As we approach Independence Day and prepare for our annual backyard barbecues and “safe” fireworks with the kids, many of us reminisce about the “good old days” when cherry bombs, bottle rockets and Roman candles were as much a part of the holiday as The Star Spangled Banner and Aunt Minnie’s Dutch apple pie. But most states outlawed them years ago to reduce injuries and fires. Replacing them are “snakes and sparklers” and assorted thingies that do little more than whistle and smoke.

Apparently, “real” fireworks are still available in Nevada (if they have whores, they’re bound to have serious fireworks, right?) but our Governor has begged Californians not to buy them this year. No wonder; we already have more than 1200 wildfires burning through our landscape, and firefighters have no idea when they’ll get them under control!

All of which reminded me of a classic scene in the movie Joe Dirt, a conversation between David Spade and Adam Beach…

Now, I’m not telling you what to do or not do, but I’m with Arnold on this, at least this year. How ‘bout forgetting the “real” fireworks? Go to a controlled fireworks show in your area instead. They’re bigger and better anyway, right?

“I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.” - George Carlin

A groundbreaking observational comedian and a flat-out great storyteller, George Carlin died yesterday of heart failure at age 71. Known for his edgy, provocative material, he was shocking, irreverent and hilarious, yet somehow made you question things you thought you knew.

The last vote that George Carlin said he cast in a presidential race was for George McGovern in 1972. And when Richard Nixon, who Carlin described as a member of a sub-species of humanity, overwhelmingly defeated McGovern, the comedian gave up on the political process.

But while he may have stopped voting in 1972, America’s most consistently savage social commentator for the better part of a half century didn’t give up on politics. He read the papers, followed the news, asked questions and turned it all into a running commentary that focused not so much on politics as on the ugly intersection of power and economics. He didn’t want Americans to get involved with the system; he wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.

Needless to say, he was not on message for 2008’s “change we can believe in” election season. No, his was a darker and more serious take on the crisis and the change of consciousness — sweeping in scope and revolutionary in character— that was required to address it. Like the radicals of the early years of the 20th century whose politics he knew and respected, he believed that free-speech fights had to come first. He always pushed the limit, happily choosing an offensive word when a more polite one might have sufficed.

By 1972, the year he won the first of four Grammys for best comedy album, he had developed his most famous routine: “Seven Words (You Can’t Say on Television).” That summer, at a huge outdoor show in Milwaukee, he uttered all seven of them in public — and was promptly arrested for disturbing the peace. When a version of the routine was aired in 1973 on WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation radio station in New York, Pacifica received a citation from the FCC and was ordered to pay a fine for violating federal regulations prohibiting the broadcast of “obscene” language. The ensuing free-speech fight made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled 5-4 against the First Amendment to the Constitution, Pacifica and Carlin. Amusingly, especially to Carlin, a full transcript of the routine ended up in court documents associated with the case, F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).

There will, of course, be those who dismiss him as a remnant of the sixties who introduced obscenity to the public discourse — just as there will be those who misread his critique of the American political and economic systems as little more than verbal nihilism. In fact, George Carlin was, like the radicals of an earlier age, an idealist — and a patriot — of a deeper sort than is encountered very often these days.

Carlin explained himself best in one of his last interviews. “…I don’t consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word ‘cynic’ has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. ‘George, you’re cynical.’ Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?”

This is a Patriot’s Journey post. You may also enjoy visiting the other journeyers: Drumwaster, Larry at The Bastage, the folks at The Line Is Here and Shortbus from The Edge of Reason…

Probably not the best banner for advocating English be our national language, ya’ think? A May 1 immigration reform story carried in the online Houston Chronicle featured this photo:

You have to love the irony!

Michael reminds me that today is also May Day. Ancient spring rites that related human fertility to crop fertility gave birth to most modern May Day festivities. May 1 is the traditional day to crown the May queen, dance around the maypole, perform mummers’ plays, and generally celebrate the return of spring. In Great Britain, the custom of “bringing in the May” involves gathering “knots,’ or branches with buds, on the eve or early morning of May 1.

Of course, the day is also linked to organized labor’s fight for workers’ rights and, since 2006, Uno de Mayo, organized demonstrations by illegal immigrants in an effort to gain legal status in the U.S. I prefer the more traditional May Day festivities of my youth: the celebration of spring and dancing ‘round the maypole.

