Let’s Booze-up for New Year’s … Nothing but Lives Are at Stake

         Let’s Booze-up for New Year’s … Nothing but Lives Are                                                at Stake

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/30/18

            Looks like breweries will soon cover Cobb County like the dew.  Americans have gotta have their “likker,” you know, especially around New Year’s Eve.

            I call all alcoholic drink “likker” because my parents did.  I’m sure there is a big difference between beer and whiskey, but I don’t really care to know how much.  What I care about is the effects of both, and far too many of those effects are bad.

            Dead is dead and sorrow is sorrow whether it’s the alcoholic or the teenager led by beer to his Friday or Saturday night highway death.  Sorry, but I get angry when I think of how Americans have gotta have their alcohol.  Whatever its benefits - the buzz, the taste, the forgetfulness, or the desired social status – we are paying a high price for our love of our pet drug.  At home, at the parties, after work … gotta have it! 

            I wish we took the harmfulness of alcohol as seriously as we do that of tobacco.  The expression “adult beverage” doesn’t work for me, and obviously, in a different way, not for teenagers either.  For teenagers the expression is an enticement.  Don’t teens want to be adults or feel like they are adults?  Guess what the rite of passage still is for the American teenager.  It’s not sexual experience.  It’s easy-to-get alcohol.

            If teenagers see their parents drinking and know that drinking is simply their parents’ way of life, what do we expect teenagers to do?  Become tee-totalers?  No, no, no.  They don’t have to be tee-totalers.  That’s a bit drastic and old-fashioned.   They just need to be taught to “drink responsibly.”  For parents who believe that “drink responsibly” will work for more than 5 % of America’s youths, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona.

            Another expression that doesn’t work for me is “moderate drinking.”  Moderate or social drinking isn’t a cure for alcoholism.  It’s the cause of much of it.

            Two things have led to my stiff – and I do mean stiff – opposition to alcohol: my parents and teaching school.  My parents were as full of practical wisdom as anyone could be.  I can’t think of anything they were wrong about except maybe Little Richard and The Beatles.  But they were not stern.  They merely shook their heads at “this new ‘50s music,” saying little and sometimes half smiling.

            Even with “likker,” they were not preachy.  The thought of people drinking made them sad.  It brought to their minds carnage and sorrow.  They issued kind, but strong warnings.  Their teachable moments were supplied by the “town boys,” those inebriated rebels without a cause who turned Old U.S. 80 Highway into a virtual drag strip right in front of our house way out in the country, creating havoc more than once. 

            But there was a more deeply embedded reason for my father’s opposition to alcohol.  His father drank and so did his only sibling, a brother.   This lovable brother was reckless and wild when drinking.  Two people whom my father loved most turned him off to drinking.

            Teaching teens and college students is a good way to learn what alcohol can do.  You not only overhear things.  You are sought as a confidant by students who live with alcoholic parents and endure alcohol-induced sorrow.

            Researchers at the Archives of General Psychology report that 78% of teens from 13 to 18 drink alcohol and view binge drinking as no big deal.  The Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that the average age for first use of alcohol is 12.  For marijuana it’s 14.  The CDC claims drinking is responsible for more than 4300 deaths among youths each year.  Unfortunately these facts don’t bother those who gotta have their booze.

            Regarding alcohol’s “moderate” use, how many moderate drinking state legislators have been stopped for DUI while returning home from a party?  At least four of my legislative friends have.  I’m glad they were stopped.  Their moderation could have killed somebody.

            I expect Americans to continue popping the corks, lifting their glasses at parties, and building their breweries.  Something else that will continue is the sorrowful and deadly effects of drinking.

            Frankly, I don’t think too many people really care.  They love drinking too much.  On New Year’s Eve, I also suspect, drinking and its sad consequences will intensify.  They always have. 

That’s why I hate “likker” and why I believe tee-totalers aren’t foolish.

Roger Hines

12/18/18

No Judaism, No Christianity … Before Christmas, Hanukkah

 No Judaism, No Christianity … Before Christmas, Hanukkah

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/16/18

            Ah, Christmas!  Is there any celebration anywhere on the globe that compares to it?  Think of its themes that are celebrated every year: peace, goodwill, joy, children, music, cheer, and a giving spirit.

            Elvis put it best, “Why can’t every day be like Christmas? / Why can’t that feeling go on endlessly / For if every day could be just like Christmas / What a wonderful world this would be.”  (Google it, people, Google it!)

            I seriously here testify that I know hundreds upon hundreds of people for whom the feeling does go on endlessly.  What an encouraging reality to have loved ones and friends – lots of them – whose each and every day is genuinely like Christmas.  Not to tamper with Elvis, but for the people I’m thinking of, it’s actually not a feeling. It’s a mindset, a spirit, an upward and outward view of life and a practice of living that is selfless and others-centered.

            To whom could I be referring?  Since you asked, yes, I am referring to the bride of my youth, to two beautiful daughters and two strong sons, none of whom have a selfish bone in them and who reach out to others daily.  I chronicle them not out of pride, but out of gratefulness.

