I was taught as a child that most people never realize “how uncommon common sense is.” We’re living in a time when common sense seems to have been tossed out, allowing misinformation, duplicity, and the falsehood that we can change reality just by saying something is true. All manner of untruth, disinformation, and nonsensical thought permeate the air. A couple of examples:
Gender identity:
Myth: The radical left promotes the concept that we can be whatever gender we want to identify with, just because we want to be it. Gender reassignment is a permanent surgical/medical change, which for the most part is irreversible. Or we can be transgender, which I understand means I can identify with whichever gender I want to be, but not necessarily commit myself to a permanent gender reassignment. The myth is that, in doing so, one can become a different gender than that of their birth.
Common Sense: There are only two genders when children come out of the womb: We’re either male or female. That’s the way God in heaven made us. No surgical change can alter the fact that we’re either born male or female. As a male, I can be surgically altered to be female or vice versa but it never alters or denies the fact that I will always be a male, and a woman will always be a female.
Critical Race Theory:
CRT promotes the concept that the United States of America is inherently racist in function, and was intentionally founded to maintain social, economic and political inequities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.
Myth: That the United States of America was and continues to be socially constructed to allow whites to oppress and exploit people of color. It supports class distinction and is designed to marginalize and divide American society and is a Marxist-oriented philosophy.
Common Sense: Nothing is further from the truth. While America had its own trouble with slavery, it’s simply a lack of education, and utter nonsense, for anyone to contend that America was founded on the premise of one race oppressing another. Any study of history confirms that over the centuries prior to the founding of America, most nations around the world indulged in slavery. History also shows that it was tribalism in Africa that generated most of the slave trade. African tribes made a business out of kidnapping men, women and children from other tribes and selling them to slave traders for profit. The reality is that slavery was eradicated from American society during its first hundred years of existence. That can’t be said for all nations around the world.
Minority Oppression:
Myth: The left is promoting the concept that minorities in American society are actively being oppressed by the “ruling white class.”
Common Sense: The United States of America is the freest, most open society in the world. The Emancipation Proclamation in the 1860s and the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s eradicated the ability of any part of society to oppress another. Whether we are African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American, Native American, Caucasian, Middle Eastern, or Pacific Islander, we are all citizens of the United States of America with equal freedom to pursue our dreams and become whatever we want to be. People of every ethnicity prove that every day as they excel in what they do and what they want to become, regardless of the economic and social circumstances of their birth or the color of their skin. Ethics, integrity, intelligence and the will and drive to succeed exist in all of us.
The Constitution of the United States is founded on the principle that color or ethnicity should not exist in determining one’s path and potential life. My father taught me this truth, that “condemnation …. prior to investigation …. is the truest and purist form of ignorance.” Far too many people are shouting their condemnation, having never investigated and studied history to know the truth.
It should be noted that it’s the Constitution that provides all those who denigrate, criticize and condemn America the freedom and absolute right to do so. They seem oblivious to the fact that these actions they can do so freely and openly here, would put them in jail, or even get them killed, in many countries around the world. Try that kind of protest in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Yesterday, July 4, 2021, our beloved nation celebrated its 245th birthday. It was heartening to see millions of Americans from all walks of life and in all parts of the country joyfully celebrate the nation’s birthday. It proves to me that common sense is alive and well in the American people. That most of us don’t buy in to all the nonsensical, shrill voices from the ultra-left or right.
The problem is we need to be actively involved in repudiating the disinformation and nonsense being disseminated by the radical elements in our society. We need to be active in our town councils, at our school boards, with our state and federal representatives, taking a stand for what’s true and right and what makes common sense. We’ve heard it many times, “All that’s required for evil to prevail is for good men and women to do nothing.”
It’s time to actively take a stand for American values and common sense!
Bob Dorris Jr.
Thousand Oaks
