Women Who Hold Their Own Are Fine Role Models

             Women Who Hold Their Own Are Fine Role Models

                   Published in Marietta Daily Journal December 18, 2016

            Woman without her man is lost.

            Punctuate the sentence above to fit your own, uh, perceptions.  In the interest of harmony, husbands and wives should neither work together on this nor share their answers.

In my immediate family, I’ve had lots of women in my life: my mother, ten sisters, six sisters-in-law, one wife, two daughters, six granddaughters, and two daughters-in-law.  Add several scores of female colleagues in the teaching profession.  If I don’t know very much about women, I should.

  One thing I do know is that nobody should fear the “feminization” of education just because women outnumber men in public schools.  The women with whom I’ve taught, though quite feminine, have not been weak.  In fact, I’ve seen the most petite of women put the toughest of 17-year-old boys in their place, with words of course, and those effective, pointing fingers.

            More than once I’ve paused or slowed down my walk in the hall because I saw a female teacher dealing with a tall, strapping boy at the door of her classroom.  Thinking she might need a man around, I would approach gently, only to discover that I was superfluous.  Believe it, female teachers can be tough and are not to be pitied.

            If I’m already sounding sexist, I just don’t care.  If I believe a lady is in need, I’m going to run to her, no matter what changes are going on in today’s crazy world regarding gender and gender reference.  Any man who wouldn’t, well …

            Actually, I’m glad there are so many women in education.  The guys need them.  They need them so that they can learn about women.  And girls need male teachers so that they can learn about men.  I know, I know.  This train of thought goes against the utterly senseless gender neutrality squawk that we’re all supposed to be swallowing.  We’re no longer male and female, you know.  We are the world; we are the people.  No differences, please.  Differences would make us unequal.

            It’s been fun all these decades watching male coaches interact with high school girls.  I love coaches.  Parents of non-athletes may not realize what an important part coaches play in the development of their youths.  Most coaches also teach academic courses, so they influence more than just their athletes.  Usually they are well known by the entire student body, head coaches and assistants both.

            Speaking of almost 100% of the male coaches I’ve taught with, I can say that they are an indispensable part of the development of young people whom they teach or coach.  Coaches are a symbol of masculinity (pardon another ugly sexist word).  Coaches are typically fun and are good teachers.  Taking their coaching skills into the classroom, they know how to demonstrate, not just tell.  What I’ve most admired them for, however, is their modeling for the guys how to view and treat the girls.

            My ten sisters have shaped my life as much as anyone I know.  Mentally I clump them according to age.  Ida, Jewel, and Authula are the oldest.  Children of the 1920’s, they have always epitomized beauty and character.  Margueritte and Minnie are ‘30’s girls, although Margueritte was born in 1928.  Almedia, Ruby, and Janelle were born in the ‘30’s but came of age in the ‘40’s.  Carolyn and Tressie are ‘50’s girls, the first to grow up in America’s new youth culture.  They survived and thrived.

            I have long wished that every friend I have could meet these intelligent, interesting women.  Their birthdays range from 1922 to 1942.  They all have the same parents whom they have honored all of their lives. Their love and respect for each other is endless.  They have raised their children well.  Quiet strength is their forte, humility their path, laughter their constant companion.  Cotton fields never marred their beauty.  Life’s struggles never diminished their faith.  I wish I were their equal.

            My mind always goes to these sisters and to my six brothers every time I read or hear about the fuss over gender.  Even Princeton University joined the foolishness last fall, imploring their students not to speak or write in “gender-based” words so as not to show disrespect of others who are “transgender, gender queer, or gender nonconforming.”

            Gender nonconforming?  Since when have we had a choice?  Look, my sisters are outstanding W-O-M-E-N. That’s females.  And my brothers are exemplary M-E-N; males, that is.  The joy of my life has been to be a little brother to all of them, except my kid brother who is “the baby.”  I’m not his equal either.

Roger Hines

12/14/16

The Status of Christmas: Are We Denying our Own Culture?

  The Status of Christmas: Are We Denying our Own Culture?

               Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 11, 2016

             Christmas is here!  Not Christmas Day just yet, but Christmas season.  Is there anything that elicits more joy in America than Christmas?  Anything that more quickly turns our thoughts to goodwill, children, the needy, and to giving? 

            We’re all aware of the commercialization of the Christmas season, of how easily seduced we are to think of things rather than people.   Yet, Christmas still seems to bring out the best in us.  Individuals, families, and organizations look around for people who need help at Christmas.  We want everybody to have “a good Christmas.”

            Since for over two centuries the total impact of Christmas has been positive, why and how did we get to the point where the word “Christmas” is to be shunned?   What trail of events led President-elect Trump to exclaim boldly, “We will say ‘Christmas’ again”?

            The answer is that for two decades or more many schools and businesses have been gun shy about even using the word, much less allowing its celebration.  We celebrate vague “holidays” instead, ignoring the fact that “holiday” is but a variant spelling of “holy day.”  

 Many school systems insist on the term “Winter Holidays,” which is purely druidic, the Druids being the 200 BC (oops, I mean BCE) Celts of the British Isles who were devout worshippers of nature.  Schools have actually only substituted one religious term for another.  The Star of Bethlehem is out.  The Winter Solstice is in.  Presumably, students are to turn their thoughts to the tilt of the earth, and away from its creator. 

It is difficult to deny the reality of religious beliefs and roots.  We cannot escape transcendent terminology. Every culture has a set of beliefs and principles that inform and shape it.  How foolish, how ignorant it is, to deny this fact.

