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“Go kill some more Vietnamese babies!”
“What?” I asked, startled.
I was slouching in the back seat of a car on a 1969 late-summer Cape Cod day.
“Some soldier is hitch-hiking,” the adult who had jarred me out of my backseat self-absorption spluttered. “But there’s no way in hell I’ll give him a ride.”
And off she went on another tirade against the United State’s involvement in Vietnam’s civil war.
Once again, I allowed this anti-Vietnam war tirade to wash…..
Those of us who live alone while totally blind must find and encourage people to assist us with tasks that involve reading print or driving.
Since January, my guide dog and I have been living together in an apartment, and Carol has been buying me groceries, writing the occasional check, sifting through my mostly junk mail, and performing other quirky tasks. We had gotten to know each other as she drove me to and from Choral Union rehearsals during the…..
“Black lives matter!”
“All lives matter!”
“Michael Brown!”
“Darren Wilson!”
“Police crime!”
“Black crime!”
“If police respected us!”
“If you people did what the police told you to do!”
“The blue wall of silence!”
“You’re making police ineffective!”
“Discrimination!”
“No fathers!”
“Underfunded schools!”
“You don’t care about education!”
“Black lives matter!”
“1,873 black babies murdered every day by abortion!”
Around a year after Michael Brown’s death, a ray of light penetrated these howls in the darkness.
African American mistrust of…..
In last week’s post, I wrote about my reaction when Bruce Bialosky fooled me with his satiric piece on Townhall.com.
http://peteraltschul.authorsxpress.com/2015/08/11/four-satirists/
His response in a private e-mail was a muted version of the typical put-down so common in the Talkingheadocracy Nation: I’m right, and you’re an idiot.
My first reaction was to delete the e-mail. My next thought just prior to falling asleep was that I needed to defend my honor.
The next morning, however, while lying beside my wife…..
“Not again!” I groaned inwardly when I first read about the Center for Medical Progress’s release of a series of videos accusing Planned Parenthood of selling fetal body parts to make money.
Since the late 1990s, pro-life activists have accused Planned Parenthood of encouraging teen sex to make money, promoting child sex trafficking, supporting genocide against African Americans and people with disabilities, among other things. Shortly after these sensationalist charges, pro-choice activists denounce the tactics used as a basis for…..
Recently, Senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul posed a challenge to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz when journalists pressed him for specifics about his views on abortion rights.
“Why don’t we ask the DNC: Is it okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?” Sen. Paul demanded. “You go back and you ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she’s OK with killing a seven-pound baby that is not born yet. Ask her when life begins, and…..
I don’t often lose my cool while listening to controversial political conflicts being discussed, thanks mainly to the work I did encouraging pro-life and pro-choice activists to work together on abortion-related issues. But I lost my patience while riding with someone to a choir rehearsal. We had been listening to Sean Hanity and Michael Savage trash-talk President Obama several hours after Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
“What bullshit!” I nearly shouted as we pulled into the parking lot of the…..
In January, 2001, George W. Bush was sworn in as president of the United States, and after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and northern Virginia, the world was behind him; “we are all Americans now” was one of the more popular quotes of the time. But during the run-up to the mid-term elections of 2006, a pack of hyenas began calling him names, rejoicing in his failures, and howling about impeachment.
In January, 2009, Barack H……
While psyching myself up to embark upon a Fourth of July evening of barbecue and bombastic booms, a couple of comments from an article written by Jackie Gingrich Cushman entitled “Responsibility and Freedom” caught my attention. First, she quoted the passage from the Declaration of Independence familiar to most of us:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,…..
Ever since working on a project encouraging pro-choice and pro-life activists to work on issues important to both groups, I have been on the look-out for potential common ground among “unlikely allies.” Recently, the title of a John Ransom column posted on Townhall.com on March 11 caught my attention. The column, entitled “Five Things Obama Could Do to be the Greatest President Ever, but Won’t”, raised my blood pressure and piqued my curiosity. I have learned from prior experience, however,…..
Breaking Barriers - Working and Loving While Blind