Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

The Sound of Silence

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(Written for a Public Law & Judicial Process [GOVT301] class at George Mason University.)

There are few issues as uselessly contentious as the issue of silence. What I mean, of course, is legislation which requires that school children observe a “minute of silence” during school hours. The issue in question is whether or not statutes which require minutes of silence violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which guarantees that the people are free from government establishment of religion and government limitation of the practice of their own religion.

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Moment of Silence Speech

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(Written and presented for a Public Law & Judicial Process [GOVT301] class at George Mason University.)

(open with ~ 20-30 seconds of silence)

My opponents would have you believe that I just trampled your Constitutional rights. They would tell you that my giving you a little quiet time—quiet time which you (point) might have used to write poetry, you (point) might have used to think about your boy/girlfriend, and you (point) might have used to pray—constitutes government establishment of religion.

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The Sin of Silence

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I believe there are two major types of wrongs that people commit in this world. There are passive wrongs, and there are active wrongs. While that separation makes great material for philosophical debate, the fact remains that both types are exactly what they say they are—wrongs.

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Shades of Grey

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Billy Joel once wrote a refrain, “Shades of grey wherever I go / The more I find out the less that I know / Black and white is how it should be / But shades of grey are the colors I see.”

Many of us, at least on some level, choose to see the world in black and white. I’m not talking on a racial level—I’m saving that for a later rant—but rather on a metaphoric level. Many people choose to see their opinion on an issue as the right and only valid argument, and everybody else is just pissing in the wind.

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Unnaturally Repressed Young Adults

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We live in an odd, odd world. I’ve said it a million times, I’ll likely say it a million more. Despite all of our studies, all of our psychologists and psychiatrists, all of our open minded liberal attitudes, all of our political discourse and newfound naturalist tendencies, I have discovered that our society is by its nature creating monsters of repressed—and/or dangerously unrepressed—balls of human mental deformity.

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.