Curtis Dahlgren
Has the banning and burning of books (and the Bible) begun?
By Curtis Dahlgren
"You are capable of both something grand and something small; it would be a shame if you do nothing at all." – John Donne (quoted in UP magazine)
THAT QUOTATION was included in a letter from a prisoner to the magazine (UP stands for Upper Peninsula). To review it, the writer said:
"Over six years of incarceration, it's taken me this long to realize the irony in my longing for freedom . . : I've sat hear wanting for freedom, freedom I'd use to inspire young men and women to take a better path than the one that landed me in prison. Years have gone by and now I notice I am free to try encouraging others from right here. I am free to sit here with this pen and paper and make an attempt at inspiring someone with my words.
"So this whole time I was longing for freedom, I wasn't even taking advantage of the one freedom I'm afforded . . . if one of these days you're confronted with a wall you can't seem to get over, grab a pen, write an encouraging line or two, tie that letter to a rock and give it a toss over that d*m# wall."
There must be a lesson in there for all of us. Too many of us are fatalistic and too pessimistic to try to make the best use of the Freedoms we DO have (my favorite scripture says "Use your freedom to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men"). The Psalmist says:
"All iniquity shall stop her mouth."
Between today and that day, we are going to be judged on how we use our freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of speech about religion, etc. There was a point in history where even Hitler's mouth could have been stopped, but the populace just went along to get along. What about 2014 (100 years from the start of the "Great" war)? That prisoner's words not only got published in about 30,000 copies of UP magazine, but now have been posted at RenewAmerica – for what it's worth!
THE OUTRAGE-OF-THE-WEEK:
You probably haven't even heard the one about this, but WISN's Vicki McKenna reported the other day that the library at Case High School in Racine has had over 2,000 books purged from its shelves. Including the Bible, Mark Twain, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut, plus the Iliad and the Odyssey! Mr. J.I. Case must be rolling in his grave. This is the old war on Western Civ on human growth hormone! The excuse, "routine updating" just doesn't cut it. In fact, it was teachers themselves who complained to McKenna. This is social engineering a bridge too far even for them! This is the New "Core" Curriculum.
A word about today's Culture Gap. As I've said, if Lincoln hadn't been shot, he could have been a contemporary of my grandparents. My dad was born when men were men, women were really women, and a Cadillac was a – well actually it hadn't been built yet – but you get the idea, eh? I went to school in the 40s and 50s, before social engineering, and my county didn't even have one murder in the 1950s. Chicago on a recent weekend had nine fatal shootings and over 60 "minor" shootings. If "children" from El Salvador are coming here to get away from "VIOLENCE," they are in for a big disappointment.
Speaking of the generation gap, when Sir Walter Scott was on his death bed, he asked his son-in-law to bring "The Book." His son-in-law said, "What book?"
Scott was talking about the Bible of course, the words of which may someday soon land you in prison (if you quote it). What's the first word that comes to mind when I say "Bible"? For many hipsters, the word is "OUTDATED." Chicago boasts about being "the city that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down"! How's that working out for America?
P.S. Speaking of outdated opinions, it's summer for a few weeks in the Northwoods so I suppose this is as good as any time to mention this: Summer is the time of year the female of the species has "nothing to wear" and they wear it. "As a man, what's to complain about," you may say.
Well, if modern fashions are so common-place that we shouldn't even notice, what's so "exciting" about that? No wonder so much money is spent on the little blue pill! I mean, like, if you're stoned 24 hours a day, what's so special about it? Enough said?
PPS: Runner-up for story-of-the-week was the one about a UN conference on the environment. As reported by Elrushbo, 130 "green" groups proclaimed that unless there is an end to capitalism, the whole darn planet is doomed. The conference was in Hugo's Venezuela (surprise, surprise). Rush described these loons to a tee twenty-seven years ago. I got a letter from Friends of the Earth over 40 years ago in which they admitted that "most ecologists are socialists."
In other words, the only thing green about them is that they are green with envy. Of course, as they work for "equality," incomes always fall, on the average, and the inevitable consequence is shortages!
Someone said that when a person loses one of the senses, the other senses are enhanced, and so, that's why people with no sense of humor have such an exaggerated sense of importance (it's normal to want to matter and "make a difference," but do you really want to make things WORSE?).
As I said at the outset, even Hitler's mouth could have been stopped at some point.
So what are you doing to USE YOUR FREEDOM? Wouldn't it be a shame to do "nothing at all"?
DON'T JUST SIT THERE READING MY COLUMN!