Of course, America’s religious and cultural roots lie deep not only in Druidic thought, but in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.  Buddhism is the reason Americans believe in and seek karma.  Hinduism is why Americans believe in thousands of gods.  Islam is the reason Americans believe the word of God must be read in Arabic. Right?

Not really.  America’s ethos springs from none of these belief systems.  These systems have informed Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East.  America’s foundational religious, legal, and social ideas and ideals have their roots in the richness of the Judeo-Christian ethic and tradition.   Who with any amount of historical or cultural knowledge would deny this?

Yet we are not supposed to say it.  A false and stupid sensitivity has led us to deny historical truth and be tippy-toe about who we are.  Do Buddhist, Hindu, or Islamic countries deny what has shaped their cultures?  They certainly don’t.  Why then should Americans deny that the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are the basis of our ethics and morality?  What has fashioned America more, the Dhamma, the Vedas, the Koran, or the Bible?

Don’t answer that.  Misled college kids will bristle with hostility and protest in your front yard.

Whether they are afraid of lawsuits or simply personally opposed to Christmas, school officials are denying that Christmas is a part of the American psyche.  This fact about our ethical roots doesn’t mean that everyone has to celebrate Christmas or believe in the Christ of Christmas.  Not everybody in Indonesia, the world’s most Islamic nation, is Islamic, but Indonesia certainly doesn’t deny her Islamic culture because of it.           

            We must be pluralistic and multicultural, we’re told.  Frankly, the entire West is about to pluralize and multi-culturalize itself out of an identity.  Unlike the East, Western civilization has become unsure of itself.  Witness the ongoing transformation of Europe.  In many pockets of America, self-loathing is the order of the day.  This is particularly true on college campuses where students are taught to respect the beliefs of others, but not dare have any of their own.  Acknowledge the cultures of other lands, but don’t embrace your own too tightly; otherwise you are “nationalistic” or “nativistic.”

            Just as public schools must now say “Winter Holidays” instead of Christmas, colleges require students to use BCE rather than BC.  BC is a reference to Christ, so none of that.  Of course BCE refers to the “Common Era” which means the Christian era, but at least for extreme multiculturalists the word Christ is gone.

            It is such anti mindset that now encircles Christmas. The Grinch that is still trying to steal Christmas is not the mighty dollar.  It’s the deniers of historical facts who just don’t like the facts.

            Christmas lovers, unite!  And spread the love, particularly to those who don’t love Christmas. And give, give, give!  That’s what the Christ of Christmas taught us to do.

Roger Hines

12/6/16  

Tyranny and Tyrants and How to Avoid Them

            Tyranny and Tyrants and How to Avoid Them

               Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 4, 2016

            Of the French Revolution, de Tocqueville wrote, “The evils which are endured with patience as long as they are inevitable, become intolerable as soon as hope can be entertained of escaping them.”

            In other words, the hope of better things incites people to act.  So was it in the presidential election.  New voters, formerly cynical about politics and government, came out of the woodwork.  So is it also in regard to the recent death of Fidel Castro, one of the world’s longest ruling tyrants.

            Castro’s death brings to mind de Tocqueville’s ruminations.  It also inspires questions about tyranny and tyrants.  Why would anyone want to be a tyrant or an absolute monarch, lording it over people?   Why would anyone want to either lead or send out vast armies in order to build an empire over which to rule?  How do we explain an Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, or Castro?  Why has the world had to endure them?

            Castro’s entire adult life was spent living out the very definition of tyrant. In 1959 at age 33, Castro and his rebels seized control of Cuba.  The New York Times applauded him, and so did the good ole Reader’s Digest and most Americans.  After all, the object of Castro’s rage was dictator Fulgencio Batista.  Let’s just say Batista was one of the world’s worst men.  He needed to be toppled.

            But only to be replaced by an equally power-hungry tyrant?  Castro moved fast.  Only 18 months after seizing power, he nationalized U.S. owned oil refineries.  Relations between Cuba and the U.S. from that point to today are well known.            

 The failed Bay of Pigs invasion, actually staged by Cuban exiles, and supported by President Kennedy, embarrassed America.  Our prestige was restored a year and a half later when our blockade of Cuba forced the Soviet Union to remove her nuclear missiles lodged 90 miles from Miami.

            Thirty-six days shy of 58 years, the sneering, cigar-chomping Castro sat atop his little island empire, having taken over almost all private businesses (but, of course; he declared Cuba a socialist state 2 years after seizing power), executing hundreds of his opponents, sentencing dissidents to prison, and hobnobbing with the world’s most notable tyrant thugs. 

            So why did Barbara Walters interview Castro so adoringly?  Why are so many American liberals and college students (I repeat myself) praising him so effusively now?

            More importantly, what gives rise to a Castro and other tyrants like him who dot the trail of world history?  Whether petty tyrants or emperors, their evil minds have led to more human misery than have natural disasters.  What drives them? Why must they conquer and control?

            I’m guessing that each of them has a void within.  They are needy.  We know that Alexander and Napoleon were.  Their towering ambition, according to biographers, masked a need to be known, seen, and affirmed.  What most of us perceive as a supersized ego is actually a supersized hole, an emptiness that cries, “At some level of my existence, I am nobody. I need to be somebody.”

            So is it true of many a manager, a department head, a principal, a CEO, an employer of any stripe, or even a religious leader.  Running the show assuages their need.

