Post-Christmas Potpourri

            Post-Christmas Potpourri

                                                                       Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 27, 2015

            Leadership in Cobb.  It’s time for heads to cool.  Our Board of Commissioners must do everything within its power to deflate any further blow-ups from the Lisa Cupid/Cobb Police Department issue.

            Cobb County has too much to lose to allow personal miffs or even legitimate concerns to split the citizenry and send the county spiraling into the incivility and poor governance that marks some other counties in metro-Atlanta.

            We can argue about whose language was more intemperate, that of NAACP chairman Deanne Bonner who spoke of “pure war,” or that of Chairman Tim Lee who charged Commissioner Cupid with “seeking to create a media spectacle.”  One’s choice of words was as unfortunate as the other.

            For that matter, neither were the actions of Commissioner Cupid very wise when she set out to establish her own grievance committee to address police behavior.  Her Lone Ranger approach was provocative, advancing her cause not one whit.

            Commissioner Cupid, Ms. Bonner, and Chairman Lee need to get together.  But citizens need to understand what it’s like to live and work in the limelight.  Public officials must watch their words at every turn.  A single outburst is forgivable and should not be fatal for any leader.  From my observations, all three of these people are good leaders.  They stand on the shoulders of many other political and community leaders who have created an excellent county.  Anyone who doesn’t believe this needs to get outside of Cobb County more.

            Let’s hope that the New Year brings these three good people to the table with nothing in mind but to keep Cobb moving forward.  In fact, let’s watch carefully and see if one of them allows personal plans or wishes to be the beginning of a downward spiral for a great county.

            Ed Setzler and schools.  Rep. Ed Setzler of Acworth is on to something.  At a recent meeting of the Cobb Legislation Delegation, he spoke on behalf of constituents who are concerned about block scheduling, particularly as it pertains to math.

            Block scheduling is the name for longer class periods that meet fewer times a week for 90-120 minutes as opposed to traditional scheduling of daily 50-55 minute periods.  Block proponents argue that block scheduling provides more time for instruction since so much of a 50-55 minute period is spent each day on non-instructional things, even such as calling the roll.

            Opponents argue that expecting most teens to stay focused for an hour and a half is unrealistic.  Setzler’s concern was that the majority of students need a more drawn out pace for algebra and calculus than blocking allows.  His point about Walton, Lassiter, and Pope parents being successfully vocal against blocking is pertinent.  New Year’s prediction: the Board of Education will be hearing more from parents on the matter and will need to have a discussion of the advantages/disadvantages of block scheduling.

            Republican timidity, again.  Whenever Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer grins that grin and Senator Harry Reid’s erstwhile poker face manages a smile, you know they’ve won and Republicans have lost.  What’s sad is that Congressional Republicans are claiming Republicans won as well on the gigantic $1.1 trillion spending bill. 

            Good grief!  Congressional Republicans lost on everything, including the defunding of Planned Parenthood.  Republicans are simply unwilling to fight.  They are infected with partisanship, that Democrat shibboleth that is akin to “Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly.”  If Republicans cannot see what’s driving Donald Trump’s success, then forget unwilling; they’re blind, tone-deaf, and are absolutely ignoring their constituencies. 

2016 will most likely be the year when we know if the Republican Party will live or die.  Right now it appears the nation may be headed toward a multi-party system, the likes of which has never served Europe very well. Unfortunate, but when politicians and party big-wigs are unresponsive to the working stiffs that choose them, they should expect revolution sooner or later.

Parenting and politics: as goes the home …  Parenting or the lack thereof affects the affairs of every nation.  For good or ill, parents set the path for their offspring and for the culture at large.  Evidence abounds that either too many parents are not setting the right path or their offspring, when trained well, are simply choosing another path.  In “The Collapse of Parenting,” medical doctor Leonard Sax argues that America’s children are immersed in a culture of disrespect that touches every area of our society.

 Sax is right.  Andy Griffith is no longer the cultural diet.  Celebrities and the Internet are.  Politics, manners, and respect for others will improve only when parents improve first.  Sax says forget your child’s self-esteem and teach humility.

Perfectly good advice for a new year.

Roger Hines

12/23/15

Christmas Cheer without the Beer...Is It Possible?

                     Christmas Cheer Without the Beer … Is It Possible?

                                                                      Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 20, 2015

I know little to nothing about anything alcoholic.  For me, it is enough to observe what America’s intense love affair with alcohol has led to. 

            Three things have caused me to literally hate the thought of alcoholic drink.  One is my parents, simple people who never drank and who, without ranting, would speak warnings now and then of the “evils of strong drink.”  So sincere were they, so low-key and yet so convicted that drinking was wrong, that I simply chose to believe them.  Their quiet but occasional, loving warnings were persuasive.  From his father and only brother, my father saw what drinking could do to a family.

            To my parents, the words “drinking” and “divorce” were sorrowful. They didn’t like to mention or talk about either one.  During the 50s and early 60s when I was growing up, drinking and divorce were not prevalent, but they were beginning to be.  My parents were well aware of the trend.              The second influence, which bolstered my parents’ position, was a sister-in-law, a very special sister-in-law from Trieste, Italy.  Brought to the states by my older U.S. Army brother in the mid-50s, Antonia began to make comments about all the news stories on alcohol-related automobile accidents.  Those were the days of James Dean’s “Rebel Without a Cause,” and drag racing was a Friday and Saturday night sport for many a rebel.  Somehow, even in dry Southern counties, teenage and twenty-something dragsters managed to get their beer and oftentimes hard liquor.  One can imagine what the mix of drinking and drag racing produced.

            My sister-in-law was puzzled and alarmed by America’s drinking habits.  A teetotaler (and from Europe?), she would shake her head.  In her broken English and accent that followed her to her grave, she once remarked, “A-med-i-cans no drink right.  They go crazy.  Italians no go crazy.”