 But I’m also referring to friends galore who also do not live for themselves but for others.  I’m referring also to countless business, community, and political leaders in the county where I live who are incredible givers.  Get around these happy leaders for ten minutes and you see why they act like it’s Christmas Day every day.  It’s because the “feeling” (I’ll use Elvis’ word here) goes on endlessly for them as well.  How many counties in the nation can revel because of such a community?

            Christmas has literally caused the guns of war to cease at least for 24 hours.  It happened in both world wars.  Christmas has brought food to the hungry, clothing to the poor, and hope to many who were about to give up on life itself.

            Christmas, of course, has a history, a context, and certainly a purpose.  It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that every effect has a cause, the cause being greater than the effect.  Christmas is an effect.  Its cause was that God put on an earth suit.   It doesn’t take a philosopher to explain that man can endure the loss of just about anything except meaning.  At Christmas – understandably, with joy all around – those who cannot see or find meaning in life are often at the lowest point of their lives.

            I wonder what percentage of Americans under 30 know that Christianity was born out of Judaism, that Jesus was a Jew, that Jesus was His name and Christ (Messiah), according to His own claim, was His office?

            Today the state of Israel and Jewish people around the world have no better friends and defenders than evangelical Christians.  The Christian’s God is the God of Israel.  While Jews and Christians interpret the Abrahamic covenant differently, there is a kinship between them that is unbreakable.  (And I know people who think Christians are disdainful of Jews.)

            Just as Judaism preceded the new covenant, or New Testament Christianity, so did Hanukkah precede Christmas.  Just as the Maccabees were resisting the Syrian Greeks who sought to impose their culture on the Jews, so did early Christians and so do Christians today resist the notion that the state or the culture is their God.  Jesus’ life and ministry are chronicled by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus as well as by the biographers (also Jewish) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Wherever they are chronicled, both believing Jews and Christians are seen standing for their faith.

            America’s predominate ethic is Judeo-Christian, its principles having been drawn from the Mosaic Law, the Sermon on the Mount, and the tenets of the Epistles.  No informed citizen can say our basic ideals are drawn from Buddhism, Islam, or Hinduism.  To so argue is not criticism, just mere fact.  Today’s motto seems to be “Respect the faiths of others and don’t dare have one of your own.”  Atheism is just as much a belief system as any theistic one is and is probably the most evangelistic religion in America today.

            When the multicultural gospel is stretched too far, a culture winds up ceding everything away.  Hanukkah and Christmas are reminders that, though under fire, the faith of our fathers continues to be the foundation of our lives.

Roger Hines

12/12/18

           

           

Go Teach … and Be Encouraged

                           Go Teach … and Be Encouraged

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/9/18

            An article in the Marietta Daily Journal this past Tuesday produced a parade of personal history that marched across my brain for at least 48 hours.  The article was about a former student of mine, Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton.   It recounted the speech Melton gave to the Cobb Chamber of Commerce’s First Monday Breakfast. 

            The Chief Justice rode high in that parade, but allow me to leave him momentarily after stating that in 10^th grade English at Wheeler High School, Melton was a prince of a guy with character and future success already written all over his face. 

Flashback to the parade that led up to Harold Melton.  When I was 11 and 12, I dreamed of becoming either a radio announcer or a country music star.  Radio announcer because I simply loved radio.  Country music star because country singers rode on big buses and got to see the world as well as sing.

            During my 13^th year, realism set in.  Newspapers stole my heart from radio, and Ernest Tubb and Marty Robbins were riding so high that I decided I could never reach their heights.

            During year 14 in the 10^th grade, a deeper desire began to stir.  Unbeknownst to them, my teachers and coaches at little Forest (MS) High School began to draw me to themselves.  They weren’t just smart.  They loved life and people.  The coaches, like those I would work with years later, were fun-loving and motivating.  Even the sterner, less outgoing teachers obviously enjoyed teaching.  With this batch of educators, Roger Dale Chambers and Gerald Smith met their match.  These teachers still believed and let us know that the teacher should be large and in charge, not students.

            History, literature, science, agriculture, and even mathematics were all compelling, but not nearly so much as the teachers themselves.  If they could enjoy their line of work so much, maybe …

            Suffice it to say that at age 22 I set out to be the kind of teacher my teachers were.  No such luck.  My first year was heaven and hell.  Let’s forget the hell.  Every line of work probably has its share.  That first year produced cute little blond headed 7^th grader Lloyd Gray who became one of Mississippi’s most well known editors at Tupelo’s Northeast MS Journal.

            Three years before the death of former MDJ editor Joe Kirby, I finally got him and Lloyd Gray together.  The two of them enjoyed talking journalism. I listened in.  Lloyd Gray began the 52-year parade of outstanding youngsters that made teaching a joy.  

            Three years ago a bright-eyed 40-something plumber knocked on my door.  We had a happy reunion.  Nick Smith had enjoyed American literature and composition at North Cobb High School, but before entering to fix my problem, he apologized profusely for refusing to give the required talk in American literature. 

