Liberty Postings

And I thought it couldn’t happen here.  (OK, actually I did; I just hoped it wouldn’t)  My friend’s son was stopped by a police officer yesterday and prevented from riding his bike.  This boy was told that his mom was irresponsible and let him do bad things.  I am so angry on behalf of my friend, who, along with her husband, is raising smart, responsible, independent children.  Please read on.

My friend’s son, who is in the first grade, loves to ride his bike to school.  When his older sister, who is ten, also rides her bike to their nearby building of public education (a mile and a half away on paths lining streets of suburbia . . . oh, how treacherous), they head together without adult chaperones and usually encounter other walkers and bikers along the way.  On those days when the boy is riding solo, my friend hangs back in her car and makes sure he arrives safely.

Yesterday, this boy was at the school with his mom, as she had arrived to help with an after-school activity.  When the time came to leave, his mom told him to head out to get his bike while she went in the opposite direction to wrangle a group of kids she was responsible for driving home, with the intention that she would meet him outside.

She drove to the side of the school at which her son was to be waiting for her and saw a police car.  Oh, my!  What happened?  Turns out, the cop had stopped the six (almost seven)-year-old boy, questioned him, and then informed him his mother had done a bad thing by letting him be alone with his bike and cross one street alone.  Well, not really alone . . . even though he had crossed this street many times before, a teacher happened to be right there and watched him get across safely and then continued to look out for him once he was on the other side; that is, until the officer arrived and took charge of a clearly volatile and threatening situation.

Once my friend pulled up to her son and the disappointed man in uniform, she was confronted by the officer: “Don’t you think your son is too young to be riding his bike by himself?  I think the world of my kids and would never let them ride by themselves!  Anything could have happened!”  He never introduced himself before shouting at her.

To translate, the police officer essentially said the following: “I actually love MY children; you don’t.  You obviously don’t care whether your child lives or dies.  He could have been abducted by a serial killer or mutilated by a wild pack of coyotes, all while dozens of parents and teachers who know and love your child and were within mere feet of your son simply would have stared and done nothing to help him.”

My friend’s son was nervous and afraid . . . not by the prospect of riding his bike without a parent attached to his side, which he had done many times before, but by this ridiculous police officer who made him feel like he was doing something bad.  He later told his mom, “Maybe I should have told him that I was seven instead of six and then he wouldn’t have yelled.”

Here is one of many reasons that my friend is awesome.  She told her son to get back on his bike and ride on home.  She didn’t want him to think he had been doing anything wrong.  Because he hadn’t.  If more kids rode their bikes home every day, I think that would be a good thing!  What would the cop have cited her for — encouraging independence and a sense of responsibility in her child?  And, in a move that surely would have further infuriated the officer, the next day, this boy and his big sister rode their bikes to and from school together . . . without Mommy hovering around them.  They made it just fine.

My friend did not drop her son off on a rural road five miles from home and next to a parked, windowless white van with a man leaning against the back door offering him candy and then tell him to find his way home.  That would be stupid and dangerous.  Instead, she trusted him to get his bike and start his short trek home, knowing that within minutes she would be right behind him with parental eyes on her child–a child who was actually exercising and getting fresh air!  She had been teaching him, and all of her children, small steps of independence from the moment they could walk.  That’s what we’re supposed to do, right?  Teach them to be confident men and women who can live safely in the world around them?  Those lessons can’t start when a kid turns eighteen.  She didn’t treat him like a helpless infant, but as a boy who understood safety and used common sense.  I’m so glad that she has not let this police officer, who apparently thinks horrible people and certain amputation or death are lurking around every corner, affect what she knows to be best for her son and daughters.

As I’ve done my reading over the past couple of years by authors who assert we are raising our children in a culture of unwarranted fear, I’ve come across stories in which “concerned neighbors” call the cops because they see a 10-year-old walking on a sidewalk unattended or a mom has to fill out five triplicate forms in order to let her kid ride his bike the half-mile home from soccer practice by himself.  I try not to get frustrated at this bubble that some authority figures want to place around kids, because it does me no good and because I know it all comes out of love for our children.  But, boys and girls are as safe as they ever were.  In fact, statistics show that kids are safer than when we were growing up in the 1970s and 1980s — fewer abductions, less violence, less disease.  What were we allowed to do by ourselves as kids?  Did our moms not care about us and our safety?

I let my six-year-old walk to the bus stop without me and when she walks to school instead, she does the last part of the walk with a nine-year-old neighbor and not me.  I’m thrilled that my friend lets her kids bike to school and trusts them and the people around them (most people really are good!) enough to know they will arrive and return safely.  Some parents aren’t comfortable with that.  OK.  But, with the exception of some clearly abusive situations, most parents should be afforded the right to decide what is best for their children.  That cop was out of line in the way that he talked to my friend and handled the situation in general.  His mindset is detrimental in promoting the safe and vibrant communities we all want.  We need to have some discussions at our schools and in our neighborhoods about the restrictions we put on our kids and the real reasons we do so.

