Thanksgiving to Whom?

                               Thanksgiving to Whom?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal,11/24/19

            It’s a bit puzzling that the so-called Christmas wars have gone on for several years while Thanksgiving Day has caused little or no stir.  Actually the Christmas wars have abated since the election of President Trump, probably in part because just before his first Christmas in office he declared, “At the White House we will be saying ‘Merry Christmas’.” 

            Maybe I should pay another visit to Target and find out how they are handling Thanksgiving.  Like all retailers, they are certainly taking advantage of Thanksgiving’s commercial benefits.  Readers might remember that when the bathroom wars were front page I reported that, in order to get first hand information, I visited the local Target (in Acworth) and asked a cashier if I were allowed to use the ladies’ restroom.  As the cashier began to answer, three other nearby female employees, seemingly managerial, rushed toward me as though disturbed by my question.

            Repeating my question, I could only elicit what sounded like a scripted answer: “You may go into the restroom you identify with.”

            “So any man could go inside the ladies’ restroom while my wife was inside it?” I replied.

            “Men may go into the restroom they identify with,” the second of the three female employees repeated.  It would have been silly, though playful and satisfying, to point out that their corporate script had used a preposition to end a sentence with.

            Did I say that this happened in Acworth, Georgia down in the Bible Belt?  I believe I did.  Wonder where Target’s corporate headquarters are.  The way things have changed, they could well be in Cobb County and not far off in, say, the Republic of California, or some other such area where things are getting crazy.

            I suppose the reason many retail stores began requiring their employees to say “Happy Holidays” in the first place is that the word Christmas has Christ in it.  That would make “Merry Christmas” religious and we can’t have that.  Of course “Happy Hanukah” is religious too.  Doggone it, the word “holiday” is religious as well because etymologically it is an embedded form of “holy day.”  Can we not see where our ultra-sensitivities have led us?  Well, not everybody’s sensitivities, but the sensitivities of those who wish to perform a religious lobotomy on America.

            And what about Thanksgiving?  I hate to bring it up for fear of giving ideas to the ACLU, the American Atheists organization, (and probably Target), but has anyone thought about to whom our thankfulness is directed when the nation takes off work and observes Thanksgiving Day?  Have the corporate elites, the secular provocateurs, and the Acworth Target manager ever thought, “Oh no. Thanksgiving is a religious word.  We stock Thanksgiving holiday merchandise, but we’ve gotta be pluralistic.  We can’t offend anyone by saying Happy Thanksgiving.”

            Yes, the forces that deny our religious roots are many.  Consider the faith of Columbus who has been smeared by academia for the last two decades.  Remember who was on the Mayflower and why.  Recount the fervor of John Winthrop who declared the new land would be a “city upon a hill,” meaning a beacon of religious freedom, and Patrick Henry who really did prefer death to tyranny of all stripes, religious tyranny included.

            Consider the position of other founders.  Unlike many of my fellow conservatives, I don’t believe Jefferson was a Christian.  He was a theist, more precisely a deist, and along with Washington, Adams, Madison, and all of the other founders, Jefferson embraced the belief that “rights” (freedom) are derived from God, not from the state or any head of state.

            Surely this foundational Judeo-Christian belief, unlike that of Muslim states, is what led to the famous D-Day radio prayer of FDR in which he sought the help and blessings of God for America.  That ethic is also the root system of the expressions, “In God We Trust,” “One nation under God,” and “So help me God.”

            The secularists who don’t like these expressions or “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Thanksgiving” deny that their position is a religious one.  However, if secular humanism or atheism isn’t a religious position, i.e., a position on theology, what is? Secularists try to get a free ride, declaring their views to be “free of religion”; therefore, their views should prevail.  However, the prayers and expressions of Jews and Christians should be squelched, whether at Rotary, high school ballgames, or the White House.

            This Thanksgiving millions of Americans will be giving thanks.  The receiver of that thanks will be the God Who, incidentally, is the God to Whom all of our presidents have at least paid lip service.

