Way back in this post (right at two years ago) I teasingly predicted that Apple was going to have to finally depart from “big cat” nicknames for OS X or else things were going to get silly. Of course, that prediction panned out. The upcoming version of the operating system due out this fall is to be code-named “Mavericks” (which is to say, “gets results by refusing to play by the rules”). The word is one of the few that is full-blown American in origin: Its coinage here was a result of the independent, think-outside-the-box attitude of an 1800’s Texan named Samuel Maverick.
Words completely indigenous to the U.S.A. are rare because our language is so full of pre-existing English words from the U.K., which was already filled with words imported from other languages, including Latin, French, Spanish, German, etc. Of note: way back when our Continental Congress voted on what was to be our official language, only one vote carried English over German. How different might things have been when World Wars I & II occurred, if Americans were speakers of German instead of English? I shudder to think. While the Nazi’s eugenics program was running amok, we (here in the U.S.A.) already had our own eugenics program hard at work sterilizing minority women, often without their consent or knowledge. Had we also been Germanic in language, we might well have favored the Nazis instead of siding against them.
Our nation has made many right choices (such as fighting to end slavery), but we have made many wrong choices too, such as with the issues of slavery (prior to our war to end the practice) and abortion. There is no guarantee we would have sided against Germany otherwise.
There is a difference between a practice being legal and it being lawful, or right. Abortion is not lawful but it is legal. Furthermore, so-called same sex marriage is not lawful, but in some places is now legal. Just as the SCOTUS was wrong “in its infamous decision in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), [when it] ruled that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in its territories” so also the SCOTUS is wrong now in its ruling that the Fed and the State of California lack the power to prohibit so-called same sex marriage. We would do well to remember that just because the courts rule a certain way does not mean it is right or lawful. Truth is transcendent of the wrong decisions of rulers, courts, and parliaments, etc.
Regarding issues such as abortion and so-called same sex marriage, we can only pray that America will eventually right herself as she did with the issue of slavery, and that such a righting does not involve a bloodbath beyond the one already occurring with murdered babies and women who are harmed and dying younger (long before their time) due to complications because of their abortions, including greatly magnified risk of breast cancer and other ailments. The cost added to our healthcare fiasco due to the increased number of pre-term births, caused by prior abortions, is staggering. Questionable research data indicating that wide-spread acceptance of so-called same sex marriage will not be detrimental for the children raised in such homes is being exposed as bogus. More solid data reveals the opposite is true. Marriage between one man and one woman is “America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty.”
When the prevailing “rules” say that human babies are not human persons until some time after they’re born, we’re no more right than when we considered black humans to not be persons. When the prevailing “rules” say that we as a society must redefine crucial words, such as marriage, for the sake of not offending someone who demands that their deviant practice be officially condoned, we’re no more right than when we sterilized women without their knowledge and consent. When the rules are wrong, you must go against the tide, against the rules. In order for America to ever become righteous and get back on the right path, we’re all going to have to be mavericks, which is to say, people who “get results by refusing to play by the rules.” We must strive against the foul tide of this hour. We must do our best to speak out on the real war on women (namely, abortion) and the dual-factors of a real war against babies and children (namely, abortion and so-called same sex marriage). Before we can pray “God bless America” we need to pray “God help America… God save America.”
