Want to know what starting a war on lies and getting away with it because nobody has the guts to stand up and yell stop does to a nation?
Want to discuss what happens when a country that prides itself on a bill of rights, starts torturing people?
Care to talk about what happens when greed takes over where morals were lost?
How about what happens when adults start to believe their own lies because its more convenient?
It was bad when Americans took to the streets and celebrated the death of Bin Laden a mere 8 months ago. To me, celebrating murder was something only our enemies would ever do as they had allegedly done on the morning of September 11th when my husband was killed.
What is perhaps even more unsettling is to wake up this morning and witness the young adults at Penn State University rioting in the streets about the firing of Joe Paterno.
Joe Paterno is a man who turned a blind eye to the brutal rape of a 10-year-old boy and perhaps several others for years in exchange for greed, reputation, or even worse to win a few more football games.
I'm no moral compass. But I am a mom. And an American. So I take the actions of those Penn State kids personally and as a sobering reflection.
And I am ashamed.
What has become of us and our priorities in the past ten years?
We have so clearly lost our way.
And, I ask, where have all our leaders, our coaches, and our parents gone?
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Rabbi Joshua Hess: The Final Chapter of Joe Paterno's Legacy
I am relieved that in the SF Bay Area, the sportscasters at 95.7 were pushing for Joe Paterno to resign immediately, ever since this horrible news that he had known about it came out. They were asking how he could possibly go out and coach on Saturday, both before and after Paterno said he'd retire at the end of the season. John Lund and Roxy Bernstein correctly stated this morning that despite what most of the rest of the country is saying, it is all about those abused kids and NOT about the firing of so-called great Joe Paterno.
As a former middle school Physical Education teacher and coach for 37 years, I was a huge Paterno admirer for what I thought were the values he taught his teams. No more. He obviously didn't live by those so-called values himself, and furthermore perpetuated what I consider to be the most heinous crime of all, pedophilia.
Most of the students there now don't really know this criminal who betrayed innocent children and youth, because they weren't there when he did those horrible things.
They only know that JoePa embodies THEIR school. He made his guys get good grades if they wanted to play, and has headed the team and been the soul of the school for longer than most of their PARENTS have been alive.
They're angry that these terrible things have stained their school and their JoePa, and they don't want to relinquish the squeaky-clean image of either.
It is possible to be enraged that a career symbolizing a school is ending, tarnished, like this while also being enraged that such evil was done under his nose and purview.
You act as if these students are supporting the man who committed the crimes, when in reality they are expressing their frustration that somebody they revere is being dethroned for something he might have known about in part--because to them, it isn't conceivable that he knew more than the least-evil portion of what happened, or knew that it continued.
They are acting out their anger at having those horrible evils compounded by a good man doing nothing, and also their anger at what THEY see as an injustice of this inaction they never saw overshadowing a life full of great actions they've seen in full.
Judge them as human, and as infuriated as you are that the man they judged in only one way has proven to have more to him than just great deeds or foul inaction.
These are students who riot even when they WIN. They're not demonstrating for a man who allowed a pedophile to continue to abuse kids, they're standing up for a man who did so many other things that people like you refuse to see because he was weak when courage really counted.
You're calling innocent bystanders disgusting for not wanting to see their hero's flaws, when you refuse to see anything but those flaws. You're just as wrong as they are.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!