Here are 13 things for little kids to worry about instead of college and test preparation

Since I wrote about homeschooling last week, I’ve been fielding tons of email messages from people sharing their public education horror stories.

This one jumped out at me because it seems to echo the news about an elementary school that canceled its kindergarten play so that the kindergartens could focus on college preparation. I don’t know that this woman’s kid goes to that school (she didn’t mention it, so I assume he doesn’t), but she is dealing with a similar problem.

Honestly, I hesitated to share this with you because, to me, in my little bubble of innocence and naivety, this is almost too horrendous to believe. A kid in FIRST GRADE already giving up his hobbies and passions because he’s concerned about what his college application will look like?

Is it that bad out there? I guess it is. At least, this seems to be an indication:

 

Dear Matt,

I read your post about home schooling and decided to finally email you, even if I’m not expecting a response. My son, Peter, is in first grade in a public school. Recently, with a combination of Common Core and just bad educational strategies on the part of the school, my kiddo seems to have lost his interest and motivation. I don’t blame his teachers but I blame the system, as you pointed out. He used to love to learn and read, but now he comes home stressed out and anxious. He is reduced to tears when he’s doing his homework! The math work is INSANE! I don’t think I had the amount of tests and homework that he has even when I was in COLLEGE!

I’m writing to you because my heart was broken last week when my son, who has always been very creative, playful, and loved arts and crafts, came home and announced that he doesn’t want to draw or play with Legos anymore. I asked him why and he said that it’s a waste of time. When I asked him why it’s a waste of time, he said it won’t help him get into college! I’m not kidding! Yesterday he told me he “hates school more than anything.” I told him that school is good because it’s where you go to learn. He literally responded that he “hates learning.”

This is crazy! I feel like the school is crushing my poor kid’s spirit and now he doesn’t even want to draw or do arts and crafts with mom anymore. It’s all about testing and grades and “useful knowledge”, and I’m afraid that his childhood is being taken from him. I don’t know why I’m writing this to you. I just enjoy your opinion, and the funny thing is that my son likes you, too. He hears mom and dad talk about your blog at the dinner table, so now “Mr. Matt” has become kind of a mythological hero to him, lol. I showed him the picture of you trying to kill a spider and he laughed his head off!

What do you think about this, Matt? I just want to know your perspective.

Sincerely,

Anne

 

Dear Anne,

I think you chose the right words. If I’m a hero, it’s only in a mythological sense. In the real world, I’m noticeably lacking any heroic qualities at all. Still, I appreciate that you’ve opened up to me about your issue with your son. You know that I’m a homeschool proponent, so the first thing that comes to mind is that maybe you should consider other options outside of public school.

Of course, I don’t know your situation, so I can’t make that judgment call. It isn’t my business, anyway.

I thought that I’d write an email back to you, ranting about how kids are having their creativity and zest for life sucked out of them, but I changed my mind. I’ve ranted plenty on that subject, and I’m sure I’ll rant again in the future.

Right now, I’d like to address Peter directly, if you don’t mind. I wrote him a letter, and I’m hoping you’ll read it to him, or help him read it.

Here it is:

 

Hi Peter,

It’s Mr. Matt. I’m really worried, because your mom tells me that you think it’s a waste of time to draw pictures and play with Legos. I’m sad that you feel that way, because I bet you could draw an awesome picture of a dinosaur or a spaceship, but now the world will never get to see it.

Here’s the question, though:

Can you draw a picture of a dinosaur IN a spaceship? Check out the doodle I sketched this morning:

OK, maybe that looks more like a big hat with a picture of a lizard on it, but I tried my best.

I’ll admit that a few people in the history of the world have made cooler pictures. Has your mom told you about the Sistine Chapel? Look at this:

A guy named Michelangelo painted those pictures on the ceiling 500 years ago. It took him FOUR YEARS to paint all of them. If arts and crafts are a waste of time, then Michelangelo wasted A LOT of it.

Your mom also tells me that you hate learning. That’s too bad, Peter, because I love to learn, and I bet there are tons of things you’d love to learn about, too.

Did you know that there’s a type of cat called a cheetah, and it can run as fast as a car or a motorcycle?

Did you know that the temperature on the Sun is 27 MILLION degrees?

Did you know that your brain is smarter and more powerful than every computer on the planet?

These are really exciting facts. My life is more fun and enjoyable because I know them. This is what happens when you learn. You discover more about the world and yourself. Learning is like going on a journey over an ocean, or through a jungle, except you can do it in your home or at school.

There are a bunch of things I haven’t learned yet, but I hope I will one day. For example, I’ve always wanted to know why people yawn, or why it’s impossible to tickle yourself. Maybe you can find those things out and teach me about them. Or maybe nobody knows, and you can be the first person to ever answer the question.

Also, can you figure out what this weird animal is supposed to be:

I think it lives in the rainforest, but I’m not sure. I need help investigating this mystery.

See, I’m not even in school or college, but I’m always trying to feed my brain and increase my understanding of the world around me.

You should learn, and draw, and paint, and read, and play with Legos, Peter. I still play with Legos. You wouldn’t believe the huge tower I built last week. It literally touched the ceiling. Seriously.

Don’t worry about college and grown up stuff right now. You’ve got more important things to do. Things like:

-Running outside

-Rolling down a grassy hill

-Using your imagination

-Jumping through a sprinkler

-Jumping in a puddle

-Jumping on the couch (don’t tell your mom)

-Deciding what you’ll say if aliens land and you’re the first person to make contact with them. (I already decided what I’ll say. I’ll probably just tell them “hello,” and then I’ll ask them if they want some iced tea.)

-Painting and drawing pictures

-Writing poems and stories

-Reading books

-Playing games

-Daydreaming

-Eating ice cream

That’s at least 13 things that you should definitely fit into your schedule, especially playing, reading, and daydreaming. And ice cream, obviously.

My kids are just babies, but I hope they’re as artistic and creative as you one day. It’s a great power — a superpower — to be able to dream things in your head and then put them on paper. Sometimes it’s fun to dream something in your head, and just keep it there, and revisit your dream from time to time. It’s like you’re building a new world for yourself, out of nothing but your mind and your imagination.

I have a homework assignment for you: think of a story. Just make up a story. Any story at all. You don’t have to tell anyone, or write it down, or do anything with it. Just think of it. That’s all. Put yourself in your story — pretend you’re the main character. Think about it, just for the sake of thinking about it.

That’s the assignment.

When I was a kid, I liked to think that I was a time traveling ninja.

Actually, I still like to imagine that I’m a time traveling ninja.

My wife doesn’t enjoy it when I wear my ninja costume to the grocery store, or to dinner at her mother’s house, but I’m not sure why.

Anyway, I hope you continue to play, and draw, and learn, Peter. You’re a kid, and that’s your job right now.

Sincerely,

Mr. Matt

P.S. I know what you’re thinking, but just because I’m afraid of spiders doesn’t mean I can’t be a ninja.

Here’s the post where I’m accused of defending Donald Sterling

It’s really a fascinating thing, when you think about it.

Even a culture like ours — a culture dedicated to hedonism and relativism — has to put on a show every once in a while and pretend it has some semblance of a moral standard. It shows you that those philosophers and theologians were actually onto something when they wrote about Natural Law.

Deep down, in the pit of our being, there exists a need to be good and virtuous; but if being good and virtuous is too hard, then at least we need to find a halfway convincing substitute. Only demons and psychotics would stand and openly proclaim their own evil — the rest of us can act the part, but we still feel the urge to get up and play Morality Charades on occasion.

That’s what comes to mind when I see the reaction to the story about Donald Sterling. If you don’t watch the news (and these days I highly recommend that you don’t), I’ll fill you in on THE SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY:

Sterling is an old, crazy, rich, (alleged) racist who happens to own the LA Clippers. Being old, crazy, and rich, and living in California, he also has a pretty progressive love life. He left his wife a while back and started shacking up with his young west coast mistress. Now, his wife has quite unfairly accused the mistress of gold-digging, all because she just so happened to fall madly in love with a rich married man who showered her with Bentleys, diamonds, and cash.

(It happens to the best of us. Stop judging.)

The wife filed a lawsuit against the mistress, and the mistress allegedly swore to ‘get even.’ Getting even, in this case, evidently involved coaxing her lover into making some very inane and very racist comments, while secretly recording the exchange. To give you an idea of just how inane and racist: Sterling allegedly tells his *minority* mistress that he doesn’t mind if she has sex with minorities, but he doesn’t want her to be seen in public with them.

Well, this audio tape SOMEHOW made its way to that bastion of journalistic integrity known as TMZ — although the girlfriend totally had nothing to do with that, she says.

In a normal and sane society, this sordid soap opera would never be discussed outside of gossip magazines and entertainment shows, because there’s nothing very newsworthy about it. A wealthy, morally bankrupt adulterer in Los Angeles professed some unsavory views, behind closed doors, to his manipulative morally bankrupt girlfriend.

Alright.

And?

Donald Sterling can say and think whatever he wants to say and think. Given his situation, I’m not particularly surprised that he says and thinks offensive things. In fact, his overall lifestyle is far more repugnant than his ludicrous statements about black people.

(*Note* this post originally identified his wife as his “ex-wife.” They are not divorced, I was mistaken. This man is publicly breaking his marriage vows, but still we find his discriminatory racial views to be the most offensive thing about him.)

We permit and even celebrate most forms of evil and debauchery in our society, so our Moral Outrage energy is stored, ready to be unleashed anytime an old white guy utters something untoward about minorities. Having removed sins like baby-killing, pornography, sex-trafficking, and infidelity from the ‘Things to Get Upset About’ column, this seems to be among the only universally-recognized evils remaining.

I guess that explains why the media has pushed this to the front of their headlines, and the President of the United States of America took time out of his trip to Asia to bloviate about it.