My abused and neglected children

Quick quiz: Which of the following home environments is the most dangerous for a child?

a. Mom and Dad drink heavily, invite their partying friends over on an almost nightly basis, and expose their children to all kinds of language and behavior they shouldn’t have to hear and see.

b. Dad belittles Mom in front of kids every evening, sometimes giving her a shove for good measure, offering a horrible example for his son about how to treat a woman and to his daughter about what to expect from a man.

c. Mom is divorced and is the only parent in the home.  She works hard to provide for her kids, is active in their school, and provides hugs, prayers, and bedtime stories every night.

If you answered “c,” then, according to Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman, you are correct!!!  Give yourselves a hand.

A bill proposed by Senator Grothman, Senate Bill 507, would require the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize “nonmarital parenthood” as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.  This effort is to include statewide awareness campaigns and the dissemination of information that shares one important way to prevent child abuse is not to be a single parent.

That’s it.  Be married.  Apparently, no matter what, that makes you less likely to place your children under threat of abuse and neglect in your home.  On the other hand, if you happen to be a single parent, due to death or divorce, or if you are part of an unmarried couple with children, you are labeled a potential child abuser.

This is not meant as a defensive gripe because I am a single mom.  I’m not denying that the ideal situation for kids is a mom and a dad who are in a loving and committed marriage in which the family unit is respected and made a top priority.  No doubt about it.  But, you cannot tell me that the kids who lived below me in an apartment complex last year whose parents screamed at each other while high and then blared music until 2:00am or the friends I had growing up who saw their dads hit their moms, who themselves were hit with belts and burned with cigarettes, or as girls were told by their fathers how sexy they were becoming, or who were reminded regularly how stupid or worthless they were, or who lived in a cold home in which their mom regularly confessed to them that she did not love their father are in a better situation than kids who grow up in many of our country’s single parent homes.

So-called “conservative” politicians, those who espouse the virtues of small government until using government fits your moral agenda, I say this to you.  Stop.  Single parents deal with lots of challenges (as do all parents, actually, but single parents face some unique issues of their own) and many already carry extra guilt and worry over their kids’ well-being and future.  Labeling them child abusers in the supposed attempt to protect and promote the traditional family is insulting, harmful, and absurd.

Oh, and Senator Grothman, have you met our own Senator Stacey Campfield?  If not, give him a call.  I think the two of you would get along famously.

It was the summer before fourth grade. I was at my friend’s house and we found a copy of Where Did I Come From? on the top shelf of the bookcase in her living room. We read it from cover to cover. We stared at each other in disbelief. Then we read it again. After that, we got out a tape recorder and recorded ourselves reading it and then played the recording back. We were fascinated.

We shared our discovery with my friend’s mom, who advised me to walk home and let my mom know about the reading material I had encountered that afternoon. (Perhaps there also was a phone call to my mom while I was in transit; I don’t know.) I remember my mom was in the middle of teaching a piano lesson, so I patiently waited upstairs and then told her all I had learned at the first opportunity. She was awesome. She answered every question I had, including several that I probably would have been too embarrassed to ask if I had been a little older.

That must have been the summer that a lot of kids “found out,” because sex was all the buzz when we walked into our fourth grade classrooms. Lots of whispers of, “Do you know?” and “Our parents do that!” And, looking back, I don’t think that was too young to learn about sex. I handled it fine, and so did my peers. I will have no problem with my kids learning about sex at age eight, nine, or ten, at least in general terms. I hope the conversations I have with them will evolve as they grow and more details become age-appropriate. I want to talk to them before they hear too much from their friends. And, they will hear things.

In fifth grade, we got the “Our Changing Bodies” lessons, with my teacher in charge of the girls and our school principal taking the boys in another room. We used the same book for fifth and sixth grade health education, and I clearly remember my teacher telling us not to skip ahead because we would learn about actual sex next year and then hearing the quiet yet urgent flipping of pages that immediately followed. Seventh grade science devoted a week to sex education, and my teacher put a box in the front of the room in which we could leave any questions we wanted to ask anonymously. There were some intense queries from some very confused and frightened students, as I recall, and Ms. Mason answered them all with respect and compassion. Ninth grade health class brought more in-depth material and some very graphic photos of end-stage syphilis. Senior year gave us the condom on the cucumber lecture in the auditorium, with the expected snickering. There were permission slips that went home in every instance, and there were usually just one or two kids who had to go sit in the library until we were done.

None of these classroom instances compelled me to have sex.  But, I was glad to have the knowledge and to be able to have rational, informed conversations about the topic.

I am glad that sex education was taught throughout my schooling. My mom talked to me (or at least was willing to respond to my questions) but many kids do not have a parent at home who will do that. Perhaps a class discussion will encourage kids to ask questions at home to a mom or dad who might not address it otherwise. Or, at the very least, they will get some information about how sex works (the level of misinformation is shocking) and how to protect themselves.  Ideally, yes, parents should have these tender moments with their children when they sit down and discuss how sex is an act of love between two people who are committed to one another for eternity and if you even think about having sex in high school (or earlier), your genitals will explode and then fall off (or something equally as compelling). But, that doesn’t happen.

