[Prev| Next| Index] jwash@tico.com, Raleigh, NC, USA

My groovy essay

Warning! This document may contain words, thoughts, imagery or pictures
that you might find offensive. If you don't want to be offended, don't read
any further. Feel free to Email me to discuss things that I say here, but
if you email me and tell me that something I've said has offended you I'm
going to email you back and remind you that you should have read this
warning. Then I'm going to tell you to get a life.

By John Wash, jwash@tico.com.

I'm John Wash. I'm married to (gasp!) my wife, have two litle dogs (Kyrie
and Foxtrot) and live in Raleigh NC. By day I'm a mild-mannered "Computer
Scientist" (that's Pompous for "programmer") for Research Triangle
Institute. By night I'm a bagpiper and organizer of the Electronic Freedom
March on Washington.

This CDA thing has me up in arms. It's truly amazing that a group of people
can pass laws without having the first clue about the results the laws
could have?

Freedom to me is the natural right to be yourself and do the things you
want to do. I simply cannot understand why other people feel that it is
necessary to decide what is best for you. It's pretty pretentious for
people living hundreds of miles away from you, and certainly never having
met you, to assume that they know better than you the direction your life
should take. I want no part in that.

I'm young but I'm an adult. I've been an adult for several years. I've made
childish mistakes and adult mistakes, and have learned from every one of
them. If I don't make mistakes, I don't learn. And, as long as I don't hurt
you, why can't I go on making mistakes and learning from them? Don't give
me the crap line about nudie pictures or dirty words hurting you. They may
offend you, but heck, lots of things offend me. Loud people offend me.
Stupid arrogant people offend me. Proselytizing religious people offend me.

The difference between me and the people who have a snake in their pants
about making the world safe for decency is simple: I don't pursue campaigns
to ban things that offend me. Because no matter how hard I try to stamp it
out, there will always be loud, stupid self-righteous jerks, and nothing I
can do will make them go away. Sure, in a perfect world we'd all be nice to
each other and nobody would ever get offended. It's not a perfect world,
though, is it? Nope, but with all its problems, the world is a great place
to live, and I'm proud to be a part of it. I enjoy the good parts and try
to ignore the bad parts (at least the ones that don't directly affect me),
so I stay pretty happy most of the time.

What Is Democracy?

Webster's has this to say about democracy:

de.moc.ra.cy \di-'ma:k-r*-se-\ n [MF democratie, fr. LL democratia, fr. Gk
de-mokratia, fr.] de-mos + -kratia -cracy 1a: government by the people; esp
: rule of the majority 1b: a government in which the supreme power is
vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a
system of representation usu. involving periodically held free elections 2:
a political unit that has a democratic government cap 3: the principles and
policies of the Democratic party in the U.S. 4: the common people esp. when
constituting the source of political authority 5: the absence of hereditary
or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

To me democracy is exactly that: a government by the people. We, the
people, are our government. We're getting pretty far away from the original
intent of the United States: except for the native Americans, we're mostly
people who came here to get away from government oppression, or who fought
our way out of oppression. At a time when many of the oppressive
governments of the world are headed full-speed-ahead towards democracy I
find it pretty ironic that our democracy is moving full-speed ahead towards
oppression.

This document is under construction. Please keep checking for the latest
updates. If you're interested, that is.....

John