Rules

Okay ... recently I stopped by a McDonald's to get out of the heat while I waited for someone to come pick me up after my car broke down. While I was waiting I saw the rules posted on the playground area for the kids, and I just had to wonder where this country's discipline has gone. The rules (from memory here so may not be exact) were:

• Please do not run in the playground.
• Please do not wear shoes on or in the playground area
• Please wear socks at all times
• Please do not climb on the outside of the playground equipment

Please? PLEASE?? Are these rules, suggestions, or requests? The sign was labeled as 'Playground Rules' so I would assume that they are, in fact, supposed to be rules and that not following them can get you removed from the playground area. I understand that it is nice to be polite ... but those aren't 'rules' ... they are requests.

"No running in or around the playground" is a rule ... "Please do not run in or around the playground" is a request, not a rule. We wonder why our kids have no sense of discipline or responsibility, why they seem to think that they can do anything that they want ... it's because we keep giving them requests instead of rules.

I've heard it in stores as well 'Timmy, please stop running around and come here.' .... the mother in question asked him 5 times ... he never complied, and she never elevated her request or did anything to stop or prevent him. What has Timmy learned? That there is no consequence for ignoring mommy.

Seriously people ... if someone can't handle being told that their child is not allowed to run in the playground doesn't need to have their kids loose in a public place. I mean, come on ... this is McDonald's property if your child is going to use it they need to learn that when they are there (or anywhere else for that matter) there are RULES that have to be obeyed and these rules usually involve limiting the things that they are allowed to do.

But "No" has been ostracized as a word for being too negative. It has been declared harmful to children because it imposes limits or somehow harms their self worth. You can't give them a bad grade because it might damage their personal perception of themselves. (god forbid they try to work harder and get better .... if they did that it might make another student feel bad, or worse encourage them to do better too.) Children must be coddled and protected and made to believe that they are the center of the universe ... eventually that view will have to be crushed in some form or another but by then they'll be adults and can pay therapists thousands of dollars per hour to figure out how their lives got so screwed up.

It's just a flag

I came across this article while skimming through Neal's Nuze (boortz.com) for today. For those of you that don't want to follow the link to read the article I'll give you a quick summery:

A California high school Principal has announced that the school will be canceling the school paper next year after the paper ran a picture of a burning American flag, along with an pro-flag burning editorial piece. He said 'the latest issue of the student-run Volcano newspaper was embarrassing' and that 'the paper is finished' and the faculty advisor called it 'bad journalism'.

The faculty advisor also said that they put the image and article at the last minute which implies that she wouldn't have let them run the article had they submitted it. This would be a different issue as it would amount to a government employee telling people what they could and could not say in the student publication.

This is a complex issue in that the school pays for the publication of the student paper, and in that respect should have some control over content, on the other hand the school is government funded so is technically paid for by the students parents. (and to some degree the students themselves if they have part-time jobs). So who should really be controlling the content of the paper?

However, the question of should the paper be discontinued over this issue is an easy 'no'. First off it is essentially the school Principal saying 'they are expressing opinions that I disagree with so I'm going to shut it down so that I don't have to worry about that in the future.'

The article does say that the school had previously been considering shutting the paper down because money was tight, but given his statements about the article being 'embarrassing' it seems pretty clear why the choice was made, regardless of previous considerations.

But then again ... that fits in with the mission of the government schools in general ... 'we don't want them to think or have opinions, we want them to be good little workers that think as little as possible and do what they're told.'

Now ... the issue of flag burning is one of those 'on again off again' hot topics ... it makes the rounds every now and again. Personally I find burning the flag to be abhorrent and reprehensible, but I don't believe that it should be illegal either.

Does it offend me, yes. But that doesn't mean that I believe that people should not be able to express themselves in that way. If they feel strongly about something and feel that the best way to express that anger/frustration/dissatisfaction is to burn the flag, then they should be allowed to do that. Provided, of course, that they do not do so in a way that damages someone else's property or otherwise infringes on someone elses personal rights. (This would, of course, mean that it would have to be a flag that they bought and own, not one that they took from someone elses flagpole ... and burning a flag in someone else's yard without their permission would infringe on their property rights and potentially harm their property.)

Every now and again the government (state or federal) tries to pass laws making the burning of the American flag illegal. That should never, ever, happen. It is a very tricky thing because it would first require a very specific and legal definition of what constituted a flag ... if I draw an image of the American flag and burn that (for example) would it be violating the law that bans flag burning? ... Of course it also opens the door for other restrictions on what can and can't be used as a symbol of expression ... In the end it comes down to one thing - where do you draw the line?

The government ... ALL governments have shown that once they've been granted a power they are reluctant to release that power. Rather they become hungry for more such powers. Like the old saying goes, 'give them an inch and they'll take a mile.' I'm not willing to risk freedom in order to prevent someone from doing something that I find offensive.