            “Mr. Hines, I was too bashful and petrified, but you’ll be glad to know I teach 12-year-old boys at my church,” he pleaded.

            Unlike the effervescent 12th grader Judge Tain Kell, Harold Melton was quiet.  But you knew he had his sights set on something.  When Justice Melton spoke at a Chattahoochee Tech graduation several years ago, he and I also had a happy reunion.

            It’s not the Lloyd Grays, Tain Kells, Nick Smiths, and Harold Meltons who most need the help of good teachers, however.  It’s those who are not so bright-eyed or so fortunate to have parental encouragement.  More and more, suburbia is sending to our schools children and youths who need the kind of teachers I had and the kind of exemplary classmates like the former students I’ve named.

            That’s why the teaching profession needs the best and the brightest, not just in the brains department but in the ability to encourage and point the way for a generation that is not as well-anchored as the one I taught.  That’s why adults who are seeking a second career need to consider teaching and why we need to support our current teachers who still labor hard and long.  To teach is to learn twice.  Do it, adult readers. 

To his friend Richard Rich, Sir Thomas More said, “Why not be a teacher?  You’d be a fine teacher, perhaps a great one.”

            “And if I was, who would know it?” asked Rich.

            “You, your pupils, God.  Not a bad public, that.”

            Every new generation of youth is up for grabs, and they are immensely influenced by teachers and the likes of forward-looking classmates like Harold Melton.  Therein lies much hope.

Roger Hines

12/5/18

Man with No Manners, Characters with No Character, Children with No Anchor

   Man with No Manners, Characters with No Character,                                       Children with No Anchor

         Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/2/18

            Sad but true, humans have to learn to be human.  When they don’t, what we get is man’s inhumanity to man.

            Inhumanity takes many forms such as slavery, tyranny, disrespect, and general incivility.  Incivility has many manifestations.  Some of the prevalent ones today are shouting down public speakers with whom you disagree, blocking traffic, vandalizing property, and accosting prominent citizens in public places. 

            In 1969 country singer Merle Haggard revealed his opposition to the anti-Vietnam War, anti-establishment movement with his big hit, “Okie from Muskogee.”  In 2012 sociologist Charles Murray (who knows what it’s like to be shouted down), penned his highly acclaimed book, “Coming Apart: the State of White America.”  Haggard sang of college students of the 60s who didn’t respect the college dean.  Murray chronicles events from 1960-2010 and concludes that many college students still don’t respect the college dean.

            Something obviously happened during the 50 year span Murray analyzed that allowed incivility and disrespect for authority to continue. Permissiveness? Why, just as Haggard became a target for the dope-smoking anti-war protestors, has Murray become the target of today’s political left?  Perhaps it’s because Murray is an intellectual libertarian/conservative who is hitting some nerves.  (Haggard, of course, was a deplorable.)

            The ancient Roman poet Horace often used the expression “laudatores temporis acti,” meaning “praisers of the past.”  What aging generation has not claimed that things were better in the past?   Today Americans have more food, more healthcare, and more “stuff” than ever before, but less civility.  When it comes to manners and respect for others, we can say we have seen better days.  For two centuries our political leaders at every level followed the dictum of England’s Sir William Harcourt that says to function well, nations and their law making bodies must engage in “constant dining with the opposition.”  From 2001 to 2010, I observed this dictum being successfully practiced in the Georgia General Assembly.

            Today, however, there appears to be no middle, no middle ground between the political/cultural opposition, no place to dine.  But appearances aren’t always real.  The great divide, America’s cold civil war, is taking place not so much between ordinary citizens out across the land as between the talking heads on television.  The majority of those talking heads are defenders of the political left, particularly of the manners that campus leftists are displaying.

            Englishman Edmund Burke argued that manners were more important than laws.  One can understand this.  The purpose of law is to make us behave.  What are manners but the individual choice to act mannerly?  Lawful, mannerly people hardly need laws.  Yet, more and more we live in a manner-less world.  Laws are necessary.

            Long before our current president crossed the line, uttering manner-less words no presidential candidate had ever uttered, writers, movie makers, comedians, and college campus activists were doing far worse.  Today’s television fare is as bad as Tinseltown, the standard fare of both being profanity and moral garbage.  When did today’s entertainment and media elites, who pretend to oppose the President’s crassness, ever call into question the culture that produced him, the culture they engineered?

            In the 18^th century novel “Frankenstein,” a scientist created a monster, only to have the monster get out of control and turn on him.  What was his creator, Dr. Frankenstein, to say?  That which he fashioned became his enemy.  Media elites and movie moguls should reread “Frankenstein.”  Their “monster” turned on them and they don’t like it.

            The publishing business has affected manners and morality as much as television and movies.  My line of work requires me to haunt libraries and book stores.  Base magazines, lurid novels, large measures of graphic eroticism, and filthy language fill our libraries and bookstores.  Most fiction now presents characters without character, man at his worse, certainly not his heroic, sacrificial best.  Writers of the not so distant past seldom depicted man’s underbelly.  They didn’t need to. They had literary talent and could make their point with grace.