And, since I love nothing more than to spoil an overdone, media-hyped Outrage Party, I have a few comments of my own to make:

1) President Obama jumped onto this story immediately after the gossip merchants at TMZ broke the ‘news.’ You’d think, as the President of the United States on an important trip overseas, his remarks would be along these lines: “Yeah, that guy said some messed up stuff. Good thing he’s not an elected official, no crime was committed, nobody was hurt, and none of this has any relevance to the lives of any American who isn’t dating Donald Sterling. Next question.”

That’s how a president who respects his office might respond. But a president who never misses an opportunity to reinforce his progressive racial narrative would instead give a lengthy and thorough statement, which includes this little gem: “The United States continues to wrestle with a legacy of race and slavery and segregation that’s still there — the vestiges of discrimination.”

Yes, he really did paint the LA Clipper owner’s ridiculous, private comments to his girlfriend as some kind of symptom of a larger national issue. Donald Sterling’s stupid opinions about minorities couldn’t just be Donald Sterling’s stupid opinions about minorities — it has to be an indication that the legacy of slavery still thrives nationwide. It exists in Donald Sterling’s heart, so therefore it exists in America as a whole; lingering in the air we breathe, infecting our souls, and turning us into Republicans.

Besides, when it comes to commenting on domestic scandals, President Obama will never live down his cowardly refusal to speak out against Kermit Gosnell. Here was a man who, for thirty years, murdered black infants in his Philadelphia abortion clinic, while his activities were allowed to continue because of the complacency and tacit approval of local, state, and federal agencies. Here was a man who segregated his waiting room by race, and gave better, safer treatment to white patients. Here was a man involved in a murderous scandal that implicated — and still implicates — every level of political authority, and resulted in hundreds of born infants being decapitated, stabbed, and drowned in toilets.

What did Obama say about it?

“I can’t comment.” Abortions should be “safe, legal and rare,” he said, but he “can’t comment.”

“I can’t comment.”

The ONE time his comments would be needed, warranted, and appropriate, and he declined

Forget everything else the man has done. Forget everything else he’s said. All you need to know about Barack Obama the man, and Barack Obama the President, can be summed up by the fact that he immediately and forcefully commented when a black Harvard professor was arrested by a white cop; he immediately and forcefully commented when a black teenager was killed by a Hispanic neighborhood watchman; and he immediately and forcefully commented when a white NBA owner allegedly made some insulting comments about black people — but when an abortionist was allowed to murder black infants for thirty years in the middle of an American city, he said nothing.

In all three of the cases where he did comment, the facts weren’t yet fully known, and the incident had no relevance outside of the area where it occurred. In Gosnell’s case, the facts were established, and the incident encompassed a wide range of local, state, and federal authorities. Yet on the first three he pounced, while on the last case he ran for the hills.

That’s all you need to know about Barack Obama.

2. The LA City Council is drafting a resolution calling for the NBA to sanction Sterling, and labeling his comments as, somehow, a violation of ‘human rights.’ Because we all have a human right to… not be insulted by people in the privacy of their homes…?

Really?

The NBA can do whatever it wants here. I don’t care. However, no government authority has any business getting involved in any capacity whatsoever, unless there are laws in Los Angeles against telling your girlfriend not to go to basketball games with Magic Johnson. I don’t think any such law exists, but I know that a California law against secretly recording private conversations does exist. Therefore, interestingly, if the government steps in at all, the law requires them to step in on behalf of Donald Sterling.

But they probably won’t, because we’ve given up on the law, and we’ve given up on free speech. We’ve given up on it so completely that I will be accused of racism simply for making that statement (see: the comments under this post).

3. Al Sharpton is threatening a boycott. I’m still waiting for Al Sharpton to boycott himself for his anti-Jewish comments, anti-gay comments, and anti-Mormon comments. Not to mention the time when he helped stir up racial hysteria over a rape hoax, or the other time he helped stir up racial hysteria over a rape hoax, or the time when he incited black mobs to attack Jews in Crown Heights, or the time when he got involved in drug deals before turning snitch for the FBI. I’m waiting for Sharpton to boycott himself for the crime of being Sharpton — i.e. just an overall lying, shameless, despicable, crook.

4. Various rappers have come out of the wordwork to express their dismay over Sterling’s remarks. It’s impossible to ignore the irony when we get this kind of faux-indignation from the precise people responsible for hurting more black kids in more ways than a thousand Donald Sterlings ever could. Racist NBA owners might result in hurt feelings, but the self-destructive culture peddled by these record industry predators results in funerals and prison time for black inner city children. I’m happy to know that Snoop Dogg — writer of such poetic lyrics as “b*tches ain’t sh*t but hoes and tricks” — thinks that Sterling should be ashamed of his repulsive rhetoric. Now that we know how sensitive Snoop Dogg is, let’s just hope he never listens to a Snoop Dogg song.

Lil Wayne also came forward to register his disapproval. This is the same guy who recently wrote lyrics where he called Emmett Till — the 14 year old black kid murdered for flirting with a white woman in the 50’s — a ‘p*ssy.’

But Mr. Wayne is, you know, super sensitive to the historical plight of black Americans.

5. If anything should come of this ordeal, it ought to finally be the complete dismantling of the NAACP. The organization was scheduled to give Sterling a SECOND ‘lifetime achievement award’ in a few weeks. They’ve since rescinded, but their backtrack doesn’t get them off the hook. If Sterling really has a lifetime of achieving things in the name of civil rights and racial tolerance, wouldn’t they perhaps be a little hesitant to throw the guy under the bus? They sure seem to have cut Sharpton a ton of slack. But if he was only going to be given the honor because he’s a wealthy guy and the NAACP is nothing but a political arm of the Democrat Party, then the move makes sense. So which is it, NAACP? Are you betraying this man who, as you formerly claimed, has dedicated an entire lifetime (TWO lifetimes, in fact) to achieving racial unity, or are you a bunch of Democrat shills doling out political favors?

Hmmm, this is quite the perplexing riddle, isn’t it?

6. Sterling is a jerk. There’s no doubt about that. But I am extremely uncomfortable with seeing a guy get penalized for private, illegally recorded comments he made. Even if I find the comments to be abhorrent, I just don’t like how it feels when we take somebody down based on something they said in their living rooms, off the record.

I’m consistent about this, too. When liberal Alec Baldwin was recorded berating his daughter a few years ago, I said we should be angry at what he’s said publicly, but what he said privately to his family is none of our business. When Mel Gibson was crucified for screaming at his girlfriend a while back, I said the same thing. Now, I repeat those sentiments.

There is not a person on this planet who hasn’t made ‘offensive statements’ to their loved ones, privately, in their own homes. I’ve never said the things Sterling said, because I’m not a senile, adulterous, racist, but I’m sure I’ve made comments to my wife or my close friends that I wouldn’t make in a business meeting, or on TV, or on Facebook.

It’s a troubling precedent when we start penalizing people for essentially being entrapped, illegally, by an intimate confidant. The NBA might have the authority to ban Sterling for life and force the sale of his team, but the move is nonetheless problematic.

Go ahead, get emotional and tell me I’m making excuses for Sterling. I’m not. I only hope that nobody has to make excuses for you one day if your private conversations are illegally dumped into the public square.

This is a steep and slippery slope.

*****

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Behold: the two absolutely worst arguments against homeschooling

Here’s the email I received last week. I was saving it for today, as I’ll be speaking at a homeschool conference tomorrow:

*The subject line of this email was: “Not all public school teachers are the devil.”* 

Hi Matt,

I’ve been a pretty decent fan of some of your writings, and while I don’t always agree I find that you sometimes have an entertaining way of presenting your opinion. Anyway, all due respect, I find myself having a hard time continuing to follow you now that I’ve gone back and read through your views on education.

It doesn’t so much bother me that you seem to be PROUD of your lack of a college education. You seem to be of the lucky few smart enough to get away with having no real education to speak of (congratulations). What I can’t reconcile myself with is your vitriol and hatred for public education and your insistence on peddling “homeschooling” like it’s somehow the answers to all of our problems.

I worked in public education for many years so it’s hard for me to stomach your ignorance. However I’ve enjoyed many of your posts so I don’t want to give up on you just yet. Hopefully you’ll consider this email and consider retracting many of your statements about public school. Public school might not be perfect (we can’t all be perfect like you, Matt) but it’s certainly far superior to “homeschool”. Any number of studies prove this. Studies aside, I’d like to see your response to these two point:

1. The flaws in our public school system have to do with PARENTS. Parents send their kids to school and think their job is done, instead of being involved in their child’s education. How can the system ever improve if the involved parents pull out and do their own thing? We have a responsibility not just to our own family but to our community. Homeschool parents hurt their communities when they isolate themselves and remove their children from our academic institutions. If we don’t help the system, the system will not work.

2. You mock the idea of socialization, but the fact is that kids need to learn how to socialize. That skill is not ingrained in them. How can they learn proper social skills if they aren’t around other children? You might as well try to teach your kid how to swim without ever putting him in a pool. It’s most important for kids to learn the academic fundamentals, but learning proper socialization is very important as well. Public school gives young people the chance to become well adjusted adults.

I look forward to your responses to these two points, and to your admission that “homeschool” does far more harm than good to our society. I don’t think I can read your site again until that has happened.

In Christ,

Dan

 

Hi Dan,

Thanks for reading.

I actually went back to check, and I can’t find the post where I refer to all public school teachers as ‘the devil.’ Now, I can tell you that I had a music teacher in elementary school who once ‘disciplined’ a kid by having him sit in front of the class while she went around the room and asked all of his classmates to insult him. True story. I’m not saying she was ‘the devil,’ but if the devil ever DID teach an elementary school music class, I’m sure he’d do something similar. Let’s just settle on calling her behavior ‘devilish,’ and leave it at that.

