It is difficult to assure accuracy in an incident without knowing all the facts. However, knowing all the facts is also nearly impossible. Thus, mouth-all-mighty people like me offer opinions based on the information they have available. As more information becomes available opinions shifts.
Now, I come to target of this monologue.
This past weekend the Snow Canyon Lady Warriors rugby team in St. George, Utah conducted an event to raise money to assist them in traveling to a national competition, out of state. A passerby decided to choose to be offended by the event. “This is a highly inappropriate way for a team to raise money, no matter how desperately it’s needed.”
What was the egregious event? A bake sale combined with a raffle for shotgun. In this lady’s mind the raffle equated to insensitivity to recent tragic events across the nation that have cost people their lives. Insensitivity to mayhem raises the eyebrow of any rational person.
Yet, with full sensitivity to those events, I asked the question, “What made this women chief of the appropriateness police?” Where does she deem she has authority delegated to her by society to decide what is or is not appropriate…beyond her own self-appointed superiority complex? Yes, I know that sounds harsh. It was intended to sound harsh. Because those who would lord themselves over others will learn by no other means than directness.
This woman of course ran to the school officials bawling that she was too weak to view opinions opposed to her own. In response the equally weakling principal jumped to confusions about his role. According to the newspaper article he is placing the coach in jeopardy of her job. Why? Because he too believes it is somehow his role to declare to the community what moral offenses (as his opinion dictates) can or cannot be committed. He has assigned himself, by merit of a simple administrative bureaucrat role, as the chief of moral values for the community. How absolutely presumptuous. Perhaps rather than dismissing the coach, for allowing her team to conduct a legal activity, it should be the principal that is fired for being a clear and present danger to the liberties of the community.
We live in a society that is sacrificing itself upon the alter self-importance. Somehow, a preponderance of members of our society have come to the conclusion that their choice to be offended is more precious than another person’s right to liberty. Another way of stating that is “My desires are more relevant than your rights”. Or, yet, even more succinctly “My liberty to have control over you exceeds your liberty to have control over yourself.”
Such presumptuousness is evil at its core.
We have, in the name of the awful doctrine of psychological self-awareness, attempted to build a moral fabric of society upon a foundation of “feelings” rather than conduct. Said a woman and a principal of questionable principles “we are entitled to pretend that our opinions deserve the same protection as does violation of your liberty.”
Further, we have fallen victims to the age old fallacy that “when they are learned, they think they are wise.” We were warned and forewarned against such foolish assumptions…by men far wiser than most of us.
Now, for the record, I despise the use of guns. I equally despise the acts of violence which so easily men engage in to enforce their power-over others. The use of guns in place of reason is an insult to the dignity of mankind. I make no distinction as to why, what brand, what caliber a gun is. I despise the lot of them. Yet, having said that, I know how to use many of them. And, because some reactionary people, such as those who take offense at the liberty of others or seek to exercise control over them by mere titles, it becomes necessary for some of us to keep and bear arms.
The US Constitution assured that right to bear arms after diligent and thoughtful discourse among men of reason and principle. I have yet to meet or hear of any person in my lifetime with greater wisdom and inspiration than them. But, it is not just their wisdom we can honor. It was the reasonable understanding and logic of the entire nation of people that embraced that right to bear arms to whom we ought to look to fashion our own wisdom.
The assault on a group of girls by a zealot, supported by a potentate, is possibly far more egregious, to all, than the girl’s offense of being nothing more than a group of carnival barkers crying “Come one and all. Step right up. Try your chance at winning a symbol of your liberty.”