            And how do all of these dynamics affect children and youth?  The next generation will always land where the previous generation casts its anchor.  It will champion, at least for several decades, what the previous generation championed.  The cultural/political left has championed the sexual revolution, a different definition of marriage, transgender and non-gender silly talk, and freedom from restraint.  

            Are there any words more powerful than “Thank you” or “I’m sorry”?  Such words are external indications of internal character.  They are actually necessary if we are to avoid brawls, incivility, and the salacious “entertainment” that has seeped into every corner of our society.

Roger Hines

11/29/18                                                                                                                                                                                     

           

           

           

Morality, Money, and a North Star … Every Nation’s Need

    Morality, Money, and a North Star … Every Nation’s Need

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 11/11/18

            If I had to choose between my children and grandchildren being good or smart, I would choose good.  Smarts can be acquired; good is a condition of the heart.  Today the world needs far more good than it does smarts.

            People and nations are now such close neighbors that what affects one of us affects all of us.  In America we speak of “the common good.”  We are better known than any other nation for being Good Samaritans to each other. 

            Whether or not our political divide grows wider and begins to test friendships and community spirit, there are moral principles that will ever stand, even if we don’t stand by them.

            If your house is on fire, do you care what political party or religious persuasion your assisting neighbor clings to?  No, you care only about the size of his water bucket and how fast he can run with it.  Therein, somewhere, lies a moral principle, one to which Americans have adhered since our woodsy New England days and later our little houses on the barren prairie. Americans help each other.

            Americans don’t believe in killing the infidel or in the divine right of kings.  Neither the religious teachings that sprung from the lower Middle East nor the centuries-old monarchy/royalty of Europe define us.  It’s America and the American ethic that still remains a beacon to the world.

            Morality is merely the adherence to particular principles.  Worth of the individual is a principle, one that monarchy, communism, and socialism oppose.  Marital fidelity is a principle, one that America has let slide.  Like the old slide rule and the level, which crooked walls don’t like, principles are unchanging goal posts that tyrants and lusty men don’t like.

            “Don’t steal” is a principle, and I shall never forget my father’s contribution to my embracing it.  After a supper table discussion of a local theft, he drably remarked, “Well, even if you’re hungry, starve to death and go to heaven, but don’t ever steal.”  While some might smirk at such absolutism, I was inspired by it.

            Morality matters.  It certainly beats tooth and claw, and has kept many a family and nation together.  Without the “civil” in civilization, there would be no civilization.  Moral principles foster civilization.  They are the do or die for the home and the nation.

            Money matters also, if you desire a roof and some food.  From the beginning of time to the late 1700s every nation was poverty-ridden, with only the thinnest level of wealth and wealthy people at the top.  That changed with the rise of capitalism.  How strange that a growing number of Americans could oppose a system that took hold not yet 300 years ago and began to increase wealth and food at every level. How is it that Henry Ford and even Mitt Romney are scorned as “capitalists,” and why are today’s capitalists so inept in defending capitalism?  What makes it hard to defend a system that has acquired a roof and food and even a yacht for some?

            Again, a principle is needed.  Sociologist Charles Murray, who after taking the stage was forbidden by students to speak at the University of Michigan and Middlebury College, provides one: “Capitalism is the economic expression of liberty.”  Some, of course, would reject this principle, but if they know history at all, they could never replace the word capitalism with socialism.  Socialism equalizes.  Free enterprise does not.  It rewards work.  Socialism is supposedly compassionate.  If so, it is coerced compassion which is no compassion at all.  It is government taking from Peter to give to Paul, even if Peter does the producing and Paul sits at home.

            Business moguls like Andrew Carnegie believed that government has a role in capitalism, but they didn’t favor stymieing or killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

            Whatever the system, there must be a method for perpetuating it.  America’s method is participatory, representative democracy arrived at through elections.  Many opponents of Donald Trump still refuse to acknowledge his election, claiming he is “not legitimate.”  If Republicans refused to acknowledge the Democratic takeover of the U.S. House (they wouldn’t) and called the new House membership “not legitimate,” it would be hypocritical for Democrats to criticize them.

            If Americans start rejecting the outcome of elections, we will be taking the civil out of civilization. An enduring moral order, a North Star, is necessary for American civilization to continue.  One can find a North Star path in an ancient book called “The Exodus” (Section 20), and in a famous 1^st century sermon called “The Sermon on the Mount.”  Check them out.

Roger Hines

11/7/18

Tom-A-ta, Tom-MAH-ta ... Patriot, Nationalist … What’s in a Word?

Tom-A-ta, Tom-MAH-ta ...  Patriot, Nationalist … What’s in a          Word?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 11/4/18

            Oh, the stir recently created by a simple, easy to understand word.  Words are the vehicles on which our thoughts ride.  The rub comes when someone takes exception to our choice of vehicles.