Some of us are deskbound or lead otherwise sedentary lives. Regular exercise gets left at the gate when we’re scheduling our week, month, quarter. There are priorities, things that must be completed on time. Urgent things. So we don’t get enough exercise and our physical wellbeing suffers, right? “Secretary spread” some call it. (Shame on them!) Details, a Steelcase Company, offers a possible solution:

“The Walkstation is the fully integrated combination of an electric height-adjustable worksurface with an exclusively engineered, low speed commercial grade treadmill. And it’s the first product in the entirely new FitWork™ category of products from Details designed to bring healthy habits to sedentary workers while they are actually working.”

Seems a novel idea, doesn’t it? But I wonder how productive it would be in the workplace. I know from personal experience, for example, how difficult it is to run, or even walk at a pace sufficient for a descent cardiovascular workout, while reading. I can’t imagine doing it while performing routine office tasks like keying or taking notes while talking on the phone. Unless, of course, the pace is so slow, as the literature suggests, that you don’t even breathe heavily. In which case, what’s the point?

Well, it turns out there is one. Experts say any amount of exercise is better than none at all. And Sean McCance, a co-director of orthopedic spine surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, points out that sitting still all day is bad for your spine. “When you remain in one position for too long,” says McCance, “your muscles get stiff, putting pressure on the discs of the spine.” By getting up and moving around every 30-45 minutes or so, your back gets to change position, your blood flow increases, and fluid flows back into the area to rehydrate the discs that cushion the spine.

So, if a Walkstation would fit in your cubicle — and your boss will allow it — check it out. It could be just what the doctor ordered.

I ran across this reprint of a 1943 article published in Mass Transportation Magazine that gave me a chuckle. Times have certainly changed; we like to think for the better. The eleven tips in this article prove the point.

I especially like, “Older women who have never contacted the public…are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy,” and “…’husky’ girls - those who are a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.” The latter reminds me of advise from my grandfather: “Marry a fat girl. They’re less likely to run around on you,” and “Marry a girl with small hands…” But that’s another story.

Before you’re too critical of the managers and supervisors of 1943, remember that it was war time and the majority of male factory workers had enlisted or been drafted and were stationed away from home. To keep the factories running, women were hired to fill the jobs formerly performed by men. Managers and supervisors of the day had little, if any, experience supervising and training inexperienced female workers, so articles like this one attempted to help guide their dealings with their new workforce. It was new and awkward for everyone, workers and management alike, and a testament to our determination to support the war effort that we were able to pull it off!

Click on the thumbnail image of the article and give it a read. For those of you old enough to remember WWII, it’ll be a walk down memory lane. For those of you too young to remember, it’s a piece of history that shows just how far we’ve come.

Apparently, if we’re to believe a new study from Germany.

The study by Hamburg Sex Researcher Professor Dr Werner Habermehl looked at the sex lives of hundreds of German women and compared them with their hair color. “The sex lives of women with red hair were clearly more active than those with other hair color, with more partners and having sex more often than the average. The research shows that the fiery redhead certainly lives up to her reputation,” he says.

According to Habermehl, women who dyed their hair red from another color were signaling they were looking for a partner, and added, “Even women in a fixed relationship are letting their partners know they are unhappy if they dye their hair red. They are saying that they are looking for something better.”

Psychologist Christine Baumanns notes, however, that it may not [have been] the women who were to blame for the better sex lives of redheads. “Red stands for passion and when a man sees a redhead he will think he is dealing with a woman who won’t mess around, and gets straight to the point when it comes to sex.”

Don’t you just love studies like this? I often wonder what drives someone to embark on such a “study”. And what is the intended benefit to humanity? Perhaps the good doctor was trying to help German men narrow their hunt for “hot” German women. I’m still wondering.

My wonderful wife, Dawn, often challenges me with questions I usually try to answer off the top of my head. But if my answer fails to satisfy her, she assigns me the task of finding the “real” answer and getting back to her. Such was her question about the origins of the Easter Bunny and its colored eggs since, we all know, rabbits don’t lay eggs and the whole Easter Bunny thing isn’t even mentioned in the scriptures. Well, I’ve put it off for as long as I can. Easter is this Sunday and I was reminded that the question is still “out there.” So I did some cursory research and here’s what I learned.

