Paul, Pete, and the Kurds

                                Paul, Pete, and the Kurds

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/27/19

There’s little doubt that two of my older brothers, Paul and Pete, joined the army to escape the cotton field.  Not that they were lazy or averse to hard work.  They weren’t.  It’s just that they both had been in the cotton fields since they were twelve.  They weren’t the only Southern boys who took refuge in the military.

            Interestingly – and fortunately – both of them enjoyed the military life.  Not the horrors of battle, but seeing the world after World War II ended.  Paul had served in Italy; Pete wound up in Belgium, specifically at the Battle of the Bulge.  Both made a career of the military.

            Like my father, Paul and Pete were avid readers. They never saw a newspaper or magazine they wouldn’t absorb.  By the time I was 15, Paul and Pete were 40 and 38; my father, 65.  At our house a 15-year-old would not inject himself too much into an adult conversation, but he would ask questions, listen, and learn.

            Learn I did.  Because of the intense labor these brothers and their father shared and endured in the fields, they developed what must be called a brotherhood.  By the time I was old enough to work, my father had downsized from fields to “patches,” much smaller areas of crops rather than vast, endless acres.  Many times he reminded me that I didn’t have as rough a life as Paul and Pete.

            After retiring from the military Paul landed in Alabama, Pete in Texas.  The most stimulating times of my youth were when they managed to come home at the same time, thus enabling me to eaves-drop as they and my father discussed their days in` the big fields, the war, Churchill, Truman and McArthur, Eisenhower, and the new young President Kennedy.

            I’m 17.  Paul and Pete are at our house. Paul, the biggest talker, always speaks first. “We proved what the United States has.  There’s not an army anywhere that can whip the United States.”

            “Be careful, now,” my father retorts. “I wouldn’t say that.  You never know.”  Pete, a quiet man who didn’t like to talk about the war experience, adds, “All I know is I must have shot and killed more boys my age than I could count.”

            That comment quelled the topic of superiority and turned the conversation to another topic in which we are engulfed today, that of the role of our military.  A few months earlier in his farewell address in January of 1961 President Eisenhower had warned, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military/industrial complex.”

            The beloved “Ike,” a WWII hero, went further.  After introducing the expression “military/industrial complex” to America’s political lexicon he added, “Great and sustained spending for defense and war creates power groups that could disastrously harm the nation’s future.”

            Power groups?  Created by war?  Yes. War is profitable for many and always has been.  But why have so many politicians in America encouraged war?  Was novelist Taylor Caldwell right in claiming that wars are always promoted by rich industrialists and their political friends?  With Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syrian “conflicts,” the U.S. has been in a permanent state of undeclared war since the last declared one ended.  But dead is dead and most of the deaths in the undeclared wars have not been the sons of the industrialists or politicians, but the Pauls and Petes of America’s heartland.

            Long before Eisenhower’s warning about the “military/industrial complex,” James Madison stated, “No nation can maintain its freedom in the midst of continuous war.”  Was the esteemed Founder foreshadowing an unofficial alliance between the nation’s military and the defense industry that supplies it?  Did he foresee a powerful vested interest, a relationship between the government (politicians) and defense corporations?  I don’t know, but the question is not far-fetched.

            President Trump, as he promised while campaigning, is pulling back from America’s role as policeman of the world.  The brave Kurds, who will be most immediately affected, were not an issue when Paul and Pete were alive, but the role of the U.S. military was.  And believe it or not, when Paul, Pete, and my father’s conversation turned to Eisenhower’s farewell address, Paul the military hawk (Pete was almost a dove), agreed with Eisenhower.

            Perhaps he, like Eisenhower, knew what war was like and believed that you should fight a war to win or come home.  Declared wars typically end.  “Conflicts” don’t.  Have we noticed?  And there are indeed profiteers of war.  Have we noticed that?

