Republicans mock freedom and American history

.... then as a jewish state worked i offer to give up christmas. costs the state a fortune and doesn't mean anything special to me ;)

not a-nonymous. there's a big difference.

If you need to know who I am, I will tell you. But what you really need to know is that I am the same person who posted other things over time, and so you can be fairly sure that you are dealing with one person, and somewhere in those postings, if I had some biases or, you know, personal interest in things, that would be clear.

You, on the other hand, could be any of the regular posters, or someone with a personal interest in this matter, or just an agitator. You've nothing in the game and next time you come around as a-nonymous, we won't even know it's you. The distinction between "pseudonymous" and "anonymous" is nontrival.

Further, the American patriots you want to celebrate often wrote pseudonymously. Poor Richard, Common Sense, Algernon Sidney and Clarendan come to mind readily. By invoking their names (look them up if you can't convert to their real names) I do not mean to place myself on the pedestal with them, only to say that this is nothing new, and to point out the plain irony of the dueling complaints that you apparently placed together, deliberately, in the space of your latest exposition.

Think it over. I'd say more, but this is not on topic.

Now, despite your invoking the ol' ad hominem, I'll read the rest of your note and perhaps respond to it.

OK I've read it.

I didn't grow up in MA and though I've lived in the Commonwealth (I know to say that, at least) for quite a number of years and have paid my share of taxes here and suffered my share of the indignities that go along with living here ("paid dues" in some sense, some would say)... I really don't know what to say and wonder if you would say I'm not entitled to an opinion anyway, as a non-native-born. I think that came up in another thread not too distant from this one. Or maybe it's even here. I didn't look.

However, I cannot help but think that the idea that taking a day off work to stay home, watch game shows, paint, drink, or otherwise party, somehow "honors" the long-dead, seems nonsensical to me. If kids were IN school that day, they could attend (and probably stage) an education-related activity, letting them connect to that history, rather than spending it at home with parents who probably don't know much about it because they were home with THEIR parents on the day, last generation.

Personally, I don't much care for celebrations of wars, even when we've won them. I do like the idea of celebrating our freedom, and I'm the last person to dance on the graves of my forebears, except to celebrate something good they left for me (and yes, in two very distinct and deserving cases, to take a whiz, but that's unrelated to the Founders).

So no, I can't really get behind the idea of shutting down this state when no other does, and when only a few people really don't go to work that day, of hobbling public transit on those days ("holiday schedule"), of spending untold hours explaining what's open and closed, confounding schedules, sentencing parents who DO have to go to work to find someone to care for school-age kids...

and frankly this is not related to "the economy." Were we all good Yankees, we would humbly note that good times are the only time to put up resources for bad times, because there are always eventually bad times. Eat all the fruit in summer and you're going to have none in January. That's about where Massachusetts is now... and there's nothing noble, noteworthy, or particularly respectful of American patriots in that kind of indulgence.