It's "of" people.

I was on a blog wander when I came upon an article about the WBC and their picketing of Tim Russet's funeral. Which led me, strangely, to an article about a woman, distraught over the fact her father-in-law was in a coma, getting lambasted by atheists for having the effrontery of quoting the WW2 phrase "There are no atheists in foxholes.". Both by the same unfortunate woman.

I'm disturbed. To say the least.

People, the first amendment to the Bill of Rights reads:

CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF; OR ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.

Ratified on December 15, 1791

Now, read it carefully. I'll wait. Read it again. No, really.

Nowhere in there does the word "from" appear. It's freedom of religion. Of, of, of OF, for Shiva's sake already, its of. The word "of" carries a completely different meaning in this context than "from".

From Websters Online Dictionary.

• of
  Pronunciation:
  \əv, before consonants also ə; ˈəv, ˈäv\
  Function:
  preposition
  Etymology:
  Middle English, off, of, from Old English, adverb & preposition; akin to Old High German aba off, away, Latin ab from, away, Greek apo
  Date:
  before 12th century
• 1 a: relating to : about b: in respect to

For those of you who don't want to read that little blurb, "of" in this case means relating to or in respect of. See, I repeated it. That means, in this country we're free to practice or don't practice, believe or don't believe in whatever form of higher being, god, earth spirit, or ceiling cat we want or don't want too. But that also means that our practice ends at the tip of our nose. We don't get to ram our beliefs down anyone else's throats. I'll repeat that so you're sure to hear it.

We don't get to ram our beliefs down anyone else's throats!

We don't get to make everyone practice the same religion or, and this is important too, exclude anyone from celebrating whatever religion they want to just because you've chosen to not have any sort of faith. Those people who are forcing communities to remove any sort of religious connotation from Christmas decoration are just as bad as someone forcing them to hang crosses over their doors. Unfortunately, there's militant nutters on either end of the spectrum out there. These people seem to have missed that day in kindergarten when they taught about infringing on other peoples rights. DON'T DO IT! There, you've made up that day now go out and play on the swings... Nicely.

Let's talk about vision lock.

Vision lock is when you get so focused on something that your field of view narrows down to just that to the exclusion of everything else. Parachute jumpers would get it, they call it ground rush, and forget to pull the rip cord. Ground attack pilots would get it and not pull out of the attack run in time to avoid the ground. Nutters get it on an idea and think that everyone else should be indoctrinated to it and there mustn't be any discussion or dissension on it. People like that caused the holocaust in WW2, the inquisition of the 15th and 16th centuries, or the crusades of the middle ages. And it's imbeciles like that who make it hard, really really hard, to appreciate that 1st amendment freedom we have. These sorts of short minded, short sighted, mentally stunted retards need to be subjected to a dose of their own medicine. No, screw that, not a dose. They should be subjected to it till they've equaled all the suffering they've inflicted on others.

This country was supposedly founded so there would be room for all those differing view point to exist in relative harmony. And by harmony, I don't mean all rose-colored glasses-y with pink ponies. I mean the ability to have open discussions, if that's the thing to do, without the monkey's from the gallery throwing shit all over you. These fringers don't believe that and don't want it to happen. Makes you wonder what sort of society they'd prefer. I hear there are some jack-boots out there running some countries. [Cough]Venezuela[Cough]Iran[Cough].

I'd love to be able to apologize to everyone out there that's been hurt by the WBC-idiots or rabid atheists. But, I'm with you on this. They're reprehensible immature attention whores and really deserve the ass-whoopin they're crying out for.