Our Founding Fathers would be spinning in their graves if they were alive today because America as a country has turned into one giant, sensitive, wimpy baby.
Focusing on the latest and seemingly one-sided current event of the removal of the Confederate flag (including the backlash from the cartoon in the July 8 issue) I think it is absolutely absurd. The Confederate flag is a piece of history. But, instead of using it as a symbol to illustrate how far we have come as a nation, we have instead been bullied by the tragic act of one hateful individual who was inspired by said flag to end the lives of several black worshippers. Here’s a thought: What if another gunman was inspired by the American Flag and his hatred of Americans to open fire in a school? Would we take that flag down? This sensitivity to seemingly every issue is just not about events that happened this year. I was appalled when in 2011, a special edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn removed the “N” word for political correctness. Who are we to alter America’s literary history?
Kids don’t know how to lose or be wrong because they are rewarded for those things. They suffer from inventive spelling in elementary school, the “No Child Left Behind,” act where a student who should be left back a grade moves on just as easily as an above average student, and receiving the same set of trophies whether they win or lose because participation ribbons would make kids cry.
We are not all equal. If we can’t all speak our minds freely without getting a slap on the wrist for every word that comes out of our mouths that people don’t like, then maybe we should reconsider the First Amendment, and if America really is the land of the free and home of the brave.
—Jennifer Fauci