            The third influence, and actually what sealed my opposition to alcohol, was becoming a high school and college teacher and hearing much too frequently about the deaths of students - my students -  brought on by alcohol. During my third year of teaching, two high school seniors were killed in car wrecks because of drinking, a girl and a boy, both good students whom I thought the world of.  My first thought was “I wonder if they learned drinking from their parents.”  Since then, nine students of mine have met death via alcohol’s path.  That’s not the total of all in the schools where I’ve taught, only those whom I’ve personally taught and knew well.

            Apparently the wimpy preachment, “Drink responsibly,” didn’t work for them.  Nor did that wobbly crutch, “designated driver.”  All eleven of these students were promising young people.  Most of them were seventeen, so I cannot lay all the blame on them.  They weren’t even old enough to vote.  I lay much of the blame on a culture that can’t seem to make do without its alcoholic beverages: can’t seem to have a good time, to find another way to get a buzz, to relax after work without that drink, or to acknowledge that drinking is still a dangerous initiatory rite for youth.

             My sister-in-law was correct.  Americans actually have gone crazy when it comes to drinking.  Gotta have it, whatever its cost in addiction, loss of productivity, or lives. No longer taboo in any corner of the nation, not even the Bible Belt, drinking is now pervasive.  According to Jay Reeves of the Associated Press, drinking is like gambling in that its acceptance in the South is a fait accompli. As for gambling, all but two Southern states, Alabama and Mississippi, have lotteries.  Perhaps there is a connect between this fact and the recent finding by the Pew Research Center that 19 percent of Southerners don’t identify with any organized religion.  Churches used to keep quite a few things at bay, but no more.

If Reeves and Pew are right, we could say that the Bible Belt has come unbuckled.  The only remaining taboo is to consider anything taboo.

Several years ago the Atlanta Public School superintendent was arrested for drunk driving on his way home from a social event.  Last year a good friend of mine, a leader in the Georgia General Assembly, was arrested for the same thing in the same context.  So it goes.  No wonder teens and college kids drink, even binge, and then kill with their vehicles.

In all things there is a more excellent way, a higher ground socially, morally, and practically.  Seems to me the highest, certainly the safest ground, is to leave alcoholic beverages alone. 

Christmas is a good time to think about it.

Roger Hines

12/16/15

Pronouns and Social Awareness or Playing Foolish with Grammar

                     Pronouns and Social Awareness or Playing Foolish with Grammar

                                                                      Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 13, 2015

  Today’s lesson is on pronouns.  It’s all about how colleges and universities are using grammar to achieve a particular social goal.  Warning to taxpayers: you might get angry.

            It’s also a lesson about the extremes to which academia is going in order to be sensitive.  I for one have just about had it with sensitive.  Why aren’t educational institutions content to teach things that are needed?   Things like mathematics and science that put us on the moon, gave us a high standard of living, and alleviated much human suffering.       

            Yes, pronouns are being abused and even put to death in order to advance a social agenda. 

            Let’s start with a few questions.  If you are female, are you bothered by the expression, “To each his own”?  How about the word “freshman”?  Do you fault the psalmist for writing, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” even though you know he was referring to the human species and not just to males?  How about the happy exclamation, “Man alive!”? 

            If you’re a male, has it bothered you that countries have always been referred to in the feminine gender, or that Lady Liberty, not a Mr. Liberty, stands tall on Ellis Island?

            You may not be bothered, but many colleges are.   In fact a growing number of college students and their enabling professors have begun to insist upon PGPs.  That’s preferred gender pronouns. 

“Huh?” you say.  So did I a few months back when I first learned about this.

            My range of emotions went from laughter to despair.  Laughter because I thought it was one more innocent college caper.  Despair because I soon learned that it wasn’t.

            No, colleges hither and yon – mostly yon from where I live – are announcing that, as a matter of policy, they will begin to ask students at registration which gender pronoun they prefer.  The purpose of this laughable practice is to “make our campus welcoming and inclusive for all.”  Or at least those are the words of the director of the Pride Center at the University of Tennessee.  (UT?  That’s just up I-75 apiece from where I’m sitting and typing.  That’s not yon; that’s hither.)

            Other institutions of so-called higher learning are also in on the act.  Little but prestigious Cornell College of Mount Vernon, Iowa ( Iowa?) puts their policy this way: “A preferred gender pronoun is a consciously chosen set of pronouns that allow students to accurately represent their gender identity in a way that is comfortable for them.”

            All the fuss, of course, is in the interest of “the fluidity of sexuality.”  If one is transgender, or is simply male or female but prefers “no pronouns,” then professors will know not to say Mr., Mrs., or Ms. when calling the roll.

            Of course Harvard is in on this kick.  So are the University of Wisconsin, the University of Vermont, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and many other institutions of higher sensitivity. Some of these institutions have been told by students that they prefer “shem” to “she” or “him,” again out of deep respect and concern for all students who don’t want to be “captive to gender.”

            People, the world is in strife, our nation is in an emotional slump, and we’re getting this kind of drivel from academia.  Besides, what’s an old English teacher like me to do?  For years I’ve taught that pronouns, like prepositions and conjunctions, are a closed class of words, a snooty bunch that, unlike nouns and verbs, does not admit new members.  I shall wait and see if the pronoun family admits these concocted new pronouns, but given the power of the homosexual and transgender lobby and the way academia fawns over them, I suspect we will soon see dictionaries with some new pronouns.

            There’s good news, though.  When the Tennessee legislature heard about the UT Pride Center’s policy and made noise about it, UT’s president removed the policy.

            Good for him. He has inspired me to make a bumper sticker that reads, “Keep your hands off my pronouns.”

            Now, if only some other state legislatures will get tough as well and ward off such foolishness.  Otherwise, “sensitivity” will continue to lead us to even more denial of reality.

            Incidentally, there’s a new book out that undergirds the foolishness, the movement’s manifesto, if you will.  Melvin Konner, anthropology professor at Emory University, has produced “Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy.”  The blurb of the book states that Konner “explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary in the biological destiny of the human race.”

            I simply don’t know what else to say.