Roger Hines

10/23/19

           

           

Bitter lips, Filthy Mouths, Forked Tongues

                              Bitter lips, Filthy Mouths, Forked Tongues

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/20/19

             Rev. Reginald Thomas Jackson, the bishop over 500 plus African Methodist Episcopal congregations in Georgia, seems to think I and 63 million other Americans are racists.  As quoted in the Marietta Daily Journal on October 14, Jackson recently remarked, “Donald Trump is not the problem.  He’s only a symptom of the problem. The problem is the 35% of this nation’s population he speaks for.  35% of this nation’s population is racist.”

            Where to begin!  First of all Mr. Trump amassed approximately half of all the votes cast for president in 2016.  Jackson’s 35% figure appears to have been snatched out of thin air.  The president certainly speaks for more than 35% of the population. Did the bishop mean that 35% of the 63 million were racists?  Clarity, where art thou?

            But Bishop Jackson wasn’t finished.  Addressing the Georgia state NAACP convention  he added, “For some of ya’ll RNC means Republican National Convention. For me it means “Racist National Convention.”

            How healing is that?  How mean?  How do such words help bridge the divide in our national political discourse?  Right now in a flash I could list hundreds of friends who voted for Trump and who also are strong defenders of racial justice.  Racists don’t reach out to people of a different color. They don’t volunteer to teach in schools of a different color or purposely support businesses run by those of a different color. They don’t go to integrated churches.

            And true healers and lovers of all people don’t use incendiary language, especially if they are spiritual leaders.  They don’t stereotype or trumpet un-forgiveness and getting even, a la Al Sharpton.

            Let’s revisit the history of the “Racist National Convention” and compare it to the Bishop’s vicious characterization.  Birthed in 1854, its first successful presidential candidate in 1860 ran an anti-slavery campaign.  He won and ended slavery with the stroke of his pen.  From then on that president’s party advanced equality while the other national party became the refuge and seat of power for self-avowed, arch-segregationists.  One member of that other major party whom the party never chose to censure was a West Virginia U.S. Senator and former prominent KKK leader, Robert Byrd, who died as recently as 2010.

            The “Racist National Convention” also fought for and helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 over the strong opposition of the other major party’s members who dominated committee chairmanships in the U.S. Senate.  In time, by 1980, the “Racist Convention” would turn southern politics upside down, all for the better.  Meanwhile, Senator Byrd was still using the N-word with nary a peep from his own party colleagues.

            Bishop Jackson lamented that there are over 42 million blacks in America and only 500,000 NAACP members.  That’s understandable since younger blacks are hearing from black “Racist National Convention” sympathizers like brain surgeon Dr. Ben Carson, activist Candice Owens, intellectual Thomas Sowell, Wall Street Journal writer Jason Riley, radio host Larry Elder, Professor Walter Williams, and many others.

            Let’s give the Bishop the Bitter Lips award.  In all fairness let’s give the Filthy Mouth award to President Trump, but let’s not hold faultless those who have been just dandy with our culture’s R-rated movie and comedy filth, but who act appalled at the president’s language.  To whom are our youth more attuned, who influences them more, the president or our filthy-mouthed cultural icons?  Mr. Trump didn’t start that landslide.  Movies and television did.

            One thing we must give the President credit for is his calling a spade a spade.  If his mouth is filthy, his tongue is not forked.  “Yea, yea” and “nay, nay” are refreshing after decades of “well, on the other hand” from so many politicians.

            Filthy language is to be rebuked, but vivid understandable language is to be commended.  “Drain the swamp” is language we deplorables understand and have been yearning for.  Many in Congress have gotten rich from “public service” because of connections abroad or lobbying jobs taken after leaving Congress, thus “the swamp.”  Knowledge obtained from years of “public service” has enriched more ex-U.S. Senators of both parties than we can count.

             It’s appears that both parties are going to be outed as far as profiting from “public service” is concerned.  Surely the President’s 63 million are thinking, “It’s about time.”  His phone conversation with the Ukraine president stirred up a beehive.  Democrats never dreamed the loose bees would be stinging them as well.

            Loose lips sink ships.  The much talk, the persistent accusations thrown at the president are turning toward his accusers.  Ask the Bidens.