            Happy Thanksgiving!

Roger Hines

11/20/19

           

The Dangers of Denying the Past

                        The Dangers of Denying the Past

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/17/19

            William Faulkner, the Mississippi Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, was good at one-liners.  Those one-liners, though, were buried in his endless sentences.  Faulkner wrote in  “stream of consciousness,” a technique in which the writer goes on and on with words, creating a natural flow of thought that more often than not slaughters the rules of grammar.  One has to like words to like Faulkner.

Consider the following one-liners.  “Ain’t nothing in the woods gonna hurt you unless you corner it.”  Faulkner should know.  His beloved Oxford in north Mississippi is woodsy and Faulkner knew those woods well.  He also knew about rural life: “A mule will work for you for ten years just for the pleasure of kicking you once.”  Believing that fiction “tells a lie in order to tell the truth,” Faulkner spent most of his literary life writing short stories and novels.

Most writers, they tell us, are not good speakers.  Writers spend too much time with their heads down, mulling words and trying to think up the next sentence.  Unlike the good speaker who is normally engaging and gregarious, the writer is ponderous and arguably actually thinks too much.  Faulkner was in the latter group, but he did make quite a few quotable statements while sitting on the nail kegs in the hardware or general stores of Oxford, talking weather and politics with the locals and the farmers who had come to town to “stock up.”  

Consider this sentence from Faulkner: “The past is not over yet.” Anyone reading (or trying to read) Faulkner’s novels will catch right away his love for and knowledge of the past.  With an eye for the future, Faulkner understood Shakespeare’s line, “The past is prologue.”

But just how strongly do we believe that today?  Why do so many people dislike history?  Why to so many is history a school subject and little more?  Why have we succumbed to what Cicero called “the tyranny of the present”?

These questions are easy to answer.  Let’s approach them backwards, answering them partially with other questions.  We allow the present to tyrannize us because so many of us know nothing else.  We live in the now with little thought of who we are and where we came from.  How far back can the typical 21-year-old “see”?  How much does he or she care to see or know?

As for history being considered a school subject and little else, surely that’s because very little history, if any – immediate history: your grandmother and grandfather and where they came from, child! – is passed on in the home.  Can anyone say “fatherless homes” or “ineffective parenting” or “family meal times”?

But times have changed, many will argue. Homes have changed.  Marriage has changed. So has gender.  History doesn’t matter very much for Digital Man.  Evolution is a sociological as well as a biological reality.  We live under a different paradigm.  Yes, we most certainly do.  And that paradigm hasn’t exactly produced wondrous things.

Beyond ignoring history we are attempting to destroy it.  We dismiss the history we don’t like and topple monuments that remind us of it.  We tailor history books to satisfy the sensibilities of modern day, safety-conscious students.  Universities apologize to students for having invited Jeff Sessions to speak!

Our chief denial is that of who we are as a nation.  As unpopular as the word “nation” has become, I shall still argue that America is a nation and that our nation is decidedly Greek.  Like the Greeks whose art began to depict life and freedom rather than death and tyranny, we are a nation of no single ethnicity.  Like the Greeks we tasted freedom and democracy and liked the taste.  Like them we learned too slowly, but learned still, the value of the individual, no matter his or her race or ancestry.  Americans, of course, are perpetuating Greece’s love of athletics.

Most importantly, like the Greeks we know the difference between the nation and the state.  The nation is the people; the state is the nation’s government.  As out of favor as is the word “nationalism,” Greece was the cradle of nationalism.  We err dangerously to lean toward globalism, believing that all ideas are equal and that the world can be one happy family.

Growing up, I lived down the road from Faulkner – about 195 miles – and studied him diligently. He once wrote, “I observed that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about.”  On that postage stamp Faulkner showed that he knew history and knew its value.”

Would that we all would.

Roger Hines

11/14/19

Time to Curb the Cussin’

                               Time to Curb the Cussin’

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal,11/10/19

            It’s past time for people in the media, Congress, and the White House to check their tongues.  Filthy language has become widespread and ordinary folks who oppose it need to start saying so.