Roger Hines

12/9/15

Ich bin ein Richt supporter

                          Ich bin ein Richt supporter

                                                                           Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 6, 2015

            Hey, ya’ll, I’ve had my picture made with him, too.  But so did every other member of the Georgia House of Representative’s Retirement Committee.  Yessir, University of Georgia Coach Mark Richt appeared before the committee to argue for a retirement plan for assistant coaches throughout the state, not just for those at UGA.

            The year was 2003, so the young coach was still fairly new to Georgia.  I was impressed by his concern for his lieutenants.  For the hour or so he spent with the committee, plus the extra half- hour the committee members spent fawning over him and taking pictures, Richt appeared untouched by all of the attention.  In fact, he seemed uncomfortable with his celebrity. 

            Unassuming, unfazed, with not an ounce of  self-importance, the coach eloquently stated his case to the Retirement Committee and then kindly tolerated our fawning.

            I love the guy.  But since football is the tail that wags the dog of so called higher education (“Higher than what?” columnist George Will is now asking.), and since Richt is a $4 million plus man, his boss has a right to expect $4 million results and to delineate what those results are to be.

            But so do bill-footing taxpayers who believe college football has become the be-all and end-all of college life.  Even if college athletic budgets contribute to non-athletic, academic departments, the average college student probably doesn’t know it.  He or she only knows that from the office of the college president on down the line, the football program is the supreme value.

            It’s all a male thing, of course, and it’s casting a shadow over intellectual pursuits … you know, the pursuit of learning and human advancement, of research, history, law, language, science, the arts, mathematics, and all of those other old-fashioned subjects that most certainly did excite college students back in the day.  Back when football didn’t wag education, when five months of the school year were not spent anticipating the weekend game, playing it, and then arguing about it until Tuesday.

One reason I admire Coach Richt is that from all accounts he has sought to raise up men, not just football players. He loves the game for what it can produce, which when taught properly, can produce men.  He hasn’t leaned toward the legendary Bear Bryant whose fabled remark was “My players are athletes first and students second.” 

And for that he paid a price, unfairly so.  A 145-51 record isn’t good enough?  How many other great coaches produced a national champion within 15 years as Richt was expected to do?  Bear Bryant didn’t; it took him 17.  Tom Osborne didn’t; he needed 22.  Joe Paterno, like Bryant, took 17. Lou Holtz labored 19 years for the dream, and Bobby Bowden, Richt’s mentor, took 18 years.

But that was then and this is now.  Longfellow’s line, “Learn to labor and to wait,” isn’t good enough for today’s athletic directors.  Or fans or alumni.  Instant gratification infected all of us some time ago.

While a coach’s boss has the right to fire him, exercising that right isn’t necessarily the wise or right thing to do.  The boss man may have been responding in part to those who think Richt didn’t snort and stomp and wave his arms enough on the sidelines.  But very few of the nation’s greatest coaches have conducted themselves in that manner.  

I have often faulted Richt for his leniency with his athletes’ off campus conduct.  Too often he was too forgiving.  But his record remains, the testimony of his athletes is compelling, and his commitment to coaching and winning is unquestionable.  By the time of this writing, Coach Richt may have made a decision about his future.  Whatever that decision is, I only hope that at some college, some day, some more young men can be around him and learn about character.  Fundraising and glad-handing for UGA will not make this man happy.  He’s a coach.  As a classroom teacher, I owe much to so many coaches like him.

On June 26 of 1963 in West Berlin, President John Kennedy uttered what is probably his second most memorable sentence.  Aiming his words at the Soviets who were responsible for the divided city, Kennedy declared in German, “I am a Berliner.”  Though the dividing wall didn’t come down for a quarter century, the initial step was taken.

Citizens who believe coaches should still build men as well as win trophies need to assert, “Ich bin ein Richt supporter,” thereby declaring that if college football is not supposed to educate and grow men, it doesn’t belong in an educational institution.

Dinosaur thinking, I know.  But what a need exists for it.

Roger Hines

12/2/15

An Era That Won't Die ...A Movie We've Seen Before

An Era That Won’t Die … A Movie We’ve Seen Before

                                                          Published in Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 29, 2015

            We should have expected it.  The rise of the emboldened, spoiled college student protestors, I mean.

            When a university football team threatens to strike unless the university president steps down, we can say that campus protesting is back in vogue.  When that president steps down 2 days later, we can say the football team scored a victory, though not the kind the university had in mind when it granted the athletes a tuition-free education.

            Yes, the spirit of the 1960s is alive and well at the University of Missouri, but not only there.  From coast to coast college students are feeling their oats once again.  And instead of challenging them, college presidents are rolling over, big time.

            At the University of Missouri the problem was that the president, in the eyes of the protestors, failed to deal with incidences of racial discrimination.  At Yale, President Pete Salovey displayed great cowardice while addressing protestors who complained that free speech was getting out of hand.  Salovey’s response was “We failed you.”  He promised to do better.

            “We failed you”?  Why not “We’re expelling you and are calling up some of the applicants we rejected.  Maybe they will come to Yale for the right purpose.  Maybe they believe in free speech.”

            Princeton protestors recently demanded that the university remove from all buildings and plaques the name of Woodrow Wilson since the former president of the USA (and of Princeton) was, for a short time in his life, a segregationist.  The University of Michigan canceled the screening of “The American Sniper” because of Muslim student protests.

            At least 100 college campuses have boarded the bandwagon that was hitched up by the Missouri athletes.  Although each band of protestors has cited concerns relative to their own campuses, there have been two common complaints at virtually all campuses: racial/sexual discrimination and the need for “safe space.”

            By “safe space,” students are not referring to physical safety or security but to “an environment free of offensive ideas and words.”  At Smith College “capitalism” is a bad word; it means greed.  One wonders if students there know about Andrew Carnegie, the greedy capitalist who funded so many public libraries and gave away 90% of his fortune. 

            But why do I say we should have expected this recent wave of college campus protest?  One reason is that the past is never over.  It has a way of popping up again.  The 1960s college chant, made in reference to Vietnam, was “Make love, not war.”  Today’s chant is “Safe space.”  The latter chanters are the grandchildren of the former.