But, no, I don’t think all public school teachers are that bad. Some of them are, but not all, and probably not most. In my own experience, I’d say 10 to 15 percent of my public school instructors were so obnoxiously terrible at their jobs that I often wondered if their classes were elaborate practical jokes, or maybe some kind of strange performance art stunt. On the other side, a good 10 to 15 percent were wonderful, dedicated, tuned-in, engaged, and brilliant. The rest fell somewhere in between the two extremes, as is often the case in any profession. The only difference here is that, in most other (non union) occupations, the obnoxiously terrible ones can and will be fired.

I notice that you have no problem laying the blame on parents (or PARENTS, as you call them), but, apparently, leveling even the slightest criticism at the sainted teachers is akin to accusing them of Satan worship. This strikes me as an awfully unbalanced way of approaching the issue.

Also, I’m anxious to read any number of those any number of studies you mentioned. I’m not sure what subject you taught in public school, but I’m positive you’d have given your students a failing grade if their Works Cited page simply said: “-Any number of studies.”

That’s the thing about claiming to have read “studies” that validate your argument about public education being superior to home education — you really have to offer, like, maybe ONE example.

I’m not sure which studies you’ve researched, but I guess it isn’t the one confirming that homeschoolers outperform public schooled kids on standardized tests, or the one showing that homeschooled kids are more prepared for college, or the one showing homeschoolers achieving a higher 4th year GPA.

Really, though, we could go back and forth with studies all day (well, I could — still waiting to see you produce one on your end). What’s the point? This is part of the reason many people are thoroughly disgusted with the way we treat education in our country. We don’t need to be studying our kids like lab rats, running academic experiments on them, and then comparing and contrasting their performance with the other kids across town, and the kids across the world, and the kangaroos in the zoo. Education is not a competitive sport. I’m a little tired of this “quick — learn more stuff faster!” attitude. Education is a much deeper pursuit. It can’t always be quantified and qualified and whateverified. You can’t necessarily measure a person’s knowledge, anymore than you can measure their artistic talent or their sense of humor.

Maybe we should stop turning our kids into charts and bar graphs, and instead work on connecting with them as human beings.

Furthermore, if we treat education like a race (“Race to the Top!”), we only reinforce the notion that the whole endeavor is just a game to see who can absorb the most information, and carry it all across the finish line without having a nervous breakdown.

There is no finish line. Education is a lifelong journey, despite the fact that nowadays we tend to say: “Hey, you graduated college! You’re done! Now go watch Netflix until your eyes bleed!”

So let’s forget the studies and move to your two points:

1) You say we should keep our kids in public school in order to help ‘the system.’

Dan, listen, I have to be real with you: this isn’t just a bad argument — it’s disturbing.

‘Help the system.’

Is this really a priority for parents? When my wife and I make a decision for our family, should we stop first and ask, “wait, but will this help the system?”

Would you REALLY put the welfare of ‘the system’ over that of your own children?

I’d hope that you wouldn’t, and I’d hope that this line of logic is unique to you, but I know that it isn’t. I’ve heard it before. I’ve heard it so often, in fact, that I’m starting to think I’m the strange one for having absolutely no desire to make my children martyrs for some bureaucratic machine.

You know what my kids need me to be? A parent. Their dad. Not a cog in the system, not a member of the community, not a loyal townsperson in the village, not a ‘team player.’

Sure, I’ll tell them not to litter and I’ll make sure they play nice with the other kids in the neighborhood, but when it comes to making choices about something as serious as their education, I don’t frankly care how our decision effects the community. Does that make me callous? I don’t know. I think it just makes me a man with priorities.

Would the school system be helped if my family ‘participated’ in it? Maybe, and I’m sure the circus would be helped if you went on stage and stuck your head in a lion’s mouth. But you won’t sacrifice your scalp to the Ringling Brothers, and I won’t sacrifice my kids’ brains to public school. I guess we’re even.

2) You say that homeschooled kids aren’t properly socialized.

I give you this: with the exception of about 14 thousand other times, this is the first time I’ve ever heard this argument.

It’s an argument that seems to march on, even after its been disproven, discredited, deconstructed, and decapitated. I just promised to stop tossing around studies, so I won’t link to an article (here) that cites at least two different studies proving your assertion to be a myth.

I’ll only say that you chose a pretty strange analogy to prove your point. You can’t teach a child to swim without bringing him to a pool? I agree. But do you bring a child to the pool, drop him there with a thousand other kids, then come back 6 hours later, and repeat that process every day, five days a week, for the next 12 to 13 years? Or do you bring him to the pool, hang out with him, maybe even get in the water and play some Marco Polo, and then leave with him after a couple of hours?

I can tell you this: if you decide to just abandon your kid at the pool for hours and hours and hours on end, every day, for over a decade, he probably won’t do a lot of swimming. If he doesn’t drown (drowning is a very real possibility, especially if there’s only one lifeguard for every 40 kids), he’ll likely spend more time playing on his iPhone and smoking pot in the bathroom than learning the backstroke.

Indeed, when it comes to teaching your kid any other skill — whether its swimming, or driving, or riding a bike, or catching a baseball — all parents understand that their hands-on involvement is crucial. It’s only with the skill of ‘socializing’ where many of us suddenly decide that the matter should be outsourced to a factory in China (or a factory down the street, in this case).

Why do I even need to debunk the socialization claim? You’ve seen our society, haven’t you? You’ve interacted with people, right? Homeschooling might be increasingly popular, but the vast majority of the people you meet have been public schooled. And you’re telling me that the vast majority of the people you meet are ‘socially well adjusted’?

Really?

You and I both know that’s a lie. Sure, you can probably tell me about a homeschooled kid you met once who was totally weird and awkward and stuff, but I could see your anecdote and raise you school shooters, the bullying epidemic, youth suicide rates, a youth culture utterly dominated by cliques, fads, and trends, and then this:

Well adjusted adults?

WELL ADJUSTED ADULTS?

Go to a college campus — any college campus — and tell me again how these public schooled ladies and gentlemen are such well adjusted adults.

For God’s sake, Dan, they literally cannot socialize without inhaling a barrel of urine-flavored light beer ahead of time.

Public schools teach our kids how to socialize? Then why is this such a common sight:

I’m not claiming that homeschoolers don’t use smart phones or beer bongs, but I am saying that an overwhelming preponderance of our society has been exclusively public schooled, and if public school helped ‘socialize’ us, you’d think we’d see SOME positive results SOMEWHERE.

Expecting your kid to learn ‘social skills’ from public school, is like sending him to live with chimpanzees so that he’ll learn proper table manners.

‘Socialization’ — in the public school context — means that your child will simply absorb behavioral cues from her peers. She learns to socialize by aping her friends, who are themselves only copying other girls. She learns to repress the parts of her that don’t fit in, and put on an exterior designed to help her fade into the collective. I’m not theorizing here, this IS the social process in public school.

It’s also competitive; your social status depends on your ability to cut your peers down, until your can easily step on them and elevate yourself.

Expressing your ideas, showing vulnerability, communicating your deepest thoughts and feelings — these are all fervently discouraged. Kids are tasked with expressing not their own thoughts, but sufficiently imitating the thoughts and views of the peer collective. Children who can’t keep up, or who have no desire to keep up, will either have to be the most self-assured human beings on the planet (which is unlikely, since they haven’t been given the tools to develop that self-assurance), or they’ll become bitter, self-conscious, and depressed.

There is nothing positive about any of this. Nobody is better for it. Nobody benefits. The psychological damage can be lasting, maybe even permanent. Again, this is not my theory. This is just the way it works. How could you be so oblivious, Dan?

Now, homeschool socialization is different. Here, a child learns his social skills from his parents. He is oriented by adults, not other children. He matures, and grows, and is provided a safe environment to, as the phrase goes, be himself. Despite common perception, I don’t think most homeschool kids are locked in a tower like Rapunzel, and forbidden from human contact. They have friends, they play sports, they emerge into society and interact with people.

The only difference is how they learn to interact. The public school kid learns to interact based on how his peers carry on in the hallways and at the lunch table, whereas the homeschool kids learns to interact based on the guidance of his parents.

Who has a better foundation for becoming a well adjusted adult?

I’m not insinuating that homeschool is perfect, or that homeschool students are perfectly adjusted, but I am absolutely declaring that ‘socialization’ is the WORST part of public school.

Find a different selling point, Dan.

I appreciate the email.

In Christ (whose Word, incidentally, exhorts us to “train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it”),

Matt

*******

Note: every Friday I’ll go through my inbox and respond to one (or maybe more than one) email from the previous week. If you want to send me an email on any topic at all, here’s the address: TheMattWalshBlog@gmail.com

Also, message me on Facebook.

Aborted babies are being incinerated to provide electricity in the United States

After reports a few weeks ago that aborted babies are burned to heat hospitals in the UK, today we get this:

The remains of aborted humans are being shipped to a US power facility, in order to provide electricity to Oregon residents.

The British Colombia Health Ministry has confirmed that ‘medical waste’ is sent to our country to be converted to electricity in waste-to-power plants. ‘Medical waste,’ in this brave new world of ours, includes amputated limbs, cancerous tissue, and the bodies of murdered children.

I don’t have any long tirade for you. I just need you to understand what’s happening here in your one nation under God. We are incinerating slaughtered babies so that we can charge our iPhones and power our televisions.

If we displace a few caribou to build a pipeline, or disadvantage a couple of dolphins to drill for oil, the public outrage cannot be contained. The cries of injustice and eco-treason can be heard across the land. But using the corpses of dead kids like firewood? Well, that’s just a practical cost-saving measure, now isn’t it?

God help us. And God help the sick, perverted, psychopaths who can’t recognize this for the atrocity that it is. We kill these human beings, can’t we at least treat their bodies with dignity?

I read these stories and I remember the accounts of ancient pagans burning their children alive as a sacrifice to the god Moloch.

These are terrifying times. Don’t let yourself be too buried in piles of Tweets and selfies and Netflix binges to notice that the ship is sinking straight to hell.

In our comfort and our apathy, we scoff and say, ‘ah, it can’t be that bad.’

But it is that bad.