Roger Hines

10/16/19

           

What’s Next in the Sexual Revolution?

                   What’s Next in the Sexual Revolution?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Journal, 10/13/19

            It’s doubtful that I would have had a keen awareness of the Sexual Revolution had I not been around 16 to 20-year olds for the past 52 years.  I capitalize the two words because just as surely as the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Civil Rights Movement were all social/political game changers in the western world, so have been the ever changing views of human sexuality.

             With a fearful and sad heart I watched at least five times the video of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam defending post-birth abortion.  Of course “post-birth abortion” is an illogical expression.  If a baby is alive and delivered it can hardly be aborted, but its life can certainly still be ended, and that’s exactly what the governor was suggesting.

            And what connection does abortion have to the Sexual Revolution?  According to the Guttmacher Institute, over 80% of abortions are for convenience.  Fewer than 1% are done to save the life of the mother.  Most of the 80% are by young, unwed mothers.

            The Sexual Revolution began in the late sixties.  Had the Great Depression not halted the Roaring Twenties, it might have begun sooner.  This ongoing revolution has denied the importance of home, re-defined marriage and family, reduced all sexual morality to “consent,” and exchanged common sense and science for ideology.

            Believe it or not there is a political candidate who is challenging the revolution.  He too is a doctor, a former veterinarian and now a general practice physician.  A third-term Congressman from northeastern Louisiana’s 5th district, Dr. Ralph Abraham is a happy cultural warrior.  The good doctor dares to speak exactly what he believes, addressing what he calls “the absence of common sense in all of the gender and transgender talk.”

            “I’ve delivered babies for years and I can tell you that in every case I’ve turned to their parents and told them they have a boy or a girl,” the doctor- politician recently stated.

             Dr. Abraham’s strong stand has not hindered his present race for governor of Louisiana.  It has, however, made me wonder why more politicians and doctors as well don’t speak out for sanity in all things sexual.  The Sexual Revolution has delivered disease and sexual chaos.  It has normalized the abnormal.  Even so there is silence everywhere.

            Ok, let’s forget about those silly, outdated ideas about traditional marriage, monogamy, and marital fidelity.  Let’s go libertine and do just anything we wish.  What’s wrong with trouples, or polyamory, or incest?  That’s right, incest.  Does anyone think incest is not in the agenda of the sexual libertines?  Some of us need to do a little more reading.

            And parents need to do a lot more inquiring, in the schools of California, Washington state, Massachusetts, and Virginia for sure, but coming soon to the schools in your area as well.  For that we can thank the LGBQT lobby, the criers for “transgender studies,” the ACLU, the American Psychological Association which long ago left its academic purpose, and quite a few religious denominations that have traded orthodox faith for “diversification,” diversification meaning not different cultures but a departure from Judeo-Christian values that western culture has championed for two millennia.

            Suffice it to say that modern society cannot countenance any restraint on sex.  No limitations, no boundaries either.  Surely there are more than two genders.  Tell your son he can be a girl.  Get free from nature and nature’s God.  Cut loose from marital fidelity and from matrimony itself.  Give Oscars to those who depict blood, gore, and the raunchiest sex, but who would never show a video of an abortion.  Appoint judges who, un-tethered from the written law, sally off to invent new “rights.”

            Traditionalists have spoken much of family but perhaps too little of “household,” a word that sends leftists into cardiac arrest.  The culture needs families, but families need a place, that is, a community.  Even gangs have a place where work is shared and belonging is experienced.  Ponder how a sense of place, where meals are shared and talk is plentiful, might alleviate the loneliness that leads so many teens down the wrong sexual path.  Ponder the great need for community and political leaders to speak out on sexual chaos as the Louisiana doctor-politician is doing.

            The beast of perversion is at America’s door.  Guardrails are needed.  It will take parents, grandparents, pastors, teachers, and straight talking politicians to restore them.  I doubt that I could have hope for restoration if I had not gazed into the eyes of so many lonely and aimless young people who yearned for something more than what the culture was giving them. 

