Fred Phelps, founder/leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, has died.

This is a profound test of our ability to rise above the ignorance and hatred that were part and parcel of his message.

I do not celebrate the death of any human being. I wish he had dealt with whatever demons made him so broken and spoiled inside. I wish he hadn’t wasted the only life he will ever know.

I will celebrate the death of his message, whenever that happens: it hasn’t died with him, and that’s one of the things that makes it impossible for me to experience any joy at his passing. The other is basic human decency and the sometimes complicated and conflicting desire to be a better person than he ever chose to be. But I won’t celebrate his death, as much as the primitive lizard part of my brain begs me to gloat over it.

May he rest, not in peace, but in oblivion: forgotten. May his funeral not be picketed or protested, but instead completely ignored. May his message be reviled wherever it survives, and die the painful death I hope he was spared. May his “religion”, gnarled, twisted branch of a tree that grows in the shape that we nurture it to be, wither and fall.

We have work to do. Let’s not waste our time on those who deserve none of it, other than to learn our lessons about the bell curve of humanity, and move on.

This whole concept of the GOVERNMENT telling us what time it is, and then having us all move forwards and backwards in lockstep at their whim, reeks of socialism. When the Founding Fathers met to write the Constitution, there was ONE time zone in the United States, and it was called THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE STANDARD TIME. And now, almost 300 years later, the government has expanded that FOUR HUNDRED PERCENT in the continental US, not even counting Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Falkland Islands.

WASTEFUL.

Since when does being a U.S. citizen mean we surrender our watches? After all, one of the first requirements of a well-regulated state militia is that everyone can agree on what time to attack. If the Federal Government can change time at their pleasure, then how can a state militia know when to show up to defend their fundamental liberties? “Sorry, local patriot state militia: you’re an hour late and your slot was given to those hippies in Vermont and now you have to marry this gay giraffe while smoking free government-provided pot for your glaucoma AT EXACTLY 10:30 EASTERN COMMIE TIME.”

SOCIALISM. WHAT TIME IS IT BACK IN KENYA, BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA?

I say we go back the principles that founded this great nation, to the ideals of the patriots that fled England and the tyranny of Queen-imposed “Greenwich Mean Time” (the “G” in “GMT” used to mean “Government”). Back then no one agreed on what time it was, and everything worked out fine! The words “Central Standard Time” don’t even appear in the Constitution!

A great man once started a speech with the words: “Four score and twenty years ago…” Not “Four score and twenty years ago at exactly 4:20pm Mountain Standard Time”. Back then you didn’t depend on the government for your handouts of free time, you made your own. People “made time” for each other! That’s where that saying originally comes from! We worked *together* as a country to make time: we didn’t depend on socialist redistribution of time stolen from the rich time-creators to give to those too lazy to get up in the morning at whatever time they want and put in a full day’s work at whatever job they had at the time.

The only “time” we should recognize is the Time to Take Back our Freedom. Throw off your shackles, people! Stop bowing down to Obama’s corporate foreign masters in Switzerland! You have nothing to lose but an extra hour of sleep once a year!

Written by my hand, the 9th of March, 2014, at Flebteen past Hammertime, Dave’s Standard Time.