When I was a kid, Mama's answer to "Everybody else is doing it" was "That still don't make it right. If everybody else is jumpin' off a cliff, you gonna be next?" she said time after time after time. "Everybody else don't determine what's right and wrong. Just 'cause other people's doin' it don't make it right. Never has. Never will."
Me and Mama don't agree about a lot of things. Although she's politically conservative and fundamentalistly Christian, she managed to raise a politically and religiously liberal son, in no small part because she insisted over and over and over again that I had to think for myself when it came to right and wrong.
For her, it was a moral imperative, one that I adopted and that has kept us at odds (to one degree or another) for most of my adult life.
In the end, that tension has led us to agree to disagree about certain things concerning politics and religion. Now that I'm middle-aged, she takes my opinions more seriously. That's not to say that we ever agree about philosophical points. Just that I've earned my right to my own opinions.
But there's one thing she taught me that we still agree on: other people's disregard of what is right is no justification for following their examples.
On that single principle lies the root of my distaste for the current Administration. They know right from wrong, but that knowledge doesn't seem to inform their acts. Instead, they twist and contort the law like a yoga master. They don't recognize boundaries of executive powers. And to a large degree, justify their actions on that same flawed principle: other people are doing it, so we can and must, also.
When one follows an enemy off of Mama's proverbial cliff, one becomes as repugnant as that enemy. In doing so, the enemy wins because you have become what you purport to abhor.
Mama also taught me that it doesn't matter what you say: it's what you do that counts. It's what defines your character.
Torture will always be torture, no matter how you slice it, dice it or perfume it up. We are slicing and dicing ourselves off that damned cliff, and it stinks to high heaven.
There's not enough perfume in the world to make this scenario smell good.
I've said my peace, and that's all I can do besides vote.
And sleep at night.
read more
Me and Mama don't agree about a lot of things. Although she's politically conservative and fundamentalistly Christian, she managed to raise a politically and religiously liberal son, in no small part because she insisted over and over and over again that I had to think for myself when it came to right and wrong.
For her, it was a moral imperative, one that I adopted and that has kept us at odds (to one degree or another) for most of my adult life.
In the end, that tension has led us to agree to disagree about certain things concerning politics and religion. Now that I'm middle-aged, she takes my opinions more seriously. That's not to say that we ever agree about philosophical points. Just that I've earned my right to my own opinions.
But there's one thing she taught me that we still agree on: other people's disregard of what is right is no justification for following their examples.
On that single principle lies the root of my distaste for the current Administration. They know right from wrong, but that knowledge doesn't seem to inform their acts. Instead, they twist and contort the law like a yoga master. They don't recognize boundaries of executive powers. And to a large degree, justify their actions on that same flawed principle: other people are doing it, so we can and must, also.
When one follows an enemy off of Mama's proverbial cliff, one becomes as repugnant as that enemy. In doing so, the enemy wins because you have become what you purport to abhor.
Mama also taught me that it doesn't matter what you say: it's what you do that counts. It's what defines your character.
Torture will always be torture, no matter how you slice it, dice it or perfume it up. We are slicing and dicing ourselves off that damned cliff, and it stinks to high heaven.
There's not enough perfume in the world to make this scenario smell good.
I've said my peace, and that's all I can do besides vote.
And sleep at night.
No comments:
Post a Comment