Restore the guardrails we must.

Roger Hines

10/9/19

           

           

When Objectivity Dies

                                When Objectivity Dies

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/6/19

Glance at the front page of this newspaper.  Compare it to the page you are now on.  On the front page you will find hard news.  The headlines indicate that factual material will follow. I believe that factual material is what you will always find there.

On the page you are now reading, a heading appears.  It reads “Editorials & Opinions.”  I have read the Marietta Daily Journal since August of 1971.  I doubt that I have missed reading a single issue over these 48 years.  I also believe this newspaper has remained true to the distinction between news and opinion.

This doesn’t mean that the MDJ’s editorials or its columnists’ opinions haven’t made anyone angry or that they haven’t been unfair.  Fair or not is a matter of perspective.  In opinion writing, “fairness” doesn’t apply as long as one doesn’t tell lies or misrepresent someone.  It’s not the opinion writer’s purpose to show both sides but to argue, support, and shed light on one side.    

Factual or not is a matter of integrity.  Even so, it’s possible to get facts wrong, in which case apologies and corrections are due.  At any rate, a principled journalist will always keep news and opinion separate.  This newspaper does.

Not so with its print counterparts around the country nor with television news.  Objectivity informs; subjectivity argues a viewpoint.  Only a cursory glance will reveal whether or not the Washington Post or the New York Times presents hard news objectively. They don’t.  The Wall Street Journal is better, though at times it could justifiably be charged with fashioning headlines that tilt a certain way.

It hasn’t always been so with the New York Times.  Its long time editor, Mississippi-born Turner Catledge, was heralded as an ethical man who sought to “do newspapering right” and to “report the facts straight and the opinions clear.”  Editor of one of the world’s most widely known newspapers from 1951 to 1968, Catledge was never a big shot nor too busy to visit his home state and little East Central Jr. College in Decatur, Mississippi to talk journalism with the college newspaper staff.  Catledge was a graduate of Mississippi State University, then known as Mississippi A&M.

Smaller newspapers excepted, modern journalism has not followed the path of Turner Catledge.  Neither has the electronic media.  That’s why President Trump’s rage during his press conference this past week was justified.  There has never been a better example of New Journalism’s excesses and subjectivity than the way the national media has covered President Trump.  Finding him entertaining during his presidential campaign, the networks and the national newspapers gave him time and space, never dreaming he would win the presidency.  The biggest Uh-oh! in political history is election night of 2016.  The media’s useful idiot turned out not to be an idiot after all, but a candidate who was saying what voters wanted to hear.  Since that eventful night, the sole mission of CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times has been to erase their embarrassment by destroying Donald Trump.  So far none of their efforts have worked.  It’s highly unlikely that a kerfuffle over the president’s conversation with a foreign leader will work either.

Nationally, objective journalism is dying.  ABC’s Sam Donaldson started it all by yelling out at and being disrespectful to a president, but who could ever enrage the smiling, joke-cracking Ronald Reagan?  Trump, though, ain’t taking it.  Good for him.

Georgia Congressman John Lewis deserves deep respect for his courageous stand as a civil rights hero.  How many different photographs of his bloodied head have we seen?  But that heroism cannot justify Lewis’ ludicrous claim that President Trump is a threat to our democracy.  Currently the biggest threat to our democracy is “news” organizations leading the way in refusing to accept the results of an election.  That’s what undeveloped nations do.

Churchill once commented, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”  His words are an apt description of the journalists and commentators whose arrogance and disdain are aimed as much at Trump’s 63 million voters as at Trump himself.

Having thrown respectable and objective journalism to the winds, the New Journalists are mean and vengeful, but they aren’t dumb. They know that Biden is too yesterday and that the other Democratic candidates are too far left.  Their aim is to coronate Hillary Clinton who, no doubt, is waiting in the wings.

Even Napoleon remarked, “Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”  But Donald Trump doesn’t fear newspapers or cable television either.  That’s why they hate him.  He has bill-boarded their total lack of objectivity.

Roger Hines

10/2/19