The answer lies in the ingenious way that the Christian church absorbed pagan practices. After discovering that people were more reluctant to give up their holidays and festivals than their pagan gods, the church simply incorporated pagan practices into Christian celebrations. As recounted by the Venerable Bede, an early Benedictine monk, clever clerics copied pagan practices and by doing so, made Christianity more palatable to pagan folk reluctant to give up their festivals for somber Christian practices.

In second century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the goddess Eostre (Ostara), whose sacred animal (or consort, depending on which version you choose to believe) was a hare. One story holds that Eostre hurled the hare into the heavens after giving it the power, once a year, to lay colored eggs. Another popular piece of folklore is that Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a hare. Because the hare had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and eventually became the modern Easter Bunny.

But the eggs associated with the hare also have another, even more ancient, origin — The eggs associated with this and other vernal festivals have been symbols of rebirth and fertility for so long, the precise roots of the tradition are unknown and may date to the beginning of human civilization. We know, for instance, that ancient Romans and Greeks used eggs as symbols of fertility, rebirth, and abundance.

And eggs were solar symbols that figured in the festivals of numerous resurrected gods. Pagan fertility festivals at the time of the spring equinox were common and it was believed that, when day and night were of equal length, male and female energies were also in balance, hence the connection to fertility. In this context, the hare was often associated with moon goddesses; the egg and hare together represented, respectively, the god and goddess.

Moving forward fifteen hundred or so years, German children awaited the arrival of Oschter Haws, a hare who laid colored eggs in nests made from children’s caps and bonnets to the delight of those who discovered them Easter morning. Abandoned plover nests found in the spring were said to have been those of Oschter Haws in which he laid his colored eggs. It was this German tradition that popularized the Easter Bunny and Easter basket in America when introduced into American culture by German settlers in Pennsylvania.

Many modern practitioners of neopagan and earth-based religions have embraced these symbols as part of their religious practices, identifying with the life-affirming aspects of the spring holiday. The neopagan holiday of Ostara, for example, is descended from the Saxon festival. Ironically, some Christian groups have used the presence of these symbols to denounce the celebration of the Easter holiday and many churches have abandoned the pagan moniker in favor of more Christian oriented titles like “Resurrection Sunday.”

So there you have it, Dawn. I hope this gets me off the hook on this one so I can move ahead with some of your more recent “questions.”

I just finished reading a humorous article by Eric Feezell about the oft misused phrase, “begging the question.” I’m told that I may have, at least on occasion, misapplied it myself, although I am prepared to offer my best circular reasoning to the contrary.

In the article, Feezell postulates that the term “begs the question” has essentially been bastardized, whereby laymen (e.g., us) have misconstrued or broadened its meaning, and in the process have pissed off a very small group of anal-retentive, scholarly types (e.g., them). So when you use the phrase, like most other people, you use it to mean something like, “Well, that opens up another can of worms.” For example: Your 16-year-old son gets in a fight with a bouncer at a strip club. Sure, it’s bad enough he’s rumbling with bouncers—and you are probably in need of some parenting books—but you might say the whole situation begs the question: How did he, being underage, get into the strip club in the first place? And did he at least get a lap dance before he was thrown out? (Let’s hope so.)

But that, writes Feezell, would be the incorrect use of “begging the question.” In a nutshell, “begging the question” refers to a certain fallacy in syllogistic argument where the very thing you are trying to prove (your conclusion) is presupposed in the supporting argument (your premises). This is sometimes called “circular reasoning.”

Structurally, it would look something like this:

• x implies y
• Assume x
• Therefore, y

Feezell explains, with tongue in cheek, linear, circular, triangular and other more complex variations of argumentative logic such as inductive argument and, of course, Popeye-Cartesian proof of existence (I think what I think, therefore I yam what I yam.)

I found his explanations entertaining and informative. If you enjoy word play, give the article a read because, as you know, smart people read, people read this blog, so reading this blog makes you smart. Right?

The colorful internet group known as “Anonymous” donned masks and descended on Scientology centers in major cities throughout the world yesterday to protest the Church’s questionable ethics, devious practices, free speech violations, and their requirement that believers pay tens of thousands of dollars to participate in their “religion.”

