A Short Story of Sorts

The car was speeding along the road, running from something or someone. The sky behind them was lightening toward dawn, the broken moon hanging low in the sky, growing ever closer with each passing day. Inside the car two people were watching their surroundings with white-knuckled intensity. They both knew that time was short, this mission dangerous, and their enemies around every corner. He was an author, a writer for the newly formed underground, dispensing the ideals of freedom, justice and equality. She was his lover, and his bodyguard, keeping him grounded and safe from their pursuers.

The night was ending and soon they would have to go to ground, hiding from the horrors that stalked the day. The all Seeing Eye’s of the Administration were almost everywhere and spreading fast. When the Moon broke people turned to their leaders for guidance and those leaders betrayed that trust, taking as much power as they could. The Administration was taking over and stamping out any opposition with brutal, and often deadly efficiency. The duo of intrepid heroes pulled off the main road, heading for deeper woods in their dilapidated old car, these days you could barely trust anything that wasn’t made before the 1970’s to many micro-chips and whatnot for the Administration to control.

They pulled off into a copse of willow trees, the car would be hidden from sight in this little glade, the over hanging branches would hide them from any conventional eyes, though more technologically advanced means of surveillance might still track them, only time would tell…time they no longer had. Each grabbed a few hours of sleep while the other kept watch, their dreams were troubled, sleep fitful, but these days everyone’s dreams were strange and fitful. Doctor’s and scientists blamed the encroaching moon, other folks who still left the cities and ventured off the beaten path knew that these days it wasn’t just the moon hanging to low in the sky that gave everyone nightmares. All the old legends seemed to be walking the countryside without a by your leave from the saner and more scientific minds. The cities were still free from these new dangers, but folks still knew not to go out after dark, something had changed.

The Daylight hours passed by without incident, each member of the intrepid duo taking a turn at the watch, dusk fast approached and they began preparations for returning back to the road. The writer, his tall frame stretching against the shadow’s adjusted his glasses and closed his eyes. Preparing his mind, and his spirit, for the task at hand. He pulled a piece of chalk, worn down to a nub, and began to whisper quiet words as he sketched arcane symbols and whorls along the outside of the car. They seemed to glow in the moonlight bright against the dull gray of the metal. When it was done he sagged against the car, as if the drawing took far more energy than it should. His companion helped him into the passenger’s seat and climbed behind the wheel, the routine was practiced and smooth. And soon they were on their way down the road.

They drove fast that day, their destination was close, and if they pushed it they would make it right as dawn was breaking. If they were lucky they would be sleeping in a bed tomorrow, and safe, safe at last. They drove fast that night pushing the limits of their machine and the enchantment on it, but neither cared, they were close, and that made them sloppy. Perhaps it was chance, perhaps it was the fact that their ride had reached its limit, whatever it was the damage was done, and the car broke down three miles from their goal, with dawn fast approaching.

“What now?” she asked, looking to him for guidance.

“Now…we run,” he replied a sardonic smile creasing his lips. There was no joy in that smile only resignation.

They took to their feet then, running through the woods, dodging through the shadows, as swift as a rabbit on the run. The danger was clear; as soon as they stepped from the car they could hear the howls in the distance, the sounds of their pursuers rose from the silent night all around them. The protective metal shell that had shielded them from the darkness gave them up now, and the horrors of the night were fast on their heels. On the road they ran now, all pretense of stealth forgotten in the chase, speed was their only asset if they could reach their goal, they could rest then.

The hot fetid breath of their demons stalked them, it was close, so very close, and their destination was only a few hundred meters ahead. With a last burst of speed they made it, or so they thought, but pursuit didn’t end at the boundary, something breached it something large, something angry.

They ran then fear giving their feet wings, until she fell behind turning to face their tormentor, a grim determined look in her eye. He stopped then, begging her to follow, begging her not to do this, tears in his eyes, another friend would die to save him. He couldn’t live with that torment again. Not again.

She turned her eyes filled with sorrow, and smiled, she would do this, one last sacrifice, one last life to pave the way, to end the darkness, and then she turned.

He left, stealing his heart to the pain, vowing that her death would be the last, and ran on. He reached the door to their destination as the sounds of battle filled the air behind him. She was a warrior and would give the beast as good as she would get, for a time. But no person can battle the darkness that consumed the world without help, and no help was coming for her that night.

As he entered the building his companions within joyous at his return, he listened for her last cry, those around him saw the sorrow in his eyes, and fell silent as they waited at the threshold of their sanctuary. But no cry came, and the sounds of battle ceased, darkness pressed in, the light seemed to be leaching out of the surrounding fixtures, and the moon hanging bloated and broken in the sky dimmed for the first time since the cataclysm. The world was silent and hushed, a pregnant anticipation. And from that silent darkness, his companion walked, her eyes shining in the shadow.

“How?” he gasped.

“How?” they chorused behind him.

Her answer was a smile, as she walked into his arms, everyone else crowding around congratulating and cheering their comrade. No one saw, in the deepest of the shadows, a tail slithering into the distance, and a faint glow coming from the eyes of his friend.

