abra KADAVER

There are a few excuses not to graduate on time:

1. Having a serious illness that requires you to be hospitalized most of the school year, such as cancer. You can’t blame people for being sick unless it’s from smoking or some such detrimental activity.

2. Being pregnant and missing enough time to where you have to make up a few credits. I GENERALLY don’t respect teen moms, but if you really want the kid and are GOING TO TAKE CARE OF IT, that’s fine. Miss a few months and try to make them up. If you can’t, there’s always summer school or spending one extra semester at school.

3. Having mental retardation so severe that you simply cannot learn. Obviously, being born retarded isn’t that person’s fault. We can’t expect them to keep up with regular kids if it’s severe enough.

These are NOT excuses:

Being too busy doing drugs.
Not wanting to get up in the morning.
Being too lazy to do the TINY amount of homework that public high school requires.
Preferring to spend your time with a guy/girl.
And the list goes on.
Passing public high school, on time, is not at all difficult. You barely have to do ANY work. All you really need to do is show up. Somehow, I refuse to believe that getting up in the morning, throwing clothes on and sitting in a fucking desk is hard. Most of the people I’ve seen drop out do so because they’re lazy and stupidly place more emphasis on getting high and spending time with their loser friends (who are most likely dropouts, too) than graduating. I don’t know if these people realize it, but if you don’t show that you have the simple intelligence required to pass high school, future employers are going to LAUGH IN YOUR FACE. And no, I don’t mean the manager at McDonald’s or a janitorial job. I mean like big boy jobs, you know, ones you can support yourself (and the three accidental children you’re destined to have) off of.

“Oh, but I’m being victimized! Everyone’s picking on me, wahhh”.
It’s not hard. Everyone has to do it. Everyone. No one’s picking on you, stop expecting people to believe that you’re so important that people are going out of their way to make things harder for you.

As opposed to justifying your own laziness and saying you dropped out because the teachers were assholes (of course they fucking are, get over it), or you had trouble getting up (quit staying out till four, then), stop being a lazy pussy and just do it. I assure you, simple math and english aren’t hard. Well, as long as you haven’t destroyed your brain with drugs.

Lastly, if you’re so fucking lazy that you can’t graduate or get a job, don’t have fierce integrity for everyone else. If you have a problem with something that someone else is doing, before you condemn them, stop and look at yourself – a dropout, jobless, future-less fucking loser. If you can’t perform those simple tasks, don’t expect ANYONE to take you seriously. You’re nothing.

I agree that protesting at funerals is really disrespectful… just to throw this out there, the Westboro Baptist Church makes me feel sick to my stomach and I sincerely hope that bad things befall them.

However, we must still look at this objectively. Laws should be based on what’s right and wrong, not what people dislike.

It is the constitutional right of those crazy uber-religious freaks, as Americans, to protest (within a certain distance, within regulations, yadayadayada) just as much as it’s your right to have that funeral. I think it’s jacked up that people do it, too, but just because people view something to be jacked up, that doesn’t justify making it illegal. People have the right to peacefully assemble and protest. As long as they don’t cause a disturbance (by what the law defines as a disturbance, NOT by what John Q. Public defines as a disturbance) or harm another person (no, having hurt feelings does not count as being harmed), they’re exercising their right to protest.

Now, I’m not condoning protesting at military funerals. I think it’s very disrespectful and immature. So to anyone who reads this, before you jump down my throat about how your dad or uncle is in the military and you hate me for being objective and blah, blah, blah…read those two sentences.

My point in this is that just because something is disrespectful, or upsetting, or mean-spirited, that does not justify making it unlawful to commit that act. If I want to stand on a street corner with a sign that reads “I HATE RELIGION, AND ANYONE WHO BELIEVES IN GOD”, I’m sure that many people would be very offended by said sign. HOWEVER, that does not justify my government making it illegal for me to stand on that street corner with that sign. If you’re a lawful citizen of the United States of America, you have the right to free speech. There are regulations concerning “time, place and manner restrictions” (such as schools being able to tell students they can’t use profanity), imminent danger (such as the fact that you legally can’t yell “BOMB” at an airport), etc., but there are no clauses that state “You have the right to free speech UNLESS it makes someone angry or upset”.

Laws should be made on the basis of protecting people from being physically harmed, exploited, or otherwise. If we made anything that caused hurt feelings illegal, people wouldn’t be able to move without fear of being arrested. Laws simply cannot be made based on someone being offended.

There are a lot of things that I positively, absolutely, without-a-doubt hate seeing people do. These things include being religiously intolerant, driving slowly in the left lane, standing in the middle of an open walkway, and knocking something over without picking it up. Now, simply because these things cause me to fall into a rage, that does not justify my government, city, state, or national, making them illegal. I realize that these are smaller scale, in some peoples’ eyes, than protesting at a military funeral, but they are of the same vein. Either way, it would be making something illegal on the basis that it upsets someone. By that logic, okay, let’s make atheism illegal. After all, it makes Christians upset.

My point is that just because someone is doing something upsetting or disrespectful, that does not warrant taking away their constitutional rights. America was founded with the idea of liberty. How are we any better than a totalitarian government if we take away the right to protest? First it’ll be that right, then free speech, then another right, then another, and so on.

I sincerely hope to never see a day where the government can EVER take away constitutional rights. Protesting at the funerals may be horrible in some peoples’ eyes, but that does not change the fact that rights are rights. No matter who’s using them.