The CDC reports that 46% of our kids are having sex before they graduate from high school. This isn’t because they are exposed to sex education in the classroom. Just as scary is the statistic that around 40% of these kids aren’t protecting themselves. I don’t think kids should have sex in high school. (Both literally inside the high school . . . we all know someone who did that . . . or during that time of their lives.) But, if they are, I want it hammered home that they need protection. If their parents aren’t going to be responsible and have that conversation, it needs to happen elsewhere. The alternative is an ongoing waiting list of pregnant girls signing up to star in the next season of Teen Mom as well as a bunch of babies who are more likely to be raised without a father, to struggle in school, and to live in poverty than their peers who are born to older mothers.

This post was prompted by my reading of commentary regarding State Senator Stacey Campfield’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill (yes, the same fine legislator who recently asserted the notion that AIDS was brought to our country by a pilot having sex with a monkey), a proposed piece of legislation that would ban any discussion of sexual orientation before the ninth grade. My research led me to investigate how sex education is handled in Tennessee in general. I did not know that our state does not require sex education for its students and if it does, it must emphasize abstinence. I also didn’t know that current law forbids schools from teaching any sex education until the ninth grade. Sex education then can be taught to high school students in the appropriate classes (biology, health, etc). Doesn’t that seem too late? I’m not asserting that a lot of kids are having sex by the ninth grade, but I can guarantee most of them are talking about it.

The statistics for Tennessee are troubling. We are higher than the national average in teen pregnancies, teen STD rates, and percentage of high school students who didn’t use a condom the last time they had sex. There are a lot of teenagers in our state having sex and truly not knowing how to prevent pregnancy or maybe just not getting the lifelong consequences of their decision not to protect themselves (if the ill-advised decision to have sex is made in the first place).

I don’t want the government to invade into the private sexual decisions of young people, like, say, a Rick Santorum might. Those moral questions must be addressed within a family. But, I do think that sex education has its place in a school curriculum before the ninth grade. Boys and girls are learning all kinds of wrong information during discussions that take place as they ride school buses and walk through school hallways and sit in school cafeterias; that conversation shouldn’t stop when they step into the classroom.

So, I’ve been thinking about not voting this year.  That’s big for me.  Whenever I move, I submit my voter registration information before I call the cable company or make sure my lights are turned on.  I have only missed one opportunity to vote since I turned eighteen in 1993.  It was a primary in a state election and I still feel guilty about it.  But right now, I really feel like I would have to apologize to the country if I voted for any of these guys to be its leader.

I’m no fan of President Obama.  I don’t agree with most of his political priorities and have a very different view of the role that government should play in our lives.  I don’t want him to sit in the Oval Office for another four years.  Now, I take no issue with the man personally.  As I’ve mentioned before, he seems to be a lovely husband and father and I probably would enjoy an animated discussion with him.  I just don’t like his vision for the country.

And, regardless of whether or not I agree with his ideology, I think Obama has proven to be a very weak leader.  Bush was pummeled for gas prices lower than they are currently when he was in office; Obama apologists say he just can’t help it and there’s really nothing one man can do to affect this global situation.  We can’t seem to pass a budget, and Obama and the fellow leaders in his party blame the Republicans (and then Boehner cries).   We now have more people on food stamps than anytime in history and nearly half of our population not paying income tax.  Hey, the president isn’t good at accepting responsibility, why should the rest of America?  He is really skilled at apologizing to other countries but disappears when the time comes to take a strong stand on behalf of the people of he is supposed to lead.  Three years ago, he asked for and received nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus money that would “save or create” 3.5 million jobs.  Yeah.  Not so much.  President Truman had a plate with “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk; perhaps Obama could learn a lesson from one of his Democratic bethren.

With that in mind, people tell me that the most important mission we must have is defeating President Obama.  Anyone would be better than him, they say!  Our country won’t survive another four years of this administration!  Let’s put a plastic bag on the ballot and vote for it, as surely it would do less damage than our current president!

I disagree . . . I don’t think that every other possible option is better (the plastic bag being one example).  I think our country would veer as far away from the Constitution and the writings of our founders under a Santorum administration as it currently does with an Obama one.  Santorum loves him some government intervention.  He is a self-proclaimed fan of big government as long as it’s manipulated by supposedly conservative principles.  You can’t rail against government running our lives when you don’t like the way the guy in charge is directing the efforts, but then turn around and think it’s awesome and righteous when your agenda is being promoted.  Limited government is a founding principle of our country.  Period.

I’ve posted it before, but this 2008 quote from Santorum bears repeating,

“[Some conservatives] have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues . . .that is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I’m aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.”

I don’t understand how conservatives of the “less government is better government” variety can support this guy.  He believes that government should get involved in your bedroom . . . in cultural issues . . . in how you choose to live your life!  Santorum wants to use government to force the country to conform with his religious and social mores.