            This analysis doesn’t fit everyone who leads or seeks leadership.  Compare the tyrants named above to Cincinnatus, Lincoln, Reagan, Rome’s “good emperors,” or even Mike Pence.  Ambition has taken no toll on these men.  The world has been blessed with many leaders whose motives are genuinely altruistic.

            Even so, we foolishly disregard history if we think the time will never come when a charismatic figure could lead America from a representative republic to an autocracy.  Hard times and prolonged disenfranchisement have more than once led law-abiding citizens to act uncharacteristically. 

Ironically, those who burn flags and put down the freest country in the world are fanning the flames of tyranny.  In stretching freedom so far, they tempt others to restrict it.

No one has a better opportunity for improving the human condition, for alleviating hardship, all the while expecting excellence, than do those in positions of leadership.  This is true not just of political leaders but of the boss of only four employees down at the body shop.

“He that ruleth over men must be just.”  Tyrants are neither leaders nor just.  They are drivers.  They crush men’s souls. We avoid their evil only with Jefferson’s “eternal vigilance.”

Good leaders successfully woo and inspire.  We have never needed them more than now.

             

Roger Hines

11/30/16

All I Want for Christmas …

             All I Want for Christmas …

              Published in Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 27, 2016

            Sometimes it’s hard and not even right to be conciliatory.  When American colleges remove the American flag from their campuses, asserting that the flag is “a symbol of ostracism,” it isn’t the time to be conciliatory.

            Similarly, moral relativism is a viewpoint that should be opposed and defeated.  Sometimes there is a hill on which to die, a battle to be fought and won.  At times there should be no calls for unity, only victory.

            Today there are many differences among Americans, however, that aren’t this stark.  When they aren’t, we should and must give serious thought to unity.

            For the sake of unity, one thing I want for Christmas is for every city, town, and hamlet in the nation to hold a dance up and down Main Street early in the New Year.  No showing off, just fellow citizens engaging in two or three hours of pure joy, the joy of community and national unity.

Billed as a unity or friendship dance, it should be akin to a polka, a square dance, line dancing, or any kind that’s not sensual.  As if I know what those three types of dance really are.  In the home I grew up in, all kinds of dancing except square dancing were frowned upon.  We joked that the reason we Baptists opposed drinking and gambling was that they might lead to dancing. 

I say the dance should be on the same day throughout the nation and should be sponsored by the nation’s mayors.  The dancing itself should be led by people who love people, love dancing, and love crowds.

We should be encouraged to bring with us a friend of a political persuasion different from our own, but especially a friend or neighbor of a different race.

Now you see where I’m headed.  From Little House on the Prairie days, on into the 1950’s, Americans were united by a common struggle, eking out a living.  There was far more racial unity than most people today could imagine, in spite of segregation.  Stubborn soil, a depression, and two world wars had an equalizing effect.  We were poor together.

But urbanization and technology are doing us in.  Our houses have become our enclaves.  After a day’s work, we close our doors and watch television, thus entering into the darkest of wastelands.  There we get a warped picture of the world we live in, from television drama as well as from so called news.  There we see racial tension everywhere even though we have worked happily all day with colleagues and friends of a different race.   Twenty-four-hours-a-day news, of course, isn’t news.  It is stress-inducing re-hash that desensitizes all of us. That’s why we must have a nation-wide dance.

  I won’t be dancing, because I can’t.  But I can clap and holler as I watch fellow citizens set aside their differences for a few hours.  I’ll also do any of the dirty work a mayor or any other organizer asks me to do.

So let’s dance.

Another thing I want for Christmas is for churches in every community in America to plan at least three inter-racial worship services, one per quarter, in 2017.  Imagine what it would be like – the exhilaration, the emotion, the fun – for whites, blacks, and browns, to worship God in spirit and in truth, knowing that that old albatross called race is being transcended. 

Interracial friendships would be built and business relationships forged.  If the family that prays together stays together, why wouldn’t it be true of a community?  Every weekend, 40% of Americans go to churches and synagogues, enough to bring peace to chaos if that 40% has unity on their minds.  America needs more integration.  

So let’s worship – together.

I’m willing to take the following action.  I will email my new friend and philosophical polar opposite, author and columnist Kevin Foley, and schedule another coffee time.  I’ll even cave on the demand I gave him when we last talked.  I demanded that since our first meeting was at Starbucks, our next one would have to be at Chick-fil-A.

Believe me, dear reader.  If Mr. Foley and I can be civil with each other, world peace is a distinct possibility.

Public schools are no longer the leveler of our differences or the glue of our culture.  So what is the glue?  It should be freedom and our Constitution that fosters freedom.

Not any more. Because unity takes more than a document.  Neighborly love doesn’t come from a vacuum, but from a context.  That context must be built.  That’s why we had better find some ways to unify.  A nation can’t last too long when its people cannot talk, laugh, dance, and worship – together.

Roger Hines

11/23/16.

Too Many Trophies, Too Many Smiley Faces, and a Changed Nation

                   Too Many Trophies, Too Many Smiley Faces, 

                               and a Changed Nation

                  Published in Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 20, 2016

            Who among us doesn’t need affirmation?  Affirmation?  The very question reveals how far we have come in our need for praise.

            Consider the following names and ask yourself if these leaders/changers needed affirmation: Lincoln, Mark Twain, FDR, George Patton, Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham, Elvis Presley, Steve Jobs …

            The list is endless.  Do we seriously think that people who have changed the world worried about whether or not they would be affirmed?  OK, Elvis did ask his mother at one point early in his career, “Mama, do you think I’m obscene?”  Apparently, the criticism of his much swiveling – so new to the entertainment scene – reached him, but it didn’t stop his altering style.  He kept swiveling, but also blessed us with “How Great Thou Art” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

            Lincoln could be melancholy, though not from lack of affirmation, but from the weight of his office.  That weight led him to remark, “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”  That’s how millions of Americans feel about abortion.

