5 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. Exceptionalism emerges from a host of earlier myths of redemption andgood intentions. Pilgrims, persecuted in the Old World, brave the Atlanticdreaming of finding religious freedom on America’s shores; wagon trains ofhopeful pioneer families head west to start a new life. Nowhere else, we aremeant to understand, was personal freedom so treasured as it was in theAmerican experience. The very act of migration claims to equalize thepeople involved, molding them into a homogeneous, effectively classlesssociety.

      Do some of these same types of stories and mythologies also erase the harm of an over-armed populace with respect to the lack of appropriate gun control and mass shootings versus gun rights in America?

      As a country our gun mythology is stronger than our desire to act to improve our (collective) lives....

  2. May 2023
  3. Jun 2022
    1. War assault weapons have no place except with military?

      It's strange how the same people who imagine a disarmed populace as a good thing are playing catch-up to arm Ukranian civilians against a military. I've lost count of the children massacred by militaries that are the only groups of people magically trustworthy enough to be armed apparently.

      If you left a murderer alone with a room full of kids and a knife for 77 minutes, you'd have the same result - and if you're a student of recent history, you'd know that's exactly the kind of attack that has happened time and again in gun-free victim zones around the world.

      To address this issue properly, citizens must understand the #JustPowers Clause of The Declaration of Independence, the foundation that the US Constitution is laid upon; and a universal document that recognizes the rights of ALL humans.

      Put simply, it states that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else may justly grant powers to others that we do not have.

      If you or I stole our neighbors' firearms, even if we claimed it was for "safety" or "the common good", we'd face criminal charges. We all know this, and the evidence is in our conduct.

      Instead, why not focus just powers such has holding adults responsible for the safety of others accountable for negligence?

  4. Apr 2022
  5. Nov 2017
    1. One possibility is the American preoccupation with fame. Studies have found that Americans are more interested in fame than people of other nationalities are. A 2007 Pew Research survey of 18- to 25-year-olds found that about half said that getting famous was a top priority for their peers. Television shows increasingly promote fame as a value, research has found, and pop lyrics are becoming more narcissistic. A 2010 review of research studies found that modern college students display less empathy than students of the late 1970s. These studies fit a general pattern of research showing that narcissism is on the rise. Simultaneously, Lankford said, the line between being famous and infamous is blurring. Scientists looked at the covers of People magazine issues dating from 1974 to 1998, and found that cover stars were increasingly featured for bad behavior — cheating, arrests, crime — rather than good acts (though there was a slight shift toward positivity after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks), according to their 2005 report.