So, vote for Ron Paul, you might say.  No one can argue against the fact that the fine Congressman is consistent in his adherence to limited government.  True, and I admire him for that.  But, I also can imagine a moment in which a President Paul sits down to negotiate with Ahmadinejad or some of his peeps on a boat floating in the Caspian Sea.  As they are chatting about the weather, that fine mentally stable leader of a country in which there are no gay people leans into Paul and whispers, “We just blew up Tel Aviv.  The city is leveled.  Our bodies are probably beginning to feel the effects of the radiation right now.  How ya like me now, Doc?”

I don’t imagine this scenario because I think Rep. Paul is naive about foreign policy, as ridiculous callers to Phil Valentine or Michael Delgiorno like to say.  (Those calls always sound like this: “I think Ron Paul is 100% right about our economy and I would love to see him Secretary of the Treasury, but his naivete about foreign policy is a dealbreaker for me.”)  I don’t think Ron Paul is naive.  That’s insulting.  He is an intelligent and well read man who comes by his opinions from a place of genuine principle.  But, I think it’s in instances of foreign threats in which you have to give the Founding Fathers a little room for error.

In 1787, how could you have imagined the creation of large metal objects with wings that could fly across oceans in mere hours in order to deliver a weapon that split the nucleus of an atom, resulting in thousands of immediate deaths and radioactive repurcussions for generations to come?  No lasting foreign entanglements sounds easy enough when your most recent enemy, and the most powerful nation on earth at the time, was across a body of water that required several weeks in a wooden boat to cross.

Note: I tried to write about Newt Gingrinch in this blog post, but his ego wouldn’t fit on the screen.  And, he kept telling me what I should write and which of my opinions were legitimate ones.

Even though I wrote before that I could not vote for Mitt Romney because he had no core principles, perhaps he is the best option after all for that same reason.  As several wise friends have argued to me, since Romney doesn’t actually believe in anything, he will just try to keep people happy.  If we get a true, small government Congress in place, as we seem to be trending, at least Romney will be a good sport about signing the legislation that lands on his desk.  With President Obama remaining at the helm, we’ll have another four years of stalemates and a problematic can of horrifying deficits and entitlement spending that continues to get kicked down the road.

I have to admit, I’ve wondered a lot recently if I even am a Republican.  When I look at those guys on stage at the debate last night, I start to think that I’m not.  I take solace in the fact that 55% of the members of my party wish that someone else was running.  I am not alone.  Here’s hoping for a brokered convention!

When the time comes, I’m sure I will walk behind that curtain for the primary and the general election, press my selections on the electronic screen, and slap on an “I Voted” sticker before heading off to work.  I can’t bring myself not to participate.  But, I hope that one day there is once again a candidate for whom I can have some excitement about voting, who I will be proud to see represent our nation and its interests.  Until then, I will have to accept disappointment and reluctant engagement as my most compelling emotions of the day.

It was only two weeks ago that I wrote about the lovely comments made by State Representative Richard Floyd regarding his desire to “stomp a mudhole” in any transgendered individual who tries on a new blouse in the proximity of his spouse.  Today, State Senator Stacey Campfield took to the airwaves and made Floyd sound, in comparison, like someone who could lead the next LGBT Pride Parade.

Campfield visited a show on XM radio and shared this fantastic insight into a health epidemic that has caused devastation around the world for three decades:

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall. My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex…very rarely [transmitted]. What’s the average lifespan of a homosexual? it’s very short. Google it yourself.”

There is so much going on in these five lines that my head is spinning in my attempt to digest it and write coherently about how ill-informed and absurd these comments are . . . made by a man who has actually been elected to office . . . more than once!

(Side note — For those of you familiar with Senator Campfield’s blog, to which I often look for inspiration concerning how to craft elegant and persuasive prose, you will realize that if Campfield had written these words instead of speaking them, it would have appeared something like “scrooing a monkee.”)

It’s shocking how irresponsible an elected official can be in stating publicly that it’s virtually impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.  Luckily, the average ninth grader who’s completed a semester of Health class knows better than that.  The CDC reports that in 2009, nearly 30% of new HIV infections in the United States were due to heterosexual sex.  I know it’s some tricky math, but I don’t think that qualifies as “very rarely.”  In the rest of the world, the AIDS crisis that rages on is overwhelmingly furthered by unprotected heterosexual sex . . . between two humans (just thought I would add that in case Campfield wants to continue to blame the monkey for ongoing risky sexual decisions).

The fact that Campfield says these ridiculous things out loud, and that some of his constituents might actually believe him, is simply dangerous.  Let’s see how Campfield’s “very rarely” conclusion holds up when placed against the 14 million orphans of the AIDS crisis in southern Africa.  Those precious children are without a mom or a dad because of a virus transmitted through heterosexual sex.

