(This is a follow up to the question I asked on Facebook. I've linked my sources if you're interested in reading them.)
I don't have cable. I need to get an antenna so I can get local news channels, but I haven't done that yet. So I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been keeping up with local news and what's going on in the world. In fact, what I hear and read about frustrates me so much that I start avoiding just to keep my sanity. This morning for the first time in months I turned on Glenn Beck's radio program. Now, the guy can be a little extreme. He goes off on his rants and sometimes I don't agree with everything he says. However, he's also the one who is absolutely determined to push the important news stories that the other big news outlets don't always push. Usually you can find articles, they'll cover these stories, but it's usually not front page news. Apparently hundreds of deaths in Egypt isn't spectacular enough for the front page. Anyway, so it was this morning, through Glenn, that I heard about what was happening in Egypt. I immediately got on the internet to look up this story and see what other news sources were saying about it. What I found was extremely disturbing to me.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been a focus of Glenn's for some time now. I haven't followed it incredibly closely, but I know he accuses several people in office of being in bed with them. And now, in Egypt, they are showing their true colors. For some reason, they are blaming the Coptic Christians for their chosen Muslim Brotherhood president being kicked out of office. What followed was a bloodbath. While going through the articles and stories, I saw an extremely disturbing similarity to Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. Dozens of Christian churches throughout Egypt have been burned or destroyed. Christians have been raped, beaten and killed just for their faith. An orphanage was attacked. 3 nuns, women who have dedicated their lives to Christ, were paraded through the streets, abused and harassed, and probably would have been killed had a Muslim woman not given them refuge. Their shops were being marked with black or red x's, so the rioters would know which places to destroy.
After reading all these horrific stories, I began to reflect on WWII and the Jewish genocide. Or, as a friend of facebook pointed out, the African American oppression and enslavement that was going on right here at home. I began to consider what my reaction might have been, had I been alive at that time. Would I have gone with the status quo? Would I have disagreed with the slavery, murder, torture and rape silently? Or would I have spoken up, making it clear where I stood? And what am I doing about our country today?
There are some serious problems in our country right now. The racial divide is only growing bigger, certainly being helped along by our celebrities, people whom so many in our country trust and look up to. Our own president gave a speech that also created a "them" vs. "us" situation. Was he wrong in addressing some of the problems facing black men of today? Certainly not. Could he have done it in a less inflammatory manner? I think the answer is a resounding yes. Unlike this man, our president didn't acknowledge the areas in which young black males help further the negative view of them he mentions. Overall, I was not impressed. For a man who claims he wants to unite our country and bring us together as one people, all he seems to do is make it worse.
There are people in our country who are standing up for pedophiles. There are teens as young as 15 who commit murder "for the fun of it". In over half the states in our nation, people on welfare are making more each year than those hardworking individuals who are supplying that welfare. There's a group in California who will deliver free condoms to children as young as 12. Instead of focusing on the decline of family values and the divine parental responsibility we have to raise our children to respect and value life, we blame guns and race when murder happens and turn it into a political platform. Is it a coincidence that as the value of marriage and the nuclear family declines and divorce rates and single mothers raising children alone rise, so is the violence in our country? I don't think so. As a single mother myself, I know that I cannot do as good a job raising my daughter as I could if I had a partner to help me. God has been evicted from our schools and we wonder why we have children killing children? With evil now being portrayed as good and good as evil, I don't know how anyone can be surprised.
I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being a part of the silent majority. I'm sick of sticking my head in the sand and ignoring the problems that are happening around me. We have a responsibility to help to shape the direction our country is headed, and we need to stand! I'm still not sure how I can help change things, but I know I'm going to start with my daughter. I'm going to teach her about the way things used to be, and how damaging it is to follow the status quo. I want to raise her to be her own person, someone who knows what she believes in and stands up for it. I hope you'll stand with me on this. I hope you'll be able to see that it's not about whether you're a democrat or republican, a progressive or libertarian. It's about morals and values, and the basic understanding of what is right and what is wrong. It's about hope for our future and the courage to see it through.