            No, the 60s children did not and will not go away.  Their poster child, who said he “loathed the military,” served two terms as president.  His very 60s wife is a candidate for president.  Our current president has governed from the 60s playbook: continued animus for the military, egalitarianism, big government, and executive tyranny.  His Secretary of State, who after serving in Vietnam, came home and appeared on every late night talk show to revile his former comrades, now shuttles around the globe sounding his uncertain trumpet.

            Let us say, then, that the spirit and philosophy of the 60s seized the day.  It penetrated American politics.  It reached the White House, therefrom to spread its ethos across the land.

            Another reason we should not be surprised at the recurrence of college protests is that parents of the last 40 years have shamelessly coddled their children.  We have taken to “parenting” instead of fathering and mothering, to saying “Please, kinda, maybe, can you at least consider doing what I just asked you to do?”  Sheer capitulation.  Like parents, like college presidents.  Seems we’re all abdicating our rightful authority.

            But hope springs eternal.  When the liberal American Association of University Professors takes issue with protesting students and labels them infantile and anti-intellectual for seeking “safe space,” there is real hope.  Another ray of hope lies in a statement from the University of Chicago.  There a committee was formed to discuss the legitimacy of the nation-wide campus protests.  Its report reads, “It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find offensive.”

            Shall the pot command the potter or the college president obey his or her students?  Purdue University in conservative Indiana says no and has voted to adopt the Chicago statement.  Even liberal Princeton has recently followed suit.

            Maybe college presidents will cease to grovel before students and commence to educate them.  Maybe an era that has clung to us politically and educationally so long will begin its last gasp after all.  We should hope so, lest the affliction of academia become the incurable affliction of the nation.

Roger Hines

11/25/15

The Dictionary Past and Present: The Work of a Drudge?

  The Dictionary Past and Present: The Work of a Drudge?

                                                                            Published in Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 22, 2015

            In the spirit of merry old England’s most famous dictionary writer, I offer below some more current definitions.  The words defined are not alphabetized but are discernibly clumped according to the broad topics of politics, culture, and language.

            First some background.  In 1755, seventy-three years before Noah Webster composed a simplified dictionary for frontier America, England’s Samuel Johnson penned his massive work titled “A Dictionary of the English Language.”

            The purposes of the American and the Englishman were quite different.  Webster’s purpose was to fashion a language that “men do use.”  He sought to define words as they were understood and used by the majority of Americans.  Webster also wished to introduce a slightly more phonetic spelling system.  For instance he took the “u” out of the British “labour” and “colour.”  With these and other such changes, Webster initiated the distinction between British English and American English. 

            Johnson, famous for his line, “To be tired of London is to be tired of life,” produced his dictionary more out of fun than a desire to educate the masses.  His landmark dictionary was as much a playful display of his prejudices as it was an attempt to codify the vocabulary of English.

An example is his definition of “lexicographer”: “a dictionary writer; a harmless drudge that busies himself tracing the signification of words.”  For a definition of “to blab,” Johnson wrote, “To tell what ought to be kept secret.”  Prejudice is writ large in his definition of “excise”: “a hateful tax levied by common judges, the wretches hired by those to whom the excise tax is due.”

            While speakers of English owe much to these 2 “drudges,” an update of definitions is always in order.  In the following update I will, like Johnson, cast mild judgment on each word or phrase.

Racist – any statement or person with whom a liberal disagrees.  Liberal – any statement or person with whom a conservative disagrees.

Libertine – a libertarian gone crazy; one who gives a good libertarian a bad name; a near anarchist.

Atheist – one who believes there can be a meal without a cook or a design without a designer; a proponent of the religion of atheism.  The New Atheism – the old atheism.  

Evangelism – efforts made to promote a belief, philosophy, or political candidate; today’s most passionate evangelists being atheists and political consultants.

Abortion – termination of an unborn baby presumed not to be a human being (or not yet) and presumed to have no right to be born in the first place.  Family – human civilization’s oldest and smallest unit of government; currently under assault by America’s highest unit of government, the Supreme Court.  Moloch – god of the ancient Phoenicians for whom the Phoenicians “passed their children through the fire,” sacrificing them by burning; akin to the modern American practice of passing unborn children under the knife or burning them with saline solution.

Sanctuary city – a city that grants refuge to lawbreakers; precursor to the “sanctuary state” like unto California and Vermont, the two states furtherest away from Middle America.

Playboy – a womanizing, promiscuous man; also a 62-year-old magazine which, having reached its goal of sexualizing the nation, considers its mission complete and no longer runs pictures of nude women; the initiator of the Sexual Revolution.  Sexual Revolution – a term referring to America’s journey from sexual responsibility and marital fidelity to acceptance of nudity, co-habitation, out-of-wedlock births, free love, and disease often got thereby; a revolution without any winners.

The Great Failure – title of an upcoming book detailing how the election of a black president did nothing for racial healing; a reminder that consistent building of friendships and relationships one by one is the key to social stability and unity.

Contemporary Christian music – a name for extremely repetitive, often wailful, rock-oriented music; good in that it centers on praise; bad in that it is often, though not always, commercially-inspired; lies in contrast to hymnody which emphasizes theology instead of how faith makes you “feel”; always loud, even for worshippers with hearing problems; occasional rhythms not unlike those heard at the local bar.

Think outside the box – a tired expression that needs to be locked up inside the box.

How come? – a perfectly legitimate expression common in the Southern half of the nation; a clipped form of “How do you come to that (conclusion)?”; a phrase often scoffed at by Yankees.

At the end of the day – an overworked, empty expression used by politicians who are at the end of their vocabulary.

Columnist – one who pontificates and aggravates even when his observations are no more worthy than anyone else’s.

Roger Hines

11/18/15

            

Restoring America's Self-image...Is It Too Late?

                                             Restoring America’s Self-image … Is it Too Late?