And, I like that the fine Senator falls back on the always handy “gay guy = guy who engages in bestiality” equation.  He makes it sound like a pilot put his plane on cruise control, invited a primate into the cockpit for some intimate inter-species relations, and immediately following that encounter, walked up and down the aisles to have sex with multiple unsuspecting men who then landed and . . . boom . . . started the AIDS epidemic.

It is true that transmission of HIV is higher as a result of gay sex than heterosexual sex, and that AIDS began primarily as a disease within the gay community in our country, but this is not a “gay disease” that flourished from a one-night stand with a monkey.  It is widely accepted that the virus first spread from chimpanzees to humans in the early 20th century, likely to bushmeat hunters in Africa who had a lot of exposure to the infected animals and had the infected blood pass through a cut in their skin.  These hunter dudes then had sex with lots of WOMEN (and probably some men, too . . . I’m not discounting that factor) and the virus took off.

I assume that the statistics about the lifespan of homosexuals that Senator Campfield wants us to discover through our Googling are based on the “research” done by Dr. Paul Cameron and the Family Research Institute, which has been thoroughly debunked by multiple scientific organizations and by anyone who can read the methodology with any level of critical thinking.  Cameron sampled obituaries posted in gay magazines and newspapers and said, “Look at how young all the gay people are dying!”  Oh, that’s conclusive.

Maybe we should ask questions like, “Is it possible that some older men and women just never were comfortable sharing their sexuality publicly?” or “Is it possible that just the untimely deaths by AIDS were being highlighted in order to raise awareness about the disease?” or “Is it possible that some gay men and women were never accepted by their families and therefore there was no one to write the obituary of the 90-year-old lesbian who lived down the street?”  Or, maybe Cameron was just looking for an excuse to thumb through hundreds of gay publications.  Whatever his motivation, Dr. Cameron’s efforts have gotten him expelled from both the American Psychological Association and American Sociological Association and his work has never been published in a reputable journal of his field.

Sadly, this is about what I would expect from Senator Campfield, so I shouldn’t be surprised.  He has a fine and well-deserved track record of absurdity.  It just makes me sad that some people in this state that I have now called home for almost a decade and love dearly actually want this guy representing our interests and priorities in the General Assembly.  That truth is stranger than the fiction that the senator was spewing today.

Over the past week or so, I’ve seen the image above posted on the Facebook walls of several friends.  And, it’s bothered me for a couple of reasons.  First, there should not be an apostrophe in 1970s.  But beyond my frustration with the widespread sharing of poor punctuation, I don’t understand why the fun in the photo has to be a thing of the past.

I’ve written plenty of times about my approach to parenting –  letting my kids play outside without standing right next to them, walking or riding the bus to school, giving them the opportunity to bleed, cry, and fail once in a while — and I get we all have our own way of doing things.  We all love our kids and want the best for them.  Each mom (or dad) has to do what she thinks is best for her kid and there are countless different ways to be a great parent.

All that being said, I honestly don’t get why building a ramp and flying off the end of it with your big wheel or bike or scooter has to be considered a relic of the past.  Can you help me with this one?  People have commented on the photo, “I wish our kids could do things like this” and “We had such a blast.  Wouldn’t change a thing!  Our kids will never experience this feeling.”  Why not?  Why not use the next sunny day to say, “Hey, kid of mine!  See that cinderblock over there?  Put that piece of plywood on top of it.  Now ride your bike really fast over it!”  If you don’t want them to be unsupervised, stand five feet away and watch them.  Heck, go ahead and have the Neosporin and bandaids at the ready.  Winter is the perfect season to give it a try — more layers of clothes to protect the skin!

If you take a look at that photo, that kid has MAYBE two and a half feet of air under him . . . the injuries sustained from that height can’t be that bad.  Surely the possibility of a few scrapes and bruises can’t even come close to the beautiful look of both thrill and terror on that boy’s face, and the absolute pride he probably felt when he came back to the ground, quickly pedaling his bike back behind the ramp to do it again.

Were you allowed to use your imagination to create backyard or playground adventures that bordered on dangerous and physically painful when you were a child?  If so, did your mom love you less than you love your kids? 

I agree that some safety measures that have been implemented since the 1970s are a good thing.  I get that buckling my two-year-old son into a car seat is important and gives him a much safer riding experience than I had at his age, which would have been in 1977.  But, it makes me sad that simple, outdoor, mildly risky fun with nary an electronic device in the picture has to be seen as a nostalgic memory from times of yore.

I showed this photo to my daughter and she is very excited to build a ramp at the end of our dead end street this weekend.  She’s even found the perfect materials left in our garage by the previous homeowners.  We invite you to come on over with your bikes, skateboards, or whatever wheels you may have!  Several of our neighbors, who I am pleased to say routinely engage in daredevil acts up and down our street, hopeully will be joining in the fun.  My girl is going to rev up that princess bike of hers and let it fly.  We’re bringing a little bit of the 1970s into 2012!