The End…for now.

Hypocrisy for All, it’s an Orwellian world.

Hypocrisy for All, it’s an Orwellian world.

So my Master’s degree has eaten most of my free time and free brain cells, but while doing research for said degree I was able to read an award winning Graphic Novel entitled Watchmen. I’m sure most people reading this comic will be familiar with the title, if not go read it. Anyway the story got me thinking about a very old work I wrote while I was in Junior College, back during my formative years, the odd thing is that work has even more credence in today’s current political and social climate. The actual work itself is rather sophomoric and pedantic in the arguments it uses so I wont subject my few readers to its less than graceful prose. However that wont stop me from discussing it here again. What brought about this rant was an article a long while ago about a young girl who was expelled from her school for a dream sequence story she wrote in her private journal in which she ‘kills’ a few of her fellow class mates and then wakes up still in class. The girl in question was an honors student, a member of several clubs including the school’s literary club and newspaper staff. Yet when a teacher confiscated the journal because the girl was writing in it after finishing her work sooner than some of the other students, instead of complimenting the girl for her dedication to academic pursuits such as writing, she sends the poor child to the principle, who then expels her. That expulsion was eventually overruled and she returned to class, but that belabors the point that she was in fact expelled for her writing, in a private journal, after she had finished her class work. This one occurrence seems to be a symptom of a larger disease amongst our society, that of ‘political correctness’ and over sensitivity. When the masses begin to dictate how one must think, act, and generally live ones life we enter a dark and Orwellian society where ‘Big Brother’ and other over arching groups begin to micro-manage society on a level that just isn’t conducive to life. This causes all sorts of problems, which any well-read person can notice in society around us today. This young lady was expelled from school for a work of fiction, she never acted on anything she had never even acted out enough to get detention much less be expelled, but because her thoughts violated some unfathomable sense of right and wrong she was punished for it. Socrates once violated the tenants of his society and drank Hemlock because of it. Should we therefore sentence Stephen King to death because he writes about serial killers, possessed cars, and other horrific things? Should Tom Clancy be labeled a terrorist because he writes books about them? Should Tom Cruise be arrested because he once played a pimp in a movie? No. None of these people broke any laws, all they did was to think, or create things that discussed these societal horrors. In the end if we begin to crush creative thinking because it offends some one then our society is doomed to some Orwellian dark age where ‘Big Brother’ controls what we say do or even think. I fear that day, more than I fear any war, or ‘terrorist’ act, because when that day comes, freedom itself has died.

Truth or Consequences

Well, it’s time for another rant from an angry conservative. Today’s outrage concerns political correctness winning out over truth in the academic field. Now you may be thinking to yourself that this article will be discussing the fight between Evolution and Creationism within our schools that seems to have come to the forefront lately, but that is not the case. Today I bring to you the story of a Professor of History at Wellesley College specializing in Greek History. Here is a link to the article for your reading displeasure. I’ll wait while you go read it to familiarize yourself with the story.

http://www.popecenter.org/issues/article.html?id=2019

Angry yet? Good. So apparently teachers, people charged with disseminating knowledge and learning to their students to better them and educate them bringing them into the academic circle and elevating them both mentally and sociologically, have decided that truth and fact aren’t as important to their students and instead have decided to throw out any information that doesn’t fit their ideal of appeasing the politically correct minority and making groups who might feel offended by the unaltered light of truth.

What does this mean for the youth of America, well here are some outrageous scenarios that might shed a bit of light on how far this ridiculous practice might take us.

Scene 1. A student who has struggled in Math all his life decides that his feelings get hurt when he gets a Math problem wrong and proceeds to complain, fuss, and generally raise a hissy fit. Well we certainly can’t have that now can we. So the academic community which has embraced this idea that truth is merely a fluid concept that can be molded to suit the professor’s idea of what is morally right will then change the laws of Math to make this boy happy. 2 + 2 no longer equals four but instead equals 5 or 6 or whatever people want it to equal.

This is an extreme case but what is to stop professors from changing the laws of Science and Math to suit their needs when they already feel morally obligated and justified to change history, alter established fact without any imperical evidence, and manipulate established ideas to increase their own personal agendas?

I’ll close with this statement by the world’s first educator Socrates, “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”

Politically Correct Information for all.

I read an article today about a popular text book publishing company being accused of letting political correctness get in the way of writing a factually correct text book. The story illustrates some new Haughton Mifflin textbooks that have been edited to remove embarrassing or controversial information about Islam. This scares me, because it illustrates the fact that education is no longer the presentation of facts and un-diluted truth, though one could argue it never really was. Education has now become the dissemination of a political agenda or a certain set of facts that are deemed politically safe or, politically correct. What piece of history is next to fall under the chopping block, will we remove the Holocaust from our textbooks because it offends Germanic peoples? Will we edit out the fact that European settlers in the Americas slaughtered the native populaces because it offends Europeans? Will we remove from history the attack on Pearl Harbor because it might offend the Japanese, or maybe we’ll edit out the incidents in Tiananmen Square because it offends Chinese folks? Where is the stopping point in the editing of history, where do we put an end to the wholesale destruction of our past because our ancestors did something offensive to our current political climate? You know, I’m a 25yr old White Southern Protestant male, and I don’t like the presentation of the South as slavers and all around bad guys that our current history books portray. Maybe I’ll create a special interest group to lobby for the South to be viewed as a poor immigration service who failed to provide proper compensation to the African Immigrants that were brought to this country.

