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