            Particularly, the filthy-mouthed ones seem to be stuck on “damn” and “Who the Hell.”  Guests on the news talk shows are the chief culprits, along with Judge Jeanine Pirro and President Trump.  I hate to report that the ones whose language is worst are those with whom I agree most on politics and policy. This past week I stopped counting Judge Jeanine’s “damns” and “Who the Hells.”  Talk about gratuitous.  A beautiful and smart woman, the Judge, sadly, is obviously on the bad language air waves bandwagon.

 I’m glad that conservatives don’t take their bad language to the streets in protest as the progressive groups do (Antifa, # MeToo, Planned Parenthood, and others). Conservatives don’t protest in streets too much, probably because they’re at work.  But on television a good-sized bunch of conservatives have forgotten what their mamas taught them. Before I forget, let’s place Senator Lindsey Graham in that group as well.

            Don’t tell me this is a trivial matter.  Most of us have children and grandchildren to think about.  But forget children and grandchildren for a moment.  Adults don’t need to hear bad language either.  Anyone who chuckles at such a thought (or who considers my musings here squeamish or “puritanical”) understands little if anything about the power of language, and its lingering quality.

            Language is the dress of our thoughts.  Words are the vehicles upon which our thoughts ride.  Those who use filthy language are spilling a portion of their character, revealing a dark side.  Anything that comes out of us was in us. This is not to say that filthy talking folks are all bad.  You can talk ugly and still have a heart as big as Texas, or talk ugly and be selfless.  But you can’t talk ugly without painting pictures that diminish beauty, grace, and civility.

            A picture is worth a thousand words, we’re told.  No doubt, but a word is also worth a thousand pictures.  Ugly words make ugly pictures which instantly distract a listener or reader from what is being communicated.

            Any way you cut it, “damn” is simply ugly and sad.  “Hell,” whether a literal or a figurative place (I’m camping on literal, partly because I don’t believe my precious, believing mother can share the same eternity as Adolf Hitler) conjures the worst that can be conjured.  Its casual use trivializes its seriousness.  And back to children, who wants their children to be using the word loosely?  As with drinking, so with cussin’.  If we don’t want our kids to do it, we had better not do it ourselves.

            Words can exalt and they can debase.  I wish that some of the President’s evangelical Christian supporters who have his ear would tell him that his bad language needs to cease.  Can’t the vice-President do this?  Maybe Pastor Robert Jeffress should, or Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr. or Sen. David Purdue, or somebody!  Maybe somebody has tried. 

            Evangelical Christians are faulted for supporting President Trump, given his ugly language.  Those who do so are pushing a spurious argument.  Here’s why.  Our children and teens are far less influenced by the President than they are by pop culture.  How many children and teens watch his rallies where he really cuts loose?  Probably not many.  But they do watch movies, videos, potty-mouth comedians, and who knows what on their cell phones. Let’s not fault the President while giving our crude culture a pass.

            The first president I ever voted for at age 20 was Barry Goldwater who cursed profusely in front of cameras.  LBJ, who defeated Goldwater soundly, cursed even more.  Richard Nixon showed us his soul on the Watergate tapes, but that wouldn’t have led me to vote for George McGovern.  My father’s favorite president (after FDR) was Mr. Salty Tongue himself, Harry Truman, but my father would not have voted Republican so Salty Tongue it was. I could not have voted for Hillary Clinton, nor could I ever support any of the socialists, one of whom will be President Trump’s opponent in 2020.  Sometimes we have to make decisions.

            Sometimes our choices don’t offer us the more excellent way in every area of life.  President Trump has ignited good, hardworking, common sense Americans like never before. Thankfully he’s putting pompous elitism and arid intellectualism in their place.  I just wish he would take advantage of the fact that English has more synonyms than any other language known to man.