The Inaugural Blog

I am starting this ‘blog’ as a personal exercise to re-develop and rebuild my rather flagging argumentative (writing) muscles. I care neither way if any of these little posts are ever read by anyone other than friends, family, and acquaintances. All that being said lets get this party started off with a bang.

The degradation of the term ‘racism’ and it’s greater threat to freedom as a whole.

I’ll start off by sharing a few quotes to establish my point that the term ‘racism’ has been degraded and devalued of its original and rather sinister meaning. First up is a quote from the “Oxford English Dictionary”
- the belief that there are characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to each race that make them morally, spiritually or racially superior.
This definition is the standard by which the term racism, or racist, is established. The caveat of belief in the superiority of one race over another is quite important later on.

The Second quote I’ll take from a less reputable but often times more cited source in these technologically profound times, the dreaded, Wikipedia (ominous thunderclap).
Some sociologists have defined racism as a system of group privilege. In Portraits of White Racism David Wellman (1993) has defined racism as "culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial
minorities,” (Wellman 1993: x).

It is interesting to note in this ‘sociological’ definition of racism, that it actually reinforces racist ideals that the ‘white’ man is always in power and always the oppressor when, compared to historical fact, every race at one point in their history was oppressed, held in slavery, or generally degraded by another.

And my last quote is taken from the ‘Urban Dictionary.com’ –
Noun.
1) Strict definition: An irrational bias towards members of a racial background. The bias can be positive (e.g. one race can prefer the company of its own race or even another) or it can be negative (e.g. one race can hate another). To qualify as racism, the bias must be irrational. That is, it cannot have a factual basis for preference.
2) Commonly intended definition(in America): A bias that white people have against blacks.
3) Politically motivated definition: A justifiable reason to redistribute resources or opportunities between groups on the basis of race alone.

1) One is not a racist for pointing out that blacks receive lower scores on their ACTs, SATs, GREs, LSATs and other standardized tests of academic achievement.
2) One is a racist for pointing out #1 *IF* there is no reason for pointing it out other than to make black people feel inferior.
3) Racism is the reason that a 20 on the ACT should actually be considered a 25 if the test taker was black.

Interestingly enough for the purposes of this rant the “Urbandictionary.com” does the best job of illustrating the point that I am attempting to make, that point being, that due to today’s heavily politically correct conscious news, press, politics, etc. The term racism, or racist seems to apply to anyone that disagrees or dislikes another race or culture. Not in fact in someone who believes as was originally stated by the first definition in the moral spiritual or racial superiority of a given group, culture, etc.

I find it interesting that a term once used to describe the man who ordered the slaughter of over 6 million Jewish, Black, or otherwise ‘different’ people is now used to describe someone who dislikes the infusion of a Hispanic culture into their area of the country, or is annoyed by the fact that establishments both in retail and the government cater to people who emigrate either legally or illegally to this country and then don’t bother to learn the language.

America is a beautiful nation because of the fact that, while people have differing views, that sometimes vary widely across the political spectrum, and often times engender very emotional and visceral reactions, the people of this country are still allowed to, and encouraged to, have these differing opinions. What worries me is that; due to the politicizing of nearly every facet of existence as the election date draws near, people seem to lose that core ideal of freedom. Because a persons views might be different from your own gives no one the right to silence that group out of ‘fairness’ to others, or because it might offend a certain group, sub culture, race, faith, or people.

To silence anyone who speaks out leads down a road toward the silencing of everyone except those sanctioned by the people in power. Orwell illustrates this fact beautifully in the book 1984 where all speech or thought not sanctioned by the government or “Big Brother” is seen as a crime punishable often times by death. A more recent example of this silencing of the freedom of speech can be seen in the movie Equilibrium starring Christian Bale of Batman fame.

How this censoring of speech relates back to the degradation and misapplication of the racist, or racism label is quite obvious once you think about it. Using this unspeakable crime, that carries with it untold amounts of cultural and historical baggage, anyone wishing to silence another group, or enforce their will upon them has merely to cry racism, and let the baggage that that term entails drag down their opponent.

In closing I’d like to point out that in no way shape or form am I sanctioning, endorsing or encouraging racist acts or statements, I am merely pointing out the misapplication and misinterpretation of a label that seems to be bandied about in popular and political media far to much, especially when they more often than not could have used a far better word, though it may have a bit less of the shock value and the anger inducing power that the ‘racist’ label can hold.