Stand...or Don't

September 21, 2017

 "Stand...or Don't"

It's a really hot day in Northeast Kansas today. It's not quite Autumn yet; that will come tomorrow for us. For us Pagans, it will start the season of Mabon, where the year will begin to die and culminate in that cycle in late December.

But it feels like Summer; it's 89 F degrees, and 62% humidity, making it a miserable heat index of roughly 98, using my powerful third grade math.

I've read several articles this week, and listened to the President of the United States address the United Nations Assembly; a speech that sounded way too much like a campaign speech or a State of the Union address. It was powerful, nonetheless, and I am sure that Kim Jong-un is already plotting the destruction of his model airplanes, and deciding whether to nuke Guam or Japan first.

Now, you heard all of that, right? I hit on religion, weather, the POTUS, and a world leader all in one lump sum. You know how? The First Amendment...that's how. It guarantees me the right to say what I will, speak my mind, and tell you in this blog that Hillary Clinton is a liar, Mitch McConnell should have retired a long time ago, and that my taxes in Kansas are just way too damned high.

I can do all of this without fear of arrest, detainment, or prosecution as long as I do it peacefully. I can't yell these things out on my front porch, and when someone disagrees from across the street, send a bullet flying across the way intended for their shiny little head...that's illegal.

You also have those rights; the ones that the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States gave you, including the one to sit down or kneel when the National Anthem is being played at a football game or some other sporting event, and the one to peacefully protest the cop that was acquitted after he shot a kid with a something he thought was a gun, only to find out it wasn't.

However, I ask one thing as a Patriot. I ask you to study, learn, and ponder what you are actually exercising your First Amendment rights for. Are you shaming the memory of fallen soldiers in our nation's bloodiest wars by not standing when they are honored? Because that is what the National Anthem is played for. It is played to remind you that you are at a football game as a free citizen, and not at a food line waiting for a scrap of bread in a concentration camp. Our society has history at their fingertips...literally; every day, via smart phones. I would like just one or two of them to use it to open an encyclopedia and read about World War II or the American War for Independence. Maybe, just maybe, they'd start giving one third of a fuck what they aren't standing for.

 

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