            Mark Twain was considered a literary renegade because he spelled words the way people pronounced them.  Unfazed by the rules of English, he brightened the lives of readers on at least three continents.  FDR and Reagan?  Those two cheery men were going to be happy, affirmed or not.  Mother Teresa, Thatcher, Billy Graham, and Steve Jobs?  Focused people like these aren’t thinking about affirmation. 

            Patton and Churchill?  These two didn’t need anybody’s trophies or smiley faces either.

            But today’s children, teens, and college students do need them.  Why?  Because that’s what we’ve handed them for decades.  We have trained them well to seek and to need affirmation.  Not all of them, but enough to fill the streets with “protestors” who need “safe space,” who can’t seem to grow up or to understand that “free” means somebody besides them pays for it.  Who don’t know that peaceful transfer of power after an election is one of the chief distinctives of democratic America.

            Unearned affirmation and self-esteem emphasis have produced bad fruit.  That fruit is one nation under therapy, a nation of people who are not as tough as our parents and grandparents were.  No wonder.  We’ve swallowed all the books that push affirmation instead of accomplishment.  That’s why we award “participation.”

            Everything has a history, and the Great Age of Coddling in which we find ourselves is no different.  I sensed this age easing in as far back as 1970.  Just five years into teaching, and at a well respected high school, I could tell that educational priorities were shifting.  A social-psychological agenda was displacing the time honored knowledge-based agenda.  At faculty meetings, conferences, and in educational literature it was clear a new day was dawning, a day in which learning was taking a back seat to “the learner.”

            Some things in the shift, such as more help for slow learners, were good, but learning decreased and “the learner,” with all his “needs,” became education’s central purpose.  Even so, in every class I’ve ever taught it’s knowledge that excites students.  Introspection depresses.  Students need far less affirmation than knowledge and character development.  Knowledge and character point students upward and outward.  Excessive affirmation points inward to the self.  

One mark of the Great Age of Coddling is the demise of substance.  Recently on a popular Christian radio station, I suffered through a song with 12 “Wo-ee-wo-ee-oh’s” before anything of fact or argument was given.  Mid-song, there were 2 “wo-ee-wo-ee-oh’s,” and at the end of the song, 10 “wo-ee-wo-ee-oh’s” as the song mercifully faded away.  Little content, but affirming sounds and feelings, I reckon.

            Just as so much contemporary music is low on words and high on rhythm, so are the actions of anti-Trump protestors void of idea.  Despite a national election that turned politics-as-usual on its head, college students are merely chanting vulgarities and personal attacks.  No lucid expression of their purpose; just “Adolf Trump,” “Racist Trump,” and a refusal to acknowledge the unambiguous results of a stunning election. 

            Inauguration Day may not be pretty.  Pretty or not, it will be the beginning of a four-year conflict between President Trump and his protestors who will enjoy the support of the media.  For eight years President Reagan endured the same.  For eight years President Obama, the media’s darling, had smooth sailing.

            Pampered college youths have made it clear that they want satisfaction and that they deserve it.  They’re special.  Don’t you know that?

           

Roger Hines

11/16/16

Flirting With Socialism

                          Flirting With Socialism

               Plublished in Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 13, 2016

            Maybe it came from watching (and helping) my father as he struggled to produce crops for “the other man.”  Maybe it was from reading so much Southern fiction that described the harsh realities of sharecropping and poverty.  Or perhaps it was the perplexing attitude of my father who seemed to respect all the men for whom he labored, always loving the labor.

            Whatever it was, my youthful years produced a deep interest in “economic justice,” a term I now eschew.

            Because of excellent teachers in a small southern town high school, I was introduced to Karl Marx in the 10^th grade.  Cotton was king then, and although my father had stopped raising cotton, he and I still “chopped” and picked cotton for neighboring landowners.  Securing and reading a copy of Marx’s “Das Kapital,” I found myself conflicted.  I knew what capitalism was and how it had built America; however, Marx began to get inside my 15-year-old head.  He made me feel sorry for my father.

            Secretively I began to feel a measure of disdain for the wealthy men for whom my father worked, even though they were good men.  How could they expect my father to work so hard in their fields, woods, pastures, and sawmills?  Yes, my father’s problem and society’s problem was capitalism and the tenant farmer system.

            Had not Marx asserted that “exploitation belongs to the nature of capitalism which in turn creates inequality”?  Did he not argue that only government intervention would improve the life of the poor?  And just why in 1959, a full century after “Das Kapital,” were we still living under such exploitation?  In the preface to his treatise, Marx wrote, “I do not draw the figure of the capitalist or the landowner in a rosy light.”  This Marx guy was winning me over.

            Please remember I was only 15.  Most 15-year-olds were and are malleable.  What they read, whom they listen to, and whom they trust shapes their world view.

            It’s scary to think about it now, but the writings of Marx and other socialists were shaping me.  The landowners my father worked for were the oppressors; my father and I were the oppressed.  Those landowners should have shared their wealth, and the government should have come to the aid of us, the working poor.

            Several counter influences rescued me from becoming a doctrinaire socialist. While I brooded over socialist writings, the following influences, thankfully, perched on my shoulder, tweeting ideas contrary to Marx’s: a teacher, an atheist, a columnist, my brothers and sisters, and my father also, whose lot it was that drove me to entertain socialism in the first place.