            Boldly – how else would he do it? – President Trump at his Houston, TX rally used the word “nationalist.”  That unknowing, uncaring fellow even declared, “I am a nationalist.”

            Well, so am I.  And so is anybody else “who is devoted to his or her nation” (Webster’s New World Dictionary), “who advocates for national independence” (The Merriam-Webster 2004 edition) and “who is patriotic, favoring an independent nation” (my smart phone).

            And how did the chattering class respond?  They threw onto the President’s verbal vehicle a load of fake definitions.  “Nationalist,” one media star pouted, means “white nationalist.”  Another self-appointed lexicographer insisted that the word means “nativist,” and “nativist” is an ethno-centric expression that no President should use.

            Of course the President was using the word “nationalist” in the context of and in opposition to the word “globalist.”  The semantic path he was taking he had taken before.  During his first year in office he stated, “I’m the president of a nation, not of the world.”

            It’s true that “nationalist” has become a pejorative term, that is, one that has moved at least partially from respect to disrespect.  Consider the word rhetoric which means “the art of oratory.”  Today in common usage it has come to mean “hot air” (“The politician was merely engaging in rhetoric,” we say), but not so in formal usage.  So is it with “nationalist.”  The word long pre-dated Hitler, had a noble meaning, and the chattering class knows it.  Even so, CNN and MSNBC used the word’s pejorative meaning as a weapon to associate the President with Hitler. 

So it goes.  Mind readers are everywhere these days, claiming the occult power to read our minds and hearts.

            Please.  Family, tribe, nation, globe.  This sociological arrangement has been with us from Day One.  Free sovereign nations with borders are a good idea, partly because they are typically a coalition of tribes.  I don’t believe I would like living in a white nation.  My black friends are too big a joy to be without.

             Is American liberalism, which in times past fostered lofty ideals (integration, voting rights) so exhausted that it fusses about vocabulary words and searches for the President’s every imagined slight?  Martin Luther King, Andy Young and other icons of the 1960s dressed up in coats and ties to march and lead the way for a cause that was just.  Their dignity and eloquent, precise words contributed to their success. 

            Contrast these fearless, rhetorically skilled men to the leftist protestors of today who dress like the homeless, scream in anger, and hurl vulgar words that do nothing but turn ordinary people off.  To these people and the progressive elites behind them, nationalism and populism have become unacceptable words. 

            In a span of 25 years the focus of liberals has shifted from the working class to the themes of multiculturalism and globalism.  The constituency whose support they could always count on is now the deplorables they can’t corral.  This working class is now the “populists,” another term that repulses and frightens political elites.  These populists, of course, are also nationalists, and as Salena Zeto puts it in her highly acclaimed book, “The Great Revolt,” these Trump-supporting populists/nationalists are “a culture craving respect.”     

            This Tuesday, the nationalists/populists will know how much political power they hold.  Will Joe Lunchbox prevail in the midterm election?  Or will victory go to the media and to Target, Delta, Google, Dick’s Sporting Goods and other corporatists who have turned their backs on regular folks, siding with the cultural left instead of their customer base?

            Regular folks rejoice that Donald Trump has flustered the previously untouched news media, driving them to distraction.  They crave action on several fronts, particularly the growth of the administrative state with its bureaucrats and unelected executive branch agencies that actually run the country.  They also desire proper response to migrant mania.  If this makes them “nationalists,” they proudly wear the label.

            Trump has won the hearts of the Democrats’ base, creating a blue collar revolution.  If his personal negatives, which are many, don’t prevent a midterm victory, we can assume that the word “nationalist” wasn’t a bad choice of words after all, and that normal, hardworking folks, the demographic that keeps the nation humming, are back in play.

Roger Hines

10/31/18

The Age of Foolishness

                                 The Age of Foolishness

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/21/18

            There are some things we can dismiss as trivial and fleeting, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s questionable genealogy, but there are other things like pronouns and peanuts to which we best pay attention.

            Who would have thought that pronouns and peanuts would ever reach political discourse or that self-respect and charm would go out of style and have to be re-taught?

            Why pay attention to pronouns and peanuts?  Because they provide examples of outlandishness and tyranny that are making inroads, especially in California.  Also because our children will fall victims if they are not taught how to resist outlandishness and tyranny.

            Now that the all-gender bathroom issue has waned, the pronoun issue has begun sweeping the country.  From where?  You guessed it.  Academia.  Oh, the foolish, wasteful things birthed, nourished, and indoctrinated in settings where people should be learning math, science, history, and p.h.y.s.i.o.l.o.g.y.

            Many of academia’s well nourished children move on to government and education where they set or enforce policy and thereby spread the foolishness.  Take New York City, for example.  The New York Times reported recently that beginning in 2019, New York City will allow citizens to be identified on their birth certificates as “male,” “female,” or “X.”  No more limiting people to those old-fashioned, sexist, “binary” identifications like “male” and “female” or “he” and “she.” 

