An Alabama for Alabamans… And Me
The famed early theologian of the Church, Tertullian, is said to have exclaimed, “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?!”
Of course, he was speaking from the point of frustration, even exasperation, about contemporaries who from Tertullian’s perspective over-emphasized philosophy at the expense of faithful ascent to revelation.
What does Illinois have to do with Alabama?
Now, I am in no way in the business (not that there is one) of arguing with pre-teens to young adolescents on most matters. My experience in teaching students of this age group has confirmed for me that, especially outside of the classroom, most of them have little to no regard for what those senior to them have to say. But last night, I let three of them have it.
My dear, sweet, gregarious 4-year-old son was riding his bike at the local shutdown juvenile penitentiary (public middle school) and decided to talk to a group of girl skateboarders. He possesses that warm, innocent friendliness that all too often is sadly stomped out of us by our late teens and early twenties. He introduced himself and even complimented their skateboarding.
Their response: They immediately told him to stay away and covered up their faces with their dirty hoods from their sweatshirts. When I inquired with them, “What’s the problem?” they responded in the snarkiest of ways: “Well, a global pandemic, sir.”
This is what we are dealing with today. I told them that my sweet boy does not have CO-Vid and most likely, nor do they. Furthermore, due to the most remote chance that they might contract the illness from my son and actually suffer in ways indistinguishable from the common cold, they engaged in making my boy feel like nothing more than a disease-carrier.
What the irrational exuberance over COVid and attendant lock downs among Karens young and old has conclusively revealed is that they don’t want to live around me and my family, and believe me, we don’t want to “live” around them. After all, I fly a Gadsden flag in my front yard; they in turn define human life as amounting to a biological state in which one consumes Amazon delivered hard tack through a thin portal in your basement while streaming Netflix. No thanks.
No one seems to like a one-size-fits-all approach in anything but government: Not in shoes, ice cream, or skateboards. And yet, there is a sick-in-the-head portion of the population in 2020 that thinks that the imposition of ever more dislocated government and its diktats represents the “way to go”.
No, no it is not.
Indeed, the real way to go is decentralization, especially in places like Maryland, Illinois and New York wherein major metropolitan areas dominate and lord state power over the rest of the state’s regions and populations. The last of these has a group of upstaters demanding for more regional, balanced representation in Albany–and good for them.
In Illinois, Chicago politicos down in Springfield want to put the last shovel of dirt on the grave of this state by altering the state constitution so as to provide an avenue for a fair (always unfair) progressive income tax. After all, the state is doing so much to care for those in the aftermath of a state imposed and unwarranted lock down–budget deficits have mounted and someone has to pay. Remember: 15 days to “flatten the curve”? Well that has very quickly mutated into 12 months to totally socialize a state–as if the state was doing so well before the whole COVid hysteria.
Think locally and act locally is right. And when there are too many pre-teen jerk skateboarders in your area that they become a critical mass, it is time to get out.
Hey, honey: Bring up that Zillow page of houses in Alabama again…
