The Supreme Court says it’s okay for someone to chant hate-slogans at your son’s funeral.
Westboro wins Supreme Court Ruling
There once was a societal right and wrong. Amongst any group of diverse people, a common set of moral and ethical rationales existed that could be applied where required.
That is what made Lord of the Flies such a powerful story. It put forth the premise of a group in which the moral and ethical structure broke down.
We are living amidst the Flies.
What has happened to common sense? Have we spent so much time examining the excess of laws in our country that we are now governed by their nuances?
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, in their appeal of a judgment against them. They are that pseudo-church that sets up confrontational picket lines at funerals, and a grieving father had successfully sued for emotional damages. That ruling was overturned today.
It is hard to fathom the idea that intelligent members of the nation’s highest court believe that parents who have lost children to war or disease must also face a combative group at the final memorial services.
They examine the right to free speech with the attention of a wine sommelier, rolling the law around in the glass, sniffing at perceived scents, swishing the clauses to the palate, and then spitting out an effete ruling.
I believe the common man knows when wine is fit to drink. If there is any question, offer the glass to the next fellow. We all know that it is morally reprehensible to attack on baseless grounds, the emotions of those most vulnerable, and yet we acquiese to an interpretation of the finer points of a law as it was written.
A California schoolteacher is under suspension today because police were called to her classroom by a student with a cellphone. She had rattled a table to call the students to attention and had the police called to the school for her methods.
Why do students have telephones in the classroom? Rattling a table is now a cause for police intervention and employee suspension? What happened to common sense in the application of regulations?
We no longer live in an agrarian society, planting and harvesting from dusk to dawn. No longer do our nation’s laborers work at their jobs fifteen hours a day. Assembly lines have emigrated to foreign countries. We enjoy plenty of free time in the US.
We spend it with computers that are invariably switched on – our telephones connect us to the internet at the press of a button. We view screens and endless streams of information. Our excess of free time is spent in critique. Just like this one.
Back in the time when men wielded shovels to dig a grave, judges weren’t needed to know whether it was right or wrong for a group to stand nearby and chant hate-filled slogans. The common sense of every man and woman standing in the freshly-turned dirt knew the answer.
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