The person you’d least like to see when trapped in a burning building

If I were trapped inside of a burning building, I’d rather see a burly fireman coming to my rescue than a 135 lb firewoman. Am I a sexist?

I’m sick and tired of feminist harpies constantly carping about women’s issues and blaming men for any and all of their personal failings. Am I a misogynist?

I think people who enter med school should be young enough to practice for a reasonably long time following matriculation. Am I an ageist?

I can’t stand politically correct puritans telling me they find my jokes insensitive and my libertarian politics morally offensive. Am I a fascist?

I think social conservatives who wave over-sized bibles in my face should listen to its main protagonist declare he’s the Son of Man and recycle their floppy bibles. Am I a satanist?

I resent the federal government gobbling state’s rights, listenting to me, lying to me and keeping secrets from me. Am I a seditionist?

I don’t like the rapper Jayceon Taylor, aka “Game,” and the gangsta culture he epitomizes. Am I a racist?

Am I all of those unsavory characters?

Rapper “Game” who plays his gangsta role perfectly … unfortunately for his peers

Yes, according to people who weave tapestries of lies from gossamer threads of truth spun from random statements in order to prove those they disagree with are sexist, misogynist, ageist, fascist, satanist, seditionist or racist … or other “ists” … and thereby silence those voices.

But other labels could equally apply. They could just as well call me Hotspur, Hamlet, Horatio, Richard, Othello, MacBeth, Iago, Romeo, Falstaff, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. These were just guys trying to make it through life as best they could, flawed but blessed as well, sometimes doing good and sometimes not.

So why do we engage in this mean spirited stuff that’s reached such a flash point? Why are so many of us so eager to silence voices that oppose our political, social and economic agendas?

I bring all this up because of the recent media tsunami from Florida … the Trayvon Matin, George Zimmerman tragedy.

A guy trying to do what’s right

Among other things, this media/internet frenzy has provoked a call for a national conversation about race in America from personalities as divergent as President Obama to popular TV commentators like Bill O’Reilly.

So let’s converse.

But before we do, let’s put all of the name-callers, from Al Sharpton to Rush Limbaugh, in solitary confinement so they’ll only have themselves to listen to. After all, conversations don’t get very far when we start by calling each other names.

Second, let’s be candid about facts. Let’s not hide them under excuses, or censor them with politically correct filters.

Third, let’s be frank. There are a lot of people making lots of money using race. These people, like Jesse Jackson, have a vested interest in the racial status quo. They come to the table with messianic rhetoric, a self-promoting agenda, and demands for more and more money to allegedly comfort the poor, but which in fact sustains their rich-and-famous lifestyle.

And if you listen carefully, these activists have no specific plans. They just complain, lament, provide globlal excuses that sound good and demand more money. They deliver moving speeches that move nothing useful.

Third, let’s define words honestly … words like “racial profiling.” If you see a guy who looks and dresses like Game (pictured above) coming at you when you’re alone late at night, is it all that unreasonable to get a little twitchy? I guess you could call that profiling, but I’d call it “playing the odds,” something the success of our entire race has depended upon for countless millennia? Is self-preservation now politically incorrect?

Fourth, let’s address facts with specific solutions, and not excuses and generalizations such as “we’ve got to cure poverty” (we’ve spent well over a trillion dollars on a war against poverty over the past half-century, and poverty won … isn’t it time for a different approach?) or “we’ve got to improve education” (we spend thousands of dollars more per pupil on education than Britain, Australia, Canada, Finland and France, and more than twice as much per pupil than South Korea or Japan, yet fall far short of their much higher results).

Don’t you think it’d be a good time to start looking at other ways use all that energy and money to find better ways to motivate the poor out of poverty and educate our kids? As Einstein famously said, stupidity is doing the same over and over while expecting a different result.

So let’s get real! Let’s discuss facts about race that concern us at round-tables in all of our communities, without big brother dictating how we’ve got to do it; without ambulance chasing lawyers using racial imbalances for extremely lucrative lawsuits; without participants calling each other names; without cons and hustles by racemongers who demand we of keep-doing-the-same-things-that-haven’t-worked-for-decades or else!; and without social theories expounded by far-away professors and bureaucrats who don’t live in the communities for which they prescribe solutions.

Running around infinity loop

Let’s no resign ourselves to this endless social dissension that never finds healing. Let’s  allow a true diversity of uncensored opinion to be heard. Let’s give individual communities the opportunity to address their unique needs without the feds intervening.

And let’s stop calling each other names  … because if we don’t we’ll continue to run a race looking for a finish line we’ll never cross.

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