Saturday, July 21, 2012
Well….here I go again! It seems the voice of Karrie the Revolutionary will not be denied! It’s even in my dreams. The picture I keep getting is similar to Patrick Henry passionately proclaiming, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” I feel it in every cell of my body - and it isn't very comfortable! As I read an article from the Washington Post about the 2012 GOP platform in Texas regarding education, I became almost rabid at the attack on individual freedom including Life….Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Just in case you didn’t happen to catch it, here’s one of the key “planks” of this platform….
Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
Are you kidding me? The “Far Reich” has gone too far. And they want to label Obama as a socialist or communist? (Of course, these are the same people collecting their SOCIAL SECURITY check every month! And what about Medicare? I guess socialist-type programs are ok when you’re the one benefiting.) Back to this not-so-subtle attack on individual freedom – which the Republican Party used to champion in the old days.
First, I find it interesting that the reason many people first came to this “land” – before it became a nation founded in liberty ….. was to escape religious persecution. However, we seem to forget that the religious persecution they were escaping was also done by the religious! And here we go again…a group of extremist religious-oriented groups demanding their beliefs regarding morality and truth (notice the little “t”) be the law of the land. Freedom of religion – or freedom from religion – means the right to lead your life according to your own belief system. We have the right to personal beliefs which we lose when one group’s personal beliefs become the law of the land. This is part of the very reason people escaped their “homelands” to come to “America” in the first place. And most certainly, it is related to the need to declare independence in 1776. (I thought one of the important things about knowing “history” was so we didn’t make the same mistakes twice?)
Second, Truth is not found by blindly believing someone else’s fixed beliefs. It is found through searching and experiencing - which many times begins with questioning. (Do you really sense that Truth is afraid of questioning? Of course not! But “non-Truth” certainly is!) Can you imagine where we would be if we hadn’t questioned the fixed beliefs regarding women and minorities?
The fortunate thing is that each and every one of us has access to Truth (big “T”). We know what is “truthful” and what isn’t. We don’t find Truth in our thinking…we find it in our heart. We don’t come into this world with hatred and bigotry - we are taught such things. And though I believe in freedom of religion, I will not remain silent when the true spiritual values and unalienable rights of Source-God-Consciousness are challenged. We have long been held hostage by those who live in - and spread - the poison of fear and judgment. I acknowledge their right to live this way but I will no longer sit in silence when their poison threatens the very foundation this nation was built upon.
In Liberty,
Karrie
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