                                                                          Published in Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 15, 2015

            Multiculturalism, one of America’s obsessions for at least two decades, is currently producing its harvest, and the fruit is bitter.  In perhaps what was a sincere effort to enlighten students and to teach respect for other cultures, education at every level has de-emphasized our own. 

            It’s reasonable to study other cultures.  In fact, we had better.  However, when we neglect our own, inject moral equivalency into the picture, and argue that western values are no better than anyone else’s, we have become blinded by a fuzzy notion of cultural equality. 

            Are the ideas of Lenin and Mao “equal” to those of Jefferson and Madison?  Is radical Islam “equal” to Judeo-Christian values?  Some better questions are what has been the fruit of Lenin and Mao’s communism? Of Jeffersonian and Madisonian thought?   Of Islam?  Of the Judeo-Christian ethic?  What does each of these world views say about individual freedom?  How does each view women?

            Americans have allowed their schools and colleges to shift from celebrating and promoting the best of western thought to honoring all thought.  Schools shy away from some of our most cherished traditions.  Consider how skittish school systems are regarding any mention of Christmas.  Fearfully and foolishly, they try to ignore or deny a centerpiece of American culture, all in the name of sensitivity, multiculturalism, diversity, or … whatever.  Is this crazy?

 Academia says emphasize openness and tolerance.  Tolerance, that is, for everything except our own values.  I know because I have been in the middle of the fray for over 4 decades, particularly at conferences around the country.  I and many others have done our best to counter academia’s anti-western, anti-American bias but have been terribly outnumbered.

            How so?  Because so many educators believe we should “teach all cultures and let students decide what is best.”  Because “if we stress so-called ‘Americanism,’ students will come to believe that Americans are superior to other nations.”  (I got those 2 gems at a conference of the National Council of Teachers of English over 2 decades ago.)

            The conference presenters who gave the above arguments need to ponder this question: From what did western culture, particularly America, spring?  The answer is it sprang from Judaism, Christianity and the best of Greco-Roman ideals.  And what has been the fruit of these 3 philosophical systems?  The fruit has been more individual freedom than in any other culture in the world, more alleviation of human misery and more opportunity for the pursuit of happiness.

            In a recent column titled “In Defense of Christendom,” the Wall Street Journal’s Brett Stephens began with the startling sentence, “The death of Europe is in sight.”  Asserting that Europe has already forgotten the roots from which she sprang, Stephens writes, “What is Europe?  It is Greece, not Persia; Rome, not Carthage; Christendom, not the caliphate.  Having ignored its inheritance, Europe wonders why its house is falling apart.”

            Strong words.  But do they not apply to America’s college English departments that argue there is no British or American literature, but just “literature,” or “world literature”?  To a growing number of English departments the names Shakespeare and Twain are embarrassments.  Shakespeare was “nativistic” because he loved “this blessed plot, this realm, this England” too much.  Twain was a crude frontier comic, nothing else.  Longfellow is a forgotten, dead white man.  C.S. Lewis?  Too Christian.

            Stephens says Europe “needs a new self-acceptance.”  So does America.  Because like Europe, we are allowing our religious and cultural heritage to slip.  In the interest of pluralism and multiculturalism, we are surrendering our very cultural identity.  Helping “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is one thing.  Changing our culture to be “sensitive” toward them is another. 

            Since the 1960’s, pop psychology has touted self-awareness and self-acceptance.  Much of this emphasis has been pure narcissism, but it contains a grain of truth.  Just as an individual must have a measure of self-love, so must a nation.  To love America and claim that she is exceptional is not to claim that we are superior.  It is to say, as Stephens puts it, “This is us and that is you.” 

            The character of America is changing, however, and changing fast.  Could we survive the massive influx of Muslim immigrants that Europe is now experiencing?  We could not and should not if those immigrants come demanding that we cut ourselves off from our western Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman roots and become modern Persians.

            If immigration trends continue unchallenged or uncontrolled, Stephens’ fears will be confirmed.  The West will die.  America cannot be America if she is not true to her inheritance – religiously, culturally, and linguistically.

            Is this issue insignificant? Only if we believe Jefferson is no better than Lenin or that Christendom is no better than a caliphate.

Roger Hines

11/11/15

Music is Mother's Milk for Today's Youth

                                        Music is Mother's Milk for Today's Youth

                                                                   Published in Marietta Daily Journal Aug. 2, 2015

          “I am Music, I Write the Songs.”  So crooned singer Barry Manilow throughout the seventies and well into the present decade.   Manilow’s #1 hit and Grammy Song of the Year for 1975 was written by Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys.  When Manilow expressed fear that the word “I” would make both  writer and singer appear to be egomaniacs, Johnston explained that “I” referred to God and/or the creative spirit that indwells all of us.

            Johnston’s thinking about music wasn’t too far from that of British essayist Thomas Carlyle: “Let me have the nation’s music and I care not who makes her laws.”  That strong statement was written long before i-tunes, i-pods and free music websites.  In fact Carlyle wrote it in the late 19^th century.

            Was Carlyle right?  Is music that powerful? I don’t doubt that it is. Even if our national anthem is virtually un-singable, we still know how “God Bless America” can make us feel.  Even if we don’t particularly like music, there is still probably a song of some stripe somewhere that speaks to us no matter how deeply in our past it may be buried.

            If Carlyle’s assessment of music’s power in the late 19^th century is correct, how much more pronounced and ever present is music today?  Whether blaring from the car sitting beside us at a red light or grating our ears while we are on hold on the telephone, music is inescapable.

            The moral relativism in which the western world is now wallowing has certainly reached our music.  Decades ago Johnny Cash sang the words, “The lonely voice of youth cries, “What is truth?’ ”   Today adults as well seem to have doubts about even the existence of truth.  Why else are we hearing the expressions, “my truth” and “your truth”?  Those who use such expressions apparently believe in no truth.  Music is now reflecting this loss of meaning.  Tune in to your local hard rock radio station or head to Phillips Arena if you want to check out musical nihilism.