And it will only get worse from here if we don’t wake up.

 

*****

Update: LifeSiteNews reports that the Marion County Board of Commissioners have announced that the practice of burning aborted babies for power will be stopped immediately. They claim that they were unaware of the practice, but will now put it to an end.

This is a positive development, but it does not make this story any less outrageous.

*****

A response to the dismissive “what’s the big deal?” comments:

Look, if you don’t believe in God, and you reject the sanctity of life, and you believe that we are all nothing but a collection of random molecules, then I suppose I can’t really explain why the body of a deceased human ought to be treated with dignity. Particularly if you accept and promote abortion, I can’t tell you why dead bodies should be treated with respect, when you don’t even think living bodies should be treated with respect.

All I can do, in your case, is appeal to that natural instinct, that voice inside your head — “conscience,” it’s called — that tells you cannibalism is depraved, even if the person is already dead. What we have here is a form of Industrial Age cannibalism: using dead bodies for fuel.

All I can do is remind you that, God forbid, if your child died, or your mother, or you sister, you would be outraged in the very pit of your being if someone spit on their corpse, or defiled it in someway. By your professed logic, the act shouldn’t bother you. After all, you say, that body isn’t them. They’re gone. They are nothingness now. They don’t exist. What does it matter?

But we both know that it does matter. The only difference is that you don’t understand WHY it matters, or else you pretend not to, whereas I, and many other commenters on here, do.

I know it’s awfully cool and terribly trendy to carry on like materialistic utilitarians who scoff at totally outdated and completely old fashioned concepts like dignity and decency. I know we have this habit nowadays of thinking a thing is pointless if it can’t be ‘used’ in some manner. And, if a thing can be used, then we tend to say that it should be used, just on the principle that useless things have no right to take up space on this planet. But, again, deep in my heart, I know that deep in your heart you see this attitude for the vacant, hollow, lie that it is.

Yes, the body of a deceased human is useless. Yes, it can, apparently, be converted into electricity and, yes, electricity is useful. Yes, and so what? The Mona Lisa is useless, should we chop it up for firewood? Your grandmother isn’t nearly as useful as she once was, should we send her the farm to be put down? Music is useless, should we throw all the guitars and pianos into the inferno also?

No? Then maybe, just maybe, you really DO understand that sometimes the value of a thing has no relation to its usefulness.

What I’m saying is this: the body of a deceased child is useless, yes. But it has value. It has dignity. It deserves to be treated with respect.

Now, to those who call themselves Christians but still make excuses for this practice: you should be ashamed. Truly, you should be ashamed. Our bodies and our souls are not two separate entities. Your exterior is not some fleshy shell. Your body and your soul are in harmony with one another, and the two, together, make you you.

Jesus Christ became man, and this act forever puts to rest the debate about whether or not the human body, in and of itself, deserves to be respected and treated with dignity. God Himself took its form, forever elevating that form to something sacred. End of discussion. The argument is settled.

You are a Christian, are you not?

In any case, Christian or Jew or Muslim or Atheist, we should all be, at the very least, civilized people.

Civilized people don’t burn dead babies for fuel. They just don’t.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Affirmative action: defeating perceived discrimination with actual bigotry!

 

I read that the Supreme Court upheld Michigan’s voter-approved initiative banning affirmative action in college admissions.

They didn’t rule on affirmative action itself, but merely affirmed the voters’ right to have a say in our democratic system. Predictably, a mob of left-wingers immediately took to the internet to advocate for racial tolerance by saying a bunch of racist things about Clarence Thomas.

In the mind of Liberal Whitey, not only should we have a paternalistic mechanism in place to treat minorities like children who need special treatment, but we should even disallow the citizens of individual states from getting to decide for themselves whether their education system will be based on racial quotas and institutionalized discrimination.

Notice: I didn’t call it ‘institutionalized reverse discrimination.’ I called it discrimination. Affirmative action is discrimination by definition. Literally, by definition.

Discrimination: treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit.

To call it ‘reverse’ discrimination is to insinuate that ‘real discrimination’ is an innately white phenomenon. I know that such a view is actually held by many Americans, and actually taught in our schools, but it is a patently idiotic notion. Discrimination rears its ugly head in every corner of the globe, whether the white man is present there or not. If you want to blame white people for something, blame us for ironic bumper stickers and Aaron Sorkin TV shows. Neither of those would exist in a world without honkies. But discrimination? Find me a race not guilty of it, and I’ll show you a race not of this Earth.

Affirmative action is discrimination. It’s also bigotry, and strangely enough, the people mostly victimized by the bigotry are precisely the ones supposedly helped by the discrimination. That’s what angers me the most about the whole ludicrous affair. Can you think of anything more belittling than the white folks in charge of universities counting their students like faceless statistics, measuring them based on their skin color, and then decreeing that they need a few more blacks to fill the quota?

This is equality? This is progress? Bureaucratic calculations predetermining the exact allotment of skin pigmentations — this is the sort of diversity we want in America?

I’m repulsed by it, as any American ought to be. I struggle to even write a few paragraphs criticizing affirmative action, because the entire thing is so nakedly degrading and blatantly self-defeating.

It depresses me that discussions about affirmative action always devolve into arguments over whether it ‘works’ or not. It doesn’t work, and the fact that we’ve had affirmative action policies in place for decades, yet much of black America still struggles so mightily, proves that point. Even liberals are starting to understand the strategic disaster that affirmative has proven to be. But, really, what kind of question is that? Does it work? We’re talking about people here, not cows. Not robots. Not numbers on a spreadsheet. Even if discrimination works, it still doesn’t work. Even if the end is desirable, it can’t justify the means if the means include elevating a certain group through the targeted utilization of systematic racism.

When we criticize segregation, do we criticize it because it didn’t work? Or do we criticize it because the forced, government-imposed segregation of people based on race is a moral evil?

Affirmative action is designed to ignore a person’s merits, their achievements, their character, their ambition, their efforts, and instead rank and categorize them according to the color of their skin. This is wrong. It doesn’t matter who it’s supposed to benefit. It benefits no one, but it doesn’t matter if it does benefit someone. It’s wrong. It’s wrong to discriminate against someone or for someone simply because of their ethnicity. This is basic stuff, my liberal friends. These are basic, fundamental ethical concepts. It doesn’t matter if the discrimination is supposed to combat discrimination. That’s like cheating on your wife and telling her you only did it to address her infidelity.

Dear Lord, affirmative action proponents, please never become marriage counselors. I can only imagine what sort of advice you’d dole out.

“Hmmm, Mrs. Johnson, you say your husband is deceitful and abusive? Well, I recommend that you employ a policy of reverse deceit and abuse against your husband. Problem solved. That’ll be 600 dollars.”

It’s wrong. I shouldn’t need to spell it out. I shouldn’t need to give reasons why affirmative action in higher education (or anywhere else) makes no sense, when we’ve already established that it’s a moral and ethical travesty.

But, if I wanted to give a few reasons, I’d point out that the term ‘affirmative action’ first appeared in a Kennedy executive order, which called for people to be given opportunities “without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” This is notable because the current iteration of affirmative action is exactly designed to ensure opportunities by taking special regard for a person’s race, color, and national origin.

And if I wanted to give more reasons, I’d bring up the Jews and Asians, who are both ethnic minorities, and have both experienced enormous hardship and prejudice, yet they both are, in fact, disproportionately represented in ‘higher education,’ not to mention fields like medicine and engineering. If the university system is stacked in favor of white males, why have we wielders of white privilege made such a glaring exception in their cases? Actually, they’re such an exception, that now affirmative action policies require institutions to discriminate against them in order to stop them from being too successful.

And if I wanted to give still additional reasons, I’d say that it’s absurd to think that universities are run by white supremacists whose inherent racism needs to be regulated through affirmative action policies, when it’s the universities that peddle white guilt more passionately than any other institution in America. Many colleges go so far as to teach that all white people are racist, no matter what, without exception. Until recently, the University of Delaware, for instance, required that all residents be indoctrinated to radical left-wing racial theories, even if they weren’t taking any classes on the subject. And you’re telling me these places that convince white people to hate themselves and their heritage are actually bastions of white privilege? I think we must be working with drastically different understandings of the word ‘privilege.’

And if I wanted to continue giving reasons, I’d observe that if anti-minority sensibilities are still such a prevalent problem as to warrant affirmative action, then clearly affirmative action has not succeeded in achieving the thing which it was supposedly designed to achieve. Either our academic institutions are run by white bigots, and affirmative action has failed to change that dynamic, or they aren’t run by white bigots, and affirmative action only succeeds in creating a problem that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Either way, affirmative action loses. You are left with nothing that could lead any rational person to the conclusion that affirmative action policies must continue.

And if I wanted to give even more reasons, I’d mention that you’re putting a minority student at an extreme disadvantage when you throw him into an academic environment because he fills your skin tone quota, but isn’t otherwise prepared to handle the workload.

And if I wanted to offer yet another reason, I’d say something about the fact that affirmative action makes wild assumption contingent solely on race, while taking no account of other factors that might put someone at a greater disadvantage. We’re left with a ridiculous dichotomy where a black male from a wealthy upper class family is given the benefits of affirmative action, over the son of an impoverished white single mother, or the daughter of a poor Japanese fisherman.

And if I wanted to keep tossing out reasons, I’d probably tell you that the very term ‘ethnic minority’ is virtually impossible to quantify. Elizabeth Warren claimed she’s a Native American. Sure, she’s a shameless, lying, Socialist, but who’s to say she doesn’t have some minority blood? Who’s to say I don’t count as a minority? My ancestors came from Ireland, and weren’t exactly greeted with open arms when they arrived on our shores. At what point in the lineage does a family lose its minority status? Is it all based on skin color? Is the child of a Polish immigrant less an ethnic minority than Barack Obama, the wealthy biracial man raised by his white mother? What if Obama’s skin complexion more closely resembled his maternal side? Would that make him less a minority? Who is the arbiter of these things? Who decides? Does any of this make even the slightest bit of sense? Have all our brains simply turned to mush?

