Teaching someone a lesson — NOT
If I had to pick one article to recommend for today’s reading, it would have to be Dennis Prager’s explanation about why voting Democrat would truly put the country on the wrong track. I would go slightly further and say that we have to guard against the same outcome — a Democratic victory — as a result of voting against McCain, whether by abstaining or casting a protest vote (for Barr, perhaps). McCain isn’t perfect by a long shot, but he is so much better than Obama that the two truly cannot be compared. And on the subject of “teaching people (including Presidential candidates) a lesson” I have a little story.
One of my father’s most Germanic traits was that he put people in their place. If a sales clerk offended his sense of how sales clerks were to operate, he’d give her a public and humiliating lecture telling her what he thought she ought to know. Same with teachers, and waiters, and anyone who deviated from his proper German standards about behavior.
Dad had the same attitude on the road. If someone’s driving offended him, my Dad would take steps to let that driver know. His favorite technique was one for dealing with tailgaters. If he realized that someone was on his tail, he’d slow down to “teach them a lesson,” despite my Mom’s increasingly panicked pleas that he just get out of the way of the crazy driver.
Of course the inevitable happened: My Dad, in the midst of “teaching that tailgater a lesson,” got rear-ended by said tailgater. The insurance company paid, so it wasn’t a total loss, but it was my Dad who had the whiplash and lost his beloved car. I learned then that my Dad’s “lesson” approach had no effect on the tailgaters who managed to get stuck behind him, but it certainly hit my Dad back — and hard.
This is not the time to “teach McCain or Republicans a lesson.” This is the time to quit moaning and groaning, to recognize that a democratically operated primary process yielded a candidate most agreeable to the broad spectrum of Republicans, and to make sure that Barack Obama does not take the White House.
