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Published: October 17, 2009
Americans for Prosperity? Not for me
Americans for Prosperity, financed by the fattest of the fat cats on the Republican far right, was warmly welcomed at Liberty University on Wednesday to insist that the government keep “Hands Off My Healthcare,” a slogan plainly inapplicable to the 47 million people without health care.
Similar arguments were made in 1965 when reaching age 65 was becoming a pre-existing condition and America put their hands on the problem by enacting Medicare.
Not to waste an opportunity, the group also is blasting global warming as a hoax.
Recently, an Americans for Prosperity group was caught on camera cheering loudly when it was announced America and Chicago lost our Olympic bid; when the cheering died down, the announcer added that we were the first of the remaining contestants eliminated, and cheering erupted still one more time.
“Americans” for Prosperity?
As this group of patriots was wrapping up, The News & Advance reported Thursday, Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. showed up to say that the issues addressed “are important to us, our students and their future. We are just thankful that somebody has taken the time and effort to stop these crazy people.” Accurate for sure, but didn’t anyone think to tell Mr. Falwell that these crazy wing nuts were his invited guests?
V. JEAN GREGORY
Forest
Jury duty explained
A client recently asked me why he had been contacted again about serving jury duty when he had served only seven months ago and the roll of eligible jurors has been significantly increased by the many Liberty University students who had registered to vote in the past year.
Although the law exempts jurors from return service for two years, prospective jurors are randomly drawn from the list of registered voters.
Questionnaires are then mailed to everyone whose name is randomly drawn. According to the Lynchburg Circuit Court Clerk, many questionnaires mailed to students on the LU campus are returned because those students’ mailing addresses are often incorrect.
Election Day rules may help resolve this. If a voter’s address on Election Day does not match the registrar’s records, that voter must fill-out a sworn statement identifying their current address. In doing so, honest students will update the registrar’s records. That will increase their odds of being located for jury duty.
Some students may not want to be located for jury duty. Jury duty can disrupt a student’s academic routine. It may cause them to miss classes, tests or exams. It may force them to make-up exams or assignments during their holidays. Students can postpone jury service until their summer vacation but that might hurt their summer employment and income.
Jury duty is one of many responsibilities of citizenship. By voting, each truthful college student will increase their odds of being called to share this duty known to most long-time residents. We hope these new voters will honestly accept the responsibilities that correspond with their franchise right.
JOHN RANDOLPH NELSON, Esq.
Lynchburg
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Reader Reactions
Randolph, I would be very surprised if you didn’t watch Huckabee. His specialty is to produce comforting fairy tales for those terrified of their own extinction.
Take heart! Tomorrow is Sunday. You can watch TV preachers all day.
free2beme… If you accidently leaned upon a very hot surface, what would you do?
When it was over and you had successfully withdrawn yourself from the heat… who did it?
Was it the you asking me the question, or, the you that effortlessly turns a beer and a hot dog into muscle, enzyme, hormone, bone, gas and excrement?
Survival is pre-programed, by natural selection, into the organism. Empathy is pre-programed, by natural selection too. What choice did you really have in the matter? It’s not like you could have sat there, pointed, and laughed your behind off, is it?
What did you accomplish? Other than fulfilling your cultural imperative, I don’t know.
Why did she and her family fight if they believe? That’s simple enough. They are the products of millions of generations of natural selection for both “fighting” AND “believing”. What could possibly be more “knee-jerk” and “natural” than that?
Congratulations on being human. You have my sympathies.
I watched Huckabee tonight… Is that okay?
24, I saved a life yesterday. It was the life of an 89 year old woman with a cancerous brain tumor. She has less than 60 days to live, yet as she choked on her meal, her family screamed for me to help,,,,,,,, as i lifted her frail frame from her wheelchair, to do the Hienlich, we matched gazes, her fear was as real as that of a child staring down death,,, her family cried and screamed as I struggled to dislodge the obstruction,, not now,, later, please, not now.
Do the moments she has now belong to me? Or did I see my own demise in her eyes?
What did I accomplish, really? One more day? Why did she and her family fight if they believe? Or do they?
Yes Fred, I remember that.
As lin Yutang put it so well, “Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame of a candle, I say, is a gloriously fine thing… For if this earthly existence is all we have, we must try harder to enjoy it while it lasts. A vague hope of immortality detracts from our whole-hearted enjoyment of this earthly existence.”
I think, because so many dogmatically cling to a creed that surrenders present happiness to beliefs that assure happiness in some future, beyond the door of death, they find themselves trapped, as it were, between an unnerving present and an uncertain future… both of their own making. One as patently unnatural as the other is absurd.
As the incomparable Ernest Becker put it in his classic “The Denial of Death”: “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.“
This, of course, cuts right to the heart of the absurd struggle, which is that humans are the only animals capable of contemplating their own demise (and irrelevance). The truth that we will all die, that the physical world is all there is, and that everything we do is of no consequence whatsoever…well, it is easy to see why humans have evolved sophisticated defense mechanisms (such as religion) to keep these thoughts well-buried in the psyche.
As Becker noted: “It is hard for a man to work steadfastly when his work can mean no more than the digestive noises, wind-breakings, and cries of dinosaurs—noises now silenced forever.“ Indeed, it is one thing to say you do not fear death; quite another to agree that all of human achievement is in fact of no more consequence than dinosaur droppings.
Our eye on the reaper’s hourglass prompts us to strive for our highest achievements; but that very striving means that when he comes knocking, it is always too soon.“
This is the delicate balance for which the enlightened man strives—to live with passion while never losing sight of the meaningless of it all. This is the ultimate (and never-ending) struggle for which he chooses life over death—the rebellion against his knowledge that all is futile, and his commitment to live as if things matter…even when he knows they do not.
Holy Cr#@! - “People ARE owed something”. That’s the excuse for health care “reform”?
We are doomed.
President “Chavez”-Obama is going nuclear; threatening to remove insurance companies “privileged exception from our anti-trust laws”.
That light in the tunnel is the Government-run health care train…
24th,
Do you remember the study that claimed that Americans are more scared of death than people in other developed countries?
It also showed that Evangelical Christians are the most scared of death in America, that’s why so much (Medicare) money is spent on trying to prolong their (censored) life?
Why are those Christians terrorized at the thought of meeting the Maker they glorify their whole life and try to cram down everybody else’s throat?
Mystery to me.
Indy, I see you are cookin today. You ask, “If reality is an illusion then wouldn’t it mean reality is valueless?“ No. Of course not. That idea is yet another consequence of most people’s refusal to accept their own mortality. Rather than viewing illness and death as just another part of life, modern society sees death as the ultimate horror, to be delayed by any means necessary in the (futile) hope that it can ultimately be cheated. The supreme irony, of course, is that in so doing we end up denying ourselves the joy of living in the moment and taking each experience as it comes.
In seeking to cheat death, we unwittingly cheat ourselves of the wonders of life.
—“All thanks to an educational system full of marxists who call themselves liberals.“— So true Indy, so true.
Fred. I am eating bread I purchased from your friends down at the market today. It is wonderful. I purchased it on my way back from the Rivermont Gallery where I enjoyed the current exhibition.
Indy, could you explain this to me? —“It is the idea that there is something after life that makes life have value?“—
Isn’t that like refusing to enjoy your dinner because you have not been promised pie and ice cream after?
OneVaDem,
Other developed countries have this “quaint and obsolete” thing called “social solidarity”.
Just mentioning it in this country is tantamount to treason. Just tell Indy and watch his reaction!
When was the last time you met “honest Republicans”? Wouldn’t that be an oxymoron? Just curious!
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