If I wanted to give a bunch of reasons why racial discrimination is a bad idea — aside from the fact that it’s just a generally repugnant practice — I’d probably say all of those things.

But I won’t, because it shouldn’t be necessary.

Affirmative action is an atrocity.

Also, college is often a terrible waste of money, so this whole conversation should be a moot point.

Hallelujah, Happy Easter

Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, walked on Earth, teaching and healing and demonstrating for all of us the essence of Love.

And for this, He was captured, tortured and murdered in the most gruesome fashion imaginable. He was made to suffer more than any person before or since. It was the greatest crime in the history of humanity; the created slaughtered the Creator, and He offered no resistance. But this tragedy led to the ultimate triumph: He rose from the dead, conquered sin and opened up the gates of Heaven.

Before He ascended, He entrusted the Truth of human salvation to a small band of poor, simple, ordinary men. He told them to travel throughout the land and preach the Gospel. He promised them persecution, suffering, and death, and they received it. He also promised them eternal salvation and happiness, and they received it.

The Christians, the converts to Christ, met and worshipped in caves and basements. They were sought and murdered; a reality they embraced when they accepted His Word. Yet, in the face of incredible odds, in less than 300 years they peacefully conquered the most powerful empire on Earth. That feat alone is enough to convert anyone who considers it with an honest mind and an open heart.

No religion has accomplished what Christianity has accomplished. No ideology. No school of thought. No idea, no government, no political system. Nobody else, nothing else has ever lit the world on fire like the Gospel.

Soon, Christ’s message would make it to every corner of the world, and it would be the driving force of civilization for two thousand years. Christians would go where nobody else would go, and serve those who nobody else would serve, and win souls that nobody else could win.

Christianity is diversity. It speaks to all kinds of people, and fits into the totality of the human experience. It isn’t broad like a sitcom is broad, but it isn’t narrow like an alley or a political party is narrow. It’s deep, it’s universal. It meets us where we are, and lifts us to a better place.

We Christians are soldiers in a cosmic struggle, and the war is still raging. Many have died in the flesh, or much worse, in the spirit.

Governments and kingdoms of men have tried to exterminate the Truth, but all have failed. Christianity is a religion of peace and love, but it’s also a warrior’s faith. It isn’t a blanket to hide under, it’s a battle flag to march under. It doesn’t hide us from the pain and suffering that this world has to offer — it commands us to endure it, confront it, and find the beauty in it all.

Easter reminds us that there is an end to the suffering and a purpose in the pain. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He triumphed over evil. And He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

This is what I believe, and I am not ashamed.

Hallelujah. Amen.

Happy Easter, everyone.

This woman exercised her right to abort her infants, and now she’s being unjustly persecuted

Someone get this printed on a t-shirt:

“Free Megan Huntsman!”

Slap it on a bumper sticker. Start the campaign.

Megan Huntsman — every bit the same sort of feminist hero as Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards or Abortion Martyr George Tiller — is being persecuted. Prosecuted and persecuted before our very eyes (in the year 2014!) all for allegedly making a choice. A difficult choice, mind you. An alleged choice that she must have grappled with torturously.

She considered her options and, in the end, came to the conclusion that she wasn’t ready to be a mother. So she terminated her post-birth fetuses — six of them — and put them in boxes in her garage, according to the charges.

Police say that Ms. Huntsman has admitted to conducting this medical procedure, and why shouldn’t she admit to it? Why shouldn’t she have the freedom to make decisions about her life and her body, and why shouldn’t society herald her bravery in doing so?

Now, it’s true that I am a man and so I have no right to form an opinion on whether a fetus ought to be suffocated, either in its pre or post-birth stage of development. We know that one cannot reach an objective conclusion unless one is emotionally tied to the issue at hand, which is why, according to the dictates of jurisprudence, every jury is stacked with people who’ve been personally victimized by whatever type of crime the defendant stands accused.

Be that as it may, I am also a modern, progressive, American (in the year 2014, for God’s sake!) and so I have dutifully formulated my ideology through the passive absorption of popular culture. This process can only bring one to the inescapable realization that the worth of a fetus, or “human being” as right wing propagandists and biologists might call it, really depends on the feelings of the unwilling host, or “mother” as rabid Republican loons might refer to her.

Melissa Harris-Perry said as much a few months ago, confidently declaring that life begins when the woman feels like it. Cecile Richards has, for her part, insisted that the issue of life is irrelevant to the matter entirely, and Obama famously professed that, although he has taken a position on abortion, the job of formulating a theory that would justify that position is really quite above his pay grade.

So if the definition of ‘life’ hinges on the mother’s emotional willingness to call it life, and if the whole subject is irrelevant and impossible to quantify anyway, then who are you to tell Megan Hunstman that her post-birth fetuses were ‘people’ and had ‘human rights’?

You can’t. We can’t. And it is a travesty of justice that the criminal courts would even try. Look, it’s not the 1950s; it’s 2014! Time to move out of the Stone Age. Only a Neanderthal would think that the God given right to an abortion somehow ends at the moment of natural birth.

We’ve drawn this line in the sand, but the line is arbitrary. Indeed, whatever argument you make for abortion can easily be made by Ms. Hunstman.

Let’s go down the list:

Pregnancy is an incredible burden on a woman; who are we to tell her what to do with her own body?

This is the most trusty and commonly cited reason to support abortion, and the argument is important because it clearly defines the fetus as an extension of a woman’s body, or else negates the rights of the fetus by using its dependence on the woman’s body against it.

If the fetus is a part of the mother’s body, why should it not be considered as such once it is born? If it was literally a body part, then that is its nature, and if that is its nature, then how could its nature change upon birth? My thumb, my arm, my bladder, these are all pieces and parts of me. If I were to have one removed, would I suddenly lose jurisdiction over it? Surely, my thumb has no legal rights, no protections outside of the laws that protect me — the person to whom my thumb is a mere member. If I chopped off my thumb and threw it in the garbage, could I be accused of ‘murder’?

But if the fetus is a person, or a human, or at least some entity distinct from the mother, then, our argument goes, its DEPENDENCE on the mother’s body means that it cannot claim any rights which would supersede her own.

Alright, so what of a post-birth fetus? Is it now somehow able to exist independent of the woman? Of course not. In fact, it becomes all the more demanding. It needs not only its mother’s body, but almost all of her time, her energy, her money, everything. A pre-birth fetus ONLY needs a woman’s body, a post-birth fetus needs her body AND everything else. So how does the post-birth fetus get off the hook? It makes no sense.

Sure, a woman can find other people to fill those roles, and she can buy formula rather than breastfeed, but SHE is still LEGALLY REQUIRED to go out and seek those replacements, which is not only a hassle, and possibly financially cumbersome, but emotionally taxing. Who are we to FORCE her to do that? If the technology existed for a woman to transfer her pre-birth fetus from her uterus to someone else’s, or to a machine of some sort, I can’t imagine that any self respecting pro-choice feminist would throw up her hands and say, “Alright, no more abortion — now all women who don’t want their fetuses need to undergo a fetal transfer!”

Obviously abortion rights would still be protected even if pregnant women had an option in between giving birth and having an abortion. To relent would be to tolerate yet another imposition on women, brought upon by a paternalistic society dominated by white male Christians.

Yes, Utah is a Safe Haven state, which means a baby can be abandoned at a hospital, no questions asked. But, again, that is only one way to deal with a post-birth fetus. Who are we to say it is the RIGHT way? And who are we to hoist that opinion onto anyone, least of all a woman in the midst of such a difficult moment in her life?

A fetus isn’t fully developed, so it isn’t a person.

Tying ‘personhood’ to physical development — where would the abortion rights movement be without this essential argument? A fetus, remember, is only a clump of cells. It can’t even breathe through its lungs or use an iPhone yet. What about a post-birth fetus? Sure, it has attained a few more developmental milestones, but it’s far from fully developed. A fetus doesn’t become rational and reasonable until it’s about 93 or 94 months old. Scientists believe the brain itself isn’t finished forming until it hits about 309 months of development.

The point is this: if the abortion rights camp rejects, as it should, the inane idea that this mysterious entity with its own DNA and genetic makeup should be considered a person at conception — or, in other words, at the moment in which its unique DNA and genetic makeup come into existence — and if we reject the idea that it should be considered a person at any other random gestational point thereafter, why should we automatically concede the matter once the fetus emerges from the birth canal? If a lack of physical development makes the creature/body part/whatever-it-is undeserving of personhood, then we must see that logic all the way through.

Full physical development — i.e. personhood — does not occur, for most fetuses, until they are 26 or 27 years old. And then physical deterioration immediately begins, but we can have the forced euthanasia debate some other time. If incomplete physical development contributes in any way, shape, or form to our pro-abortion position, then we have universally tied development to human rights. We have said that, to some degree, the fullness of our rights rests on the fullness of our physiological formation. Think of the glorious implications if we only possessed the courage to apply this reasoning consistently!

Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one.

In other words, butt out. None of your business. It doesn’t concern you. Ms. Hunstman could say all of these things, and I’m sure she has.  Anyone who has ever done anything to any other person could also say this to every person to whom he or she didn’t do it. This means we really shouldn’t have an opinion about almost everything that’s happening, has happened, or will happen — including, for instance, the Holocaust and the Manson killings — as the vast majority of the world’s events will not directly and immediately impact us in any obvious way. Once we’ve more roundly adopted this slogan, we will be free from much of the onerousness of having a moral compass, because we will have defined ‘morality’ as simply ‘a distaste for that which inconveniences oneself.’

Women will have abortions anyway, we need to make sure they are done safely.

The appeal to inevitability. Well, as long as there are women who wish to have pre-birth abortions, there will also be women who wish to have post-birth abortions. The only question is whether they will be able to do them in a safe and sterile environment. Infanticide has been around for as long as abortion — probably longer. No law against it will ever stop it from happening.