            Today’s word, children, is “non-binary.”  Hello, increased diversity. Goodbye, physiological facts.  Hello, California.  New York City is catching up with you.

            Regardless of how NYC’s decision affects grammar books and teachers, it will certainly cause confusion for state and federal agencies that deal with official documents requiring correct identification.  Has anyone seen an “X”-box on their income tax return?  Don’t rule it out.  Our Age of Foolishness is well afoot.

 Let Topeka or Peoria snicker, but parents in New York and California are organizing, according to The Weekly Standard magazine, and are raising their babies as “theybies.”  Their kids “will choose their own gender and appropriate pronouns when they’re ready.”

            I won’t be snickering.  If you think the activist parents will get nowhere, pause and count on your fingers the Congressional members who already subscribe to such thinking.  I just did and ran out of fingers and toes both.  Columnist Heather Mac Donald’s expression, “the diversity delusion,” is absolutely in play here.  Watch as the list of reality-denying “snowflakes” grows. 

            As for peanuts, journalist Michael Warren recently recounted a phone call received from his son’s school nurse: “It appears your son Henry had a sandwich in his lunch box that looked suspiciously like peanut butter.  Please be reminded of our school’s total nut ban.”  One must ask if there is any corner of our existence into which government and schools will not venture.

            Another facet of the Age of Foolishness is the loss of personal pride and even charm.  The government can’t be blamed for this.   As recently as the late nineties, I stood at my classroom door (a requirement) to, among other things, send to the restroom those young men whose shirts were not tucked in.  Tucked or untucked wasn’t actually the issue.  Trying to instill at least a measure of self-pride was.

            Since then, of course, looking nice has been abandoned and Georgia’s commissioner of labor, Mark Butler, views it as a problem.  In the October 7^th edition of the MDJ, Butler reported that Georgia job-seekers are showing up for interviews dressed inappropriately.  Business owners have informed Butler of the “soft skills” lacking in far too many applicants.

            Charm is typically defined as “a quality that attracts, pleases, delights, and arouses admiration.”  For my generation Carey Grant, Aubrey Hepburn, Ronald Reagan, and Olivia de Havilland filled the bill, but what 25 year old today knows of these self-respecting icons?  They do know of the ill-clad rock stars (and the preachers who dress like them), the foul-mouthed comedians, and celebrities who provide no example of class.

            “Charm,” writes Joseph Epstein, “is the song we don’t want to end, the painting that won’t leave our minds, the man or woman we wish never to leave the room.”  It is “our relief from the doldrums and drabness of everyday life.”

            In the Age of Foolishness, charm or looking nice is scoffed at.  Though charm elevates the spirit and brightens our day, comfort is much more highly prized.  But charm is more than dress.  It’s personality, civility, and manners.

            Charm isn’t in the eye of the beholder.  Everybody understands it except perhaps the purveyors of foolish pronouns, the enemies of peanuts, and all the others who are undermining respect, caring nothing about norms.

            Charm isn’t just traditional.  It is profoundly human.

Roger Hines

10/17/18

           

           

           

