3 Years and a Lot of Blah, Blah, Blah

Today is Just A Conservative Girl's blogoversary.  Three years ago today I dipped my two into the wild world of the blogosphere.  


I hope that I have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.  


Here are some of my favorite posts:

Et Tu, Stacy McCain

I was up even earlier than usual today as I had to get everything ready for the trip down to the Lincoln Memorial for the most amazing sunrise service on Easter Sunday.  After the services, the annual Easter Egg hunt (or should I say spring sphere) took place, then the very large breakfast commenced.  The pancakes with fresh blueberries and heated syrup and the Eggs Benedict were both made to perfection if I don't mind saying so myself.  After a few hours of Nerf darts to wear off the rare treat of chocolate in the morning all has settled down.


I have been thinking about a post I read early this morning on The Other McCain that originally started over a ridiculous OP-ED piece on how all Fraternities should be closed down as they only encourage young college aged males to rape young woman.  But that is post for another time. 


Stacy then found his way to an article about how many women get married anyway even though their gut is telling them something else.  An article in Marie Clare talked about how much of this has to do with the fairy tales we tell our young daughters and as they grow they watch the romantic comedies that come out of our Hollywood culture saying that love conquers all. 


While much of Stacy is discussing is the personal responsibility that is being taken away and this article is creating almost a victimhood mentality of young women due to these influences that most young women grow up with.  What Stacy has completely overlooked is the culture that we have created for not only ourselves but for our young girls.  Divorce is the answer. 


We no longer have the reason to make our marriages work.  We no longer have the reasons to listen to our guts as we are waiting to walk down the aisle and that little voice is saying RUN AS FAST YOU CAN IN THE OTHER DIRECTION.  We can simply go through the motions because for a relatively small amount of money and short waiting time we can just start over.  The divorce rate in our society is far too high.  

43.7% of custodial mothers and 56.2% of custodial fathers were either separated or divorced. And in 2002, 7.8 million Americans paid about $40 billion in child and/or spousal support (84% of the payers were male).

Stacy asked the question:
.  

Amanda Clark got a $15,000 gown and a 7-carat ring, and she still wasn’t happy, so whose fault is that?

Was it really the fault of her husband being the Wrong Guy? To believe that, you must believe that somewhere out there is the Right Guy, ready and eager to wed Amanda Clark, except for the fact that she goofed up and married the Wrong Guy. But shouldn’t we at least consider the alternative hypothesis, that Amanda Clark was to some extent responsible for the failure of her own marriage? Isn’t it possible that she was the Wrong Woman?

It may be that Amanda is the wrong woman, but what is also possible is that Amanda  didn't care that he was the wrong guy, because she could just get that quickie no fault divorce and find the "right guy".  Part of the lie that feminist movement has hoisted on our young females (and males for that matter) is that divorce is so common that it has almost become a right of passage, and if you are being made to feel that you are not being understood or are not reaching your potential in all your glorious womanhood you can get up and walk away, it isn't that big of a deal.  Self fulfillment is the far more superior objective than actually taking your time and marrying the right person
I am not trying to say that people are not making a difficult choice or that they don't even attempt to work on a marriage, but the divorce rates being as high as they are we must ask ourselves what makes one go through with a marriage if you are not feeling right about from day one?  Marriage is very hard work.  You have to compromise, you have to give up some things that at one point in your life you considered very important.  You have to put your spouses feelings at least as high on the totem pole that you put your own.  You also must accept the fact that it isn't going to be rosy each and every day.  You will go through patches that are painful and you must be honest about that pain and the causes of it.  You also have to realize that all those habits that you think are so cute before you get married aren't really all that cute after you live them everyday year after year.  The things that bother you before the wedding only become more pronounced after the big day.  We become even more ourselves.  You have to work on your marriage like divorce isn't an option.  That is very hard work indeed. 


What I am saying is that our society feeds the idea that marriage the first time around is just a test run and if your fulfillment in your womanhood is being threatened the answer is divorce.  Stacy questions if we woman are asking the question is it us.  It isn't that women don't ask is it us, but it is that women are being told even if it us this doesn't feel good and doesn't fit the narrative that we can indeed have it all, we then can just have a start over.  Even Stacy didn't ask the question of how damaging the woman's rights movement has been.  So I must ask, Et Tu Stacy, Et Tu?

America, Faith, and The Moral Compass

I was reading a post on Another Black Conservative where Cliff made the observation that our society's moral compass is in disrepair on his post about the latest photos released by TMZ on Anthony Weiner's obsession with taking pictures of his private parts. My comment to him was that it is more than just in disrepair, the compass is on all out life support. Cliff was really talking about how we get the government we deserve. What does it say when Weiner's district wants him to stay in office?



