First, a digression:
Many regular readers of this blog know me by now; I am the kind of guy that judges a person by their character, and I try to make an effort to get beyond the superficial when I meet someone new. Why do I go out of my way to say this? Because some strays to this blog may think: Uh-oh, confederate lover, must be a slavery longing racist closet KKK kinda guy.
Uh, not really. If you only knew me...
When I teach my kids about bad words (I mean unacceptable language, swearing, etc.), whether it is in response to something we saw on TV, or what another kid said in school, I don't shy away from actually saying the word. I say the word out loud (usually making the kid cringe, and say "ooooh, dad, you said a bad word") when I teach about what they mean and why we don't use them.
I don't believe in shying away from reality when I try to teach my kids about anything. They get the bad words, the descriptions of bad things in history, gore and all, so that they understand what they are up against. For some reason, some people, like my wife, think that if you don't talk about a subject in front of a child, they won't be tainted by it, or they will have a much happier childhood, or something like that. Nice sentiment, but my job as a father is to prepare my kids for taking care of themselves, not to keep them anesthetized. That means allowing them to hear about reality from me before it hits them in the face.
A second digression:
I loathe politically correct speech. I am a product of my culture, which was conservative and anglophilic. I grew up in the seventies, and went to college in the eighties. When I hear someone pushing PC language, or making a point of correcting someone else, it sets off my inner resistance to external force.
I make silly references to politically correct speech when I talk to other people, calling the cover to the sewer a "person-hole cover" instead of man-hole cover, and I will call anything that has the word "black" in it "African-American" (like calling a blackout an african-american-out). The PC crowd at my college was a bunch of spitting self righteous liberal bullies, kind of like someone who looks like a hippie but acts like a brownshirt or member of the Komsomol, so I resent it to this day. But I am no racist.
So with those digressions to start, I wanted to talk about the term, "wingnut".
I resent a label being applied to myself and people who think like me by an outsider.
You've heard Olbermann, Schultz, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow all refer to right wingers, especially Constitutional conservatives like Ron and Rand Paul as well as tea party folks "wingnuts". Basically, anyone they disagree with is bound to be labeled a wingnut eventually.
A wingnut, according to our intellectual betters on the Left, is an epithet for a person who espouses radical right wing political views.
Well,
The British called the colonials Yankee Doodle dandies, and the colonials embraced the term, and called themselves Yankees with a sense of pride.
Eventually we called the Brits "Limeys" and they called us "Yanks" during the Second World War, which were basically terms of affection (I guess it depended on the person's tone when they said it).
Haters of black people called blacks "niggers" in the past, but blacks decided to turn the tables and started calling each other "nigger" and condemned anyone who wasn't black for using the word, so they made the word everyone now calls the "N" word their own.
Haters of homosexuals called them "fags," "faggots", "queers", gays, etc, and now, you guessed it, now that's what they call themselves, and they say it with pride.
I am proud to think of my ancestors as "secesh", even though it started out as a derogatory term. I know they had the right idea.
When Obama was elected, my heart embraced the idea of secession, and I felt that I mentally seceded from the current Statist goverment. Not because we have the first black man in the white house (Please don't think it dear, dear Jeanene Garofalo; it would cut me deep if you thought ill of me). I seceded mentally because we have yet another national socialist Statist in the white house. I couldn't care less if he is a black community organizer from the slums of Chicago or a another lilly white Yale Skull and Bones member who gets invited to the Bilderberg Group meeting every year.
So I say with pride: I am a wingnut. A Ron Paulian, tenther, threeper, gun-toting, religious, small government, free market, sound currency supporting, Confederate flag waving, States' Rights believing, unconstitutional federal law nullifying, secesh, Austrian economic school fellow traveller, dyed-in-the-wool wingnut.
Why not call ourselves "wingnuts"? I like wingnuts.
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| Lefty loosey, righty tighty (or, Lefty looney, Righty righty, as the case may be) | |
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