            One who doesn’t think music collectively shapes us should consider the following questions.  Why do we have military bands?  What is it about the very nature of music that bolstered plantation slaves through their misery?  How effective were the mournful but musical words “We Shall Overcome” to the civil rights movement or the plaintive song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” to the war protest movement of the sixties?  Why, for decades, was the Grand Ole Opry the weekly refuge of so many poor, Southern people?  How is it that highly poetic hymns from 18^th century England could cradle and buoy evangelical Christianity across an ocean and sustain it in North America for several centuries?

            If nothing else, these questions confirm Plato’s claim that music is far more than pleasure and recreation.  It is a tool that can inspire a revolution, encourage an individual and re-ignite a loveless marriage. It is also a drug that can induce peacefulness or throw off restraint and self-control.

            Everything has a history and music has a rich one.  Elvis Presley may have revolutionized rhythm and added stage antics, but at least we could still understand his words.  Not so after rock ‘n’ roll became electrified.  50 years ago on July 25^th it was folk singer Bob Dylan who started all the noise that drove many a parent crazy.  This past week most of the nation’s newspapers have chronicled how Dylan “went electric” by forsaking his Peter, Paul and Mary folk sound and strapping on a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar.

            The place was Newport, Rhode Island.  The event was the Newport Folk Festival.  But what Dylan gave his audience wasn’t folk music or even the current rock ‘n’ roll.  Instead he birthed the deafening volume and the distorted sounds that characterize rock music today.

            Schools and many churches long ago adopted the distorted sounds that Dylan birthed.  Schools pipe it in while students eat in the cafeteria and while basketball teams are taking a time out. Cafeteria workers and parents in the gymnasium can only cringe because after all, “it’s for the kids.”

            As for the churches, their abandonment of hymns for the distorted sounds of post-Dylan rock is the greatest sin of the church since the Inquisition.  Electrification has just about choked out “the still small voice.”  At church, Martin Luther and Charles Wesley are so yesterday.  At school, the same is true of Mendelssohn, Handel and Tchaikovsky.  Instead of cultivating and forming our youth’s tastes we have adopted their tastes.  Now all of us are forever young.

            Carlyle got it right.  And Barry Manilow is probably more correct than he realizes.  Music is the mother’s milk of youth today.  Its power far outstrips parental influence.

Roger Hines

7/29/15

A Primer for Principals: Tips for Educational Leaders

                               A Primer for Principals: Tips for Educational Leaders

                                                                            Published in Marietta Daily Journal Aug. 9, 2015

Dear Principal,

            School is in and both the stress and the joy are back.  Since for school age children the American summer is becoming a thing of the past, you no doubt have less time than ever to look ahead.  Most people don’t realize you had to start thinking about August last January.

            When I think of educational leadership, my mind runs to principals.  To me the pivot of educational leadership is the school principal.  Essentially you stand between the policy makers and the practitioners.  You also serve parents.  This takes communication skills that are too often unappreciated.

            I’ve never walked in your shoes, so far be it from me to give you advice.  However I have worked for, worked with, and observed closely 11 principals, all of whom were effective educational leaders.  These 11 principals had different talents and gifts, but the important thing is they gave their gifts away – to their students, their faculties and school communities as well.  All of what I suggest below is what I saw in these 11 principals.

            I hope you haven’t lost the glory of looking into the face of a child or a youth.  I hope you are still intrigued by the innocence, the hungry eyes, the anticipation of adulthood and the bright hope for tomorrow that most children and youth possess.  I also hope that you are saddened by the growing number whose hope has been crushed by conditions and circumstances they had no control over.  They, more than anyone, need the help that you and your teachers can give.

            Please consider the following actions as the new school year gets underway:

Walk the fences.  Most likely, administrivia prevents you from visiting classes as much as you would like, but students need to see that you enjoy learning.  Please don’t visit only to evaluate your teachers but to sit and participate in the lesson.  Cut up just a little bit.  Lean over and whisper (but only once) to a student while the teacher is talking.  This is not for making you cool, but making you human.  There is little wonder that students don’t know you care.  They don’t even know you.  But they should.  Tell Central Office that next week is for visiting classes and that you really don’t need to be in meetings.  Knowledge excites students.  Self-esteem pablum doesn’t.  Let students know that learning excites you and that they are there to get knowledge.

Choose your weapons. You are in a fight, you know, so fight the good fight against mediocrity and casualness.  Fight for excellence.  You need neither a bullhorn nor a stern countenance; just your sincerity and omnipresence.  Don’t overdo this business of “identifying with students.”  Do you think the parents of the Greatest Generation gave a lot of thought to “identifying” with their children?  Heavens no, and that’s one reason their children did well.  They were not coddled and their favor was not sought.  The best weapon of a leader is concern for those he or she is leading, not a desire to be liked.

Remember your history.  The truth is you were an adjective before you were a noun.  Schools started out with no administrators, just teachers.  The teacher chosen to light the fires, clean the room and secure materials was called the principal teacher.  When the tasks of readiness became too numerous and time-consuming, the principal teacher ceased teaching, assumed the operational and supervisory tasks fulltime and was then called the principal.  Your role and your title were born out of service, out of menial tasks that were necessary for a good learning climate.  The lesson from this history is clear.

Watch your language.  The field of education has cluttered the culture with vague, insipid words.  Please don’t ever say “facilitate,” or “sibling,” or “pupil station” when you really mean “make easier,” “brother or sister,” and “desk.”  You know what all of the other trendy words are.

Trust your instincts.  If you’ve got the job, you’ve already been vetted, so cling to the common sense that brought you this far.  The world has changed but human nature hasn’t.  Beware of all the romanticized educational literature that tells you today’s students are the sharpest generation ever.  It ain’t so.  I was told the same thing 50 years ago.  Students are no more or less capable of mischief than they were then.   But the same is true for excellence and achievement.

Finally, I suspect you are appreciated far more than you realize.  You’re a cultural leader.  Your role is most significant.  I wish you the best.