            The teacher, Margaret Richardson, laid out clearly in Government/Economics the distinction between capitalism and socialism and the path’s end of each.  The atheist, Ayn Rand, who had escaped socialist Russia for America, wrote fiction and nonfiction that laid socialism bare.  She had lived under it.  (Most anti-statists are not atheists, but at least Rand rejected government as God, unlike many socialists.)  The columnist, William F. Buckley, with his acerbic yet humorous pen, made me wonder how I could ever have been swayed by socialism.  My brothers and sisters, all 16 of them, were living joyous lives.  Blessed with few material things, they smiled, laughed, and worked hard, “waiting for the light.”  (They all found it. They all have plenty of food, clothes, a roof, nice vehicles, and are still smiling and laughing.)

            The counter influence that most affected my philosophical conflict was my father himself.  A reader of newspapers and magazines, he understood history and politics.  In retrospect, I see that he accepted his station in life nobly and heroically. Rather than embrace an outlook that others in his situation were embracing and with which I was flirting, he chose to be grateful for the “oppressors” for whom he worked.  If he did not (because he could not?) teach his children to dream, he could and did teach them to work hard, to be responsible, and to “finish up before heading to the house.”

            Don’t think that there were no socialist-leaning professors at the University of Southern Mississippi during the sixties.  There were and there are.  But those I sat under found me already inoculated and cured.

            In today’s America, the free market and free enterprise itself are still “forever on the scaffold,” as the poet puts it.  If my father were alive he would shake his head at the regulatory, nanny state tentacles of government that now reach into businesses, schools, and homes.    

            He would also applaud the election of a city boy billionaire who seemingly understands “poor man economics” better than the experienced politicians.

Roger Hines

11/9/16   

The Different Faces of Politics

                       The Different Faces of Politics

                     Published in Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 6, 2016 

            As the saying goes, “Politics is downstream from culture.”  Indeed it is.  Our politics is us.  Those in office are those we placed in office.  In a democratic society, political leaders are definitely a reflection of the people.

            Politics is also two-faced.  One face is that of winks and ulterior motives.  The other face is that of selfless, sincere people who enter politics to make things better.

            Most dictionaries define politics as the science of government, but we know better.  Politics has never been a science, though it could be called an art.  True science deals with or works from immutable laws.  Few if any things in government are immutable or “nailed down.”  Governmental policy can change in a whiff.  Political “convictions” can change even faster.

            Rather than viewing politics as having to do with governing, we best define it, honestly, as the practice of seeking and holding on to public office.

            For a large number of citizens, the very word “politics” conjures negative thoughts.  More than ever, Americans are viewing politics as dirty.  Dirt is dirty too, but it produces, directly or indirectly, every bite of food that we put into our mouths.  Perhaps this comparison is not apt, however.  Dirt can be cultivated, fertilized, and prepared for producing good food, and is seldom resistant to the preparation.  The heart of the politician is not always so receptive to such preparation mixture.

            Nobody should think that dirty politics is of recent vintage.  Read of the presidential campaigns – almost any of them – that stretch back to Adams and Jefferson.  Re-read what was said about Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel.  And don’t forget Richard Nixon’s VP and attack dog, Spiro Agnew, who called Nixon’s media critics “nattering nabobs of negativism.”  To me, Agnew’s alliterative words were not only amusing, but true.

            One ancient writing reads, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.”  That means don’t talk ugly.  Surely it also refers to lying.  Politics has always been a land in which corrupt communication abounds, whether lies, insinuation, or slander.  Why? Because some office seekers and office holders are willing to employ it to win or keep office.  They enjoy orbiting around the powerful so much that corrupt communication is no big deal. 

            Politics is also the land of weasel words.  Consider the concoction, “reproductive freedom.”  It actually means abortion.  It is the most ironic and deceptive weasel word of all.  It references reproduction when its objective is the halting of reproduction.  “Reproductive freedom” actually means the freedom and legality to get rid of a totally helpless, unborn baby.

            There are others.  “Undocumented worker” happens to be a technically accurate expression, but it is meant to tone down the more precise term, “illegal immigrant.”  In that sense, it is deceptive.  Everybody knows that “revenue enhancements” are taxes and that “to evolve” means to change one’s mind or position purely to get votes.

            But consider the other face of politics, that of men and women in politics in whom there is no guile.  They are far too few.   One of their prototypes is William Wilberforce, the passionate British evangelical and member of Parliament who effectively ended slavery in the British Empire.

            Wilberforce did so with the support of several fellow Parliament members who openly lived immoral lives.  Because of a deep sense of justice, Wilberforce was willing to lay aside his disdain for the vile lives of his colleagues in Parliament and work with them in order to alleviate the horrible suffering of African slaves.  It is doubtful that the British Empire would have ended slavery had not Wilberforce worked with people whose behavior he detested.  Strange bedfellows, we call it.

            Politics is one thing.  Statesmanship and effective statecraft are another.  For those who find themselves in a conundrum regarding for whom to vote for President, Wilberforce’s own conundrum is instructive.  He studied his realistic options, chose sides, and took action.  Britain and the world were made better because of it.

             Regarding this week’s election, if voters consider Donald Trump vile, they should also consider the words, views, and behavior of Hillary Clinton.  Perhaps our guiding question should be how much government do we want.

            Biographer Eric Metaxas in the Wall Street Journal recently wrote, “We already live in a country where judges force bakers, florists, and photographers to violate their consciences and faith, and Mr. Clinton has zealously ratified this.”

