It's Just One Outrage After Another

Every weekday, Neal Boortz posts his "Reading Assignments"—basically a quick overview of the various ways liberals are attempting to destroy the world. Standard stuff, really, but every so often a headline reaches shocking new levels of outrageousness. Here are just a few of the recent crises to which I was thankfully alerted:

Is "Happy Birthday" Song Insensitive?

A ban on singing "Happy Birthday" lasted all of four days at Chesterfield Elementary School in Missouri after angry parents bombarded the school with complaints.

"Singing is not permitted due to the sensitivity of all student beliefs," wrote Principal Jodi Davidson in a letter to parents dated August 13.

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Teacher Assigns Students To Plan Terror Attack

Students at an Australian school were asked to plan a terrorist attack "to kill the MOST innocent civilians in order to get your message across" as part of a class assignment, Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported Wednesday.

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Georgia Man Wins Right to Keep Flying American Flag at Home

A Georgia man has won the right to fly the American flag outside his home after getting sued for failing to remove the 16-foot flagpole from his front lawn, MyFoxAtlanta.com reported.

It's (almost) always the same. Lunatic does something loony. Reasonable people complain. Other reasonable people in positions of authority step in and do something reasonable. No lasting damage is done. Missouri schoolchildren can once again sing "Happy Birthday," Australia schoolchildren won't be required to plan a terror attack, and that guy in Georgia can adorn his property with the biggest damn American flag he can find.^[1] The system works.

The only real purpose of these stories, then, is to get people all riled up. To be clear, these are perfectly appropriate reasons to get riled up (except maybe the flag thing—assuming the rule in question was content-neutral and was agreed to voluntarily). But, somehow, the outrage inevitably takes the form of "those stupid liberals are at it again" and "stuff like this wouldn’t happen if conservatives ran the world."

Internet commenters being representative of the public at large,^[2] here's a sampling of what I'm talking about:

Another example of the leftwing loons to the rescue.

What in Gods name are we letting America become in the hands of the Liberals. The PC is killing our American Spirit…

This is the real danger of a liberal; no real understanding of human nature; no way to diagnose problems; no way to thus generate WORKABLE solutions.

Just have to adore those professional liberals and their compassion towards others. For them live is a simple creed of do as we say or else…

Man is this ruling gonna tee off the liberals who hate this country and its flag.

C'mon people grow up! DO NOT let the athieasts and liberals RUIN OUR FREEDOMS!

Who cares which comments go with which article, they're mostly interchangeable. And who are these people even arguing with? There are no dissenting opinions here. I suppose the voices in their heads—the ones telling them that anytime something ridiculous happens it must be a liberal's fault—have taken over, and that's all that matters.

You know, I'm not clear on the specifics of the Liberal Plot to Take Over the World, but if this is it—occasionally doing something stupid, then undoing it as soon as the complaints start coming in—I really don't think we have anything to worry about.

1. Subject to "any reasonable restriction pertaining to the time, place, or manner of displaying the flag…" I don't know what constitutes a reasonable restriction on flagpole height, but apparently the line will have to be drawn somewhere north of 16 feet.

2. There was a time when that would've been clearly sarcastic. Now, I'm not so sure.