Roger Hines

11/6/19

             

A Typical Day at Positive High, 1966-2003

                  A Typical Day at Positive High, 1966-2003

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 11/3/19

            8:20 AM. OK, let’s take our seats. / May I run to my locker? / No, ma’m, it’s time for the announcements. / But I don’t have my book. / Then you best get in the habit of bringing it, especially since there are only three weeks left in the semester. (Goodhearted laughter from the class; moans from the young lady.)

            From the public address system: Please stand for the pledge to the flag. “I pledge allegiance to the flag … with liberty and justice for all.” Thank you. The French Club will meet today after school in Mrs. Boudet’s room. Pictures for rising senior class officers will be made Friday in front of the trophy case.  Officers, please wear a goofy hat. Pictures for next year’s yearbook staff will be made Friday during first period. Decide in advance which picture packet plan you will purchase.

            Still from the PA system: Now a word from the Math Team cheerleaders. “We are the Math Team, rah, rah, rah. / We love calculus, ha, ha, ha.  / Logarithms, logarithms, yo, yo, yo. / We are the Math Team, go Math, go!”

Whispers back in the classroom: “THAT was stupid.” / “Yeah, the next time they do that in assembly, I ain’t going!”

From the PA system: Now Mrs. Horton has an announcement. “Students, the faculty wants to tell you how special you are. Positive High School has collected over 500 cans of food for the needy. We thank the Key Club for spearheading this. They are the greatest.  Now a word from our Key Club officers. First voice: “I can.” Second voice: “You can.” Third voice: “We all can bring cans.” All voices: “Yes, we can!”

Whispers in the classroom: “Now that was REAL stupid.” / “Yeah, I’ve got ‘ole Lady Horton for government. That woman’s CRAZY!” 

From the PA system: Here’s our principal, Mr. Wordsmith. “Students, as we close out the year at Positive High, I want to tell you what a grand bunch you are. I want to congratulate Coach Smiley and the Kittens for their baseball victory last Friday.”

“But on to something negative here at Positive High. Many of you know that 3 young men broke into the library Saturday night and turned over all the book shelves. I hasten to remind you they were all freshmen.  Freshmen need a little time to learn the rules, and I know all of you believe in forgiveness. Teachers who have these young men in your classes, please send their work to the In-School Suspension Teacher. I know you’ll be willing to give them all the time they need to complete their work.”

“Vandalism is serious and sad, and any students who need to talk about it may come to the library conference room during first period to discuss how you feel.  Everyone have a good day.”

8:45 AM. Back in the classroom: “OK, Tennyson’s Ulysses! I believe that last Friday we … / Mr. Hines, I hate to interrupt but are you going to let us go to the library to talk about the vandalism? / Look, Tennyson’s not the easiest author in the book. The test on Tennyson is Thursday. / Yes sir, I know, but Mr. Wordsmith said … / Mr. Wordsmith would understand why I’m asking you to do your therapy session some other time. Did you know any of the freshmen who trashed the library? / No sir, but I’d still like to talk to someone. / Would it help if you asked your questions here? Maybe I or someone in the class could answer them. / I don’t have specific questions, but Mr. Wordsmith indicated that …”

(Rinnnnnnnnnng!) Well, we’ll get to Tennyson tomorrow.  Look back over Ulysses tonight. You’re dismissed.

9:25 AM (Teacher’s Journal): Dear Lord Tennyson, You’ve so much wisdom to give us. Forgive us for displacing learning for therapy when your writings are therapeutic enough. Don’t blame the young man who stole your time. He was only accepting what the school offered him.

Dear Parents, Are you aware of the triumph of the therapeutic or do you favor the enabling culture our schools are becoming?

Dear Students, If I’m going to help you, you must ironically resist many distractions the school throws at you.  Please don’t believe that 14-year-old vandals are necessarily sick. They probably have flawed character and derelict parents.

Dear Reader, Do you see why colleges are now filled with students who clamor for “safe space” and who weep upon hearing things with which they disagree? It didn’t start at college. And not totally at high school. Guess where else.

Roger Hines

10/30/19