            The time is close.  As Metaxas added, “Not to vote is to vote.”

Roger Hines

11/3/16

KSU and the American University

                     KSU and the American University

                      Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 30, 2016

            Kennesaw State University’s recent dustup over the naming of Attorney General Sam Olens as its next president doesn’t rise to the level of campus unrest, but it does bring to mind the goings-on at tax-supported universities across the nation.

            Public schools are usually on everybody’s mind because they affect our children who are still under our wing.  Colleges and universities, we apparently assume, are doing their jobs.  It’s wise, however, to give thought to what goes on in higher education.  After all, we’re paying for it too.

            The Board of Regents’ appointment of Olens to KSU led to a measure of protest from faculty and students.  Placards in hand, faculty members and students got their 15 minutes of journalistic and television fame with the following words: “We need a national search,” “Olens is not qualified,” and “Olens is homophobic.”

            The purpose of a university is to educate.  Its primary purpose is not to give students a voice.  Giving students a voice has its place, as in leadership training, but students are amiss and faculty employees impertinent to tell the administration or the Board of Regents what to do.  Shall the pot command the potter?

            Why is so-called progressivism the default setting of the American university?  Why is the prevailing ideology of most tax-supported universities decidedly liberal?  Why, given that education is a conserving endeavor, does education draw liberals?  Why do so many professors disdain the words orthodox, traditional, and conservative?

            Is anybody besides me tired of the words “tolerance,” “diversity,” “inclusivity,” and “safe space”?  These words are being spoken (and yelled) on campuses across the country.  Yet, how many of these perceived virtues are extended to campus guest speakers who are political conservatives, Orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, or traditional Catholics?

            I’ll back up on the Catholics.  Democratic VP candidate, Catholic Tim Kaine, would be welcome, but only because he has “evolved” from the historic Catholic stance on abortion.  (“Evolved” is the weasel word for changing one’s position in order to get votes.)

            Yes, academia’s tolerance and inclusivity have their hypocritical limits.  Its tolerance doesn’t tolerate anyone’s ideology that isn’t progressive.  And its inclusivity doesn’t include anyone who dares to express a difference of opinion on abortion or homosexuality.  No, tolerance and inclusivity are only for designated groups: women, Hispanics, homosexuals, and blacks.  “Dis-invited” is the new word for turning away an already engaged speaker when the administration or student government learns that the speaker espouses a view different from theirs.  Ask libertarian sociologist Charles Murray and former Secretary of State, Republican Condoleezza Rice, if they know what “dis-invited” means. 

            There are many names for the spirit that permeates and reigns on college campuses.  Its opponents call it “political correctness.”  Its adherents are pleased with “progressivism,” which is understandable.  The word has a positive connotation.   I say call it leftism or socialism because its 1960’s origin and present main tenet is Karl Marx’s idea that society has two classes, the oppressors and the oppressed.  Leftist students consider themselves the oppressed.  That’s why they like Hillary Clinton’s talk about free college.

            No doubt Clinton’s election would inspire college kids to hit the pavement (and the Dean’s office) once again, ushering in another age of student protest.  No doubt because Congress will not, in this present political climate, appropriate money for every college student’s education.  And when promises are made and un-kept, a la Obama, frustration levels rise and protests happen.

            With a Clinton presidency we would again hear cries for “relevance” in curriculum, as though relevance is a stand alone judgment.  (Relevant to what?)  Students will protest traditional subjects and argue for “Family Life,” “Community Resources,” “Feminine Studies” and such.  (In the mid 70’s while education was drying off from the 60’s, Cobb County Schools taught “Bachelor Living” and “Death and Dying.”)

            There has been some pushback on universities that have been too mild with their student activists.  Last spring when the University of Missouri allowed student protesters unfettered access to the campus, even students pushed back.  This fall, enrollment was down 8 percent or 2100 students.  The university’s budget shortfall was $32 million.  So far, no pushback on the University of Michigan’s asking students to specify the pronouns by which they wish to be known.  The majority chose “he/him” and “she/her.”   “Genderqueer” students chose “ze” and “xyr.”

            And just where do those who know him think President Olens will stand on these matters, both the silly and the serious?  Squarely on the side of good sense and wisdom.  My impression is Olens knows how to listen to all parties and then to act.  We should wish him well. The American university scene hath need of him.

Roger Hines

10/27/16 

            

The Power of Realistic Imagining

                                The Power of Realistic Imagining

                 Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 23, 2016

“We are the world, we are the children,” or so sang Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and a bevy of other famous singers who got together back in 1985 to promote African famine relief.

  Well, yes we are and no we aren’t.  Certainly we are all human beings with common needs.  Most of us (we of the whole world, I mean) are busy earning bread and caring for families.  All people groups of the world also deal with hardships and dashed dreams.

So there are definitely some things that tie Americans to their fellow world citizens in … Bangladesh, or … Peru, or … Uganda.  There really is a “family of man,” and there is much that all humans around the world hold in common.

To get a sense of this fact, Google and listen to John Lennon’s song, “Imagine.”  Combined with its slow, haunting cadence, its words, “Imagine there’s no countries,” can make one conscious of the desperate, uprooted people of Syria, the poverty of Africa, the eternal unrest of the middle east, the danger of living in drug-lord infested central America, and the Baltic nations that still must fear the Russian bear.  Such suffering in other nations should move us all.

