Does This Column offend You? GOOD!
By Doug Hagin (10/11/05)
Are you easily offended? Does your little ego bruise easily? Do you think everyone else in America ought to give a darn about your self-esteem? Do your eyes fill with tears every time you perceive some is being insensitive to you? Do you live under the delusional belief that you should be protected against being offended? Do you believe that anytime you are offended someone should be fired; have their life ruined or character trashed?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions you need to shut up, grow up, stop throwing your little pity parties and get a life! Frankly, you and those like you are a major part of what is wrong with America today. Your constant carping and whining are adding nothing positive to this great nation. Instead, the climate of perpetual offended ness and hypersensitivity you are creating is sapping the great spirit of rugged individualism that made America the greatest nation to ever exist in this world’s history.
Think for a moment if the Founding Fathers had been the type of wimpy whiners so many Americans are today? There would be no America would there? Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and the rest would have been so busy filing discrimination suits and attending counseling sessions that they would have never gotten around to the business of creating a new nation.
How very pathetic these maddening wimpy attitudes are! So many in America think every thing and everyone should bend, change and alter their standards and rules so as not to exclude or offend them. How else do we explain the phenomenon of those who want to join the Boy Scouts, but ONLY if the Scouts change their rules to accommodate their over inflated sense of self-importance? Look if you are an Atheist and saying the Scouts pledge bothers you, you have a choice. You can either say the pledge and not believe a word of it, or you can start your own scouting group.
Yes! Yes! Yes! You could actually stop feeling sorry for yourself, start a scouting organization, and leave the Boy Scouts alone. Oh but that is not good enough. You, the offended feel an insatiable need to force your views onto the Boy Scouts. After all, it is all about you, your ego and your little feelings isn’t it.
If you happen to pass by a Confederate cemetery in a sleepy Southern town and see a Confederate flag or a statue of a Confederate soldier and are offended by it what do you, the offended do? Drive on, thinking that you disagree with those symbols but recognize that the descendants of those soldiers deserve their piece of history? Oh no, not you! You begin ranting about racism and lynchings, start threatening lawsuits, and demand those symbols disappear!
Why would you take such an absurd stance? Well because you are offended, that is why. It should not matter that by ripping down those symbols you are spitting on the graves of those heroic soldiers and their families. It should not matter that you are erasing history and fomenting ignorance! To Hell with history you are offended and nothing else matters does it?
You, the easily offended, see a manger scene, or possibly a monument with the Ten Commandments on it. A mentally normal person, even if they were an Atheist would pass by and think nothing of it. Not you though, oh no! You are just looking to get offended so off you go. You dial your local ACLU attorney, who of course you have on speed dial and start crying like the spineless jellyfish you are.
How dare any mention of anything even remotely resembling anything religious enter your hypersensitive field of vision? Someone has to pay for this act of treason against your all-important ego. Let the lawsuits begin! Christmas parade? Not in your presence by George! Is that an angel you see? Better not be, lest someone suffer your wrath! Moreover, Heaven help anyone who dares to even think about singing a Christmas carol in school! You are Offendedsauras and you will crush them under your hypersensitive feet!
Let some teacher dare to teach a child what the word niggardly means. Just let them try that! You and your egomaniacal cohorts will never allow that! Never mind the fact that the word niggardly means nothing racial at all. It means stingy or begrudging, but that does not matter a bit does it?
It sounds like another word, the infamous “N” word! So because it sounds like a racial slur children may not even be taught about it! How very brilliant you easily offended types are. You would rather have children grow up ignorant and offended than educated and not offended. You would rather erase words from the dictionary than explain their meanings to children.
So let us be very clear here. The hypersensitive folks who we always hear bellyaching about how someone or something has upset their emotional applecart have an agenda. To force their delusional, twisted and intellectually bankrupt ideal upon the rest of us. Are we going to put up with that? Are we willing to have every word we utter controlled by their standards? I think not!
Now to any of the easily offended sorts who are currently pulling their hair out, hyperventilating and pounding out the ACLU phone number out while reading this. A very heartfelt message from me. If my column has, in any way offended you, or hurt your feelings, or caused you emotional duress or has forced you to seek therapy, let me say GOOD!
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