Opportunities, Responsibilities and Lemons

Today’s prompt is “What do you think about tomorrow’s election?”

Clearly, the easy answer is, I’ll be glad it’s over. Except that the only real thing that will change is the political ads on television and radio will be gone. The political postings on Twitter and Facebook won’t.

I had a Twitter debate last night about healthcare.  I won’t name names, but the other person started with “Where in the Constitution does it say we all shouldn’t have rights to health care?”

Boom *explodedhead*

I have discussed our rights before.  We have Constitutional Rights and God Given Rights. Neither of those include the right to health care, or the right to not be offended.  It is a need, not a right.

They went on to say “Dividing country into haves & have nots, rich can afford things”

Well duh, they have money. They earned it, or inherited it, but I promise you, someone along the line make money by working. But just because they have money doesn’t mean they have to give it to us, or support us. We are not their responsibility.

We are all created equal, in that we are born human.  (Please understand I know there are those who are born disadvantaged, born sick, born with health problems.  But for the sake of this blog post, can we just concede that I get it, and I am not singling anyone out, I am trying to make a point. In general.  Thank you)

We are all created equal.  We come into this world helpless.  We don’t grow up in the same circumstances, but we are afforded the same opportunities.  We are all provided with an education from Kindergarten through 12th grade.  What you do with that education is up to you.  You get out of it what you put into it.  Everyone has the opportunity to go to college. Not everyone gets into Harvard, or Yale, but there are junior colleges, state colleges, private colleges.  If you want to go, get scholarships, work and save money. Everyone has the opportunity.

Everyone has the opportunity to get a job, and to better themselves.  Even if you start out flipping burgers, work your way up.  Want a better job, do what you have to do, learn, go to school.  The opportunities are there, are you willing to do what it necessary to take advantage of them?

Got a little side tracked there.

So then she went on to say that Government should not only provide ‘affordable health care’ but also ‘affordable college educations’

Again *headexplodes*

The Government is not your parent.  It’s job is not to provide for the citizens to make their life easier.  This is not the type of government our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.  The opportunities are readily available, go take advantage but don’t sit there and expect the government pay your bills, and make things easy.

My kids are not handed anything.  They have worked for their iPods, their laptops, their allowance.  There are learning responsibility, they are learning that life does not hand you anything; not even lemons.

I am Sorry Jackie DeShannon, What the World Needs Now is Tolerance.

With all due respect to Jackie DeShannon, what the world needs now is not so much love, sweet love, but actually tolerance.  And a whole effing lot of it.

I subscribe to a boatload of blogs and websites.  I spend my mornings while the girls are getting ready, reading other people’s words.  Bad idea.  It almost always gets my panties in a wad.  I can not begin to list the sites or count the number of times I have read things like “This bugs the living shit out of me so STOP DOING IT! Asshat.”  or “Here’s How We Play Nice in Social Media according to ME”  Or even “If you continue to to this and that on your blog, I will UNSUBSCRIBE” which, oooohhh I’m scared, so what, see ya.

Lately, what with this being an election year, there has been a whole lot of talk and debates, and discussions and arguments, and tweets about Rights.  While I don’t always agree with every word Dana Loesch says, (so please keep your political rantings and judgments to yourselves) she is a hometown girl, and I will on occasion listen to her.  (I support our local celebs, plus, she’s on right before The DGS) The other day, she said something that really made me think.  Rights can only be obtained one of two ways.  We have God Given Rights and we have Constitutional Rights.

Period.

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness  are rights.

But Guaranteed happiness is not.

Go forth and multiply is a god given right.

Birth control of any kind, I don’t give a shit who pays for it, is not a right.

Freedom of speech is a constitutional right given to everyone.

The right to not be offended is not a right given to anyone.

So I pulled out my trusty, if slightly out of date, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and looked up the word Right.  I know the outside said dictionary, but the ‘definition’ of this single word looked more like an encyclopedia.  So I got out our Scholastic’s Children’s Dictionary (because I have only had one cup of coffee so far this morning) and looked up Right.

And it basically looked like a children’s encyclopedia.  But if you look at #10 it says, “Something that the law says that you can have or do. As in the right to vote.

And in the blogoverse, in social media, on the internet, we all have freedom of speech, and none of us have the right to run around and force people to shut up, and go away or play by our set of rules because we’re offended.  We all have the right to ignore those who disagree with us, we all have the right to partake in discussions about topics, situations, or Facebook statuses we disagree on.

Here’s a cold hard fact of life people.  There will never come a time, or a place when/where everyone can agree on something.  It just won’t happen.  I have also learned, that no matter how passionately we argue our side of any argument, no matter how strongly we believe we are right and everyone else is wrong, the other side is arguing just as passionately and believing just as strongly, and we stand no more chance of changing their minds, than they do of changing ours.

I don’t care if someone doesn’t play by the same rules you have set for yourself.  I don’t care if someone posts something you think is inappropriate and uncalled for.  I don’t care if someone breaks one your cardinal rules of social media.  You can not change them, or force them to conform to your ideology.  They have the same rights as you.  They have the right to freedom of speech.  They have the right to voice their opinion, to disagree with you, to argue or discuss the differences, or just ignore you.  Like you have the right to ignore them.

But instead of hating them, trying to change them, or eradicate them, try tolerance. Just allow them to be different.  Allow them to coexist, allow them the same freedoms you demand for yourself.