A few days ago, I had a phone argument with my mother about “immigration law.” My mother insisted that she heard about a law that was “going to legalize illegal immigrants and they won’t have to pay taxes and they will get our social security!” To make a long story short, I told her that I couldn’t believe that a law like that would be getting passed, and that I wanted to check the facts about it, but she didn’t have a bill number or even the name of this supposed law. By the end of the conversation, she was telling me that I “always talk down to her” and that I am “uppity.” :/
Today, I was sent the following video from another family member:
I pointed out that this video was from June 2007, and then pointed the sender of the video (and all the individuals he sent it to, including my mother) that though the bill number was never mentioned (interesting, eh?) accurate information about bills can be found at THOMAS or GPO Access and that the bill that I *think* he might have been talking about was S. 1639, and it was not passed.
I am now waiting for the shit-storm to arrive. I am sure I am now a number of nasty things (snotty, uppity, etc.) because I encourage critical analysis and I don’t treat outdated information from Lou Dobbs of all people as Gospel-truth.
“That’s what we’re dealing with here: choices. My Target-boycotting acquaintance is making the choice to believe what he prefers to believe, irrespective of whatever the facts might actually be. That’s a lot of hard work on his part. It requires an ongoing and exponentially multiplying set of fabrications to maintain. It involves an ever-expanding web of things that he can’t allow himself to think about. It has to be, on some level, exhausting.
…These people have fabricated imaginary monsters that, at some level, they know aren’t real and yet they’ve put those monsters in charge of their lives. They’re driven by fear and hatred — fear and hatred of things they know don’t really exist. They are, for whatever reason, choosing bondage to that fear and hatred and it’s making them miserable. It’s stunting their humanity. It’s confining them. It’s wearing them out.”
Is it really that hard to check in to see what is real? It must be more comforting to have one’s worldview reaffirmed by bad information. It just makes me sad…sad and, of course, an uppity liberal.
American Life League launches anti-birth control campaign (I’m not shocked, but I figured I’d report it anyways, just in case any of you out there think that birth control is something that *everyone* thinks is a good idea in our, ahem, enlightened era.)
‘Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) faced off against Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove, who objected to the state of Illinois giving $1 million to the Pilgrim Baptist Church, excoriating him for not believing in God and for having the temerity to say that the Church and State should be separate. She told him that she believed it was dangerous for children to know that atheism exists. She ordered him to stop testifying and insisted that in the Land of Lincoln, “people believe in God!” ‘
Here is the link to the Chicago Tribune article, and here is the audio. Take a moment to listen and be reminded of the importance of the First Amendment.
Our First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Um, Rep. Davi, I think you need to reread your Constitution. It was pretty important to the founding fathers that we separate church and state- so important that it was the topic of the very first amendment to our Constitution. It’s not just some *crazy* notion that the atheists made up.
Seriously, it is this sort of horseshit in our government that makes me want to slap a bitch. I don’t know how these sorts of discussions can keep going on in our government, a government created by people who left other countries seeking religious freedom. I just don’t get it, and I don’t feel like I’m in some sort of privileged position to see this matter clearly.
