Markley's Blog

Who cares? That’s how I feel and that’s what I’m going to write. I have a right to
my opinion and we live in a country where there is a right to free speech and I
feel the need to freely practice that right. That was my response when I was
asked if I really wanted to write this and have it read by someone who may get
upset and take action to stop further attempts at expressing my opinion. At
first the writer and then the rebel inside said “you betcha”. Then the rational
side bumped into my pride and said maybe
you should think about this.

So I am thinking and the more I think about, I think the
whole personal rights thing would make a good article itself. So I will place
the original article to the side and look to other avenues to express that
freedom and will share something different.

When do we take our freedom too far? We have the “freedom of speech” but that
doesn’t mean we stand up in a movie theater and yell “FIRE”. We also have the
“freedom of choice” but do we take that freedom out of context and use it to
take an innocent life? We have the right to
“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, but do we act immorally to gain
those rights? It’s been said that you can’t legislate morality, so where do we
go, or what do we use for a foundation to stand on? Our founding fathers, when
writing the laws of the land and the Constitution, used a moral standard as
their foundation. So even though morality cannot be legislated, we can ask
those who feel they need to use their immorality to make a statement, “why”?

I broached the question once. At what point
is someone’s right to do what they want wrong? The answer came back, when it invades my morals and offends me, it
has gone too far. I had to decipher that for a moment until it finally made
sense. A person can do whatever he or she wants as long as the practice does
not invade my space. They can do all they want in a place where it effects no
one else. We all have that freedom. When we stand there and express it in a way
that offends someone then it’s wrong. The burning of the American flag or the
desecration of it in any way really bothers me. As Americans we do have the
right to protest. We need to realize when protests take place there are those
that may be offended. We can stand and say “I don’t care, I have a right”.  This may be true and let’s always give thanks
to God we live in a country that has that freedom. Let’s also remember that in
order to be heard we need to listen.

Once again our forefathers did not expect lawyers, radicals, liberals, to take the
words they founded this nation on and twist them and look for loop holes to make
it support whatever cause they stand for or stand against. We need to be able
to protest the things we feel need to change or things that need to be made
better. We do not need to twist things to make it fit our personal agenda.
Wrong is wrong.

If it was wrong back then it’s probably still wrong today. If morality worked back
then, morality will work today. It’s funny, if you look back through our
history, the looser we get with our morality and our laws, the more
uncontrolled we have become. The cry goes out “what has happened to our
society”? We are losing it because we have let go of the foundation it was laid
upon.  When you mess with a foundation
the whole structure becomes fragile and weak. Our morals have been slowly chipped
away like dried up mortar between bricks.

The foundation of our great nation was built with strong moral convictions that
over the years have stayed firm. But with the driving force of a jackhammer the
liberal philosophy is slowly making it weak. With its continuous pounding the
footing we started with is becoming unsure and unstable. We need to realize
that if we continue to haphazardly, selfishly, and mistakenly use our rights
our foundation will crumble from under us. Then with what, will we stand?