So, tonight an interview with Marianne Gingrinch  is supposed to air on ABC that is going to shock the world.  I have my doubts.  If she is going to share that Newt Gingrich is a pompous, self-absorbed cad who considers himself above the standard morals by which normal married men are expected to conduct themselves, then I think you can go ahead and file that under “Least Shocking Stories of 2012.”   

The former Mrs. Gingrinch is entering into her tell-all interview with a couple of credibility issues.  First of all, she was once a mistress herself, as she started dating Newt “Super Stud” Gingrich while he was still married to his first wife.  So, crying foul about an affair loses a bit of its traction here.  She should have paid more attention to that “once a cheater . . .” line her friends and her mama tried to tell her.  Also, she is an ex-wife.  No matter what, and as spot on as she may be about the despicable way in which Gingrich treated the covenant of their marriage and the fact that he does not have the character needed to lead our nation, she will be painted as bitter and vindictive.  Raise your hand out there if you have an “ex.”  How many of them would describe you as a wonderful person who skips through fields with puppies and betters the world of everyone you meet?  I actually feel sorry for her, that she feels the need to broadcast their marital troubles more than a decade after the divorce.  Let it go.

This morning, a local talk show host asked supporters of Gingrinch to call in and state whether or not Marianne Gingrich could say anything tonight that would change their minds about their candidate.  Most of them said that Mrs. Gingrich (#2) had no impact no their love for The Newt because his personal life doesn’t affect his ability to lead the nation, he has sought redemption from God, he’s a strong conversative, and he could beat President Obama. 

Thought One:  How many Newt supporters who now overlook his “indiscretions” for the chance to have a Republican back in the Oval Office thought that President Clinton was the biggest sleaze ever and that his character defamed the office of the Presidency?  Let’s be consistent, people.  The argument can be made that a man can cheat on his wife with a different woman every week and still run a country well, but that has to apply whether or not you like the guy’s policies.

Thought Two:  I know I’m not supposed to judge what is in a man’s heart and I really have  no way of knowing what kind of conversations Newt Gingrich has had with God.  But, I’m not buying it.  I think he is simply saying the words he knows conservative voters need to hear.  I get the feeling that Gingrinch is the type of guy who doesn’t really feel the need to apologize or seek forgiveness for anything ever. 

Here’s the thing, though.  If I had the opportunity to vote in a primary today (although I barely consider myself a Republican at this point because it’s hard to find any true small-government leaders in my party) and given the choices put before us, I would cast my ballot for Newt.  He seems like he’s pretty much a jerk, his ego is out of control, and he just may walk out of negotiations with another world leader in a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way, but he’s the best we’ve got.  (I hereby give the Gingrinch campaign permission to use the previous sentence in campaign literature or television ads.)   I like a lot of what he has to say during the debates.  I would be the first to sign up my kids to work cleaning up their school in order to learn about work ethic and how to handle a paycheck.  I do believe that unemployment checks, at least those that are given for an extended period of time, should come with job training.  I do think we should have a 15% flat tax.  I do want to shrink the Department of Education and put more control back locally.  And, so on.  That’s where I am. 

Will I tune into the interview tonight?  Probably not.  I’ll read the highlights and then listen to Mrs. Gingrich (#2) get trashed on talk radio in the morning for ruining a real conservative’s chance at the White House by the same people who probably condemned their political adversaries in the past for Newt-like behavior.  That will suffice as my political entertainment for the day.

I love the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I love reading them in print and hearing King himself speak the words in front of crowds with an eloquence that most leaders today can only envy.  He is one of my heroes as a writer.  I stand in awe of the fact that he was only a couple years older than me when he was tragically assassinated and how much he accomplished in so few years.

Many others have shared quotes today from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and these well-known words are always worth repeating.  However, I decided to spend some time tonight looking back on thoughts concerning the collective and the individual shared by Dr. King and what they mean for us today.

“Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.” Martin Luther King, Jr. addressing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967

King stood both for the value of a collective society and the difference that can made by a single individual.  He knew that we could not reach our potential as a society unless we cared for the least among us, as he would have learned reading the words of Jesus while growing up as a Christian.  How can you be happy with millions of dollars in your bank account when you know there are children who went to bed without anything to eat?  How could you teach your children that others are less valuable than them because of the color of their skin?  Do you not see amazing potential for a nation in which we all truly cared for our neighbors and made their concerns, their fears, and their celebrations our own?

I hope my children grow up to be wildly successful, and that includes financially.  There is no shame in creating wealth for yourself.  Work hard, spend wisely, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.  But, I also want my kids to give of their money,  and more importantly of their time, with a passion and dedication that exceeds that of their investment in self.  I want them always to be aware of what is happening to the family across town that just learned dad lost his job, or the young girl who lives in Appalachia who attends a school in which the roof leaks and the heat doesn’t work, or the terrified teenage girl who is about to become a mom and has never known real love or what it means to have a support system, or the senior citizen who sits alone in a nursing home for weeks without visitors.  I want my son and my daughter to know that the circumstances of others matter and it is their responsibility and their privilege to make a positive difference in our society as a collective.

