Thank you for posting part of my piece “I’m Tired.” People who wish to comment on it or other pieces can find links to them below. [The large list of links are in the original post and not included here.]
I’m sorry you find that I have “no compassion.” Given the title of your blog, you might be interested to know that I believe I was the first state legislator in the country to speak in favor of Gay rights on the floor of a legislative body when I agreed in 1973 to be floor manager in the Massachusetts Senate for then-Rep. Barney Frank’s anti-discrimination bills. None of the liberal democrats would touch them. I was single, straight and representing a 4-1 Democrat district after defeating a Democrat incumbent by 9 votes out of 60,000 cast. The seat was last won by a Republican in 1938. It was assumed that with that vote, I couldn’t be re-elected. When I won by 10,000 in 1974, carrying every city and town in the district, it made it safe in Massachusetts to vote for the bills, which are now law there.
As to my “privileged background,” my dad was a school teacher who always worked two jobs to feed the family, mom worked in a dental office. I worked all through college to afford it, as they couldn’t help, beyond providing a bed and meals when I was home.
What little I have, I’ve earned. I’m still working full time, despite having pulmonary fibrosis, an eventually terminal disease that kills more people than breast cancer, as I have to pay for our 1,300 SF 2 bedroom place here and support a 35-year-old step daughter and recovering heroin addict, who has never worked a 40-hour week, because we want to help our granddaughter, 9, have a decent life. So I drag an oxygen tank to work and pay all her bills, though she steals from us, recently forged her name on a voided check and got our credit card number and used it to pay traffic tickets. But she has a hostage in the little girl, so we pay. Oh, did I mention she’s an Obama voter? Or had you figured that out?
~Bob Hall
I'll only add a few brief comments.
Thank you, Mr. Hall, for your courageous action -- way back in 1973! -- in support of gay rights. I'm pleased you made the stand and I'm grateful the voters awarded your courage.
Yes, Mr. Hall, your background was privileged, simply because you were born white and male. "White Privilege" is well documented on the web. Though you worked hard for what you have, and I commend you for your perseverance and effort, many minorities find the obstacles in their way so high they are unable to get to where you are.
Though I am pleased to see you have some compassion within you, I wonder how far it extends. Do you feel compassion for the desperately poor, Blacks, Muslims, illegal immigrants, and latte liberals?
I have compassion for individuals, not groups. I have compassion, for example, for the black kids who are so often the victims of the black gang bangers in the cities, and for all blacks who are kept in poverty by victim hood fostered by white liberals who need to keep blacks poor to maintain their power base.
ReplyDeleteI have compassion for the peaceful Muslims who are most often the victims of the fanatics, but not for the millions who want to impose Shari'a law here by force so they can hang gays, marry 9 year old girls and stone women for adultery. I'm fine with Islam as a religion, but it is also a political system that seeks to impose itself on the world by force and to that extent, we must fight it.
And, yes, I have compassion for latte liberals who were born mentally defective and unable to reason from facts and history as opposed to how they wish things were.
I suggest books like "Basic Economics," "Applied Economics" "Race and Culture" "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" and "A Conflict of Visions" (which I'm reading now) by the brilliant economist Dr. Thomas Sowell. ~Bob Hall