Naked Curmudgeon
The Naked Curmudgeon curmudgeon n [origin unknown] (1577) a crusty, ill-tempered, and usu. old man. naked adj 6: devoid of concealment or disguise. Attempting to cover everything that annoys me, Dan Culberson.
My Cold, Dead Fingers The Naked Curmudgeon by Dan Culberson
Dec 22nd
Here’s what gets me.
Does it have to take an English major to explain the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution and put to rest this unjustifiable crutch of the right-wing, gun-toting fanatics and their conservative supporters?
For those of you who don’t remember, Amendment II states “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Even for those of you who do remember, Amendment II states “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
That is what it says word for word, comma for comma, capitalization for capitalization. Notice that the subject is “Militia,” the verb is “shall not be infringed,” and the sentence becomes “A well regulated Militia shall not be infringed.”
“What about the bits between commas?” you say? Those are two appositional phrases, and an apposition is “a grammatical construction in which a noun or pronoun is followed by another that explains it.”
The subject, a noun (See how it works?), is followed by “being necessary to the security of a free State,” and it is followed by “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” in order to explain “a well regulated Militia,” the subject of the sentence.
The subject cannot be “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” because you cannot put a single comma between the subject and the verb of a sentence. You cannot write “The dog, ran around the yard.” You can write “The dog, being frightened by the gunfire, ran around the yard,” because now we have two commas separating the subject and the verb. You can also write “The dog, being frightened by the gunfire, the pet of the neighbor, ran around the yard.”
That sentence is not “The pet of the neighbor, ran around the yard,” because that would be ungrammatical, just as “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” is ungrammatical and therefore not the sentence of Amendment II.
“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is an apposition that explains the subject, “a well regulated Militia,” just as the other apposition, “being necessary to the security of a free State,” does. It is a “Militia” that is “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” which is necessary to the security of a free State and which shall not be infringed.
In other words, the citizens of the United States have the right to keep and bear Arms in “a well regulated Militia,” not to stockpile weapons at home and to carry a gun around with them in some Old West mentality.
And what did the sheriff in the Old West do to maintain order? Do the words “Check your guns at the door” strike a familiar note? That didn’t mean “Inspect your guns to ensure that they are in proper working order.” That meant “Turn your guns in at the door. It’s too dangerous for you to carry guns here.”
Now, the possibility of everyone having a concealed weapon might deter a few criminal acts, but the probability that hotheads and teenagers carrying a weapon could use it in a moment of unbridled emotion is far greater.
Sir William Blackstone (1723-80), a British jurist and Oxford instructor who was the first at a British university to teach English law as opposed to Roman law (See how those appositions work?), wrote in his great work Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69), “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”
I believe it is better that ten crimes be committed than one innocent victim be killed by a convenient handgun.
Luke Woodham, a teenager in Pearl, Mississippi, who is spending the rest of his life in prison for murdering his mother and two fellow students in October 1997 when he was 16, kept a map on his bedroom wall with the slogan “One Nation Under My Gun.” Do we want our immature, impressionable children growing up and believing this heinous claim?
We used to see so-called Amendment II supporters brag “I’ll give up my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”
After a moment of rage, I don’t want those cold, dead fingers to be mine.
I rest my case.
Trust in Santa Claus: Naked Curmudgen by Dan Culberson
Dec 2nd
Here’s what gets me.
Trust in God is no more realistic and rewarding than trust in Santa Claus.
After all, the concept of God and believing in God’s existence is merely childhood fantasy grown up, because God is nothing more than Santa Claus for adults.
Think about it. Occasionally, some very old people will be singled out on television, and many times one of them is likely to say, “I attribute my long life to clean living, good health and trust in God.” If they are born-again Christians, they might say “trust in Jesus” instead, but think how substituting “Santa Claus” for either one makes absolutely no difference to the validity that the trust had anything to do with the person’s longevity and absolutely nothing to the validity of the existence of any of those named individuals.
Look at the similarities: Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus and all of Santa’s elves live up at the North Pole, and their only reason for being is to reward good little boys and girls one night a year by giving them presents. And when does Santa do this? On Christ’s birthday!
God, Jesus, the angels and every good person who has ever been rewarded with eternal life lives up in Heaven just waiting for new souls to come on up and live forever. And when does this happen? On each “saved” person’s death!
Depending on the religion or denomination, people are rewarded with an all-expenses-paid, free trip to Heaven for their good deeds on earth, for “accepting Jesus Christ as their savior” or merely for believing that God exists.
Santa Claus keeps a list, checks it twice and knows who has been naughty or nice in the past year, which he uses to reward those who have been “good” with presents and to punish those who have been “bad” with either no presents or a lump of coal in some cultures. And what do we associate coal with? Hot burning fire!
Have you ever known anyone who actually did receive only a lump of coal for Christmas, or is that just an empty threat that parents use to try to keep their children in line?
Santa Claus has lots of impersonators during the Christmas season standing on corners ringing their bells and collecting money and sitting in malls in order to let little children sit on their laps and tell them what they want for Christmas.