Where Do We Go From Here? The Sexual Revolution has long been over and both sides lost. One side, the revolutionaries, argued that sexual freedom was natural, that the restraints of past years were “Puritanical,” “Victorian,” and out of touch with modernity. To the revolutionaries, “sexual purity” was laughable. Birth control, they asserted, had rendered restraint unnecessary. Sex education would give teens all they needed to deal with their new freedom and its risks of venereal diseases and pregnancy. The revolutionaries apparently never taught high school or college. Perhaps they failed to understand that adolescence is a time in our lives when all the education in the world cannot overcome youthful passions in the absence of a moral upbringing. The revolutionaries made light of the other side, the traditionalists. Traditionalists argued that sex was sacred, not just another form of pleasure. The revolutionaries scoffed at the new expression of the seventies, “traditional values.” They argued that wherever sex education failed, it was because there wasn’t enough of it, or it wasn’t being introduced early enough. The line for this great divide was first drawn in 1948 when the famous “sexologist” Alfred Kinsey published “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and in 1953, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.” Kinsey’s “findings” about sexuality, woefully unscientific and based on interviews, were refuted by many psychologists; however, Kinsey and other likeminded “sexologists” continued to assert that happiness and fulfillment come from expressing one’s sexual urges regardless of cultural norms or religious beliefs. After Kinsey, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire emerged, presenting casual sex as a lifestyle. Today, with internet and cable porn and sex-saturated commercialism, the departure of America from a broad Christian consensus on sexual morality is virtually complete. And just how did both sides lose? Traditionalists, who understood that whoever wins the culture wars wins our children, lost partly because of the stance of public education. The children of traditionalists had to endure sex ed in middle and high school unless their parents kept their children out of it. My wife and I chose the latter, which means our children escaped the central message of secular sex ed: “Be careful, do certain things and you won’t get pregnant.” The children of traditionalists, if they were subjected to sex ed, were taught that sexuality is mere biology. It’s the facts of life. What do values have to do with it? Ah, values. How they seem to get in the way of secular culture. Traditionalists, fighting Hollywood and the shifting public sentiment, lost because they still believed that nothing is more values-laden than sexuality, that sexuality is physiology plus emotions, affection, love, and even trust. Sex ed, wittingly or not, attaches sexuality to the Darwinian worldview that men and women evolved from animals, and animals are, well, animalistic, particularly when it comes to their appetites and sexual urges. But the revolutionaries lost also. Whether secular educators, pornographers, movie makers, Planned Parenthood defenders, abortion sympathizers, or politicians who cater to all of the above, they all are now caught in a web of hypocrisy. Freedom from our Puritanical past was supposed to make us better, certainly happier. But then along came Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul who proved that we need the old rules again. Supposedly, the old rules for sexual relations were outdated and oppressive; yet, who can argue that men have behaved better under “sexual liberation” than they did under the former Christian cultural consensus? The revolutionaries also lost in that they too must live under the consequences of their own arguments. For instance, the Center for Disease Control reports that 4 out of 10 children in the U.S. are born to unmarried women, and that the spread of STDs is at an all-time high. Apparently, all the condom talk has failed. Georgian Phil Kent in his excellent book, “The Dark Side of Liberalism,” writes, “The Dark Side constantly attacks what is right and true.” Kent’s timely book echoes John Richard Neuhaus’ claim that the public square has become the “naked square,” shorn of and now disallowing any mention of transcendent values. So here we are. The revolutionaries searched for the soul’s basement and found it. But Kent’s last chapter is titled “Where do we go from here?” and his answer is apt: “Fight for future goals with an optimistic eye and a fearless heart.” I believe Kent’s optimistic advice is compelling because I’ve seen the sad eyes of too many youths who have tried the way of the revolutionaries, “the dark side,” and are ready for something far more soul-satisfying. Yes, there is hope. A counter-revolution is still possible, and it will necessarily be led by parents who refuse to let a sex-sated culture snatch their children. Roger Hines 10/10/18

                              Where Do We Go From Here?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/14/18

The Sexual Revolution has long been over and both sides lost.  One side, the revolutionaries, argued that sexual freedom was natural, that the restraints of past years were “Puritanical,” “Victorian,” and out of touch with modernity. 

To the revolutionaries, “sexual purity” was laughable.  Birth control, they asserted, had rendered restraint unnecessary.  Sex education would give teens all they needed to deal with their new freedom and its risks of venereal diseases and pregnancy.

The revolutionaries apparently never taught high school or college.  Perhaps they failed to understand that adolescence is a time in our lives when all the education in the world cannot overcome youthful passions in the absence of a moral upbringing.   

The revolutionaries made light of the other side, the traditionalists.  Traditionalists argued that sex was sacred, not just another form of pleasure.  The revolutionaries scoffed at the new expression of the seventies, “traditional values.”  They argued that wherever sex education  failed, it was because there wasn’t enough of it, or it wasn’t being introduced early enough.

The line for this great divide was first drawn in 1948 when the famous “sexologist” Alfred Kinsey published “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” and in 1953, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.”   Kinsey’s “findings” about sexuality, woefully unscientific and based on interviews, were refuted by many psychologists; however, Kinsey and other likeminded “sexologists” continued to assert that happiness and fulfillment come from expressing one’s sexual urges regardless of cultural norms or religious beliefs.  After Kinsey, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire emerged, presenting casual sex as a lifestyle.  Today, with internet and cable porn and sex-saturated commercialism, the departure of America from a broad Christian consensus on sexual morality is virtually complete.

And just how did both sides lose?  Traditionalists, who understood that whoever wins the culture wars wins our children, lost partly because of the stance of public education.  The children of traditionalists had to endure sex ed in middle and high school unless their parents kept their children out of it.  My wife and I chose the latter, which means our children escaped the central message of secular sex ed: “Be careful, do certain things and you won’t get pregnant.”

The children of traditionalists, if they were subjected to sex ed, were taught that sexuality is mere biology.  It’s the facts of life.  What do values have to do with it?

Ah, values.  How they seem to get in the way of secular culture.  Traditionalists, fighting Hollywood and the shifting public sentiment, lost because they still believed that nothing is more values-laden than sexuality, that sexuality is physiology plus emotions, affection, love, and even trust.  Sex ed, wittingly or not, attaches sexuality to the Darwinian worldview that men and women evolved from animals, and animals are, well, animalistic, particularly when it comes to their appetites and sexual urges.

But the revolutionaries lost also.  Whether secular educators, pornographers, movie makers, Planned Parenthood defenders, abortion sympathizers, or politicians who cater to all of the above, they all are now caught in a web of hypocrisy.  Freedom from our Puritanical past was supposed to make us better, certainly happier.

But then along came Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul who proved that we need the old rules again.  Supposedly, the old rules for sexual relations were outdated and oppressive; yet, who can argue that men have behaved better under “sexual liberation” than they did under the former Christian cultural consensus?