People of all nations are like Americans in at least two ways.  They must eat, and they have non-physical, emotional needs – such as dignity and self-worth – that cry out for fulfillment.

There are three people who have kept my mind on the condition of our world and have inspired me to hope and work for its betterment.  One is an Italian sister-in-law.  Another is an outstanding Indian son-in-law, and the other is also an outstanding son-in-law whose mother is of Mexican descent.   Antonia, Tanveer, and Laurence have taught me much about our world.  Because of their knowledge and respect for all people, my knowledge and thought world have been enriched.  Their background, their stories remind me that we are the world.

There is a limit, however, beyond which such thoughts of globalism just don’t work.  Realism blunts such thoughts.  Yes, we are the world, and most human hearts desire peace and love.  But there is also language, culture, race, and even topography that keep us from being citizens of the world.

Would that it were not so!  If the words “Why can’t we all just get along?” had not come from the lips of a violent, apprehended lawbreaker, we could resort to them more freely.  Rodney King’s question, however, is exactly the question we should be asking.  But we should also know its answer.  Its answer is we must view the world realistically.

Recently I watched a real life video in which a young woman was resisting arrest.  “You cannot arrest me,” she yelled to the cop.  “I’m not a citizen of your jurisdiction.  I’m a citizen of the planet.”  It appeared that she actually believed it as she continued to repeat it and resist the patient officer.

A growing number of college students have seriously adopted this view of their existence.  The grandchildren of the children of the sixties are resurrecting “Peace, brother!” and are labeling patriotism as “nativistic.”  Thus the refusal of more and more college and professional athletes to salute the American flag or to stand while the national anthem is sung.  It must be that they never came to understand or appreciate what America is.

Why did Antonia come to America?  Mainly because she loved my brother and not Mussolini, but she fast became a patriot.  Why did Tanveer leave Bombay for America?  Why did Laurence’s grandparents remove themselves to Texas?  It was because America was a beacon.  She still is, but will not remain so if illegal immigration is not checked,  if certain black leaders don’t start preaching accomplishment and hope instead of resentment, and if our love of freedom doesn’t supplant our love of government largess.

America has been a superpower only since 1945.  Seventy-one years is not a long time.  The world still needs America for an example of what freedom can produce.  Before we sing too much about world citizenship we should ponder what good has come from the American spirit: free markets (groceries), free speech, freedom of religion and more, all of which, according to Jefferson, must forever be guarded and fought for.

John Lennon’s song goes on to say “Imagine no possessions,” and then sallies off into unreality.

When Frenchman Crevecoeur visited our fledgling country, he wrote the following: “The American is a new man who acts upon the new principles of toil and rugged self-reliance.”  Imagine what things would be like if we reclaimed those principles.

Roger Hines

10/19/16

Moral High Horses and Selective Disgust

   Moral High Horses and Selective Disgust

                            Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 16, 2016

It was James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, who pressed the campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  That slogan was code for “Let the Republicans have the abortion issue and any other issue that’s not economy-related.”

             Republicans, fearing Carville’s strategy, urged presidential candidates Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney to ignore the social issues.  All three candidates played down their platform’s pro-life stance and Planned Parenthood’s hand in the federal cookie jar.

            “Character issues,” Carville argued, are a matter of personal belief.  Bill Clinton’s character was inconsequential.  Job performance was what mattered. 

            After Bill Clinton was impeached, members of his cabinet and White House staff assembled on the White House lawn to assure reporters and the nation that they were still OK with their man. Monica Lewinski and the Arkansas women who had accused Clinton of sexual assault didn’t matter.  They were placed within the category of Carville’s other verbal flourish: “Drag a 5-dollar bill through a trailer park and there’s no telling what you’ll get.”

            So here we are in a season of déjà vu all over again.  Suddenly we’re back to character matters.  It matters because we need something to hold over Donald Trump’s head.   It now matters to the networks even though 24 years ago they ignored Paula Jones, Kathleen Willy and Juanita Broderick when they first revealed that Clinton assaulted them.

            Offensive, repulsive words are one thing.  Vile acts are another.  Vile though Clinton’s acts were, he didn’t pay for them, unless one thinks the $850,000 he paid to settle with Paula Jones was enough. 

            The word “apologize” wasn’t blurted from the lips of very many people in 1992.  Nobody, certainly not Republicans, was demanding that Clinton apologize.  Remember, character and morality didn’t matter.   Hillary Clinton’s treatment of her husband’s victims didn’t matter either.

            So why the sudden concern for moral standards in speech, namely Donald Trump’s?   Historically, wrongdoing is what we punish people for, not wrong thoughts (“hate crimes”) or words.  The case before us in the presidential race is a candidate who said some things and a former president and his candidate wife who did some things.  The ex-president and his wife are getting off scot free.  The Republican candidate is being raked over the coals. 

Neither did the media “out” JFK.  He was their boy as well.

            Trump’s media critics have no basis for their feigned moral outrage.  They themselves are amoral.  Yet on their moral high horses they are giving “freaking out” a new name.  They react in horror to Trump but are hunky dory with the likes of Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, the aging Madonna, the lyrics of too many rock singers to count, and all the other cultural icons who have turned entertainment into a moral cesspool in which our youth are awash.

            The New York Times recently “reported” that “Trump has made gutter attacks on women.”  Get this weekend’s issue of the NYT and take a peep at its Arts, Movies, and Entertainment section.  See the ads the NYT is willing to take money for.  Browse a few pages of “50 Shades of Gray” and you’ll see what millions of suburban women (they who supposedly are most offended by Trump’s video) are reading.  Why is the NYT surprised that the decadent culture it has helped spawn has spawned a presidential candidate?

