Wednesday, November 09, 2005

TV melts the brain

How much time do I waste staring at the TV. I'm sitting here trying to think of something to contribute to the blog, but the boob tube has sucked out what little brain power I had.

I stumbled across this site the other day. It's called chattablogs.com. It's a free blog host for Chattanooga residents I think. Except, I stumbled across one where all the references were to Chicago locales. I went to school in Chattavegas, and I keep expecting to stumble across a blog of someone I know, but it seems to be mostly the musings of your typical southern religious folks. I seem some pictures of the town and miss it, but then I read some of the religious blogs and it makes me glad I don't have to deal with those people anymore. Some of the posts are really quite amusing.

It looks like Mr. Bush and the republicans are under the gun after yesterday's elections. Maybe that is a sign of things to come.

Speaking of religion and politics, there was a piece on Dateline a couple of weeks ago about how much political power the evangelical christians are wielding these days. It was a little disturbing to be honest with you. Why do these people insist on imposing there "moral values" on the rest of us? What happened to freedom of religion? Go read your history books people.

On to a lighter subject. I did another cross race this past weekend. Had a very tiny bit of go left at the end of the race. I usually just get passed during the entire thing, but I was actually passing people at the end of this one. That was nice for a change, but I still wasn't happy with the results. It's amazing how much fitness I lose in a short amount of time. Guys that I could keep up with in a mountain bike race make me look like I'm pedaling with one leg. Trust me, it's not as fast as this guy. Maybe it's all the booze I shove down my gullet for the months after my last mountain bike race.

Well, I'll try to hit it again this weekend. Maybe I'll do better if I don't drink a six pack the night before. The odds of either of those happening are pretty minimal.

That's it for tonight.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I find disturbing is the whine that evangelical Christians are "imposing their moral values" on the rest of society. Evangelical Christians, just as any other voting bloc, have the right to push for their agenda and the ideals they wish to have promoted. Personally, I see no difference between this and environmentalists pushing for conservation and protection of endangered species and wetlands or feminists pushing for a pro-choice agenda or the anti-war activists calling for peace.
The Constitution, in the same breath that it establishes the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech, states that the people have a right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of their grievances. In my mind, that is the bedrock of our freedom - to push for the ideas and values we want to protect or promote and to protest those we do not. I think it's rather discriminatory to argue in one breath that evangelicals should not be allowed to push their agenda, when by the very same token you would likely argue that government should fund abortions or use tax dollars for to fund artists receiving grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, etc. Whatever legislation is passed will affect all the people in some manner, whether they like it or not. Congress is only forbidden to make a law establishing a religion, they cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion or prevent the people in that particular religion from participating in the political process. I think people miss the forest for the trees sometimes in this debate by not realizing that the push to remove prayer from school or teach evolution is a moral agenda of a different kind. It promotes a humanist, secular morality, and still imposes a belief system upon a segment of society that does not adopt or align themselves with it. People wonder why Christians are angry or perhaps more active in politics now than in recent memory, but it's precisely because previous administration promoted a position at odds with theirs.

That being said, I do not agree with everything evangelicals do, or that the Bush administration does. Neither did I agree with everything the Clinton administration did, and definitely not with everything the far left does. But I do understand that the very measures that sometimes frustrate me or piss me off occur precisely because the people have the freedom in this country to promote or protest as they see fit.

Anonymous said...

Umm.. Yeah, ignore the fact that in revising a sentence, I inadvertently made it read "for to fund". Now I sound like a total hick.