Roger Hines

8/5/15

The Girl in the Door ...and a Half-century of Joy

                                 The Girl in the Door … and a Half-century of Joy

                                                                    Published in Marietta Daily Journal Aug. 16, 2015

            Fifty years ago today – August 16, 1965 – I and several other guys strode across the grounds of a northern Wisconsin youth camp to meet the girl counselors.  The week of camp was a culmination of a summer full of Vacation Bible Schools around the state.  The youth from all the churches we college kids had served in were arriving and unpacking.

            As we approached the girls’ dorm, I saw her standing in the doorway.  My heart raced.   I lingered behind my fellow male counselors as three words bombarded my brain: “There she is!”

            I had been praying for her to cross my path since I was 15.  In many ways I was old when I was young, overly serious about everything.  So serious that even dating – or the dating scene – seemed frivolous.  Actually I didn’t want to date and dated little.  I wanted and expected God to parachute a beautiful Christian girl into my life so that we could get on with life.

            It was now happening!  Parachuted down into the beautiful woodlands of Wisconsin, there she stood in the doorway of her dorm room amidst several middle school girls.  Why did I sense that she was a country girl?  How, even before speaking, could I now know for certain that my yearning for the girl of my dreams was over?  And look at how she’s greeting the guys even as she attends to a couple of her young campers.  Look at her composure and her quiet confidence.

            Though a shy fellow, I wasn’t worried about introducing myself.  All that mattered now was that there she stood and my heart was at rest.

            I don’t recall our introductory words.  I do remember that after long days of classes, hikes and recreation with campers, we counselors would gather and talk long into the night.  That’s how I learned that Nancy Milligan was a Tennessee milkmaid.  Raised on a farm near Murfreesboro, she was a country girl extraordinaire.  She was no stranger to work or to excellence.  Milking cows and picking peas were simply a way of life.  During college years, being a delegate to the National 4-H Congress was a fitting conclusion to her farm upbringing.

            At the end of the week I was one sad 21-year-old guy.  Far from the Deep South, I was homesick.  But I didn’t want to leave the camp or Green Bay where I had spent most of the summer.  The girl in the door was the main reason, but there were others.

            The small church I attended sat right beside Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers.  Packers coach Vince Lombardi ruled the world and his raging fullback, Jim Taylor, attended the same church I attended.   One Sunday we sat beside each other.  My head would not have spun more had I been sitting beside the Pope (or the president of the Southern Baptist Convention).  The thought of leaving Green Bay and the Packers intensified the sadness.

            Another pull on my emotions was the beauty of Wisconsin.  If there was a single piece of litter in America’s Dairyland, it escaped my eye.  (My beloved Southland wasn’t and still isn’t so litter-free.)  Clean towns, barns and immaculate fields punctuated the landscape. 

            On the last day of camp, I asked Nancy for her Tennessee address.  Countless times on the Greyhound headed home I unfolded and stared at the tiny piece of crumpled paper that bore her name and address.  So my wife wouldn’t be one of those beautiful Mississippi girls after all.  And I would meet her “up North!”

            Living in two different states made courting difficult.  But I don’t like dating, remember.  I just want to get married.  We did, two years later almost to the day.  Our wedding was only our 10^th time to see each other, having courted primarily via U.S. Mail and long distance Southern Bell telephone lines.

            My Nancy got a degree in English from Middle Tennessee and taught school for 2 and a half years before stopping to raise our children.  She could run the world but chose to run a household.  Several years later she resumed teaching and spoke often of two of her exceptionally delightful students, the Kendrick brothers, whose newest movie, “War Room,” is being released this month.

Nancy’s strength is drawn from her Christian faith and sturdy God-fearing parents.  She is so … Tennessee and Wisconsin both, but believes in blooming where she’s planted.  So now she loves Georgia too, and babies, cooking, reading, sewing, entertaining guests, and life.

            I’m not encouraging “love at first sight.”  But believe me, it does happen.

Roger Hines

8/16/15

How Supreme Is the Supreme Court?

                                               How Supreme Is the Supreme Court?

                                                                              Published in Marietta Daily Journal Aug. 23, 2015

            In the recent GOP presidential debate, candidate John Kasich declared that since a Supreme Court ruling is the law of the land, we should accept its ruling on same-sex marriage (Obergefel v. Hodges) and move on.  The Ohio governor went on to say, with some pride, that he had recently attended the same-sex wedding ceremony of a friend.

            One’s first response to Kasich might be “Is he serious?”  Does Kasich not know that Supreme Court decisions can be overturned?  Would he take the same stance on the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 that ruled a slave is property and is to be excluded from U.S. citizenship?  Does he not know the Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13^th and 14^th amendments of the Constitution?

            How about Plessey v. Ferguson of 1896 in which the court upheld state segregation laws, giving rise to the false doctrine of “separate but equal” schools?   Does Kasich not know that in 1954 the court reversed Plessey in Brown v. the Board of Education, thereby satisfying the moral consciences of many Americans?  It appears that “settled law” is like “settled science.”  It’s not always settled.

            All of which raises a few questions.  How supreme is the Supreme Court?  How equal are our three co-equal branches of government?  How democratic is our democracy?  

A seasoned lawmaker, Kasich surely knows about the aforementioned legal cases.   In stating that we should acquiesce to same-sex marriage, he was most likely declaring that to him the issue was not a hill on which to die.  But to many Americans it is.  Yell “bigot” if they must, the gay lobby doesn’t understand that to evangelical Christians sexuality is inextricably tied to morality.

Consider also Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion.  One thing is certain: Roe v. Wade’s aftermath continues to this day.  Just as many Americans were morally outraged by the Dred Scott decision, so today are there still millions who cannot just “move on” from a Supreme Court ruling that legalizes killing unborn babies.

            In 1974 when the Supreme Court ruled on abortion, radical feminism’s voice was at its loudest.  “I am woman; hear me roar” was the feminist movement’s mantra.  Gloria Steinem chimed in with “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”  The seventies were the Golden Age of feminism and court rulings demonstrated just how easily judges can be influenced by loud political activism rather than the people’s deeply held convictions.