The revolutionaries also lost in that they too must live under the consequences of their own arguments.  For instance, the Center for Disease Control reports that 4 out of 10 children in the U.S. are born to unmarried women, and that the spread of STDs is at an all-time high.  Apparently, all the condom talk has failed.

Georgian Phil Kent in his excellent book, “The Dark Side of Liberalism,” writes, “The Dark Side constantly attacks what is right and true.”  Kent’s timely book echoes John Richard Neuhaus’ claim that the public square has become the “naked square,” shorn of and now disallowing any mention of transcendent values.

So here we are.  The revolutionaries searched for the soul’s basement and found it.  But Kent’s last chapter is titled “Where do we go from here?” and his answer is apt: “Fight for future goals with an optimistic eye and a fearless heart.”

 I believe Kent’s optimistic advice is compelling because I’ve seen the sad eyes of too many youths who have tried the way of the revolutionaries, “the dark side,” and are ready for something far more soul-satisfying. 

Yes, there is hope.  A counter-revolution is still possible, and it will necessarily be led by parents who refuse to let a sex-sated culture snatch their children.

Roger Hines

10/10/18

Higher Education, Higher Bankruptcy

                      Higher Education, Higher Bankruptcy

             Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/7/18

Six weeks after turning 20, I walked onto the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.  Somehow I sensed that I had found myself.  Not that the junior college I had attended had failed to stretch or inspire me.  It, too, was a remarkable place.  East Central Jr. College in Decatur, Mississippi had reminded me of Daniel Webster’s remark about his beloved Dartmouth, “She may be small, but there are those of us who love her.”

            Southern Miss, though, was a growing university, already bigger than Ole Miss or Mississippi State.  I had never seen a village, as it were, known for the splendor of Greek architecture, whether in its classroom buildings, the dome-clad administrative building, the president’s home, or even student dorms.  The buildings seemingly pointed to high purpose.  Their columns pointed you to things beyond your present world, things like a better world.

            Ninety miles to the north where I had grown up, one rarely saw resplendent buildings.  Our glory was mostly futuristic: the fresh meat we would enjoy for a few months after killing hogs or the beautiful sight of the garden and the fields after all the crops were “laid by,” left to grow while we anticipated harvest.

            There was present glory, of course.  We had neighbors up and down the road who cared for each other, and plenty of food although almost everything else was always in short supply.  As for architecture, even the smallest country churches had steeples that pointed gloriously upward, a reality that had an unrealized effect on us. 

            Entering the university campus was a life-changing experience. The buildings and grounds around me held promise.  They would deepen my understanding of history and of the importance of beauty.  They would remind me that someone had the vision and foresight to build fair gardens like this campus in order for youths to prepare themselves to do their part in advancing civilization.  They would deepen my respect for my father who was so smart, so well read, and so interested in the world, yet so bound by responsibilities that he would never have dreamed of walking onto a university campus.

             I know, these are all high-flung thoughts.  Today, that American institution called the university cares little for high-flung thoughts or tradition.  To the modern university, tradition is a shackle, certainly not an inspiration.  Not so in European nations.  For all their wrongheadedness (globalism, incurable love for monarchy’s remnants, the near expulsion of Christianity), at least they don’t tear down buildings just because they are 15 years old.  Not ruled by total pragmatism, their appreciation of landmarks and of history exceeds that of America by light years.

            One wonders if there’s any easy cure for what’s wrong with the university.  Serious students will excel in spite of the university’s weaknesses, but what about the masses, those students who are there without any future vision, who have no sense of anything transcendent, and are therefore drawn to the protest movements, the party scene, and the outlandish “new way of viewing life” such as transgenderism, “fluidity,” and other “alternative life styles.”  There was a time when professors and administrators held students to tough standards.  Get your tails to the library or go back home.  We’re here not just for you but also for the future of the nation and of civilization.

            Universities are now in an intellectual crisis.  Having essentially abandoned their original purpose of liberal education and of becoming an enlightened “friend of man” as Aquinas put it, they are stuck in career ed (for which few people need a university), in sanctuary from the outer world, and in sports mania.  Families go into debt for this?  Examine the course offerings of a major university.  Compare the direction of academia today to the vision of the great Catholic theologian and educator, Cardinal John Henry Newman.

            The university is being replaced by “university life.”  Scholarship is being replaced by the indoctrination of equality, diversity, social justice, and cultural cleansing.  The therapeutic turn of higher education has led to the infantilization of university students.  Across the country there is a head-spinning array of practices intended to make university students feel “safe.”  Many universities are providing chill-out rooms.  Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School allow therapy dogs in their libraries.  Emotional fragility is the order of the day.  Universities are teaching fear, not courage.

            Droll thoughts, I realize.  But ask university students if their thought world is being challenged, or if their love for life or for anything outside of themselves is being deepened.  Financial bankruptcy is one thing, but intellectual/spiritual bankruptcy is quite another and is much sadder.

Roger Hines

10/3/18