes those other faiths are “lost” and “condemned.” This is the exact OPPOSITE of true virtue…It is the opposite of universal love, acceptance and healing that true spirituality brings.
And I want to add that you can’t ‘cherry-pick’ around those divisive, elitist and condemning teachings in the Bible and the Koran, and pretend they aren’t a fundamental part of your beliefs. They are rampant all throughout both the Bible and Koran. So if you pretend they aren’t there, you are lying to yourself and others about what your religion teaches. Where is the virtue in that as well?
Lastly, returning to the topic of politics for a moment…Is there any virtue in supporting someone for President, knowing in your heart that a candidate like Hillary Clinton clearly is fundamentally dishonest, cannot be trusted and is definitely bought and paid for by the establishment and Wall Street? Is there any virtue in knowing they have a corrupt history similar to Donald Trump, but because they are a woman, or because of their support of ‘abortion on demand’, etc…you choose to vote for them despite their corruption?
NO, there is ZERO virtue in all of these things. Yet virtue, honesty and integrity is what America is supposed to be founded upon. Even our darkest mistakes like our legacy of slavery we fought one of the bloodiest civil wars in history to end and overcome.
But we have CLEARLY lost that critical virtuous foundation of integrity, and we are well on our way to becoming just like the American ‘toilet bowl’ of a society depicted in the Luke Wilson movie “IDIOCRACY”. If you haven’t seen Idiocracy, run don’t walk to your local video store…
VIDEO STORE, silly me! Your video store is now your local pot dispensary or ‘happy ending massage parlor’…Sorry…I meant run don’t walk to your NETFLIX account and stream it today. See how the writer of the movie’s script was like some kind of amazing psychic, and how close we already are today to the sick, vulgar and ‘dumbed down’ toilet bowl of a culture depicted in the movie, in a country that showed so much promise once upon a time.
The question that remains is whether or not it is TOO LATE to find virtue again in America, with so many wanting to be entertained more than informed, or who prefer to go to the other end of the extreme, conforming to man-made religious divisive teachings of the Bible and the Koran, that have been and continue to be the ENDLESS root cause of all the wars and violence of mankind throughout our history.
Connie Bryan
(Connie Bryan is a writer in Sacramento, CA…Check out all of her material on her blog at www.conniebryan.com)
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