“There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”

We all need to have our stake in this society.  This includes a financial investment.  When half of the people in this country do not pay federal income tax in 2012, they have no stake in how our money is being spent or, in many instances, wasted.  They aren’t anxious to protect a society that is (should be?) built on fiscal responsibility and careful guardianship for the generations to follow when it isn’t their money that is at stake.  Like it or not, one way in which we collectively strengthen a society is by making sure that ALL of us contribute individually.  We all deserve that respect of worth and inclusion.

Beyond the impersonal stake created by paying taxes, how many of us don’t feel connected to the people we have chosen to represent us or don’t know our kids’ teachers or don’t even know the names of our neighbors?  And, isn’t that our responsibility to change?  Are our stakes planted in this society?  We must take some of the blame if we have never attended a town hall meeting with our congressman or asked what we can do to help our kids succeed in their classes or knocked on the door of the new person in the neighborhood and offered to help unpack a few boxes or cook a meal.  We can’t leave it to others, and certainly not to government, which is more than happy to take over, to plant these stakes for us.

“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Embedded within the value of helping the collective is the worth and importance of each individual.  There are millions of different paths to finding significance in your own life and the lives of others.  Maybe that means you don’t go to college and earn a degree.  Maybe you do.  We each have the exciting and sometimes overwhelming opportunity to create our own course in life.  I’ve already shared with my daughter that college is only one possible direction for her to take after high school.  I just want her self-chosen path to be one of substance and significance, both for her as an individual and for the people she touches as she takes her journey.

“I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life’s blueprint. Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.

 If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.” — spoken to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia in 1967 (one of my favorite speeches by Dr. King ever — I get chills every time I read it.)

ONE person can change the course of a society.  ONE person can develop a new idea and create thousands of jobs.  ONE person can reach out to another who is in pain and offer comfort through a hug and an offer to listen.  How are we doing at valuing the individual today?  Is every little boy and girl being instilled with the belief that they can achieve anything?  Do we have a national identity in which kids can dream big?  Just as importantly, do our kids value the notion that even the smallest choice or contribution they make matters?

Have we taught our kids the essential importance of work and how it should be approached with pride no matter the task?  I don’t care if you are flipping burgers or fixing toilets or building a rocket or signing bills in the Rose Garden.  You should work hard and stand tall knowing that you have done your best at whatever you have been called to do in that moment.  How many young men fresh out of high school would accept a job as streetsweeper in 2012 and do it with pride, as if they were painting like Michelangelo?  How many children have we raised into young adults who believe that certain jobs are just beneath them and that instead someone else should provide for them?  Dr. King taught us that no task is devoid of meaning and that we should expect the best from ourselves at all times.  Even if your ultimate life dream may have you scoring a touchdown in the NFL or making million-dollar trades on Wall Street, there is no shame in any hard labor you must do before you reach that desired destination.

So, what do you think?  Where do we stand now, fifty years after Dr. King and his peers engaged in a civil rights movement that changed our nation forever, in valuing both our strengths as a thriving collective and as unique individuals?  How are we doing at caring about the plight of others and what it means for the betterment of all of us as a society?  And, how are we doing at valuing the contributions, the worth, and the dignity of the individual?

It’s one of those instances that you already can see being played out on The Daily Show before it even happens.  Jon Stewart lampoons a ridiculous legislator saying something ridiculous (and, in this case, rather horrific) and then everyone in the studio audience gets a good laugh out of just how ridiculous the whole thing is . . .  while you cringe and think to yourself, “Yep, he is actually an elected official in my state.”

Every state can claim its share of yahoos who somehow manage to be deemed fit to represent the people living within a designated geographic portion within its borders.  State houses across our great land are home to some men and women who will leave you stunned at the ideas and opinions that come out of their mouths.  I can think of several such folks right here in Tennessee, and today I choose to highlight one of them — Rep. Richard Floyd, a Republican out of Chattanooga.  (I’m thinking that given his location, perhaps we can gently nudge him across the border and try to convince Georgia to take him.)

Rep. Floyd, in the spirit of limited government and personal liberty upon which this nation was founded, wants to check your panties before you enter a public restroom or dressing room.  Or, if you refuse such inspection, a simple presentation of your birth certificate will do.  Why?  The fine legislator wants to make sure that all of us are only going into the bathroom that is designated for our gender.  Uh oh.  My 2 1/2 year old son better learn to use a urinal and reach the bathroom sink real quick in the men’s room because he can’t come in the ladies’ room with me anymore!

Of course, the real motivation behind Floyd’s bill is not to separate parents and children when the need to use a public facility arises (although questions have been raised about how the bill affects such situations).  Instead, he wants to keep those transgendered folk away from the rest of us.  And, if this bill doesn’t succeed in passing (and I am pleased to say that it seems to be unpopular among his constituents for being so . . . as I already mentioned . . . ridiculous), Rep. Floyd has made it clear that he intends to address the problem himself.  In his own words, proudly shared with the public:

“I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.”

