Who Killed Common Sense?

I am sorry to inform you that Common Sense in America has been killed and laid to rest in an unmarked grave. There were few mourners at the funeral. There had been indications that it was in danger of dying or being assassinated in recent years. No one knows who fired the final shot; however, following are indications that Common Sense finally bit the dust.

An elementary school principal was angered that fourth and fifth-grade girls defecated on the floor and toilet seats and left a bag of excrement in the restroom. A sane person wonders how normal kids would  have thought to do such things, but the principal, an adult, I remind you, was without common sense also. The following day he forced the students to put on gloves and look inside a soggy bag of human feces and urine. When faced with the incident, he agreed it “was not the best thing to do.” Why didn’t he just require them to clean up their mess? That would sure teach them a lesson.

Common Sense was missing again when a ten-year-old boy in Hilton Head, SC was suspended for having a broken pencil sharpener! Terrorism, you know.

A preschool boy was suspended for bringing a toy gun to school. It was four inches and on a key chain! Terrorism, again. Then, four Kindergarten students were suspended for “shooting” each other with their fingers! When I was young, every boy would have been suspended and jailed as terrorists because we all “shot”

with an extended finger and used our thumb as a hammer. That’s what normal boys do.

Recently, I walked out of the Ringgold, GA post office and saw a small boy sitting in a truck and I “shot” him with my finger and thumb. Then I realized some federal thug could accuse me of being a terrorist! Yes, too bad about the death of Common Sense. And it’s too bad that a band of barbarians who can’t even spell freedom or Common Sense runs our schools and nation.

But it gets worse. A second grader was suspended for drawing stick figures of a “man” with a gun! Note that the kid did not have a stick weapon, but his drawing of one!

Another Kindergarten boy was suspended for kissing a girl! There again, I would have spent my school years at home in perpetual suspension since I was the Don Juan of Wayne County. Well, I thought I was.

A nine-year-old Arizona student was suspended for a “hate crime” because he used the term, “brown people”! I sure miss Common Sense.

School kids were forbidden to exchange Christmas cards in one school because of "environmental and moral" grounds.

Schools removed valedictorian honors because such honors “promote unhealthy competition.” What do school officials think kids are going to face as soon as they leave school with a diploma (that many cannot read)? As they hit the streets they will face, are you ready? Competition--for the rest of their lives.

Contraband candy has led to big trouble for an eighth-grade honors student in Connecticut when the kid purchased a bag of Skittles from a classmate. The boy was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner, and suspended for a day after purchasing the candy. A school representative said the school system banned candy sales in 2003 “as part of a district wide school wellness policy.”

A Florida elementary school accused a 9-year-old student of selling drugs for sharing vitamin C cough drops with friends.

The parents of two Bronx preschoolers charge that their kids were tossed out of class and handcuffed by a school-safety officer for refusing to take a nap!  The school official told the kids they would never see their parents again. He told the kids, “You know what happens when you don't go to sleep in there?… When you go to jail, you're not going to have no fun, no TV, no toys.” At times, it’s a matter of sanity not Common Sense.

It is not only the U.S. school system that has an absence of Common Sense, but also the criminal justice system. A judge decided a child custody case by flipping a coin and later ordered a woman to drop her pants twice. It seems both judge and defendant had no sense. Why would a woman obey such a stupid order? Have we become so craven that we think we must obey every stupid order from an official? It is not only Common Sense that has been killed!

Police arrested a 28-year-old man on a cruelty to animals charge after he yelled an obscenity at a police dog in a patrol vehicle, according to an arrest affidavit. The obscenity resulted in “causing (the dog’s) behavior to become overloaded, tormenting the dog,” the affidavit stated.

A Colorado city ordered no red and green lights could be used during the Christmas season, oops, during the “holiday” season because they are too religious. However, white lights were permissible. Every store and home in the city should disobey that ordinance.

Another city decreed that “Santa” could not say, “ho, ho, ho” but “ha, ha, ha” since it might scare children and might be confused with slang for prostitute!

Obviously, Common Sense is dead as proved in the public school system and the justice system but church leaders have proved it is dead. A Primitive Baptist Church in Kansas pickets funerals of dead soldiers! I’m Independent Baptist, but then we also have the Good, the Bad and the Ugly as do all religious groups.

H.L. Mencken’s vicious statement comes to mind: “The only really respectable Protestants are the Fundamentalists. Unfortunately they are also palpable idiots.” Mencken did not know that non-Catholics are not all Protestants since Baptists did not come out of the Catholic Church because we were already here and suffering persecution by the sword, the whip, the fire, and the wheel for hundreds of years.

I wonder if those Kansas Baptists are even Christians. If they are, they are stupid Christians. Moreover, we know for sure they don’t have any Common Sense.