I truly believe that America's turn to the type of permissiveness that allows this to happen can be traced back to the court case that forever changed the way we view religion in our country. While it doesn't have the name recognition that a Brown V. Board of Ed has, the change in our country has been substantial. McCollum v. Board of Ed was a landmark decision in this country. Many people don't realize that the words separation of church and state don't exist in our constitution. I remember years back I stupidly took a job with a progressive DM agency thinking I could just put my head down and do my job. I went for the paycheck instead of my principles. It didn't go well to say the least. I was a fish out of water. I am sure that the majority of people there backed Obama over Hillary years ago in the primary, and I would feel safe in saying that they don't feel Obama has gone far enough. Don't get me wrong, most of them were very nice people who I happened to disagree with. Bush was in office at the time and the Bush bashing was done on a regular basis. I was talking to a young guy about something. I can't recall what the conversation was actually about but I had mentioned to him that it doesn't exist in the constitution. He didn't believe me. I told him if he could find it I would give him $1,000. I also told him to do some research on Judge Hugo Black, the former KKK member. Yes, that is right we had a KKK member on the highest court of the land at one time in this country. McCollum was a case brought by an atheist mom who didn't like that her local school system had VOLUNTARY religious classes. The premise of her case was that her son was subject to ridicule due to the fact that he didn't attend these classes. The classes were put on by a council that included Jews, Protestants, and Roman Catholics. This was designed specifically to give children a choice in religious education. This was not done to exclude anyone nor was it forced on anyone. It well-known how the KKK felt about Catholics and Jews.


The battle to remove God from our lives has been an ongoing struggle in this country for about a century, but this case in particular made major changes. This case opened the door for the ACLU to sue at the drop of the hat over high school graduations, Christmas celebrations done in the squares of small towns and big cities across this nation. They rarely miss an opportunity to do so. The founders of this country were very clear about what they wanted for the country. No federally mandated religion was to be allowed, but they wanted a society that could openly worship. The founders believed that in order for a society to survive it must have a moral compass.


Morality of course is in the eye of beholder. But by relegated religion to almost a back room status we have opened our society up to changing social norms and we have acquiesced what it is that we find acceptable in our society. Look at the things that the far left can accomplish by pushing religion to the back burner. Abortion on demand, because human life is no longer kept at the forefront. We are also seeing a push for assisted suicide. You can face heavy fines for damaging bird eggs in this country, but you can kill an unborn human being at will. The left never has to answer for this hypocrisy because the unborn is no longer characterized as life. It is just a bunch of cells. If it feels good, do it. If you want to have sex with five different partners in one week, go ahead. There shouldn't be any differences between men and women, when the differences are long, varied, and obvious. The stay at home traditional mom is vilified and the men who support the traditional mom are called Neanderthals, even by people on the right.


What organizations like the ACLU have done is diminish our society, not improve it. They have given us a society that allows a congressman to take naked pictures of his private parts and have no price to pay. The polls in Weiner's district show that they are OK with what he did and don't feel he needs to step aside. What kind of twisted logic does it take to write off his behavior as a personal failing and say that his personal judgement in no way gets in the way of his professional judgement to make decisions that effects the lives of everyday Americans? If Anthony Weiner worked in the private sector and his job found out he was texting pictures of himself wearing next to nothing while working out in the company gym he would be fired, yet we have people in this country who think that he should still be allowed to continue in the legislative body of our federal government. This is a loss of a moral compass. This is a loss of faith in our society and our God. The fact that the congressman worships God in a different fashion than I do, is irrelevant to me. What is relevant to me is that people like him are constantly pushing for more and more laws in this country that take away my rights to worship freely and openly, yet gives government a larger say in my life and how I live it. The same government that says it is OK for him to keep his position.


I say no thank you to the liberalism view that it is OK for the government/public school systems to decide how I feed my child, because I may not pick the foods that are "healthy" or to decide for me how often I can use my air conditioner to save the planet against man-made global warming when the science for this is still unclear and recent events have left many questioning if this is not just some money-making hoax. A government that hires people who specialize in using marketing tools to get the public to do what it wants and the main stream media covering the story like it is a good thing instead of the scary thing that it really is. Yet doesn't feel that what Anthony Weiner did rises to the level of bringing dishonor to the House of Representatives than we as a society no longer have a moral compass. When a sitting member of congress who was writing tax laws for the rest of us slubs is cheating on his taxes and is allowed to stay in congress we have lost our moral compass. When the people in the district of Charlie Rangel re-elected him knowing he was a cheat saying "they all do it" we have lost our moral compass. When we allow people to work on Capitol Hill that owe back taxes we have lost our moral compass. When the U.S. Senate confirms a man who is a tax cheat to head Treasury, we have lost our moral compass. By turning our back to faith and to God, we have created a society that is losing its moral compass.


