Chris Christie Big Government Hypocrisy

Recently, in a restaurant in Iowa, Chris Christie was addressing his supporters, when a young boy stood up and said, "I liked my school food when Mrs. Bush was first lady.But now that Mrs. Obama is first lady, the food's disgusting." To which Governor Christie responded, "I think is the parents rights to decide what their kids eat, not government bureaucrats." He forgot for a moment that he vowed to re criminalize marijuana in all fifty states. Frankly, I'm amazed that there are still people out there that believe the Republicans are the small government party. They are anything but. They're the party that wants to decide marriage rights, and womens' rights. And they are the types take away medicine from sick children because it happens to come from a plant they consider dangerous. The Republican party is many things, but small government, they ain't.

Why I Am Against Strong Gun Control

On most issues, I guess you could consider me a progressive. But that doesn't mean that I don't see areas where traditionally progressive ideas are flawed, particularly on the issue of gun control.

I see the fight for gun control as pretty much the modern day equivalent of the Temperance Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which eventually led to prohibition.

If you look at the arguments for gun control and prohibition, you'll see that they are very similar. Not only this, but it seems to me that the types of people who advocate for strict gun control are very similar to old time temperance supporters. They are people who claim that one single issue is responsible for America's problems. Replace the scourge of alcohol with the scourge of guns. In fact, if you go back and read the literature the Women's Christian Temperance Union, you will find that their arguments are very similar. They claim that domestic violence and abuse is almost completely due to men's immoral consumption of alcohol. Ignoring economic disparity, lack of education, and the virtual non existence of domestic abuse shelters.

Similarly the gun control movement seems to do the same thing while ignoring things like mental health and media influence. I think that when a young boy keeps hearing the names Dylan Klebold and and Eric Harris, he might think "hey, those guys are famous, maybe I can be famous too".

Look, I'm not saying that guns play no role in gun violence, of course they do. I'm saying that simply banning guns, just like banning alcohol, would have terrible unintended consequences. After all, banning alcohol had no effect in stopping people from drinking (in fact. it had the opposite effect), and led to a huge expansion of organized crime.

The issue is not guns in my opinion, the issue is mental health and the media's endless sensationalism in it's coverage of shootings.

BYU and Gay Aversion Therapy

Brigham Young University is today known as one of the nation's top religious universities. But, sometimes this religion can cause people to do horrendous things in the name of Jesus. One former practice was gay/homosexual aversion therapy. Basically, from 1931 to 1989 officially, the university, in an attempt to root out homosexuality, would trap young Mormon students, mostly men in compromising positions. According to former victims, they would be strapped down to a chair, with electrodes attached to their body and forced to watch various forms of pornography. Their heart rates were monitored to measure arousal. If the student was aroused by gay acts, they would receive a large shock. Then videos of straight sex were shown and the students were not shocked. This was done to turn them straight by way of associating gay thoughts with pain. Fortunately today, as most scientists know, you cannot change a person's sexuality by shocking them. Gay aversion therapy is a pseudoscience rooted in homophobia. Far from turning them straight, many former victims now say, due to trauma they have lost all sexual interest and cannot maintain a healthy relationship with either gender. The sad truth is, the only reason the university did this, was because of religious taboos, forever scarring these men.

Captain Underpants Gay Controversy

If you were a young kid in the early 2000's, you will likely know about the children's graphic novel series "Captain Underpants" by Dav Pilkey.

If you don't know, it is about a couple of elementary school friends and their teacher. The teacher, when  hypnotized by the two prankster fourth grade protagonists, believes he is the superhero they created called "Captain Underpants". The series is filled with fourth grade humor, including villains with names like "Professor Poopy Pants." It's a very popular series of books.

But recently an addition to the series prompted controversy from a school district in Michigan. The school district sent home a letter to all the parents, warning them that in this book of the series, that one of the main characters travels into the future and discovers there that he is married to another man. However, that is not the whole of the story, merely a part of it. But apparently, the school was so concerned about the reaction from the parents, that they sent home the letter addressing their concerns. But what I find funny is that there are still so many people in this country that would be so concerned about the mere acknowledgement of the existence of gay people, that they would feel parents should be warned. I have to tell you, I've known several gay people while I was growing up. My parents have many gay friends, and they never tried to hide it from us. And I can assure you that all of them are perfectly lovely and normal people. I think knowing them helped me become a kinder and more compassionate person.

So not only am I not concerned about this subplot, I applaud it.

