“Beware the people who moralize about great issues; moralizing is easier than facing hard facts.” – John Corry
There is a well-worn path by the side of my garage that leads to the back yard where I spend a good bit of my free time. Recently, I decided to lay brick to cover the path so I wouldn’t track dirt into the house on my way back inside. This required about 500 bricks and a long afternoon’s work.
Unfortunately, as I started working on the brick path, I made a frustrating discovery. About 450 of the bricks I bought were bright red but about fifty were of a lighter yellowish hue. So I loaded up the fifty lighter bricks and took them back to the place where I bought them.
If you think I should have instead taken back the 450 bright red bricks, you may want to consider voting for Barack Obama.
The week after I finished laying my brick path I hopped on a plane heading to Colorado Springs, Colorado (to speak at Summit Christian Ministries www.Summit.org). After the flight attendant made her initial announcements, a young couple called her over to complain that she was speaking too loudly into the microphone. Her voice, they said, was hurting their ears. The flight attendant said she was talking into the microphone no louder than she was at that moment. The couple still protested – although no one else on board seemed to have a problem. Eventually, the flight attendant agreed to let someone else with a quieter voice make the rest of the announcements.
As soon as the plane took off, the small child of the couple with the sensitive ears began screaming. And, eventually, the father began yelling at the child. This went on for the duration of the flight. When the flight attendant with the soft voice announced the connecting gate information I could not hear her at all. Neither could the male half of the couple with sensitive ears. He was yelling at his son who was screaming at the top of his little lungs, which at least partially explained the fact that no one on board the flight was able to hear his connecting information.
If you think that Delta handled this situation properly, you may want to consider voting for Barack Obama.
On the way back from my wonderful trip to Colorado, I hopped on another Delta flight – this one heading to Atlanta. As we were being served our beverages, two of the flight attendants stopped to have a conference in the aisle just next to my seat. It seems that the woman seated in 6A was allergic to peanuts. She therefore decided that she wanted cookies, not peanuts, as a snack to accompany her beverage.
But the woman wanted more than just her cookies. She wanted everyone else on the plane to have cookies, too. It seems that the woman’s allergy was so great that refraining from the consumption of peanuts was not enough. She could not be around others consuming peanuts, lest she become physically ill. She wanted no peanuts to be served to any passenger on the flight.
The flight attendants struck a compromise. The people on aisles five through seven would be served cookies, not peanuts. Everyone else was free to choose one or the other. I tapped one of the flight attendants on the shoulder to inform her that I was allergic to cookies. I also told her I was allergic to people who are allergic to peanuts. She understood my joke and we shared a laugh as she handed me an extra bag of peanuts.
If you thought my joke was insensitive, you’re probably already voting for Barack Obama.
After I got back from Colorado, I checked my email. I was surprised to hear from an old friend from Clear Lake High School. He had been a staunch conservative in the 1980s but, now, he is an outspoken liberal. He dropped out of college in the 1980s and never went back. He’d held a few jobs but had not had any steady employment over the last twenty-four years.
One of my old friend’s reasons for supporting Obama is his position on universal health care. He once had a health plan but he quit the job that had provided it. It would be easy for him to get another job as he is both able-bodied and intelligent. But he says he’s burned out and fatigued. So, instead, he’ll vote for the candidate that’ll make sure he gets his health care regardless of whether he ever gets another job with benefits.
If you think my analysis too harsh, you are probably actively campaigning for Barack Obama.
I know it isn’t always easy for those in the minority to force those in the majority to conform to their needs. After all, it rarely makes logical sense. But, when they do succeed, it is usually an argument won on emotion, rather than logic. There’s just something about those who’ve suffered greatly that gives them an air of moral superiority. And there’s something about helping them that makes us really great people, too.
After another day’s work as a writer I’m off to the back yard to take in the sun in my favorite hammock. If I weren’t such a pragmatist I’d be getting there following a yellow brick road.
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Mike S. Adams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on October 30, 1964. While a student at Clear Lake High School in Houston, TX, his team won the state 5A soccer championship. Mike Adams graduated from C.L.H.S. in 1983 with a 1.8 GPA. Mike Adams was ranked 734 among a class of 740, largely as a result of flunking English all four years of high school. After obtaining an Associate's degree in psychology from San Jacinto College, Mike Adams moved on to Mississippi State University where he joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity. While living in the fraternity house, his GPA rose to 3.4, allowing him to finish his B.A., and then to pursue a Master's in Psychology. In 1990, Mike Adams turned down a chance to pursue a PhD in psychology from the University of Georgia, opting instead to remain at Mississippi State to study Sociology/Criminology. This decision was made entirely on the basis of his reluctance to quit his night job as member of a musical duo. Playing music in bars and at fraternity parties and weddings financed his education. Mike Adams also played for free beer.
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Upon getting his doctorate in 1993, Adams, then an atheist and a Democrat, was hired by UNC-Wilmington to teach in the criminal justice program. A few years later, Adams abandoned his atheism and also became a Republican. He also nearly abandoned teaching when he took a one-year leave of absence to study law at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1998. After returning to teach at UNC-Wilmington, Adams won the Faculty Member of the Year award (issued by the Office of the Dean of Students) for the second time in 2000.
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After his involvement in a well publicized free speech controversy in the wake of the 911 terror attacks, Adams became a vocal critic of the diversity movement in academia. After making appearances on shows like Hannity and Colmes, the O'Reilly Factor, and Scarborough Country, Adams was asked to write a column for Townhall.com.
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Today Mike Adams enjoys the privilege of expressing himself both as a teacher and a writer. Mike Adams is also an avid hunter and reader of classic literature. Mike Adams published his first book, Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel, in 2004. His second book, Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus, was published in 2008.
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