Archive for the ‘Morality/Values’ Category
Mediocre and entitled
“There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.”
Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924), American writer
Avoiding consequences
“Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”
-William Penn, 1644-1718, founder of Pennsylvania
A state religion?
Understanding the founding fathers’ fears of government offers insight into the meaning of their words in the United States Constitution. Many of their demanded freedoms were born from the British trail of William Penn who challenged the sovereignty of the Church of England, the state religion. On its steps, he dared to gather and preach a different belief, a capital offense.
Going home
For several months, I have been spending some time working in an emergency department in a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska; a few weeks ago taking a day off and driving 210 miles to the small town where I was born a little over 60 years ago, Holdrege, Nebraska. It was 52 years ago that we moved from Holdrege, and this was my first visit since that move.
Spoiled, dependent, entitled, indentured, enslaved
Are spoiled children born that way? According to British writer Roald Dahl, “Some children are spoiled and it is not their fault, it is their parents.” Spoiled children have parents who give them everything they want instead of teaching them to earn what they want, instead of teaching them responsibility and independence. Quite simply, parents of spoiled children fail to heed the advice of “The Country Parson,” Frank A. Clark, who said, “The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.”
“Things”
In the movie “Parenthood,” the family’s grandmother offered advice to her son who was distraught; he quit his job and his wife was pregnant. Of life she said, “You know, it was just so interesting to me that the roller coaster could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.” Steve Martin looked at her like she was nuts, but was she trying to tell him something important, something that more than 90 years of life taught her?
Rape-rape?
Whoopi Goldberg said of producer Roman Polanski and his rape conviction of the 13-year-old girl he drugged and sodomized, “It wasn’t rape-rape. It was something else but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.”
Subject or citizen?
“Oh posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it.”
- John Adams, second U.S. president
Gratitude is a burden
“Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.”
Tacitus, 56 AD – 120 AD, Roman historian
Forgetting the evil
“I ask nothing of the Jews
except that they should disappear.”
- Hans Frank, Nazi governor of Poland
Well-intentioned missionaries or criminals?
This is the question Haitian courts will answer to determine the fate of the jailed Idaho missionaries who tried to take children out of Haiti illegally. When arrested, the missionaries initially claimed they were trying to “rescue” orphaned children from the disaster caused by the earthquakes.
Christmases past
December 26th my wife and I celebrate our 28th anniversary. The year we married I was a single father with a three-year-old son, whom my wife later adopted. And, this year is the first Christmas it will be just the two of us. After cutting down our 28th Christmas tree, we reminisced about some special Christmases past.
What is public and what is private?
Does the public have a right to know everything? Does freedom of the press have any limits? Is anything private? Is everything fair game? How might Tiger Woods answer these questions? “Yes, no, no, yes.” Moreover, these questions have little to do with any claimed right to privacy, and all to do with the Constitution.
The entitled generation
Last week I watched a news report on a new type of life crisis. Well, sort of. A young reporter discussed the many difficulties facing the 25-year-olds as they finish college. Wait a minute? Why are 25-year-olds just finishing college? Did they take a few years off along the way? How did they do that?
Values and common sense
Do you ever wonder about our lost values, our disappearing common sense? Where is our foundation, our cornerstone, showing us the values that are America? Our foundation is crumbling and a cornerstone is hard to find. And we have fewer anchors to look to for help understanding what we are, and what we should aspire to be.
Our children, violence, and murder
What is happening to our children? Children with guns murdering children. Does this support the need for gun control, as advanced by the media and the politically correct, both with a fanciful capacity to not allow facts to interfere with their opinions?
Claiming racism be racist
Four police officers and two men; one black, a noted Harvard professor, and one Jewish, a famous singer –each with a recent police encounter.
Abortion – call it what it is
Killing a fellow human being is not new to us. We already accept killing in war, capital punishment and self-defense. Society has made a distinction between murder and killing.
The best man I ever new – Father’s Day 2009
When the call came that August day, I was working at Safeway, stocking grocery shelves to earn money for college. My dad was dead; a heart attack. The family anchor was gone.
“Give me the youth…”
What do a group of like-minded people do when they cannot convince society to agree with them? How do they persuade society to not only acknowledge their values, but in the end to agree with those values?
