The Age of Misplaced Responsibility

I've been sitting back for the past fifteen years or so, give or take a few years, watching our nation fall deeper and deeper into the abyss of political correctness. I'm not exactly sure when it all started or who exactly got it started; all I know is that it has now reached a level which can only be called ridiculous. Pretty soon it'll degenerate more into tragic, and then into hopeless. And to be honest, I hope I'm not around when the Age of Hopelessness sets in.

Right now I'm just struggling to survive in what I've come to call The Age of Misplaced Responsibility.

I call it that because to me, that's exactly what it is. Once upon a time in this nation we used to hold those who committed a heinous or evil act responsible for their actions, and we exacted whatever justice was necessary on them and not on those who had nothing to do with it. Not so very long ago we had a really bad problem with drunk drivers, so the nation as a whole went on a nationwide campaign to combat it. We did it by disseminating information, educating the public, providing assistance when needed, stiffening laws and - most importantly - punishing the people who actually committed the act. We put a LOT of drunk drivers in jail, and the statistics have shown that drunk driving has been on the decline as a result.

We didn't blame the cars the drunk drivers were operating, we blamed the drivers. The ones holding the wheel, the ones pressing the gas, the ones actually committing the offense. We didn't make it harder to buy cars, we didn't install governors on the engines to reduce speed, we didn't include limiting devices in the engines to reduce horsepower. We punished the drivers, not the cars.

We can't say the same about guns, can we? No, in this country when a madman picks up a weapon and goes on a shooting spree, instead of blaming him we blame the gun, as if the gun jumped into his hand, took control of his mind, and made him do those evil deeds and kill all those people. The liberal media and the gun-grabbing liberals start spewing more and more nonsense about how "common sense gun laws" would have prevented the crime, something that anyone with an ounce of true "common sense" would know is pure bullshit. And to really be honest, since "common sense" differs from person to person there really is no such thing as "common sense" gun laws, are there? No, to liberals like Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, "common sense" gun laws are those which outlaw guns entirely. They seem to think that making guns illegal will solve the problem, never mind our Constitutional rights.

Yeah, that really worked well for heroin, LSD, cocaine and meth, didn't it? We don't have a drug problem in this country because drugs are illegal, right? We won't even talk about murder already being illegal because God knows we don't want to bring logic into the conversation.

This kind of thing about gun control has been going on for longer than I care to remember, and to be honest I don't ever see it going away. This fight is always going to be with us because the liberals think they're right and won't give up, just as the conservatives know they're right and won't give up.

But I gotta tell ya, the latest flap that all started with a shooting in Charleston last week has mutated into something so utterly ridiculous that it almost defies description, and I place the blame for the conflagration squarely on the liberal news media. When the suspect (whose name I refuse to put in type) walked into a church, sat for an hour amidst a bible study class, then got up and started shooting, the headlines all read something to this effect:

"WHITE GUNMAN OPENS FIRE IN HISTORIC BLACK CHURCH, KILLING NINE BLACK MEMBERS."

What the headline should have read is something like this:

"GUNMAN OPENS FIRE IN HISTORIC CHURCH, KILLING NINE CHURCH MEMBERS."

Both headlines convey the same basic facts, that a man opened fire in a church and killed nine innocent people, but the latter does it without unnecessarily fanning the flames of the smoldering fire of racism that has been burning in our country for the past 239 years. The main point is that nine innocent people died, and the man who did the shooting must now be held responsible. That's the only way that justice can truly be served.

But no, that's not what happened. When I first heard the news the first thought that ran through my head was, "Great, now NObama and the liberals are gonna be screaming for more gun control," and within hours of this thought that's just what happened. The Great Pretender held a news conference in which he proclaimed that better gun control laws would have prevented it, and that no other civilized nation had "this particular problem."

Sorry, Barry, but the Charlie Hebdo victims weren't available for comment.

The second thought which ran through my head when I saw the picture of the murderer holding a Confederate flag was, "Great, now all we're gonna hear about is the flag on the State House grounds and everyone is going to be calling for it and every other Confederate flag in the nation to be taken down."

And dammit all, that's exactly what happened. Thanks to the race baiters and liberals throughout the nation, chief of them being Al Sharpton, the calls for the removal of the flag from the State House grounds began almost as soon as I had the thought. And to make matters worse, the next day the South Carolina governor caved in to the pressure and announced that it was time to take the flag down. Never mind the state law which says it stays there, or the agreement that the state made with the NAACP 15 years ago which also, by the way, resulted in a monument to African Americans being built on the other side of the State House.

But I never in my wildest nightmares thought that the wave of anti-Confederate feelings would run this far, this long, this deep, and be taken to such ridiculous and downright stupid levels.

I won't go into the details of what's been going on because if you're reading this then you already know. What I will do is ask a question, one that I'd really and truthfully like someone who supports the removal of the Confederate flag from anywhere to answer. Here's the question:

Just what, exactly, will removing the Confederate Battle Flag from the State House grounds solve?

That particular flag and all others just like it are nothing more than symbols; meaningless in their own right until someone applies a meaning to them and uses them as symbols for that meaning. The Battle Flag flying from the State House grounds had absolutely nothing to do with the shootings in Charleston. Those shootings were the result of someone teaching racism and hatred to someone else, using the Battle Flag as a symbol of that racism and hatred. The flag didn't pull the trigger, a man did. And honestly, if the man pulling the trigger had been black or if the people he shot would have been white, this story would have never gained the nationwide media attention it did and it would have dropped off of the nation's radar in about a day. (Need proof of this? Okay, how's this: when's the last time you saw a story on the national news about the killer, his upbringing, and his racist roots? Now when's the last time you saw a story about taking down a Battle Flag or renaming a park?)

Everyone in this nation has a right to be mad as hell that this shooting took place. Any loss of innocent lives is a tragedy, but for it to happen in a church, a house of God, gives it a particularly heinous tint that inflames the passions more than anything I can think of. And unfortunately, the race baiters and liberals in our nation have seized this opportunity and perverted it to suit their own goals and agendas. All across the nation there's talk of renaming parks that are named after Confederate heroes, taking down flags, changing state flags, and anything else which can eradicate any form of Confederate and Southern history from view.

This, people, is nothing short of stupid. Removing the Confederate flag from the State House grounds won't prove a damned thing, nor will it solve any problems. All it will do is keep the responsibility and the blame from being placed on the person who truly deserves it, and piss off a whole bunch of Southerners along the way. But it won't solve anything. Neither will renaming parks or roads or bridges, and neither will Wal-mart, e-Bay and Amazon removing Confederate flag products from their shelves (while still selling Nazi and ISIS related items).

The blame and responsibility needs to be placed where it belongs - namely, on the head of the man who pulled the trigger.

The Age of Misplaced Responsibility needs to come to an end, and it needs to come to an end NOW. And while you're at it, get rid of all of this "politically correct" bullshit as well.

Hang on to your underwear, friends and neighbors, because I have a feeling it's gonna get a little more bumpy before it's over.

IHC