© Curtis Dahlgren
July 27, 2014
"You are capable of both something grand and something small; it would be a shame if you do nothing at all." – John Donne (quoted in UP magazine)
THAT QUOTATION was included in a letter from a prisoner to the magazine (UP stands for Upper Peninsula). To review it, the writer said:
"Over six years of incarceration, it's taken me this long to realize the irony in my longing for freedom . . : I've sat hear wanting for freedom, freedom I'd use to inspire young men and women to take a better path than the one that landed me in prison. Years have gone by and now I notice I am free to try encouraging others from right here. I am free to sit here with this pen and paper and make an attempt at inspiring someone with my words.
"So this whole time I was longing for freedom, I wasn't even taking advantage of the one freedom I'm afforded . . . if one of these days you're confronted with a wall you can't seem to get over, grab a pen, write an encouraging line or two, tie that letter to a rock and give it a toss over that d*m# wall."
There must be a lesson in there for all of us. Too many of us are fatalistic and too pessimistic to try to make the best use of the Freedoms we DO have (my favorite scripture says "Use your freedom to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men"). The Psalmist says:
"All iniquity shall stop her mouth."
Between today and that day, we are going to be judged on how we use our freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of speech about religion, etc. There was a point in history where even Hitler's mouth could have been stopped, but the populace just went along to get along. What about 2014 (100 years from the start of the "Great" war)? That prisoner's words not only got published in about 30,000 copies of UP magazine, but now have been posted at RenewAmerica – for what it's worth!
THE OUTRAGE-OF-THE-WEEK:
You probably haven't even heard the one about this, but WISN's Vicki McKenna reported the other day that the library at Case High School in Racine has had over 2,000 books purged from its shelves. Including the Bible, Mark Twain, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut, plus the Iliad and the Odyssey! Mr. J.I. Case must be rolling in his grave. This is the old war on Western Civ on human growth hormone! The excuse, "routine updating" just doesn't cut it. In fact, it was teachers themselves who complained to McKenna. This is social engineering a bridge too far even for them! This is the New "Core" Curriculum.
A word about today's Culture Gap. As I've said, if Lincoln hadn't been shot, he could have been a contemporary of my grandparents. My dad was born when men were men, women were really women, and a Cadillac was a – well actually it hadn't been built yet – but you get the idea, eh? I went to school in the 40s and 50s, before social engineering, and my county didn't even have one murder in the 1950s. Chicago on a recent weekend had nine fatal shootings and over 60 "minor" shootings. If "children" from El Salvador are coming here to get away from "VIOLENCE," they are in for a big disappointment.
Speaking of the generation gap, when Sir Walter Scott was on his death bed, he asked his son-in-law to bring "The Book." His son-in-law said, "What book?"
Scott was talking about the Bible of course, the words of which may someday soon land you in prison (if you quote it). What's the first word that comes to mind when I say "Bible"? For many hipsters, the word is "OUTDATED." Chicago boasts about being "the city that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down"! How's that working out for America?
P.S. Speaking of outdated opinions, it's summer for a few weeks in the Northwoods so I suppose this is as good as any time to mention this: Summer is the time of year the female of the species has "nothing to wear" and they wear it. "As a man, what's to complain about," you may say.
Well, if modern fashions are so common-place that we shouldn't even notice, what's so "exciting" about that? No wonder so much money is spent on the little blue pill! I mean, like, if you're stoned 24 hours a day, what's so special about it? Enough said?
PPS: Runner-up for story-of-the-week was the one about a UN conference on the environment. As reported by Elrushbo, 130 "green" groups proclaimed that unless there is an end to capitalism, the whole darn planet is doomed. The conference was in Hugo's Venezuela (surprise, surprise). Rush described these loons to a tee twenty-seven years ago. I got a letter from Friends of the Earth over 40 years ago in which they admitted that "most ecologists are socialists."
In other words, the only thing green about them is that they are green with envy. Of course, as they work for "equality," incomes always fall, on the average, and the inevitable consequence is shortages!
Someone said that when a person loses one of the senses, the other senses are enhanced, and so, that's why people with no sense of humor have such an exaggerated sense of importance (it's normal to want to matter and "make a difference," but do you really want to make things WORSE?).
As I said at the outset, even Hitler's mouth could have been stopped at some point.
So what are you doing to USE YOUR FREEDOM? Wouldn't it be a shame to do "nothing at all"?
DON'T JUST SIT THERE READING MY COLUMN!
© Curtis Dahlgren
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