Rob Sheridan attended the Los Angeles rally and snapped these photos of some of the hundreds of diverse and passionate anons, many wearing Guy Fawkes masks, as they flooded Sunset Boulevard in front of the Church Of Scientology.

Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Day. I ran across a well written article by Carolyn Garris that I recommend everyone read in its entirety. Take a few moments and remember, if you can, how racism once so divided our nation that we were, quite literally, at war with ourselves, and how King carried the banner of unification that ultimately led us to the better America we enjoy today. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Martin Luther King, Jr. was no stalwart conservative, yet his core beliefs, such as the power and necessity of faith-based association and self-government based on absolute truth and moral law, are profoundly conservative. Modern liberalism rejects these ideas, while conservatives place them at the center of their philosophy. Despite decades of its appropriation by liberals, King’s message was fundamentally conservative.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, triggered by Rosa Parks’ refusal to abide by local segregation laws, sparked King’s rise from ministering a small church in Montgomery to national renown. King’s primary aim was not to change laws, but to change people, to make neighbors of enemies and a nation out of divided races. King led with love, not racial hatred. From a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, his message inspired the nation. And his message and achievements inspire us today.

Dr. King believed in the principles of the American Founding. He maintained, “We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.” Throughout American history, racism has posed a peculiar obstacle to the achievement of that goal. However, Dr. King believed that the Founders had set the nation on the right course. He did not reject the principles of our nation because contradictions existed; instead he hoped that racial groups would put aside their differences and acknowledge the principles that unite all Americans. Today, it is conservatives who seek to unite. In a nation divided by cultural diversity, conservatives defend and celebrate the characteristics that we share as Americans. As America drifts from the ideas and ideals of the Founders, conservatives stand with King as believers that the principles of the American Founding are as relevant today as in 1776…More

Remember that today isn’t just another day off. It stands for something important in our nation’s history, a time when we made a wrong turn and yet managed to find our way back. It’s a day to celebrate just how far we’ve come since then.

So you’ve listed your New Year’s resolutions and now you find yourself where you always do after announcing your intentions - struggling to act on them, to put them in motion. You tell yourself that you’re not alone, that everyone is in the same boat when it comes to following intentions with empowering actions, but you wish, just once, you could actually follow through. Believe me, I know. I’ve often been right there in the proverbial boat with you. But Dawn and I decided that this was going to be our year and so we took some unconventional, albeit fun, steps to help us give it a kick-start.

It was Dawn’s idea, I think, and pretty soon both her mom and sister had signed on, so there was no way I could shrug off doing my part as well. It seems Dawn (or maybe her mom) had read an article in the January issue of Redbook by shuistrology expert Ellen Whitehurst on some cures to make this the best New Year ever. All we needed, claimed Whitehurst, was a little New Year feng shui! Here’s what she recommended and how we did…

A Clean Sweep. Before New Year’s Day, we were to clean the entire house “to clear the way for new and exciting energies to enter your home.” The task apparently can’t be done on New Year’s Day as doing so is thought to “sweep away” all the fortune and luck that is headed your way in the coming year. If that was too big a project (it was!) then cleaning just the kitchen (we did) would be okay since it represents our health, happiness and prosperity. An integral component was to move 27 things around our home (we stayed in the kitchen) as this simple change up causes the same-old to head out with the old year. We were off and running!

Create a Cash Flow. Next, we headed to the bank for 27 one-dollar bills and 49 coins each so as to make our wallets appear full and bring us “untold and unexpected fortunes in the year ahead.” We even sprinkled dried ground ginger on the wallets and our checkbooks. I’m not sure what that does but we wanted to give ourselves every possible advantage. It wasn’t clear whether we were to leave the ginger in place or remove it. I dusted mine off. Hope that didn’t disqualify me from any untold and unexpected fortunes.

Begin New Rituals. We didn’t refer to anything from the past on New Year’s Day, speaking instead of our hopes, wishes and dreams for the future. The placement of nine mandarin oranges in a bowl in our kitchen was to help “orchestrate sweet treats that will make the coming year’s dreams come true.” And since we were home as the year turned, we briefly opened and closed all our doors and windows, no small task in a home the size of ours, “to let the previous year’s energies out and allow some new, interesting ones to come in.”