            One might ask why the Supreme Court in 1954 ruled as it did in Brown v. the Board of Education, thereby overturning Plessey v. Ferguson.  Was the Warren Court’s 9-0 decision a demonstration of moral conscience?  To be sure it paved the way for integration and added more than a spark to the civil rights movement.  What if believers in social justice had accepted Dred Scott and Plessey v. Ferguson and just “moved on”?  The nation should rejoice that there was no Kasich-like shrug toward these rulings.

            Thanks to the atrocious videos showing Planned Parenthood negotiating the sale of aborted baby body parts, Roe v. Wade will continue to be a hill on which to die for many Americans.  Just as moral conscience drove the opponents of two other Supreme Court rulings, Dred Scott and Plessey, so will Roe v. Wade continue to pierce the hearts of Christians as long as it is the law.

            In the same way does Obergefel v. Hodges (same-sex marriage) affect many Americans who view same-sex marriage as rebellion against nature.  It violates their sense of the question, “What is first in nature?”  What was first was not two people of the same sex marrying each other, but a man and a woman and usually children.  A little unit of government, if you will, that formed a foundation for all other societal institutions.

            So is the Supreme Court supreme?  Only if our three co-equal branches are not equal.  Only if Jefferson was wrong when he wrote, “I hold that a little rebellion now and then is as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”  Only if the Apostle Peter was wrong when he said, “We must obey God rather than men.”

            In a democratic society the people are supreme.  People of conscience and right reasoning changed the Dred Scott decision as well as Plessey v. Ferguson.  Whether they change Roe v. Wade and Obergefel v. Hodges remains to be seen.  I’m saying they eventually will, thus exercising the will of the people and showing that 9 unelected people cannot be the final arbiters of what is right and just. 

            Jefferson’s spirit of rebellion is in the air, no thanks to Kasich, and well it should be.

           

           

Roger Hines

8/16/15

Is a Jeffersonian 'Little Rebellion' at Hand?

                                       Is a Jeffersonian “Little Rebellion” at Hand?

                                                                           Published in Marietta Daily Journal Aug. 30, 2015

The barbarians are at the gates.  The peasants are headed toward the palace with their pitchforks. 

            Not really.  What has actually happened is ordinary people have found a megaphone, a new national leader.  Many of them, not all, are Tea Partiers.  This doesn’t mean that every Tea Party group supports that national leader.  It only means the sentiments that birthed the Tea Party are strikingly similar to those held by the supporters of Donald Trump.

            True, the first modern Tea Partiers in 2009 focused on taxes and the nation’s profligate spending, while this new leader has made illegal immigration his chief issue.  Even so, many Tea Partiers and those who have joined their ranks appear determined to dump some more tea and stir things up.

            The barbarians and peasants are actually normal middle class folks.  But to political party echelons, high paid consultants, big donors, special interests and lobbyists, they are still riffraff.

            Sooner or later every pot needs to be stirred.  Sometimes you have to fire people.  Sometimes Jefferson’s notion of “a little rebellion” needs to take place.  New wine cannot stay in old wineskins. 

Neither can freedom remain for too long on any one vehicle, because freedom likes to flow.  Political parties, contrary to George Washington’s fears, have served for over 200 years as America’s mechanism for choosing leaders.  But today one of those parties is being tested like never before.  Its leadership has been tone deaf. The riffraff are unwilling to take it anymore.

“It” is government intrusion, government regulation, government expansion, IRS excesses and an elitist media/political complex.  “It” is the timidity of political leaders whose fathers successfully defeated the evil ideologies of Nazism and Communism but who are skittish about even acknowledging the evil ideology of Islamic terrorism.

  How far we have come from President Clinton’s famous words just after his midterm shellacking in 1994. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton declared in his state of the union address.  The riffraff thought it might finally be so. But a few years after that platitude came No Child Left Behind, Dodd-Frank, TARP, executive orders and Obamacare, not to mention Benghazi, ISIS, loss of a nation we helped stabilize, loss of national prestige and flattened wages. 

            Elites are not only squirming, they are showing fear on their faces and in their words.  Network and cable news anchors appear nervous every time they interview the supposedly “buffoonish” Trump.   George Will, ordinarily one of the nation’s best thinkers and communicators, says there is reason to “voice robust disgust” with the riffraff’s new leader.  An intellectual if there ever was one, Will has served the cause of conservatism well, yet when it comes to the present turmoil, he still prefers old wineskins.

            Bill Kristol, son of the father of neo-conservatism, Irvin Kristol, says he’s finished with the riffraff’s new leader.  He, too, prefers old wineskins.  Karl Rove has cast aspersions and gloom on the riffraff.  Tethered to old line alliances and unmindful of who the riffraff really are, Rove continues to tout the establishment.

            This upending of the Republican Party (and eventually the Democratic Party that must deal gingerly with its own avowed socialist candidate) is concurrent with two other social upheavals.  One is the cracking of religious denominations as evidenced by countless unaffiliated churches – most of them with cutesy names – sprinkled across the nation.  The other is the fading of the old media or television networks that have fallen to cable and the internet.  What’s changing is delivery systems and what the riffraff are angry about is the current system’s failure to deliver.

            The current system has failed to deliver candidates who are not beholden to donors.  The candidates it has produced have, instead of representing voters, become members of a buddy club who should be fighting each other on behalf of their constituents instead of chumming it up.

            The riffraff have found in their new leader a candidate who acknowledges their love of flags and fetuses, who rightly rejects the notion that the 14^th amendment grants citizenship to children of illegal immigrants. (It really doesn’t.  Read it.) In 1866 illegal immigration was not an issue.  The amendment was intended for former slaves.

            Finally, the riffraff have a candidate who doesn’t bore them to death and who has the ability to ignite Jefferson’s call for occasional, legitimate rebellion.  That spirit of rebellion is much deeper than our political leadership and media stars realize.  They best beware and the rest of us best prepare for surprising political re-alignments of all stripes in the next decade.

            Politically, the planets are shifting.  All because regular folks and a city boy billionaire found each other.  I, for one, will stay tuned.

Roger Hines

8/26/15