Posted by
Joyanna Adams on Monday, January 26, 2009 10:26:40 PM
Nobody’s Opinion: “No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of they friends or thine own were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee”….JOHN DONNE
This quote from Ernest Hemingway’s war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, is the perfect example of why I got a big fat F on my first assignment in college English. Too bad Earnest wasn’t the teacher---I might have stayed in college. That unfair “F” was one of the reasons I decided to drop out.
It was my very first day of class. The typical liberal English professor gave us all a four-line poem to read as a first assignment and asked us how we would interpret it. As I read that poem, I realized that my interpretation would be different, depending on the mood I was in when I read it, regardless of the meaning of the author who wrote it at the time. After all, I had no idea what “she,” the writer, was thinking. The poem itself was very nebulous. And how was I to know about this “artist”? I had never heard of her in my great American public school system. I was there to learn, not guess about things.
Guessing doesn’t work in math, and it’s not much good in any other subject either.
The professor that day asked us what WE thought the poem meant…so I wrote in my essay that it would depend on my mood that day. If I was sad, I would take it romantically. If I was in a good mood, I would take it all together different. It also depended on what the person who wrote the poem was thinking that day, because I sure couldn’t tell by the poem. “A rose, is a rose, is a rose”…could mean a rose is a simple fact, or it could be interpreted as an example of global warming, or that a lesbian just likes roses. How do we know unless we know the source of the poem?
The “professor” didn’t take my answer too well, because the next day, she took my essay and tore it apart in front of the whole class, and then proceeded to tell the whole class how stupid I was, and what that author’s poem really meant, according to her.
Still… If I was asked that same question again today, I would say the exact same thing.
Despite the ignorance of that teacher, I learned a very important lesson that day-- that opinions about the meanings of certain written documents vary according to whatever the person at that moment in his or her life, wants it to mean. This happens even in the interpretation of music. The great Arthur Rubenstein once said that whenever he played a piece on piano, he put his whole life and all his many experiences into every single note. Good for music---but not so good when it comes to politicians, who are very good at interpreting “meanings” from historical documents to benefit whatever agenda they are trying to push on us at the moment.
Take the above quote from John Donne. If you were a soldier in Iraq, you would read this, and more than likely apply it to your life…as one soldier working in a unit. Every soldier needs to do his job, and if his friend dies, then a part of him dies with his friend.
If you were a liberal on the other hand, you could very well use this quote as an example of the whole world being part of one big family, and the African child that dies of malaria, affects the Iowa farmer, and therefore that Iowa farmer should feel guilty if he eats a good steak that day in good health.
Yeah, I know---ridiculously absurd.
It’s my nobody opinion that one of the main reasons most liberal newspapers have bit the dust, is that the week after week of global-pity news used to justify the paying out of large sums of taxpayer money to other nations---just got old and repetitious. Just because someone is dying in Africa, doesn’t mean that you should want to die in his place.
Hemingway, as it becomes clear in the novel, was using the Donne poem to put home the theme of his novel. A soldier dying for his friends and “comrades” in arms, for a cause they believed in: the chance for a nation to live as a Republic—a most noble cause if I must say so myself.
The novel’s main character is an American named Robert Jordon, who has gone to join antifascist guerillas fighters during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, something which Hemingway actually reported on.
So… we know the source, therefore the interpretation of John Donne’s words would be from a soldier’s point of view---even a gerbil could follow that logic…agreed?
Now, let’s take another example: Recently we have seen our Constitution being re-interpreted by leftist liberals from Obama to Tom Hanks, who say that somewhere in the Constitution; all gays have the right to marriage, because of the “pursuit of happiness” clause, and “equal” rights. But, if you’ve read anything by our founding fathers, the right to homosexual marriage was not what they meant by either phrase. They founded the nation on their own strong, Christian beliefs, and homosexual marriage is not part of that philosophy.
Sorry, Mr. Hanks, the Mormons are more justified in this than you; on the basis of interpretation…you simply must consider the source.
Tom Hanks, apologized for calling the Mormons un-American, where in fact, it was he that was untrue to the founders and their wonderful document.
If we go on by Tom Hanks’s shoddy interpretations, the Pursuit of Happiness can mean many things. Maybe it would make a certain person happy to have ten wives, and be able to kill any one wife, any time he felt like it. My idea of happiness would be Tom Hanks funding a trip around the world for me!
Quick!-- Someone see if that’s in the Constitution!
No, the real intent of the founders, as we have known for decades, is that in this great country every single person should have the right to justice, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…as long as it doesn’t hurt or interfere with ‘other’ people’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
And as much as gays and lesbians deserve the same rights as every citizen, they impose great unhappiness when too many of us are having to watch them kiss on our TV’s, and know that their sexual preferences are being pushed as perfectly normal sexual behavior to our children in our educational system.
Homosexuality is not “normal” in animals, let alone human’s beings. If it makes them happy, then that’s their right to pursue each other, but they do not have the right to impose it on the rest of us. Maybe Alec Baldwin gets a kick out of exclaiming how he wants to make out with Anthony Hopkins at an awards dinner--but do we have to listen to such nonsense?
You could turn off the show you say? Well, how in the world can we see half this stuff coming? You can’t. Like a bug on your windshield, it just hits you…splat.
And yet, that is what is being done in the name of “equal” rights. And since they can’t rewrite the Constitution without Congress, they just make up their own interpretation of the document, which is: gays have the right to be happily married.
Another liberal misinterpretation is global warming. Today, Obama said that global warming is a fact…because everyone agrees it is.
Good thing he isn’t in that Texas Ice storm in Dallas this morning.
Many thousands of scientists on this planet disagree with Obama’s interpretation of the “facts.” But then again, Obama, as we have seen by his signing executive order after order, is on an island entirely to himself. And that’s too bad for the rest of us---For the bells of liberty will toll for no one, when one man makes himself “King.”
Americans are compassionate people, but killing the hen that laid the golden goose is not the way to heal or help the world, and that's what they plan to do.
So, while the bells are tolling in many a gay liberal mind tonight, to this nobody, some of it seems most of those bells are simply cracked, and beyond repair.
For Whom Does the Bell Toll, Hemingway asked?
Well, speaking for myself, whenever another bell of liberty from the Republic of America dies: whenever a liberal politician or actor takes our founding documents and interprets them in whatever mood they happen to be in at the moment…leading us further down the fascist roads… The Bell Tolls for Thee...and nobody me.