We passed on the recommended lighting of firecrackers or the banging of pots and pans to “scare away any maligning influences” that may have been headed our way - firecrackers are illegal in El Dorado County and the cookware too heavy and expensive - but since it’s considered very auspicious if the first thing one sees on New Year’s Day is a red bird, I Googled up a few on the computer screen. Red bird sighting? Check.

Find the Right Words. There was no crying on New Year’s Day as doing so “could have triggered a yearlong deluge.” No losing of tempers, foul language or whining, either. And since the first words one utters at the top of any New Year have “a huge impact on your fortune and luck in the 12 months following”, we chose to say “health, happiness, prosperity” to one another at midnight. (I inadvertently included “and”, possibly a technical foul.)

Chew On This. Many traditions maintain that abstaining from eating meat on New Year’s Day will grant you a long and happy life. Easy for Dawn - she never eats beef, pork or lamb - and not difficult for me either. Eating fish on this promising day is said to aid in intelligence, build immunity and symbolize “a year swimming in abundance and prosperity.” So on New Year’s Eve, I drove to Placerville and bought enough of Steamer’s “lazy man’s cioppino” to cover lunch and dinner on New Year’s Day. For those unfamiliar, Powell’s Steamer makes a dynamite cioppino and removes all the shells. As always, it was delicious and now we’re ready for a big helping of abundance and prosperity. We also avoided using anything sharp, like knives or scissors, as this could conceivably have cut our coming fortunes in half.

All in all, we covered most of the bases and had a lot of fun in the process! These suggestions and much more are apparently covered in Ellen Whitehurst’s new book, Make This Your Lucky Day so, if you’d like to learn how to be prepared for the rest of this year and next, it sounds like a read worth adding to your library.

I’m sure you all followed the story of British school teacher Gillian Gibbons who was recently imprisoned in Sudan for “inciting religious hatred” by allowing her 1st grade (equivalent) students at a private Sudanese school to name a class teddy bear “Muhammad.” Sudanese Muslims filled the streets demanding she be killed and beheaded.

So afraid were authorities that harm would befall her before her trial that she had to be whisked to a secret location for her own protection. After eight days in custody, she was convicted and sentenced to fifteen days in prison, a much lighter sentence than she could have received, and one that further inflamed Muslims, some of whom said they would kill her themselves if they saw her on the streets.

Two British Muslim members of Parliament hurried to Sudan to beg — yes, beg — for her pardon and release which were ultimately granted. She appeared on Good Morning America this morning and said she hopes no one will be angry with the people of Sudan, the ones who wanted her beheaded, over the incident for which she deeply apologizes.

In order to understand the issues involved, you first need to realize that Muhammad is a very common name in Muslim countries, including Sudan, and boys are often so named by their families. In fact, Gibbons’ young students voted to name the teddy bear after a boy in their class!

So why all the fuss? My take is that Muslims are so brainwashed that they can be easily incited by clerics who tell them that a crime against Islam has been perpetrated and that they must seek vengeance, usually by killing someone. And Britain, in fact most of Europe, has allowed such fanaticism to fester for so long under the guise of religious tolerance that it will be all but impossible to ever correct. Indeed, the Europe we once knew is no more.

Watch the video (excuse the advertisement) that accompanies this news link. Note the “religion of peace” marching in the streets and demanding death to the infidel teacher. This is what liberals want us to be “tolerant” of. This is what will happen in the U.S. if we continue along the present primrose path of misdirected “tolerance.”

On the 25th of Kislev are the days of Chanukkah, which are eight… these were appointed a Festival with Hallel [prayers of praise] and thanksgiving.  - Shabbat 21b, Babylonian Talmud

Hanukkah (Hebrew: חנוכה‎, also spelled Chanukah or Hanukah), also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday beginning on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, which may fall anytime from late November to late December. This year, it began at sundown today.

The Story

The story of Chanukkah begins in the reign of Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered Syria, Egypt and Palestine, but allowed the lands under his control to continue observing their own religions and retain a certain degree of autonomy. Under this relatively benevolent rule, many Jews assimilated much of Hellenistic culture, adopting the language, the customs and the dress of the Greeks, in much the same way that Jews in America today blend into the secular American society.