What liberals need to realize is that practicing faith out in the open will only enrich our society. By having acts of faith in our town squares will help bring our moral compass back to life. It is nothing to fear, as you will not be forced to participate. But you will wreak the benefits of a society that cherishes values that don't allow people like Anthony Weiner and Charlie Rangel to continue to serve at the highest levels of government when anyone in the private sector would pay a high price for the behavior. We would all benefit from expecting our government officials to act in a moral and ethical way. 

Uncle Tom - A Profile in Conviction

Conservatives who happen to be people of color hear the words “Uncle Tom” on a regular basis. I have heard that term ever since I can remember. The term has always been to me a put down. During an interview of Alveda King, the niece of Martin, she said she viewed it as a compliment and viewed Uncle Tom as a hero.



I have no memory of reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I am sure that I read it in school, but I don’t remember the book at all. A few months back I picked up the book and started reading it on a very irregular basis. I went into reading this not believing that I would view Uncle Tom in this way. I was mostly wrong.


I found the book to be sad. Harriet Beecher Stowe wasn’t above racism herself. The narrative that she gave in the book makes that very clear. Although one must remember the time that this was written in. Racism was the acceptable view point. It was never questioned, not even by the northerners. While they felt that slavery should end, they certainly didn’t want to embrace the black community. Many whites wanted to round them up and send them all back to Africa. If you read deeply into the history books it seems that this was the view point that President Lincoln held as well. He was killed so shortly after the civil war ended that we will never know if this was his plan, but there is historical evidence to back up that view.


Black conservatives are called Uncle Tom’s all the time. They are also called Oreo’s, race traitors and many more derogatory names. Allen West recently said this during his tax day tea party speech. Many believe that he is turning his back on his race by embracing conservative views. I have never quite understood why it is that some believe that all blacks must walk in lockstep to a certain political ideology. How exactly is that equality if everyone must think alike?


I just finished the book today. I was totally blown away by the book, and realized I read the second half of the book much more quickly than I did the first half. I finished the book with a much greater understanding of what Ms. King was trying to say. The way that Tom lived his life is admirable.


Tom was a man who lived by his convictions. Tom was before anything else a Christian. He viewed his life through this prism. He loved his family and he lived his life in an honorable and decent way. At the beginning of the book Tom is sold to cover some debts of his original owner. His wife encourages him to run away with Eliza, another slave that was about to have her son sold away from her. Eliza couldn’t bear the thought of living without her son, so she ran. Tom told his wife that he couldn’t do that. His original master, Shelby, treated him fairly, as far as Tom was concerned. He felt that Shelby wouldn’t be doing this if it were not necessary. Tom read his bible and said his goodbye’s to his family. He left with the belief that he would be back to his family when the money was there.


Tom was sold to yet another “master” who treated him as well as one could expect during the time of slavery. Time went by and many things happen over the course of Tom living in Louisiana under his new circumstances. Tom was set to be freed by St. Clare but he died suddenly and that didn’t happen. Tom was eventually sold to one more Master. This one was a brutal and mean spirited man. Legree asks Tom to beat an older woman who is poor health; he is beaten when he refuses. Legree ends up killing Uncle Tom when he refuses to rat out his fellow slaves who have runaway. Sadly it was just before Shelby family raised enough money to bring him back to his family, where he would have been a free man with his family.


The point being that Tom never walked away from his own convictions. His belief system sustained him throughout his life. A life that was never easy and almost always sad. Tom was a man who used passive resistance to his existence. He certainly wasn’t one to be called a “sell out” or “race traitor”. There is nothing in the book that should make one jump to that conclusion.

When St Clare asks him if he would not be better off a slave than a free man, Tom responds with a straight: "No." "Why Tom, you couldn't possibly have earned, by your work, such clothes and such living as I have given you," says St Clare. "Know's all that Mas'r," says Tom. "But I'd rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything and have 'em mine, than have the best, and have 'em any man else's."


The narrative of the sell out actually began several decades after the books release. It started around the turn of the century. While slavery had ended decades earlier the institutionalized racism certainly had not ended. The traveling minstrel shows were very popular during the times of the First World War, and “Uncle Tom” type shows were the rage. This is where much of the narrative started.


While I may not necessarily call Uncle Tom a hero in the same way that Ms. King has referred to him as, what I will say if a politician is being called an Uncle Tom; they may just be someone worth voting for. Uncle Tom was man who lived by his convictions, loved his God, loved his family, and never wavered from what he believed in and what was important in his life. He did what was right, instead of what was easy. Wouldn’t it be nice if more of our politicians were like that?