God has lots of churches throughout the year on practically every corner collecting money every Sunday or whenever a service is held and plenty of representations of either Jesus nailed to a cross or the Virgin Mary, Christ’s mother, God’s concubine, to which people can pray and tell them what special favor they would like.
This is where the Santa Claus myth is lacking. Astute creators and perpetuators of the myth should have thought to have given Santa a son so that Santa Jr. and Mrs. Claus could stand on corners and sit in malls to relieve some of the burden during the holidays, which, of course, comes from “holy days.”
Santa Claus uses the parents of the children to make them be good for their rewards, punish them as need be throughout the year, make empty promises about what they might get on Christmas morning and then make the actual purchases, hide them in closets, wrap them neatly and finally place them underneath the tree for the excited and eager children to find on Christmas morning.
God uses priests, preachers and other self-anointed representatives to “guide” the people, relay God’s words and intentions to them throughout the year, convey special requests if need be back up to God, make empty promises about what they might expect upon their deaths and then finally perform the memorial services for those people when they do die.
Trust in Santa Claus is expedient for parents to encourage their young children, because the promise of presents for good behavior and threats of no presents or that lump of coal for bad behavior is another tool in the parents’ bag of parenting tricks.
However, when children reach the age of about six, they should be clever enough to figure out on their own how all the contradictions and illogical details in the Santa Claus myth enable them to conclude that there is no Santa Claus and their parents have been misleading them all those years, even though their parents will claim that it was “for their own good.”
I rest my case.
Amen.
Fear of Dying: Naked Curmudgeon by Dan culberson
Oct 31st
Here’s what gets me.
People who try to convert others to their religion are like those who recommend their dentist or eye doctor to people.
They have had satisfactory experiences with their dentist or eye doctor, and the more people who do likewise supports and legitimizes their own choices and beliefs. And as everyone knows who has ever attempted to persuade someone to believe what you believe, if you can demonstrate that your belief is supported in print, your position has more substantiation and more weight. In addition, if your medical recommendations have been in print for 2,000 years, then you have a lot of weight and persuasion on your side.
However, suppose that the dentist and the eye doctor receiving these recommendations are quacks. Suppose the dentist claims he has a better method of filling cavities and better suggestions for good dental hygiene than other dentists, but in fact he removes all his patients’ gold fillings for his own profit and replaces them with a cheaper filling, one designed to wear out and ensure that his patients return for more dental work. And suppose that the dentist’s “Ten Commandments of Doctor Gold’s Good Dental Hygiene” begin with “Thou shalt go to no other dentist than Doctor Gold.”
Now suppose that the eye doctor, who might even claim to be the son of Doctor Gold in order to acquire added prestige and pick up some easy patients, suppose that he, Doctor Christman, claims that all of his patients have special abilities as the result of his practice which enables them to have perfect vision without the need for eyeglasses or corrective lenses of any kind after they are dead.
That is correct. Ridiculous as it might seem, Doctor Christman, without any proof whatsoever, claims that if you patronize his practice, you will be given special powers that will enable you to continue living after you die, and you will be whisked away to some special, spiritual Haven for Doctor Christman’s former patients, where everybody spends eternity with perfect eyesight and presumably continues extolling the wonders of Doctor Christman’s special powers.
Now, remember those people who recommend the practices of Doctor Gold and Doctor Christman? Suppose they get a percentage, a finder’s fee, a kickback for every patient who actually does go to those doctors. That would make their recommendations suspect, wouldn’t it? Especially the ones who recommend that kook, Doctor Christman, who boldly claims with a straight face that if only you go to him for your eyesight needs, he will additionally reward you with life after death?
Why would any sane, intelligent person believe such nonsense?
Well, those few people who are blessed with perfect eyesight who can see clearly in all situations that require clear far vision and closeup vision don’t, because they have no need to correct their eyesight and don’t need an eye doctor in the first place. Nor do they need to follow the “Ten Commandments of Doctor Christman’s Perfect Vision,” which are suspiciously similar to Doctor Gold’s Ten Commandments. They are mostly common sense and obvious suggestions, anyway.
However, there are some people, perhaps even a majority, who are afraid of dying. And if they persuade themselves, either on their own or because of the persuasive powers of those paid shills for Doctor Christman, that simply by patronizing Doctor Christman they will be given the additional magical blessing of life after death, they consider that they would be fools not to patronize Doctor Christman and anyone who knows about Doctor Christman and doesn’t patronize him is just a fool.
In other words, their fear of dying has got the better of them and clouded their vision even more than their correctable myopia.
That is just plain silly. Those people are even bigger fools than the ones Doctor Christman’s patients claim to be who aren’t Doctor Christman’s patients, because there is no evidence that life after death is even possible, much less with perfect eyesight.
What are Doctor Christman’s patients afraid of? Why are they so egotistical as to believe that they are so special that they even need to have a life after death?
Where were they before they were born? Nowhere. What have they felt every night of their lives after they have been born? Nothing. They have been in a state of unconsciousness that people with perfect eyesight and those with corrected vision accept without fear of going to sleep.
Doctor Gold and Doctor Christman are quacks.
I rest my case.