More than a century later, a successor of Alexander, Antiochus IV, was in control of the region. He began to oppress the Jews severely, placing a Hellenistic priest in the Temple, massacring Jews, prohibiting the practice of the Jewish religion, and desecrating the Temple by requiring the sacrifice of pigs (a non-kosher animal) on the altar. Two groups opposed Antiochus and joined forces in a revolt against both the assimilation of the Hellenistic Jews and oppression by the Seleucid Greek government. The revolution succeeded and the Temple was rededicated.

According to tradition as recorded in the Talmud, at the time of the rededication, there was very little oil left that had not been defiled by the Greeks. Oil was needed for the menorah (candelabrum) in the Temple, which was supposed to burn throughout the night every night. There was only enough oil to burn for one day, yet miraculously, it burned for eight days, the time needed to prepare a fresh supply of oil for the menorah. An eight day festival was declared to commemorate this miracle. Note that the holiday commemorates the miracle of the oil, not the military victory: Jews do not glorify war.

Traditions

Chanukkah is not a particularly important religious holiday. The only religious observance related to the holiday is the lighting of candles. The candles are arranged in a candelabrum called a menorah (or sometimes called a chanukkiah) that holds nine candles: one for each night, plus a shammus (servant) at a different height. On the first night, one candle is placed at the far right. The shammus candle is lit and three berakhot (blessings) are recited. After reciting the blessings, the first candle is then lit using the shammus candle, and the shammus candle is placed in its holder. The candles are allowed to burn out on their own after a minimum of 1/2 hour.

Each night, another candle is added from right to left like the Hebrew language. Candles are lit from left to right because you pay honor to the newer thing first. On the eighth night, all nine candles are lit. On nights after the first, only the first two blessings are recited; the third blessing, she-hekhianu, is only recited on the first night of holidays.

Why the shammus candle? The Chanukkah candles are for pleasure only; Jews are not allowed to use them for any productive purpose. They keep an extra one around (the shammus), so that if a candle is needed for something useful, they won’t accidentally use the Chanukkah candles. The shammus candle is at a different height so that it is easily identified as the shammus.

It is traditional to eat fried foods on Chanukkah because of the significance of oil to the holiday. Among Ashkenazic Jews, this usually includes latkes (pronounced “lot-kuhs” or “lot-keys” depending on where your grandmother comes from. Pronounced “potato pancakes” if you are a goy.)

Gift giving is not a traditional part of the holiday but has been added in places where Jews have a lot of contact with Christians as a way of dealing with Jewish children’s jealousy of their Christian friends. It is extremely unusual for Jews to give Chanukkah gifts to anyone other than their own young children. The only traditional gift of the holiday is “gelt,” small amounts of money.

Another tradition of the holiday is playing dreidel, a gambling game played with a square top. Most people play for matchsticks, pennies, M&Ms or chocolate coins. The traditional explanation of this game is that during the time of Antiochus’ oppression, those who wanted to study Torah (an illegal activity) would conceal their activity by playing gambling games with a top (a common and legal activity) whenever an official or inspector was within sight.

Following the lighting of the candles, Jews usually sing the hymn Ma’oz Tzur; various other Hanukkah songs are customary in many Jewish homes.

For a more extensive explanation, visit Wikipedia.

My mother-in-law sent this with the caption, “Ask the American Indians what happens when you don’t control your borders.”

The graphic has been in use for a few years, at least since 2005, and is usually found on t-shirts or bumper stickers. I was surprised to learn, though, just how many opinion pieces had been written about it and what writers believe it means.

Some, it turns out, see it as an affront to native Americans or believe that those who display the graphic are America haters. Joseph Farah’s article is an example. I thought he had completely missed the point, but it got me thinking. So I looked again at the graphic, this time without the caption that had accompanied it, and decided that he just might have a point or two.

But when I view the graphic in the context of the accompanying caption, I see it the way I suspect it was originally intended, to illustrate the importance of border security by implying (with tongue in cheek) that, had native Americans protected their borders against the invading European terrorists, the complexion of America might today be quite different.

I think as a society we need to develop a collective thicker skin and stop looking for things to find offensive. What do you think?