The Death Of Common Sense - revisited

[Warph]

Just got through reading Glenn Beck's book on "Common Sense" and it great.  If you get a chance to read it, do.  You'll enjoy it and if you don't, you, my friend, lack common sense.  Anyhoo, thought I'd bring back Lori Borgman's post and my post on "common sense" from a year ago.  There is so little of it around today.



The Death of Common Sense
By Lori Borgman      http://loriborgman.com/author.html

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Three yards of black fabric enshroud my computer terminal. I am mourning the passing of an old friend by the name of Common Sense.
His obituary reads as follows:

Common Sense, aka C.S., lived a long life, but died from heart failure at the brink of the millennium. No one really knows how old he was, his birth records were long ago entangled in miles and miles of bureaucratic red tape.

Known affectionately to close friends as Horse Sense and Sound Thinking, he selflessly devoted himself to a life of service in homes, schools, hospitals and offices, helping folks get jobs done without a lot of fanfare, whooping and hollering. Rules and regulations and petty, frivolous lawsuits held no power over C.S.

A most reliable sage, he was credited with cultivating the ability to know when to come in out of the rain, the discovery that the early bird gets the worm and how to take the bitter with the sweet. C.S. also developed sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn), reliable parenting strategies (the adult is in charge, not the kid) and prudent dietary plans (offset eggs and bacon with a little fiber and orange juice).

A veteran of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the Technological Revolution and the Smoking Crusades, C.S. survived sundry cultural and educational trends including disco, the men's movement, body piercing, whole language and new math.

C.S.'s health began declining in the late 1960s when he became infected with the If-It-Feels-Good, Do-It virus. In the following decades his waning strength proved no match for the ravages of overbearing federal and state rules and regulations and an oppressive tax code. C.S. was sapped of strength and the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband, criminals received better treatment than victims and judges stuck their noses in everything from Boy Scouts to professional baseball and golf. His deterioration accelerated as schools implemented zero-tolerance policies. Reports of 6-year-old boys charged with sexual harassment for kissing classmates, a teen suspended for taking a swig of Scope mouthwash after lunch, girls suspended for possessing Midol and an honor student expelled for having a table knife in her school lunch were more than his heart could endure.

As the end neared, doctors say C.S. drifted in and out of logic but was kept informed of developments regarding regulations on low-flow toilets and mandatory air bags. Finally, upon hearing about a government plan to ban inhalers from 14 million asthmatics due to a trace of a pollutant that may be harmful to the environment, C.S. breathed his last. Services will be at Whispering Pines Cemetery. C.S. was preceded in death by his wife, Discretion; one daughter, Responsibility; and one son, Reason. He is survived by two step-brothers, Half-Wit and Dim-Wit.

Memorial Contributions may be sent to the Institute for Rational Thought.
Farewell, Common Sense. May you rest in peace...... Lori Borgman




You go girl!  As far as I'm concerned, Lori, Common Sense had a massive stroke the day we blew the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he fell into a deep coma in the early 1960's and a deeper catatonic-like coma when the Viet Nam War started and tragically died when the far left DNCer's and the ACLU decided we were not Politically Correct in our way of thinking.  Webster defines PC: "Conforming to a belief that languages and practices which could offend sensibilites should be eliminated."   My definition of PC: Pure Crap!  Of course, this is my opinion and I'm sure a few million out here in Wonderland agree with me.  I'm tired of pussy footing around to please the left.  No more PC for me!

Now, lately I find myself recurringly gripped by an overwhelming desire to smack our entire country upside its collective head.  Common sense in this country isn't just dead, it's been cremated and the far left, DNC and the ACLU are smoking his ashes in their lucky skull bong.  There is so little common sense today that Thomas Paine is spinning over in his grave so rapidly that they are thinking of hooking him up to a turbine at Boulder Dam to light up the Vegas strip.  

You can't get to your doctors office in the morning without colliding with some idiot who is trying to spawn upstream onto the elevator while everyone else is trying to get off.  You can't get in your car and not run into another idiot who pulls into the gas station with his fuel tank on the wrong side and then has to get instructions from a NASA team at Houston Control to figure out how to maneuver his car so that the tank is on the correct side.  And you can't open a paper without reading about a mondo idiot who gets hurt or killed at a railroad crossing because they had to try and beat the train to get home in time to watch Joan Rivers salute to porcelain clowns on QVC.

