American rights aren’t imaginary

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When I was a little boy, I played with dump trucks and toy guns. My sister had an Easy Bake Oven and a Barbie Doll house. It was normal.

So what kind of society are we living in today when a seven-year-old boy gets suspended for playing “pretend?”

This happened last week at Mary Blair Elementary School in Colorado. The school’s rule against “real or pretend fighting” meant that when second-grader Alex Evans decided he wanted to save the world at recess, they suspended him for throwing an imaginary grenade into a box.

Was it just a product of ridiculous anti-gun hype that has recently swept the nation, or is this just one more example of the kind of liberal, sheltered country we live in today?

Personally, I believe it’s both. We live in a society overruled by political correctness and a need to shelter everyone from everything.

Evans wasn’t being a bad guy, or even bothering other children. He was just playing a game that we used to play all the time.

Not only are we slowly strangling our Second Amendment rights, but also killing our rights on the playground.

America needs to wake up. American culture used to be a beautiful thing, but now it’s so full of political correctness and unneeded progressivism that it’s unrecognizable.

We need to return to the days where Alex could throw his grenade to save the world, and not have his education suffer.

We need to go back to the time where children could play Cops and Robbers, and not worry about consequences.

America doesn’t need political correctness or a stripped Bill of Rights. What this country needs is a good helping of American family values and a dose of reality. You can’t pretend problems in the world don’t exist.

America isn’t a utopia. We need guns for protection, we need our Bill of Rights, and we need our kids to grow up being kids. Let them save the world, encourage their creativity and don’t brand it evil and violent.

Discouraging children will keep them from becoming productive members of society, ones that will one day catch the bad guys, enlist in our military and put out fires.

Otherwise, we better be ready to throw out entitlement money like candy so these 16-year-old children can support themselves and their babies.

Oh wait, we already are throwing entitlement money out like candy.

America needs to return to the way it was, unrestricted by the changes of politically correct and progressive culture.

If we have any hope for the future, we need to see an America with real ideas and real promises that only our children can produce.

So take the chains off, let reality and creativity run its course, and maybe one day, we can see the beautiful America as she is meant to be seen.

Andrew Freeman is a pre-journalism freshman. He can be reached at afree@grandecom.net.

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4 Comments

1. 

   Sam W.

   February 13, 2013 at 2:22 pm

   Great article. American culture is being hijacked by people that want us to be more like Europe.

   Reply
2. 

   Mike

   February 14, 2013 at 4:13 pm

   >>When I was a little boy, I played with dump trucks and toy guns. My sister had an Easy Bake Oven and a Barbie Doll house. It was normal.

   Mmmm, sexism.

   >>Was it just a product of ridiculous anti-gun hype that has recently swept the nation, or is this just one more example of the kind of liberal, sheltered country we live in today?

   “When did you stop beating your wife?”

   >>Personally, I believe it’s both. We live in a society overruled by political correctness and a need to shelter everyone from everything.

   I have an odd feeling that you would be willing to “shelter” your male child from playing with Barbies and EZ bake ovens if he wanted to. Perhaps you should consider changing this sentence to “WHY CAN’T EVERYONE BEHAVE LIKE I WANT THEM TO ALL THE TIME!?”

   >>Evans wasn’t being a bad guy, or even bothering other children. He was just playing a game that we used to play all the time.

   Were you there? Oh well, at least you’re not using what is at worst a silly isolated incident in a small town to make broad, sweeping, unjustified generalizations about the entire country. That would be UNTHINKABLY stupid. Oh, wait.

   >>America needs to wake up. American culture used to be a beautiful thing, but now it’s so full of political correctness and unneeded progressivism that it’s unrecognizable.

   Tell me then, what is “needed” progressivism?

   >>America doesn’t need political correctness or a stripped Bill of Rights. What this country needs is a good helping of American family values and a dose of reality. You can’t pretend problems in the world don’t exist.

   I want to believe that you sincerely want what is best for me, but I can’t think of a single time when I’ve heard people talking about “American family values” and really meaning “some more-or-less arbitrary standards about sexuality and other aspects of the private lives of individuals that I intend to shove down your throat”. And “a dose of reality” combined with your flavor of pedantic tone usually means “everybody should come to exactly the same conclusions that I came to after spending 30 minutes listening to the news source of my choice. Rand Paul 2016!”.

   >>America needs to return to the way it was, unrestricted by the changes of politically correct and progressive culture.

   I don’t know when you mean. There’s a pretty narrow time window there. There’s pre-1965, when everybody was a second-class citizen, and after that, you’ve got JFK (shortly and very liberal), LBJ (who waged a famous war on poverty with his social welfare programs), Richard Nixon (oops), Gerald Ford (very moderate by today’s standards), Jimmy Carter (extremely liberal), Ronald Reagan (who — despite his promises — did jack squat to curb government spending, which you’re about to get to), Bush Sr. (who at one point said it was clear that we needed to move towards subsidizing birth control), Clinton and Bush Jr. (neither of whom I feel the need to refresh your memory on). Tell me more specifically when this better time was again — because the right-wingers have been bringing this gripe for a few decades now and I’m beginning to suspect they mean the 1950s, which were great for literally nobody except for white people.

   I see you’re a “pre-journalism” student. I hope it stays this way or that you learn to make coherent statements that are backed up by more than silly anecdotes and an “I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” sentiment, because I’d hate to see our journalism department endorse this kind of garbage.

   Reply
3. 

   Ken Lane

   February 15, 2013 at 7:53 pm

   We have allowed to develop a sector of government that is ever increasing its efficiency at creating a candy-ass society, one generation at a time.

   Reply
4. 

   Ben Thompson

   February 17, 2013 at 2:29 pm

   Hey Mike,
   I really like how you just took everything Andrew said and took the complete opposit stance on. I could do the complete same for any report or editorial done by CNN, MSNBC, or FOX news. However, rather than becoming irate over another persons view being the complete opposite of mine I will try to understand where they come from. It’s doubtful that you ever do the same.
   Other than that I do agree with Andrew, and wish him well in his studies. He can only grow from here.

   Reply