Without abortion, there will be a lot of unwanted children, who Republicans will refuse to provide with food stamps and welfare.

In my research, to be honest, I’ve yet to find very many Republicans who categorically oppose welfare. This appears to be more of a Libertarian position, but don’t tell that to the progressive college kids who fancy themselves Libertarian because they like drugs and booze.

In any case, as we have established, once a fetus is ‘unwanted,’ it will be destined to a pointless life of misery and sadness. Why should we, as a society, only have the opportunity to alleviate them of that burden while they are in the womb? If they are unwanted in the womb, they will be unwanted out of it. This was a point on which Margaret Sanger — the founder of Planned Parenthood — was very clear. Those who might be a drain on society must be exterminated.

It’s unfortunate that Ms. Sanger was photographed at KKK rallies and such, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss her ideas. Her ideas are the cornerstone of the abortion rights movement, after all.

It’s clear what must be done: free Megan Hunstman. If we aren’t disgusted by terminating a fetus in the womb (and we shouldn’t be — in the year 2014, for goodness sake!) then why are we pretending to be disgusted by the termination of a thing merely moments after it, according to popular notions, stops being a fetus? How could one be a right and the other reprehensible, when the acts are the same, the motivations are the same, and the results are the same?

I’ve even seen pro-choice people wonder aloud about why she didn’t “just go get an abortion.” How absurd is that? So if she had gone to some building and asked some man to do it for her, it would be fine, but instead she waits a few days and does it herself and now she’s suddenly Satan Incarnate? She terminated them seconds after they emerged from her body, and so she’s a serial killer, but if she’d killed them as they emerged, she’d be a role model for the pro-choice cause? This is insanity.

Why are we selling ourselves short? The ideology of abortion allows for so much more, yet we limit ourselves because — why? Because we fear the Christians? This is understandable — those monsters regularly resort to militant tactics, like sign-holding and prayer — but we shouldn’t let them bully us around. If Ms. Huntsman is charged with anything, it should be for practicing medicine without a license. But, really, she’s guilt of nothing more than being an empowered woman.

What a shameful lack of conviction my pro-choice brothers and sisters have demonstrated. Come, let us take our beliefs to their logical conclusions, and then toast to the Land of Freedom and Peace we will have finally forged for ourselves!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there is a competition over who’s busiest and most important, I lose. Here is my concession speech.

Alright, I won’t rehash what I wrote yesterday.

I entered into the octagon and found myself in a Parenting Death Match. The “who has it harder, whose job is tougher, who’s busier, who’s more important, who sleeps less, eats less, has less downtime, and less fun” competition. The “whose life is more miserable, because a miserable life is more important and compelling than a joyous one” contest.

That thing where we see who can beat their chest and play their violin the loudest.

That thing. That thing where we argue about whether dads have it tougher than moms, or moms have it tougher than dads, or Stay at Home moms have it tougher than working moms, or parents have it tougher than non-parents, or I have it tougher than you, or he than her, or her than him, or my dog than your dog, etc, etc, and so forth.

Honest to God, I only wanted to suggest that we all have our struggles, and nobody can measure the struggle of another or proclaim theirs to be The Greatest Struggle or The Toughest Existence. Harmony — especially between husbands and wives — is the answer. That’s what I wanted to say. That’s what I wanted you to take from it.

But maybe I didn’t communicate that message well. Or maybe people purposely twisted my words. Or maybe a combination of both. Maybe I shouldn’t have tied the message to a commentary about a greeting card commercial, because the message was relevant regardless of any commercial.

Maybe.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.

I’m putting all of that aside. What I want to do is cede defeat. I’m going to declare myself a loser of a game that I’m not sure I ever wanted to play. I’ve written about parenting many times, and every time I end up in this battle, so it’s my fault.

Here’s the truth: I can’t speak for any other parent, mom or dad, but I can tell you that my life is not the most challenging, the most important, the most hectic, the busiest, the most demanding, or the most tiring. My life is somewhere in the middle, I imagine. My life, my parenting, is likely in the realm of mediocrity.

I’m sharing this with you because I’m tired of the contest, of the competitive suffering, of the need we feel to portray our lives in a way that somehow makes other lives pale in the spotlight we’ve shone on ourselves.

So let me tell you about being a parent. This isn’t the universal story of Being a Parent, but the small little story of Matt Walsh Being a Parent.

Here is what comes to mind:

I think first of the joy.

You don’t hear about the joy of parenting very often. It’s like we take it as an insult if someone accuses us of enjoying ourselves. But I do feel a great joy. I don’t know that it’s The Greatest Joy Anyone Has Ever Felt, but it’s my greatest joy. It probably isn’t The Greatest Anyone Has Ever Felt, because our ability to experience true joy depends on our ability to fight off our selfishness and insecurities, and enter into something bigger than ourselves. I am too weak and selfish to enter Joy with the fullness that a better man or woman might — parent or non-parent — so my Joy is fainter, but it’s mine, and it’s real.

I can’t describe it exactly. It’s something beyond happiness. Happiness, for me, is a nice afternoon. Football on a Sunday. A cookout. Music. Bacon cheeseburgers.

Joy is in the same waters, but deeper. It’s my wife, my daughter, my son. It’s the wholeness that I find with them. The completion. The newness of it, the familiarity of it, the love, the hope, the excitement. The realization that I am where I belong, and whatever brought me to this point was worth the price, and wherever we’re going is worth the trouble. That’s Joy, to me. That’s parenting.

Joy is this picture of my daughter:

And this of my son:

That’s joy. Whatever hardships they might bring into my life, it could never be so hard as to rob me of it, unless I allow myself to be robbed of it.

I know there are people living and feeling none of these things. Feeling isolated and alone, like their existence is futile and random. These people — whoever they are, and whatever they ‘do for a living’ — have a tougher life than me, and the basic job of existing is harder for them.

I think of the sacrifice.

I don’t believe that I’ve made The Most Sacrifices Anyone Has Ever Made For Anything, and certainly plenty of soldiers and firefighters have given more for their cause than I have for mine.

I’ve sacrificed some free time, some money, some space in my house, though I was only wasting those things before, so the net loss is minimal. I’ve given up sleep and relaxation, though not completely, or anywhere near completely. I’m sure plenty of people without kids sleep less and relax less than I do. I don’t think my ability to sleep and relax reflects one way or another on my worthiness as a human being or a parent. Maybe some parents hardly sleep at all, for years at a time, and maybe some never relax at all, for decades on end, but that hasn’t been my experience so far.

I’ve sacrificed some peace of mind, but, to be honest, I’ve never had very much of that anyway.  I don’t know that I worry more now, but I do worry more about other people — my wife and kids — and so I think I’ve actually improved in the worrying department.

I’d believe it if you told me that you don’t have kids yet you have more worries than me. You could be a cancer patient, for all I know. You could live in a third world country. You could have a dying parent. You could be homeless or starving. You could live a normal life on the surface, but be plagued with doubt and anxiety beneath it.

I think of the physical and emotional toll.

Parenting can be a physical strain. It’s a bigger strain for my wife — who bore the pregnancy, birthed the twins, and now spends more time carrying them around throughout the day — but it can be exhausting for me, too.

I’m quite sure there are people who have more demanded of them physically. I’ve never worked as a brick layer, or a roofer, or a commercial fisherman, or a farmer, but I’d bet they’re more worn and weary than I am at the end of the day. Sure, their jobs ‘end,’ but the physical intensity of working a construction site in July is far beyond anything I’ve personally gone through as a parent.

The emotion that this work, the work of parenting, brings out of me can be confusing and conflicting. There are high highs and low lows, but the highs are higher than the lows are low, if that makes any sense at all. In the end, I am a human, and so I experience emotions on a spectrum. If I want to rise to the peaks of Joy that parenting offers me, I have to accept the risk that I’ll sometimes fall into the valleys of misery which exist in the same plane as the joys.

As for the misery of it, I don’t think I’ve been More Miserable Than Anyone, parent or non-parent. I certainly hope I haven’t, and hope that I never am. I know a man who used to work forensics in the inner city. He saw things I couldn’t fathom, experienced a misery I can’t understand, and all without, really, any of the fun and happiness of parenting. Just bleak and grey, death and murder. I don’t know that he was a parent at this point in his life, but he surely suffered more than I have, personally.

I think of the responsibilities.

I feel the profound weight of responsibility, more than I have at any other point in my life. I doubt that I have The Most Responsibilities In The World, and if you told me that you aren’t a parent but you have more responsibilities, I’d believe you. You could be a surgeon or a Head of State, for all I know. You could be a general, trusted with the lives of many men on the field of battle.

I don’t know where I rank on the list, but it doesn’t matter. My responsibilities are mine, they’ve been given to me, so they are everything. I know my wife feels the weight in an enormous way, though in a different way. She is with the kids every day, all day, most of the time. I’m not, but I know that I have to provide for my family. I know that it falls on me to keep a roof over their heads and clothes on their back. I know that if I fail, I will drag my children and my wife down with me, and that fact is very present in my mind, all of the time.

When I’m not working to earn a living for us, I’m helping around the house. Cleaning dishes, changing diapers, whatever needs to be done. I’m sure I do more than some dads, but less than others. I could be better, more helpful, and I know that.

All of these things, for me, are secondary. The greatest responsibility, the heaviest burden that I carry, that my wife carries, is the duty to help our children be virtuous and godly. We’re merely laying the groundwork now, and I suppose that foundation won’t be tested until our kids reach the age of reason and start choosing to do right for the sake of what is right, or wrong for the sake of their own selfishness.

I know that my job and my wife’s job, more than anything, above everything, more important than paying the bills or teaching them the ABC’s, is to put them on a path towards heaven. God gave them to me — to us — and said, “Here, now bring them Home.” If we can feed them organic food and get them involved in a lot of healthy outdoor activities along the way, great. But none of that matters — it’s all for nothing — if we fail in our First Duty.