Now tell me, what the hell has happened to us?  A chalk outline is slowly being drawn around common sense and most Americans can't even identify the victim.  We've gone from a nation of practical-minded, can-do Johnny-Get-Your-Guns and Rosie the Riveters to a bunch of sniveling crybabies who can't take it on the chin without running whining to our lawyers.

People, we're so bogged down in procedure, we make Bill O'Reilly look like Henry David Thoreau.... well, almost, anyway.  You couple that with a Barney Frank-like denial of personal responsibility for the pure crap in our lives, and it's no wonder we're in a malasie that makes a bout of Epstein-Barr seem like a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader doing the Watusi after four triple lattes with a Dexatrim chaser.  

There's close to a million lawyers in our country, and many of their livelihoods depend on the fact that we have got no common sense.  My theory is that intelligence, like every other resource on this planet, has a finite amount.  And as the population increases, the intelligence resource is being stretched thinner than the elastic in Oprah's girdle.

For instance, a few years ago some old lady burns herself on a cup of coffee at McDonald's and sues for three million dollars because it's not her fault.  And she wins.  She wins!  We have trouble convicting people who actually confess to murder, but this woman is able to take three mil off of McDodo?  If the judge had any common sense, the trial should have gone like, "Will the plaintiff please rise?  Yeah, it is your fault.  You're stupid.  Coffee is supposed to be hot.  Why didn't you blow on it before you chugged it down like a pledge having his first beer?  Get out of my courtroom, you stupid, stupid woman and take your pin-striped parasite lawyer with you.  Next case."

Common sense has been defined as the quality of good sense and judgment necessary to know the simplest of truths.  Well, nowadays simple truths are sighted about as often as Jon Stewart on the "Beltway Boys."  In the last twenty years we seem to have completely lost the ability to obey the natural laws around us.  We no longer recognize things that are shockingly wrong anymore.  We can't tell up from down, right from left, absolutely one hundred percent not guilty from double-murdering scumbag guilty.  And we are getting stupider.  Are we stupid or were we always this stupid?

I watch these TV evangelists on late-night cable channels and see the stadium full of people giving hard-earned money away to some chrome-head, sweat-covered, barking con man of a clown, dangling eternal salvation in front of these poor bastards like a leash in front of a chihuahua with one kidney.  Well, I'm just shocked at our lack of our common sense.  Clearly, this crook couldn't be more full of shit if he were a Porta Potti at a Garth Brooks concert.  You know which ones I'm talking about, people.


Now, to many people the government is the main foundry of not-know-how, turning the raw ore sent to it by votes and tax dollars into cold-rolled sheets of incompetence, which are then used in every aspect of our societal infrastructure.  Reports on reports of subcommittees of commissions create a sea of paper that could float Rush Limbaugh's butter dish.  All in all, practicality has about as much chance of being served by the federal government as a loud Texan does by a french waitperson... sorry, I mean
french 'freaking' waiter.  

People, we don't need more government, we don't need more colleges; we need more schools that teach common sense.  We don't need any more Einsteins who can tell you the principle of microwave cooking but can't figure out how to plug one in.  I've always said, "Give someone a fish and they'll eat for a day, teach someone not to run a bass lure through their testicle and they will be able to fish for the rest of their life."

Where does common sense come from?  It's slapped into the back of your head by your mother when you try and touch the hot stove.  It's the Buick crest branded onto your forehead for all of eternity beacuse you didn't want the seat belt to wrinkle your new shirt.  Common sense is what gores you in the ass in Pamplona when you dress up like Little Richard and run screaming in front of the bulls down a street that's narrower than  Jimmy Carters' mind.  And speaking of Jimmy, believe me, that will be another story in the future.

And most important, common sense is admitting when you don't have a big closer. I don't have a big closer....... unless you want to re-read the obit again.....  Warph

[Catwoman]

Common sense isn't all that common anymore, that's for sure...It's the one thing that keeps you from making a supreme fool out of yourself for no gain whatsoever.

[Varmit]

Warph...OUTFREAKINSTANDING!!!

btw, if you liked "common sense" you should read "An Inconvenient Book" and "Liberty and Tryanny"

[Catwoman]

I'd rather read "Sense and Sensibility".