[With this article we begin a series of personal credos, or credae, or whatever the plural is, by a variety of contributors. To inaugurate this feature–and because today is both Uncle Sam Day and National Snack a Pickle Day–we went out onto Ventura Boulevard and dragged some numbnuts in off the street and asked him, “What do you believe?”–Ed.]
I believe the United States of America is the greatest country that ever lived.
I believe the U.S. is so great because of the freedom we have to be great, as well as the freedom we have not to be bothered by other countries, which aren’t great. They think they are great, but we know they’re really not. This is called “American Exceptionalism,” which means “No country is great except America.”
I believe that every man, woman, and child is free to practice the race, creed, or color of his choice.
I believe that we are a Judeo-Christian nation, and that is why people of faith go around being persecuted all the time. If you are a Christian and you say, “Merry Christmas,” the government forces you to bake wedding cakes for unsavory people. But if you are an atheist and you say, “Happy New Year,” the government gives you a Nobel Prize or something.
I believe that the Bible is the word of God. It is true that a lot of the Bible is boring. This means that God is boring. I believe that is okay. He’s God. He can be whatever He wants. I believe that the answer to the question, “Can God be so boring that he puts Himself to sleep?” is “Yes.”
I believe that Native Americans aren’t really Americans, because they’re native, which means that when they used to live here, it wasn’t even called “America.” It was probably called something like “Land of the Native Americans Before America Was Invented,” but in Indian.
I believe that immigrants aren’t Americans, because they come from foreign countries. Everybody else is an American, except Muslims, because they’re not Christians. It is true that Jews are not Christians, but I believe that that’s okay, because Jews are like Christians’ wisecracking kid brothers.
I believe that entrepreneurs are job creators, and that if only everyone would get out of their way, they would create jobs for us, so that we could finally afford to buy the things that the entrepreneurs are creating. Of course, the reason we are in their way is, we can’t afford to move, because we have no jobs. That is why, when they ask a football player who has just won a championship where he’s going to go, he says, “Disneyland.” He knows he has a job, so he can afford to go somewhere else, and get out of the way of the job creators who created his job.
I believe that the children are our future. However, sadly, most of our children do not have children of their own—which means that they have no future. But if our children have no future, then that must mean that our future is to have no future. I believe that having no future sounds terrible but is, or will be, actually not so bad. First, that time will never come, because we have no future. And second, because no matter how long you wait, at any given moment it is always now.
I believe that our children are our most precious resource, so we must manage them very carefully. It might, for example, be a good idea to store a number of them in a secure facility (in, say, a hollowed-out mountain somewhere) against a time when we might not have as many children as we do today.
I believe that an armed society is a polite society. That is why the Second Amendment is the most important amendment of them all. I believe that every American has the right to keep and bear arms in order to protect himself from every other American—who, remember, is also armed. This is how the Founding Fathers wanted us to live, so we have to live this way.
I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. Originally that one man and one woman were Adam and Eve, but that was then and this is now. I don’t know who they are now, but I believe they’re “out there” and married.
I believe that life is for living, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is probably—or at least should be—dead.
http://tinyurl.com/p7mmo9f
Joe Penniston