The only time I will speak for other parents is now, to say that all parents who love their children want them to be virtuous, because that is the nature of love. I can also say that there is no greater responsibility in the universe than this — when the fate of another human being’s soul is entrusted to you, at least to some degree.

This is parenting to me.

This is me, the parent.

It’s a very middling tale, I realize. When the awards are given to the busiest, the most stressed, the happiest, the saddest, the most important, the most perfect, the most responsible, my name will not be called. I’m sure of this, so sure that I haven’t even written an acceptance speech.

Take this as my white flag. No need to email me anymore to defend your title of Most Active and Most Essential. You win. I can’t compete.

I don’t want to anymore. I don’t think we should. I don’t think it’s healthy. I don’t think it matters.

Ours lives are to be lived, not endlessly compared and ranked against the projected lives of those around us.

At least that’s how it seems to this average guy.

 

Motherhood isn’t tougher than fatherhood, but maybe we should all stop competing

I have to admit upfront that I have developed an immunity to ‘tearjerker’ viral ads. You see, I fell into a vat of Hallmark Cards and maple syrup when I was a child, and emerged from that scarring incident completely impervious to the sugary, contrived sentimentality of clever marketing campaigns.

I’m constantly greeted by people posting videos on Facebook, promising that, if I just watch to the end, I’ll ‘be a wreck’ because it’s the ‘saddest/sweetest thing’ I’ll have ‘EVER seen, EVER.’  Usually I skim right past, but sometimes I’ll click the link like the sucker that I am, and yet again confirm that I am incapable of shedding a tear over a commercial for sponges or minivans.

All of this emoting also damages everyone’s credibility. Honestly, I don’t know how to take someone who posts a status about how they just returned from a funeral and it was the saddest experience of their life, when I saw them write the same thing about a dish detergent advertisement three days ago.

In any event, I am in the minority, so the emotional manipulation will continue. Here’s the latest example: a greeting card company posted a fake job listing online. They then ‘interviewed’ several candidates for what they billed as ‘the toughest job in the world.’ The blogs that reposted the video promised a ‘surprise’ ending, but I guessed the surprise within 3 seconds of hitting play: the ‘toughest job in the world’ is motherhood, and these unemployed applicants, while not in line for any actual paying gig, were offered a great lesson about the importance of moms.

Never mind the cruelty of tricking desperate job seekers (so desperate that they apparently applied for a job that sounds like indentured servitude) into thinking that they were in line for a position, only to pull the rug out, all in the name of ‘sending a message’ —  and without even offering a useful parting gift, like a gas card or a can of beans or something.

Also never mind how the fake interviewer and the fake listing describe this position:

-Must be willing to stand “ALL of the time.”

-Must work 135 hours or more a week.

-No breaks.

-No rest.

-No sleep.

-Can’t eat, except when your ‘associate’ (your child, get it?) says you can.

I have twins. I’m a parent. Parenting is hard, my wife would agree. But we aren’t up and going 20 HOURS A DAY EVERY WEEK, ALL YEAR. Come on, already. We sleep. We both sleep. We have time to ourselves. We watched a movie last Friday. This past weekend, we had a cookout, twice. We had fun. You know what? The kids ADDED to the fun. We actually like having them around, if you can believe it. Parenting isn’t quite the miserable slog that some parents love to paint it.

I used to work two jobs — overnights at a radio station and evenings at a fast food place — I got much less sleep in those days than I do now. Even more recently, I’d get up at 330 AM and get to work at 4 AM. I was more tired then, much more tired.

Standing “all of the time”? NO rest at all? NO sleep at all? Who are we supposed to be parenting here? A chimpanzee on speed? If parenting literally required you to be up and going all the time, every day, with no breaks, little food, and no sleep — you’d be dead. Every parent in the world would be dead. What you’re describing here are the conditions of a North Korean prison camp, not a home in the American suburbs.

Not to mention, if your children dictate your schedule to that extent, you’re doing something wrong. Oh, they can be demanding, for sure. But my mother had six kids and I’m pretty sure she still ate on occasion. She also had time alone with my dad. They were organized. They knew how to put us in our place and prevent us from completely commandeering the household.

OK, now put the ad aside, never mind the ad. It’s only relevant in so far as it reveals a troubling attitude; an attitude that makes these sorts of commercials so effective; an attitude that portrays parenting as the most torturous endeavor anyone could possibly attempt.

I’m all for being real with people, but all we accomplish is making otherwise fine young men and women utterly petrified of starting a family. They constantly hear that you’ll never sleep, your life is over, and you’ll never have fun again, unless you learn to define ‘fun’ as ‘poopy diapers and bankruptcy.’ And then we wonder why birthrates are plummeting?

But worse even than the weird ‘competitive suffering’ pastime that is both uniquely American and very prevalent in (though by no means exclusive to) parenting circles, is the increasingly noticeable habit of diminishing the role of fatherhood in all of this.

It’s no secret that pop culture and advertisers have long taken to portraying men, and especially husbands and fathers, as bumbling nincompoops, incapable of changing a diaper or microwaving a bag of popcorn without burning the house down. The real trouble is that, I think, many people endorse this kind of message unintentionally.

Remember, the greeting card ad declared MOTHERHOOD to be the ‘toughest job,’ even though it described (with great hyperbole) the duties of parents in general. Yes, it’s a Mother’s Day commercial, but we all know that not a single company would ever conceive of making a Father’s Day commercial proclaiming specifically fatherhood to be ‘the toughest job’ in the world, and if they did, many of the folks who loved this ad would hate that one.

It’s not like calling motherhood THE toughest job in the world only vaguely insinuates that it’s tougher than fatherhood — it screams it. So, when I noticed all of these married women reposting the ad, and accompanying it with their own caption, reiterating that their job is THE toughest, I couldn’t help but wonder how their husbands factor into that equation.

I’m not out to say that being a dad is ‘harder’ than being a mom. I’m saying that they are different, and ingrained in those differences are challenges and hardships that the other could only faintly understand. I say faintly because much of what makes a thing hard — especially an enormous, all encompassing thing like parenting — rests on how you, the individual, processes it. Hard, when it comes to mothering and fathering, is less a matter of physical exhaustion, and more a matter of the emotional, mental, and spiritual weight that comes with such a profound and serious responsibility.

If I were to say that my ‘job as a parent’ is ‘harder’ than my wife’s, I would be claiming to carry a heavier burden on my heart and in my head. But how dare I say such a thing? How would I have the right? How could a statement like that have any chance of helping a marriage at all? What is it designed to do, other than hoist guilt and inferiority onto your spouse?

I would never say it, and I would never think it. My wife, I’m certain, wouldn’t either. She has verbalized that she knows it can’t be easy to shoulder the responsibility of providing for a family. And I have told her that I know it isn’t easy to be so constantly immersed in the daily task of caring for two young children.

And we both know that our greatest task as parents — above educating our children, above feeding them, above changing their diapers, above clothing them, even above keeping them safe — is to help them become virtuous, and to bring them closer to God.

This is the ultimate duty of a parent, and it is NOT easy. My kids are babies, but this is the single, solitary aspect of parenthood that weighs on me more than anything. This is my cross. This is my wife’s cross. We carry our own, each of us, but we carry them together as much as we can. All I want for my children is for them to be good. I know they will experience unhappiness, I know they will suffer, I know they will hurt, I know they will die — God willing they will die long after I’m buried in the ground. But I pray that Julia becomes a good woman, a virtuous woman, and Luke grows into a good man, a virtuous man.

This is my task. This is my wife’s task. This is why it’s important for a child to have both a mother and a father, and why those roles are meaningful. It’s got nothing to do with who vacuums the carpet or who makes dinner, it has everything to do with the unique ways in which a woman and a man can demonstrate virtue, and in demonstrating it, instill it. Any parent — mom or dad, but hopefully both — who takes this on, has taken on a tough job. In some ways, yes, perhaps the toughest. Certainly not more physically demanding than working in a coal mine, and definitely not nearly as dangerous as being a Marine Corps sniper in Afghanistan, and not more exhausting than being a surgeon or even a waitress working a double on a Friday night, and not more troubling than being a mortician or a forensics expert.

But, save the religious life, there’s only one job where you are directly responsible for the state of another human being’s soul — parenting. For that reason, and ONLY that reason, parenting has a claim to the ‘toughest’ title. But, really, there is no title. And anyone worried about it probably needs help being virtuous themselves.

Of course, some women are single moms, and all of this really does land at their feet. But some men are single fathers, or fathers in marriages with women who act in ways that would earn men the title of ‘deadbeat dads.’ We can’t say that about women, only men, but that doesn’t mean the behavior that earns the label is somehow gender specific.

One day maybe we’ll realize that parenting is designed, biologically, physically, and spiritually, to be work — not a job at all, really — that is best accomplished through the harmony of husband and wife. When we elevate one above the other, or dismiss the role of one for the sake of the other, we bring chaos into that natural harmony.

But, then again, this is all a message that won’t necessarily help anyone sell greeting cards or hand soap, so what’s the point?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three things that all of you serfs and peasants shouldn’t say on Tax Day

I recently took to Twitter to vent my righteous rage at the proliferation of list articles.
You know, list articles: the crutch used by many a lazy blogger who’d rather write in short, choppy, numbered sentences instead of full paragraphs, because full paragraphs necessitate the formation of full thoughts, which only come to those who write because they actually have something to say.

The worst brand of list article has to be the “things you shouldn’t say to ____ ” spiels you see pop up on your newsfeed 12 times a day. Just Google the phrase “things you shouldn’t say” and you’ll find a million such articles, informing you that there are, for instance, 10 things you shouldn’t say to a person in a wheelchair, 7 things you shouldn’t say to someone with anxiety, 16 things you shouldn’t say to a guy who can’t grow a beard, and, obviously, many different lists explaining many things you shouldn’t say to women or minorities, or especially minority women in wheelchairs who have anxiety about the fact that they can’t grow beards.