            The network that out-ed Trump’s salacious video is a purveyor of the very thing for which it criticizes Trump.  The networks push and sell sex virtually every hour of the day, and they do show men groping women.

            So let’s call it selective disgust.  JFK and Clinton were not disgusting.  Trump is.  JFK and Clinton committed actions and are still championed.  Trump spoke words and is lacerated.

            During the Clinton era we were supposed to shut up about the Ten Commandments,  Judeo-Christian values, and character.  All of that is personal belief.  From the 70s through the 90s social conservatives tried to challenge the culture.  They lost the culture war, but don’t despair.  Now we can decide for ourselves if we are male or female.  That’s nice, I guess.

            As for the Republicans who are jumping ship, does anyone think they would be doing so if Trump’s poll numbers had been 8 or 9 points ahead of Hillary when his video came out?  I do not.

            The Democratic Party is the party of secularism and abortion, and suddenly it is concerned about crude words.   Abortion versus crude words.  Ponder that one.

Our presidential choice is clear, and Bernie Marcus put it best.  “It’s 4 years of Trump or 25 plus years of liberal Supreme Court justices.”

Roger Hines

10/12/16

Why Trump Will Triumph

                       Why Trump Will Triumph

                    Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 9, 2016

             How many times did columnists, commentators, and competing candidates assert that Donald Trump was a flash in the pan?

            In spite of all of his deniers, Trump is the Republican nominee and continues to draw crowds in the thousands. To his critics’ dismay, Trump is now in a very competitive, winnable race.  There are at least four political realities that point to a Trump victory.

            First, populism is in the air and it is thick.  Populism still means “of the people.”  A political term and outlook, it extols the virtues and addresses the plight of the common man.  Simply put, it focuses on the little guy as opposed to catering to big banks, big corporations, big oil, crony capitalism, and political elites.

            The American political landscape is sprinkled with figures who were bona fide populists.  Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, and George Wallace come to mind.  But so should the 1972 liberal Democratic candidate George McGovern who proved that some populists lean left.  On the cover of Time Magazine, McGovern, U.S. senator from South Dakota, was dubbed “the prairie populist.” 

  All populists, of whatever stripe, have addressed the concerns of factory workers, farmers, small businesspeople, and manual laborers.  Donald Trump is not the first wealthy presidential candidate to do so.  Theodore Roosevelt was also “to the manor born” but built his career on opposing the railroads and banks and courting America’s working class. 

Trump’s base, with its thousands of rally goers, is a resurgence of the silent majority, the moral majority, the Tea Party, independents, libertarians, and even Democrats who are barely left of center.  This resurgence spreads over the nation like a blanket.  It constitutes a band of Americans who simply think “America First” makes sense for both their own interests and for other nations that still need America’s example of a city on a hill.

Secondly, Trump will win because evangelicals are practicing what they preach. Often ill-defined, evangelicals are Christians of many different denominations who believe in evangelism, that is, sharing their faith.  Following the example of Christ, they also believe in the expression “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”  This phrase itself is why countless well-known evangelical leaders have refused to let Donald Trump’s sins keep them from endorsing him.  They know that they, too, are sinners.  Their Bible says so.

Not all evangelicals support Trump, but an impressive number does, 76% according to Pew Research Center.   Evangelicals have constituted a large voting bloc since the 1970s.  Often accused of self-righteousness, evangelicals have certainly not been self-righteous regarding Trump. Some evangelicals are embarrassed by Trump, unlike many Democrats who never seemed too bothered by Bill Clinton’s White House shenanigans or his Arkansas escapades.  Even so, Hillary Clinton’s stance on abortion and homosexual marriage has tethered evangelicals  to Donald Trump.

Thirdly, the nation’s deplorables may not all have college degrees, but they aren’t dumb and far outnumber intellectuals.  Already effectively wooed by outsider Trump, deplorables were getting registered to vote long before Hillary Clinton so labeled them.  Intellectuals make their living with words.  Deplorables make their living with their hands.  They care little about any candidate’s faculty lounge pedigree or decades of governmental experience.

One intellectual, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, couldn’t defeat North Vietnam.  Another intellectual, constitutional scholar Barack Obama, can’t defeat ISIS.  But a deplorable Missouri haberdasher, Harry Truman, decisively ended a major world war.  Such realities are what led conservative columnist William F. Buckley to say he would rather be governed by the first 100 names in the telephone book (deplorables, that is) than by the Harvard faculty.

Lastly, Trump will triumph because there is a healthy rebellious spirit in the land.  It is a rebellion against globalism, loss of jobs, border insecurity, and denigration of law enforcement; against a hypocritical media that approves of Hollywood’s vulgarity but is apoplectic of Donald Trump’s, and against a conservative party that, while in control of both houses of Congress, has fought timidly, if at all, for conservative measures.

Trump understands that Hillary Clinton’s deplorables are actually the nation’s ignored citizens.  Many party regulars think Trump’s strategy of appealing to the ignored is dumb.  Actually it is politically astute.

Populism is not hovering; it’s spreading.  Evangelicals are not waiting for a perfect candidate; they’re praying for the one who will best represent their strongly held beliefs.  The deplorables are not humiliated by Hillary Clinton’s characterization of them; they’re wearing it on their t-shirts. And amongst voters there is an appetite for what we might call sufficient anger.

Donald Trump has tapped that sufficient anger and he will be rewarded.

Roger Hines

10/5/16