Back on Tuesday night, I detailed the latest Wicomico Neighborhood Congress meeting where the subject was crime. In a lengthy response, commenter “Outraged Richard” stated his case:
Fact is, the parents and law enforcement are the problem, along with the criminal youth.
Fact is, poor quality parents – those defined as unmarried, obese, criminal, and unable to afford children, for starters – should be ridiculed by the community first, next fined, and then imprisoned.
Law enforcement supervisors should be fired – the whole department if necessary – for not actively fining parents and not aggressively breaking up and punishing the criminal youth.
Then there is the problem of racism in the Transchoptankia Realm – an extremely important issue which no one will touch. I will.
Prevent newspapers from printing the typical “first black to do so and so” crap.
Pass a resolution to ban Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton from the Transchoptankia Realm.
Furthermore, and most importantly, town planning should be based on TND which promotes a dense urban core that allows people of all races to intermingle.
Get rid of the “White Side, Black Side” of town mentality! Bulldoze the dead ended urban sprawl developments and bulldoze the “hood”!
Problem people should not be allowed to live in the town. Many current citizens should be banned. How about that? To live in a proper town community you have to show responsibility and good will.
Bam! That’s how we do it!
Michael, what do you think? Are these not the proper answers?
Perhaps. But the whole subject placed me deep in thought because there is a reality out there that brings with it its own questions, one of them being whether one person can even make a difference in this debate.
Rare are the moments where the actions of one man change the course of history unalterably. While there are cases like Gavrilo Princip firing the shot which began a world war or Thomas Edison striking on the right combination of materials to produce artificial light, most of us live our day-to-day lives making a number of decisions that affect a thousand other events – but simultaneously the remainder of humankind places into motion their own event chains that generally have the effect of working anywhere from completely opposite to practically parallel to our intentions. The end result then is that more often than not society changes at a glacial, almost imperceptible rate.
So it is with all of these proposals. Certainly they all can be argued on whatever merits they have, but maybe a better way to look at the issue is to ask how we got to the point of even asking the questions in the first place. Where was it that the actions Outraged Richard decries in his rant gained acceptability or at least a tacit admission that it wasn’t an issue worth bothering with in the first place? Somewhere the myriad actions of our society pushed the ball over the goal line.
In this case, it’s unclear where that moment was but it could be that there were (and still are) some in American society who thought it best to act in a manner that may have been contrary to the common good. Edmund Burke was absolutely correct in saying, “those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”
Unfortunately, this particular case of looking at things beyond the obvious won’t reach a vast number of people, and to many it does reach it’ll be forgotten by the time the next article is read since we all have MTV-induced short attention spans now. But those dreamers like I am from time to time will keep trying for that moment of clarity when the answers do come.
I concede that I am a Right Wing Nut, but Richard scares even me. Must be on a new course of anti-psychotics. The Edmund Burke quote was actually made by Georg Santayana.
Can’t wrap your brain around Richard’s rant…perhaps this will help
Michael, you are a fair man.
Though I am constantly hounded by “trolls”, “thread crappers”, and “agitators”, I plod on with my goodly mission.
Michael, I am going to make an admission to you and it is that I was under no medication at the time of my post which you had the tolerance to raise to the level of your front page.
But enough about me.
When you said, “The end result then is that more often than not society changes at a glacial, almost imperceptible rate”, I almost spat my Froot Loops spoon out of my mouth.
Well, let me give you a few perceptible changes, ones that occurred at the speed of an avalanche relative to the time of human civilization. This was during the 1960’s when over a period of a decade or so, in one massive devolution:
Single parents were remarkably less denounced and “tolerated” and thereby became prolific,
No fault divorce laws were passed,
Homosexuality was no longer considered a mental disorder by the APA,
Sodomy laws were struck down,
Abortion on demand was legalized,
Drugs began to be consumed on a massive scale,
People started stuffing their faces with food like Oprah on a baked ham,
Music began an awful descent to “Rock” and “Rap” promoting immaturity, confusion, and crime,
The borders of the U.S. were broken down and swarms of illegal and legal aliens, many criminal, inundated the U.S. thanks in part to the 1965 Hart-Celler Act,
And the concept of “morality” was worked over in a dark alley and came limping out with a new definition: “you should be able to do whatever you want”.
Michael, as fast as this country has plopped into a cesspool, it can come back to decency and respectability by reversing the previous ruinations and perhaps adding a few rules that I mentioned in my last post.
As to your question of, “Where was it that the actions Outraged Richard decries in his rant gained acceptability or at least a tacit admission that it wasn’t an issue worth bothering with in the first place?”
The 1960’s and the degenerates thereof.
Those of you who would care to inform yourselves further on how the 1960’s generation collapsed America into a blue colored Porta-Potty, can read the book:
Slouching Towards Gomorrah : Modern Liberalism and American Decline, by Robert Bork
From the book: “It is important to understand what the Sixties turmoil was about, for the youth culture that became manifest then is the modern liberal culture of today.”