Redunculous

    No, it is not a spelling error … really. And, no, it’s not a word … yet. It’s just one of my specialties. A word coined to help find the appropriate emotion to attach to a situation. This, the latest of my installments to the Webster’s dictionary, is the combination of the words redundant and ridiculous. I did this all by myself. For some reason, Webster keeps sending back my offerings of literary coinage and asked that I please stop, as it has caused the great patriarch of the book, Noah Webster himself, to turn incessantly in his grave. I guess that would be rather unsettling.

    But I like the word. It has an essence to it— the essence of economy. Oh yes, I economized. We all have to nowadays. I took the two most prevalent manifestations of the liberal mind, redundant and ridiculous behavior. I combined them into one word and, now, I can respond to them both at once. I … I … feel so focused.
    And quite timely, I might add, because we have had a slew of redunculous behavior swirling around the state of Maine. We just had Senate President Justin Alfond make a speech assuring state workers an increase in the pensions and wages, while the those in private sector, who pay for those wages and pensions with their taxes, can barely put food on the table for their families. This was a follow up to his speech attacking private schools. The Senate President doesn’t seem to be fond of the private sector.
    Mr. Alfond suffers from the liberal illusion that Maine people have an unlimited supply of revenue and that we work at our jobs simply to give it to him to disperse amongst his government allies. I have to agree with the great conservative apologist Thomas Sowell who asked, “Why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take someone else’s money.” Alas, I fear Alfond and his allies think it’s good policy; that is, if you look at the budget they passed. Tax increases to pay for those government employee raises.
    Strange, Maine is looking at a $58 million surplus for the closing fiscal year, before these tax increases. So, why, Mr. Alfond, would you want to increase taxes on a struggling economy when you don’t need to? Oh, is that my “greedy” old self, wanting to keep my money in my wallet for my family to use. I’m just so greedy that way.
    That leads me to another issue to be resolved. Recently, I criticized those activists who seem bent on telling people what to do in their own backyards. I feel very strongly about the sanctity and privacy of a person’s private lands. I have been rebuked by some of those activists, saying that if I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do in my backyard then I shouldn’t criticize public government officials.
    Let me try to help and clarify the issue. There is a huge difference between private and public issues. I do not criticize any official on what he does in his private home and on his private lands. I have, and will continue to do so, criticized public officials on the actions or inactions in the public tax-funded sector. It is the taxpayer’s job, since our dollars fund their public decisions, to critique the exercise of their representative duties.
    Secondly, I have been admonished that, because I am a Christian, I should not publicly criticize or rebuke public officials. This individual obviously did not read the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple, nor has he read the accounts of Paul the Apostle rebuking Roman leaders to their very face, also of rebuking Peter to his face.
    The idea that I should abdicate my God-given liberties for the sake of some contrived sense of propriety and allow myself to be relegated to the doormat of society as a reflection of my faith has no intellectual, Constitutional or, for that matter, Biblical merit. The very conception of such an idea is utterly and unequivocally redunculous.

Andy Torbett
Atkinson