The journey from there to here
Gideon MacLeish's Articles » Page 61
December 8, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
So, I was listening to talk radio the other day (I can't remember the topic), and a respondent called in deriding Pat Robertson (as a representative of us "terrorist" Christian factions) for "calling lightning down" on Dover, Pennsylvania. If his were the only such view of the left, I would dismiss him as an extremist. But I have heard various others speak about Pat Robertson threatening Pennsylvania with God's wrath, when in fact, he did no such thing, and more importantly: Not ONE SINGLE MSM r...
December 8, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
I weep for the state of public education today. If the teachers who blog regularly on this site are any education, FAR too many of our teachers are graduating with the notion that they are ALWAYS right and that there is no room for debating their position (inbloom, alisonwatkins, and select others, this does NOT apply to you). Worse yet, they apparently lack the skills to read in context. The whole topic was keyed off when an educator discussed a situation they had  handled. I felt it...
December 8, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
MSM is very very good to certain activists. Barry Lynn, the leader of Americans for Separation of Church and State gets a lot of air time. So does Michael Newdow. The former is a professed Christian pressing for the suppression of Christian expression in the public square, the former is an atheist demanding the same. They both have common targets, however. In every case they aim their hand against conservative Christians in their ideological war. But they're selective in that they c...
December 7, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
Link I have to first credit LW for her article on illegal aliens killing more Americans than the war in Iraq ( Link ). For all of our rhetoric about wars and terrorism (the ad hominem attack du jour is to call someone a terrorist), I find it interesting that the MSM has ignored a very real, very serious threat to US security, that of the drug lords in Mexico that have taken over the drug trade into the US. How is it that a car bomb in Fallujah makes news but the closing of a consulate ...
December 5, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
Well, the big news over the past couple of weeks was the arrival and departure of Dick Cheney into the county seat of our little county. The secrecy behind it all has made our local media more than a little suspicious. When Cheney arrived in the community, it was speculated that he was going bird hunting with billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who has a ranch nearby. But the White House went to great lengths to obstruct anyone who was trying to gather information, including insisting that "they co...
December 5, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
When I was a middle school aged student, much of my writing had macabre, violent undertones. I wasn't violent by nature, just warped. You see, I was ahead of most of my class in reading, and I continually searched for new material. I quickly found Stephen King's books, and began devouring them at a rate of about one a week, which at the age of 13 is a pretty substantial quantity. As young artists are wont to do, much of my creative writing began mimicking the substance and style of my new ...
December 5, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
The following appeared as a letter to Dear Abby yesterday. I'll reprint the letter before I comment: DEAR ABBY: Please warn your readers that their Web pages and blogs could stand in the way of securing a job! Just as employers have learned to read e-mail and blogs, they have learned to screen candidates through their sites. Many people in their 20s and 30s wrongly believe their creations are entertaining and informative. Employers are not seeking political activists, evangelizers, whiners ...
December 5, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
With two seasoned bloggers weighing in on the issue of zero tolerance in schools, I felt it was time to put in my share. "Zero Tolerance" is a PC buzzword for big government. It indicates at the core that individuals and local officials are too stupid to make intelligent decisions for themselves and those under their sphere of influence. Whether we are talking about mandatory minimums in which judges' hands are tied when making sentencing or about a teacher dealing with a schoolyard bully, th...
December 2, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those militia types, nor do I believe in most of the various conspiracy theories without proof (although I think a few talking points in some of the theories are worth investigating, but I digress). And I don't believe we've become a totalitarian regime, my primary evidence being the fact that I can write what I write without fear of being hauled off in the middle of the night. But I believe...no, I KNOW, that some anti-government fear is justified at i...
December 1, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
On another thread, mention was made of one state's attempt to require ID to purchase cough syrup. This type of legislation is increasingly common as legislatures attempt to curb meth production, and hopefully, by extension, its usage. The title was chosen because the attempt to curb purchases of cough syrup to prevent meth production is as spurious as the attempt to restrict gun purchases to prevent gun crime. The mentality hinges around punishing the INSTRUMENT, rather than the user of the i...
December 1, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
I have very little contact with my "natural" family. I haven't spoken with my father in over two years, or my mother in over a year. While the "trendy" thing to do would be to contact them in one way or another, I realized some time ago that what I need to do is get on with my life. You see, some relationships in our lvies are toxic. They are a poison best avoided for our own mental well being. Just as a person can get addicted to a drug, alcohol, or gambling, a person can get addicted t...
December 1, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
I have asserted it before, but I thought this holiday season would be a perfect time to dissect why the attitude of Charles Dickens' notorious central character in A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge, more closely resembles the American left than he does conservatives, and why the book is a lesson against the liberal mentality that currently pervades our society. At the beginning of the book, Scrooge is approached by gentlemen collecting for charity for the Christmas season. Scrooge vehemen...
November 30, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
Being a student of history, I have a deep admiration for feminists. They have fought to give rights to women who, for too many years did not have those rights in many societies and they have given voice to a gender that was too long silenced by men who misapplied religious teachings without giving them full understanding. But I despise female supremacists. Female supremacists have worked to swing the pendulum the other way, to establish DOMINANCE for women, and to drive the male culture to th...
November 30, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
I'd like to take you back a few years, to a time when South Park was just becoming popular. I had tuned in to radio "fluff" for a long drive, and was listening to a Christian family radio program (it wasn't "Focus on the Family", but a similar group). On the show, they were talking about "South Park" and explaining it for Christian viewers who hadn't seen the show. It actually got quite amusing as the guest attempted to explain the "horrible" Mr. Hanky episode in a way that didn't offend his ...
November 30, 2005 by Gideon MacLeish
In what could only be described as a macabre deathwatch, the media has been focused lately on the 1000th execution since the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty. The much heralded "1000th execution" was delayed yesterday by clemency from Virginia's governor. The clemency was granted for valid reasons: because the evidence had been improperly destroyed and could not be accessed for DNA testing. But I have a feeling there's something bigger than that. See, I don't think most states ...