I once heard a radio talkshow host (I'm sorry I don't remember who it was) say 'Freedom means that some people are going to do things that I don't like, and that's okay.' I found that statement to match almost exactly my feelings on a lot of matters .... there are a lot of people out there, and we're all different (if we weren't the world would be a pretty boring place) ... I'm not going to agree with everyone, and not everyone is going to agree with me ... we've got to learn that just because we don't like or agree with something does NOT give us the right to say that someone else can't do it.

Change

Okay ... The Democrats have chosen their candidate (barring a sudden shift in the super-delegates before or at the convention) and so now we can go forward into the general election as Obama vs McCain.

The democrats have rallied behind the champion of 'Change' and yet most of them don't know what 'change' he represents. They will say (have already said in fact) that McCain will simply be a 'continuation of Bush's failed policies' largely because he supports continuing the Bush Tax cuts and maintaining our forces in Iraq. Those two issues, however, are two that I happen to believe were both good policies and should be continued, if not expanded upon.

What needs to 'change' is government spending, something that John McCain has at least made statements to with his vow to 'freeze' federal spending at current levels for a year while 'evaluating' government programs to eliminate waste. Obama, on the other hand, has not discussed federal spending at all, but has proposed a slew of new Federal Aid programs aimed at helping low to middle class Americans get back on their feet. This increased spending would, of course, be funded by allowing the Bush Tax Cut's to expire as well as raising taxes in other areas.

This plan of increasing the tax burden in order to increase federal spending is somehow supposed to stimulate the economy ... despite the fact that historical evidence shows that it is almost exactly what the Government tried to do at the beginning of the great depression and is the main factors that economists believe caused the depth and length of the great depression to be much worse than they would have without governmental interference.

Historical data indicates that every increase in tax has resulted in lower federal revenue and a much larger decrease in economic growth, while lowering taxes and (this is where Bush failed) decreasing federal spending causes dramatic economic growth and build up of private sector wealth across ALL income levels.

Apparently a majority of Europe and the Middle East favor Obama being elected, but these people also want a weaker United States and most of them dislike us largely due to our success. There is a reason that the 'poor' in this country have a better standard of living than ANY other country in the world ... but every year it seems that we loose sight of that reason more and more. The question is, is it too late for our eyes to turn back to the light that made this country great and away from the bottomless abyss of government?

A new month

Well ... it's been nearly two months since I last rambled here. I'd like to say that I made my two month 80,000 words in 61 days goal, but the fact is I didn't even make 40,000. This is even more sad because of the fact that I was at 35,000 at the end of April ... a little behind the target, but close enough to easily make it up in May.

I'd like to say that it was work, or that I got really sick, or that aliens came and took me to another galaxy and I didn't have any way to write, but it wouldn't be right. The fact of the matter is, ultimately I gave up ... I stopped writing. Work did factor in as I got shifted to an early morning shift to work on a feature film, but really it shouldn't have stopped me from writing because I shouldn't have let it. In part I'd say it was what I had feared ... to a degree I burned out ... I enjoy writing, but I also enjoy practicing on my bass, and playing video games and it was starting to feel as though I was forcing myself to write at the expense of the other things I enjoy doing.

The other thing that I'm starting to come to the realization of is that Summer is a bad time for me (us actually as my wife has been having the same problem) to write. This is the third summer I've attempted a personal challenge and all of them have resulted in failure. My wife and I were talking about it the other day and she expressed the opinion that it may be because we feel that there's so much to be done, yard work, home improvement, and the like, that essentially we just can't focus on just writing like we can in the winter (Both of my successful NaNoWriMos were in November (of course) and my one successful personal challenge was in Jan).

I'm still planning on finishing this story ... I think I've got a good one going and it has potential of possibly being something I can refine and maybe submit. (Actually my last two NaNo's fall into this as well but still need to be finished off and then start the editing process.) To that end I'm going to start setting aside a scheduled writing time once I'm back on a 'normal' schedule. I'm still looking forward to NaNoWriMo again in November, but I think that if I try a challenge again next spring/summer I'm probably going to lighten it up more and try to be more 'casual' about writing for it.

For now I'm going to crawl back out from under my rock and return to the world of rambles and rants. I've already written more here this year than I did last year, I'm going to try and keep increasing that over the rest of the year. Up to this point I've ranted primarily about political issues and my writing, I'm likely going to expand that with discussions of my modeling hobby and video game hobbies and role-playing games ... and probably anything else that crosses my mind while I'm sitting at a keyboard and blogging.

Hopefully soon I'll also be making an announcement that we are offering some prints of some of the artwork that we presently have up over at Grimscale Studios as well as adding some new work that my wife has been working on.

For now, however, I just wanted to take a moment and let everyone know how my writing went and where things are going for me.