American Meddling Leads to Islamic Republic of Iran

     When many people in my generation think of Iran, we see radical clerics screaming about how evil the West is and spouting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. But this wasn't always the case. Once upon a time Iran was a liberal jewel in a sea of fundamental Islam. Women, up until 1979, could attend college, wore Western clothing, had Western style TV shows, and generally were, well, Western. It was even said that it was then Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who wrote a letter to then, more conservative Saudi Arabia saying, "Please, my brother, let your women wear mini skirts. Let them have discos. Let them see movies. Let them be modern." However, despite the Shah's progressive leanings, he was still an absolute monarch, promising democracy but never giving it. He enraged the conservative Shiite majority with his Western, liberal, reforms. To top it off, he was actually put in due to the ousting of a democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who the U.S. and Britain thought was communist. 

     All of this culminated in the Iranian revolution of 1979. But there is a reason that I am boring you about this particular topic. Iran was once a Westernized, modern society which then got seduced by a radical fundamentalist. I feel that we need to be careful so that it doesn't happen again in the world. 

Charles Lindbergh: Aviation Legend or Kidnapping Mastermind?

     When Charles Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped in 1932 it triggered a shock wave around the nation. But in recent years a new and controversial theory has come to light. The disturbing part is when you look at the evidence the theory has a lot of credibility. Charles Lindbergh may have orchestrated his son's own kidnapping to hide a dark family secret. The secret: his son had a mild deformity with his leg. Why would this bring such shame to Lindbergh?

 At the time, Lindbergh was one of the most prominent vocal proponents of the philosophy of eugenics: the belief that through selected breeding and sterilization of the mentally and physically disabled you could create a master race. 

One of the main pieces of evidence: How would the kidnapper have known that the Lindberghs would be out of town on that specific evening. They would have had to have inside knowledge. However, any household staff has been ruled out since it's been considered unlikely that any of them would risk their job. Also, Lindbergh Senior was reported to have come back to the house an hour before the kidnapping, supposedly to take a call from a business associate. This would have been the perfect time to direct and organize a kidnapping. However, the belief is that Lindbergh only wanted his son put in an institution, not killed. So it is believed that during the kidnapping or when they got further from the house, something went wrong. 

     The final piece of evidence, in my mind: In 1938, Lindbergh was invited by Hitler to speak about the need to institute eugenics world wide. 

The Pied Piper of Hamlin

When you think of fairy tales, you might think, "that's an interesting story, but there's no way it could possibly be real, right?" But with one story, the line between reality and fairy tale is a bit less clear. This story is "The Pied Piper of Hamlin."

In case you have forgotten this tale, it goes, briefly, like this:

The town of Hamlin had a huge rat problem. They were overrunning the place, eating up all the food and getting into everything. When the leaders of the city were at their wits end as to what to do about the rats, a solution appeared in the form of a handsome, although rather unusual looking young man. As if, in answer to their prayers, he simply showed up one day and offered to get rid of the rats for them. His price for doing the job was high, but the city leaders were desperate and agreed to it. The interesting young man set to work immediately. He went out into the streets of the city and began to play his flute. As if by magic, all the rats came out of their hiding places and began to follow him down the streets of the town and to the river, where they all jumped in and drowned. When the piper came back to the leaders of the city, ready to be paid for his services, the mayor and his colleagues refused to pay. He told them they would be sorry, and gave them one more chance. When they again refused, he took his flute back into the streets of the city and began again to play. This time, the children came out and began to follow the piper down the streets and out of the town into the side of a mountain which opened up to receive them and then closed behind them all, except for one disabled little boy who couldn't keep up. No one ever saw the other children or the piper again.

Normally, most people would shrug this off as a cautionary tale about keeping promises. But when the English poet Robert Browning went to the actual town of Hamlin in Germany, back in 1876, he saw a stained glass window in the church of the town, depicting the 1376 disappearance of the children with the piper. What is odd about this fairy tale, to me, is how specific it is about the time and place that the story occurs, and about even the physical appearance of the piper.

Now I know this will sound crazy, but here's my theory; I think that in the 1300's, it was much more common for people to believe in magic and fairies. Magical beings and realms weren't so strange to them, and they quite literally believed in their existence. Could it be that the Pied Piper was a fairy, a denizen of the realm of Fae? There have been numerous accounts of beings from this other land. And there has always been some speculation that it is real and continues to exist, perhaps as another dimension, even though most of us can't see it. Almost like a radio station that we are no longer capable of picking up, because our receiver doesn't get that channel.

Let me be clear, I am not definitively saying that the piper was real, and I know there is no proof that this is anything more than a fairy tale. But, once again, the fact that the specifics of the the story were so, well, specific, I am simply offering this rather unorthodox theory.