Bis hierher und nicht weiter*

(*lit. "to this point and no further")

What's going on in this world could have been predicted quite easily by anyone who was paying attention 40 years ago. (And some of us were!) There is no longer an accepted standard of right and wrong. "Right" is whatever you "feel" like doing; "wrong" is whatever you happen to not like. One's friends can do no wrong, and one's enemies can do no right.

The only rights you have are the rights that the loudest voices deign to allow you to have. And any wrongs you suffer must be tolerated No... Matter... What.

And discipline? Gone the way of the dodo bird. Kids won't sit still in school? Well, that's not a lack of discipline! Heaven forfend that we make the little darlings feeeeeeel bad. Just give 'em the latest drug du jour and let 'em sit there drooling on themselves. What little discipline there is, is directed at the wrong people. (Check out your local Government Indoctrination Center school's "zero tolerance" policy.) No wonder children have no respect for authority. In order to be respected, one must be respectable.

I remember a couple of guys I worked with in Germany in the early '70s. "Stan" and "Ollie" knew each other from "back home" and the Stan told me a rather shocking tale about Ollie. It seems that Ollie was forever being picked on in school. Because he was a rather large lad, he was not only reluctant to push back, but was understandably concerned about being branded a bully if he did. One day, though, Ollie snapped. He picked up one of those chair-and-desk sets and hitting one of his tormentors with it. Next thing you know, he's in the principal's office, where the principal wanted to know why he had hit the other kid with the chair-and-desk set. His only explanation? "I couldn't find anything bigger." Had The Powers That Be had enough guts to handle things properly, it would most likely never have come to this. But they rarely do.

As the years have gone by, we've seen more and more of this. Some poor schmo gets picked on at work, and then gets blamed for being the victim. He finally snaps and says the "wrong" thing and next thing you know, he's out of a job. And people wonder why disgruntled former employees wind up coming back and shooting up the place. Not hard to figure out, really.

The worst of it all is that our basic goodness is being used against us. More and more, we're being forced to accept the most unacceptable behavior, all in the unholy name of "tolerance". And yet, those who would force us to toerate the intolerable are themselves the most intolerant. They brook no dissent.

But where do we get to draw the line in the sand? When do we get to say "to this point and no further"? Do we even have the courage? There are limits to everything. The one small ray of hope lately has been the Tea Parties. People are finally saying "Enough is enough!" and getting noticed. We all need to join in that chorus and put an end to political correctness, official cowardice, incompetence, and all the rest of the malfeasance in our society.

It's the only hope we have for our country.