I’m waking up, I’m reaching up I’m getting up from this game . . .

Before proceeding, I want to be perfectly clear that, dim as I am, I know bullying is wrong. Nobody should suffer injury by sticks and stones. My interactions with others should encourage them to strive for higher goals. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk, get burnt in a fire, or jump freestyle off a cliff. More importantly, they try to extricate dangerous ideas from each others’ brains before it’s too late. But misunderstanding is a huge part of human interaction. Word-jockeying gets difficult for those who do not wish to obsess over the latest updates in everybody’s personal lexicon. In this PC world, the mere use of an offensive word or hand gesture could reasonably be equated to a plea of innocence – but it isn’t. In other words, I acknowledge that people are sensitive, and they get hurt when exposed to different ideas, like this:

One would have thought being a reporter or public policy analyst would have involved one in considerations of tax rates, property rights, land use, welfare, and other such things. Of late, the job seems to involve getting a good daily nose-rubbing in the proverbial “Cesspool of Sin.” A flaming classic liberal, I approve of special treatment by the law for nobody. As an old prude, you had better believe I have gotten uncomfortable when, trying to do my job, somebody made it their business to fill me in on their love life and reproductive habits. Borrowing Dwight Butner’s phrase, “who you love and how you love” is no business of government. Covering meetings for a variety of outlets, I am mortified when others expect me to tell the world about their most intimate goings-on. Since I have a graphic imagination, the conversations that now flood newspapers and public meetings rot my mind into a sludge bucket. Life is short and brain cells are limited. Therefore, until the strategy backfires, I intend henceforth to ignore all future attempts to drag the media into conversations about subject matter for steamy romance novels that, forty years ago, would be shockingly unfit for public consumption. The law already provides protection against abuse, and the press need not play Wizard of Oz to those without at least a vague idea about where personal rights begin and end.

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