Interesting note: the bartender community has taken a special liking to the “list phrases that other people are now prohibited from uttering in my presence” craze. Search “things you shouldn’t say to bartenders” and you’ll find dozens of entries, including a Buzzfeed post (of course) that ranks 61 things you shouldn’t say to this surprisingly sensitive group of emotional snowflakes.

In other words, don’t speak to bartenders at all. They’ve had enough of human speech altogether.

Now, I begin with this lengthy setup in an attempt to confront my apparent contradiction head on. I hate list articles, but here I am with a list article. A “things you shouldn’t say” list article, no less. Does this make me a hypocrite? Perhaps, except that I fully admit to my laziness in this particular instance. I’ve written over 400 posts and only formatted them into convenient list-structure, I think, twice (including this one). I’m entitled to a pass, right?

Fine. Maybe not.

But I do feel OK telling you things you shouldn’t say, because I’m not telling you to stop saying them TO ME for my own benefit, but rather stop saying them in general, for your benefit, and for the sake of truth, justice, and the American Way.

So, in honor of Tax Day, I’ve written a list of three things you shouldn’t say as you enjoy the cheer and merriment of this joyous American holiday:

1. “I’m paying my taxes.”

“My” implies ownership. It communicates a certain level of inherent, natural responsibility toward the subject. So it makes sense for me to refer to “my bill” at Applebee’s or “my credit card debt”. They are both the result of a contractual agreement I personally entered into and accepted. Even if the spinach dip was overpriced, and even if Visa is kicking me up and down the sidewalk with interest and penalties, I still knowingly and willingly consented to assuming the financial cost in return for a good or service. I own it. It’s mine. It’s nobody else’s. In fact, it’s important for me to stipulate my Applebee’s bill from your Applebee’s bill because we entered into different agreements for different products. I’m certainly not on the hook for your bill, especially because I’m drinking ice water while you’re over there chugging margaritas like it’s Cinco de Mayo.

Your tax bill is different than your bar tab or the money you owe Netflix. You didn’t agree to this. You have absolutely no control over it.

You might say that taxes have always been like that and always will be, and you’re right. But, in modern times, with a government that spends 3.5 trillion dollars a year — making it the most expensive bureaucracy that’s existed anywhere on the planet ever in history — the gap between taxation and the ‘public good’ has never been more vast. It’s kind of hard to whisper even the faintest suggestion that our government limits itself to expenditures necessary to fulfill only its lawful and constitutional obligations, when it spends, in a single year, almost as much money as physically exists on the planet.

Did you catch that? If you wanted to outspend the government next year, you’d have to first steal every single physical dollar and coin that exists on Earth, and you still might not have enough.

And, since the government spends even what it doesn’t have, we have accrued a debt so enormous that the numbers cannot be understood by the human mind. Any notion of taxation with representation has been completely buried under this pile of debt so inconceivably massive that it could touch the moon (literally).

Politicians take your money and use it for whatever they like, and whatever they like almost always involves gaining power and influence. Again, you’ll tell me that politicians have always used taxes for this purpose, and you’re right, but they’ve never been able to steal this much, and they’ve never been so proficient in stealing it (while, in every other area, so utterly lacking in proficiency).

Your money will be taken and allocated to fund abortion clinics, and foreign governments, and entitlements, and studies to determine whether cocaine makes Japanese quail horny, or if Chinese prostitutes can be taught to drink responsibly, or how to best teach the benefits of genital washing in the third world. When you say that you owe this amount, you are saying that you are personally indebted to Planned Parenthood, and the government of Uganda, and every individual on every welfare program, and every study about lustful quail. Or else you are saying that a politician’s power to tax is absolute and unlimited, and their saying that you have this debt is enough to make that debt into some kind of existential reality.

The point is that this debt belongs to the powers that created it. They will take from you, but you do not owe it. There is no “social contract”. We are churning out generations of Americans born into a bankruptcy they did not cause, created to pay for things they did not buy, to benefit people they’ll never meet. Entire generations emerging into the world with a giant ‘IOU’ branded on their foreheads; emblazoned there because the Americans that came before them lacked the courage and discipline to stop the government gravy train in its tracks.

These are not your taxes. They will come from your pockets and out of the mouths of your children, but you do not owe them.

2. “I’m paying my taxes today.”

“Today”. You’re paying taxes “today”, you say? Well, that’s true. But the statement seems to imply that you don’t pay taxes every other day.

Oh, but you do.

You pay taxes today, but that does not make today unique.

If you’ll allow it, I would like to take you on a tour of your average day. This is what it looks like, whether we call it “Tax Day” or not:

You wake up.

You get out of bed and flip on a light. And you are taxed. You stumble into the bathroom and use the toilet. And you are taxed when you flush, and again when you turn on the shower, and again when you go to the faucet to brush your teeth (unless you’re one of those “brush my teeth in the shower” deviants). You put on clothing, which were taxed when you bought them. You slip on your taxed socks and tie your taxed shoes. You go downstairs. You use your taxed coffee machine. You pay a tax on the electricity. You grab a frozen breakfast burrito, which you paid taxes on, and stick it in the microwave, which you paid taxes on, and turned on the microwave using that taxed electricity again. You decide to check out the morning news while you enjoy your gourmet meal. Good thing you’ve got that taxed TV and that taxed digital cable. OK, quit stalling. Time to get to work. You grab your taxed cell phone and call your boss to tell him you’re running late. You paid about a dozen different taxes on that phone call. You leave your house, which is perpetually taxed, and get into your car, which was taxed. You drive down the street, burning that oh-so-taxed gasoline. Maybe you pass through a toll, maybe you’re stopped along the way and charged 128 dollars for not wearing a seatbelt. Maybe you get flashed by a red light camera. Maybe you have to park in a metered spot. Tax. Tax. Tax. Tax.

You haven’t even made it to your job yet, and the government’s fleeced you for a bucket of cash. Then you punch the clock at work and that’s where the real taxing begins.

See, in America, “the Land of the Free,” we pay taxes on everything we buy and everything we use; we pay taxes on where we live and what we eat; we pay taxes when we drive down the road or stay in the house; we pay taxes on whatever we sell, whatever we earn, and whatever we save. We pay taxes to live and we pay taxes to die. Some people live in states without a sales tax, but they still pay taxes when they buy things, because there are so many taxes and fees embedded into the price of any good or service.

Our Founding Fathers would rather wage an armed revolt against the world’s greatest superpower than pay a tax on their Snapple; we, on the other hand, would rather pay taxes on literally every conceivable facet of our existence, than be accused of “extremism” for questioning the government’s alleged absolute power to levy taxes on everything, all the time, without any discernible limitations.

My, how times have changed.

3. “I just filed my taxes and I’m getting 400 dollars from the federal government!”

Please don’t celebrate the tax return you’re “getting”.

You aren’t getting anything. That’s your money. The government took it, held onto it for a year, and now they’re returning it without interest. If some guy at work stole a hundred bucks from your wallet and then, after you tracked him down and harassed him about it, he gave you back a small portion of it, would you run through the halls jumping for joy? Would you thank him for returning your own money? Or would you smack him upside the head and tell him to give you back the rest with interest, or you’ll break his kneecaps with a tire iron?

OK maybe you wouldn’t go all Al Capone on his sorry behind (I mean, I did just catch you drinking a fruity cocktail at Applebee’s) but I think you’d respect yourself enough to not act like he just did you a favor by returning some of the cash he jacked from your wallet.

Now, imagine that your friend took your money, or even that he borrowed it, but he told you that he would not return it until you completed a stack of paperwork and submitted it to him on a deadline determined by him, the debtor? And what if he boasted that any failures on your end to check the appropriate box or dot the appropriate ‘i’ would result in him refusing to give you back your own money, and it may even mean that you have to pay him more?

That’s the withholding system in a nut shell, a system signed into law by FDR, designed to alleviate the burden of tax collecting from the shoulders of tax collectors, and place it instead on individuals and business owners. It gives the government the ability to acquire an interest-free loan from millions of American citizens. But don’t worry: it’s totally necessary. If everyone had to physically cut a check for the actual amount of ‘their’ tax debt — like we self-employed folks must do — there would be riots in the streets.

As it stands, Daddy Government simply slips into your wallet, takes a chunk of your paycheck, very nicely and painlessly, and then, a year later, gives you a smaller chunk back. Hooray! The populace goes from certain revolt to literally thanking Uncle Sam for the pleasure of having a portion of their own earning returned, sans the interest it could have accrued sitting in a savings account.

And that’s America in the year 2014.

Happy Tax Day, fellow serfs.

******

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*****

UPDATE: CarolBeth Hawn on Facebook reminds me that my list of taxes you pay in the morning was woefully in complete:

You forgot to mention that the milk (taxed) you put into your coffee (taxed) had the following tax-line: Farmer (income tax) has land (property tax) on which he grazes his cows (tax on grass seed, tax on fertilizer spread by tractor, tax to buy tractor, which was also taxed in its production, tax on gas for tractor, tax on replacement tires and parts for tractor, which were also taxed in production), the  cows were raised from calves produced on farm (capital gains) and visited by vet (tax on products, vet is also taxed ad nauseum) from semen purchased from an exchange (taxed), which are raised and milked in a milk shed or barn (more property tax) using equipment purchased (taxed, both on purchase and on production) and bottled (more equipment taxed on purchase and in production), sold to Meadow Gold (taxed ad nauseum), trucked to the grocery store in a refrigerated truck (taxed, taxed, taxed, gas tax), sold to store (sale is taxed, store is taxed ad nauseum) where it sits in big, taxed refrigerators, until you go to the store (gas tax, tax on vehicle) and purchase the milk (taxed) for your coffee (taxed). This is, of course, an abbreviated list. We’d need a flow chart to do it justice. The amazing thing isn’t that things cost so much, it is that they cost so LITTLE, being taxed on every level as they are!