How sweet.  I must admit, I’m not sure exactly how one goes about stomping a mudhole in someone, let alone proceed to then stomp said mudhole dry, but it doesn’t sound like an act of kindness.  What a vile thing to say.  I wonder if he shares these thoughts with his fellow members at the Baptist church he attends in Chattanooga or while attending the Christian Businessmen Committee or while participating in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (all of which he touts on his page on the state government website).  I could be wrong, but I don’t think that “stomping a mudhole” in people is part of the Great Commission we read in Acts.

If you are going to threaten violence against someone because you don’t like the way they are living their lives and believe these life choices may threaten you or your loved ones, even if no harm has actually been done or directly threatened, then I’ve got some more suggestions.  I should be able to “stomp a mudhole” in people who smoke in my vicinity because their second-hand smoke actually DOES pose a risk to my children and me.  I should be able to “stomp a mudhole” in people who fail to use blinkers when turning or can’t seem to navigate the tricky subtleties of a four-way stop, because that certainly constitutes a threat to my safety.  If this is where we’re setting the bar for being able to “stomp a mudhole,” I’ve got a long list ready!

Beyond the threats of violence and the exaggerated concern over who may be relieving themselves in the stall next to you, a basic issue is that this bill is not enforceable.  You can’t check the government-approved gender status of every person entering a bathroom.  While “panty checks” would make for a fascinating oral argument that eventually would land in front of the Supreme Court, we have many more important issues that deserve the time and resources of our state government right now.

I know several transgendered women and couldn’t care less if they need to take care of personal business or try on a new skirt in a private stall near me.  It is not threatening; it is not dangerous.  I have been in thousands of such stalls in my lifetime and I can tell you that we all pretty much keep to ourselves.  Transgendered women are not men putting on a dress and slapping on some lipstick so that they can put themselves in a position to attack women. In fact, they are the ones who would be placed in more danger if told they must go in a men’s restroom.

If someone is in a restroom or dressing room and acting in a menacing manner, then throw that person out with force, if needed.  If someone threatens or actually harms my child in one of these locations, then you can believe that I will “stomp a mudhole” in that person.  Beyond that, just leave people alone!

I would like to offer a counter proposal, if Rep. Floyd really wants to have a say in our stall behavior.  Let’s punish those folks who talk on their cell phones while going to the bathroom.  Now that’s disgusting!  Who’s with me?

What do Republican president candidate Rick Santorum and President Barack Obama have in common?

They both LOVE big government!  I mean, love it so much that they probably draw its name in cute ways on their notebooks and dream about it asking them to the prom. 

President Obama loves the notion of big government being used to redistribute wealth, punish profit, centralize power, and give all kinds of “free” stuff to people in order to keep them satiated and complacent.

Santorum loves the idea that he can use big government to remove rights from the individual states when he thinks what they want to do is kind of icky, to deny women contraceptive opportunities, and to creep into your bedroom at night with a flashlight because he’s really curious about what you are doing under those sheets and how it may possibly be causing the end of the American family as we know it.

Here’s a quote straight from Pennsylvania’s culture warrior himself,

“They [libertarian-leaning folks on the right] have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom or in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world.”

The man is actually saying here that government should be allowed to go into your bedroom!  Doesn’t this disturb people?  Look, I understand the arguments against government-sanctioned gay marriage.  I don’t agree with them, but I understand them.  (I don’t think government should sanction any marriage.)  What Santorum is saying here goes further than that.  He thinks that he should be able to step in if two grown men are together in their own bedroom . . . with the lights off . . . disturbing no one else . . . even if they are asking for nothing from government or society!  Yikes.

In his own book, It Takes a Family, Santorum writes (or someone who gives Santorum the cover credit for the work writes), ““Some will reject what I have to say as a kind of ‘Big Government’ conservatism.”  Indeed.

Santorum even admits that those who love big government, such as President Obama and himself, have come full circle and now can hold hands and bask together in the glow of the impressive power that they can wield over the individual:

“You know, the left has gone so far left and the right in some respects has gone so far right that they touch each other. They come around in the circle.”  Kumbaya, Senator, Kumbaya.

Here’s the thing.  If you love Santorum because you agree that political leaders should be able to use government to impose their theology and personal morals on individual adults in this country and you are ready to admit that you like a heavy-handed government in these instances, then go forth.  But please don’t ever use the Reagan quote “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” as seems to be a favorite among Republican activists, or complain about the growth in the size of government under President Obama.  That just makes you a hypocrite.  You want government to control people’s lives, too . . . just in the way that YOU see fit.

I cannot be more serious about this — I think a Rick Santorum presidency would be just as harmful to the founding principles of this nation as our current administration.  If Santorum somehow manages to win the nomination (which I highly doubt and the idea makes me shudder), I will not be voting for him in the general election.  I could never in good conscience push a button for him in the voting booth and walk out of there not feeling like I had just betrayed my respect for the individual, my love for freedom, and my opposition to big brother government.