Generous Givers and Christmas Blessings

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/18/20

            When Baptists realize they have sinned and are grappling with the right response to that sin, we call it “being under conviction.”  A news article in the Marietta Daily Journal this past Tuesday reminded me of two times when I was convicted of not being a giver.  I felt “condemned at the bar of my own conscience,” as one theologian puts it.

            The MDJ article reported on a speech by Acworth Mayor Tommy Allegood.  At a Cobb County Chamber of Commerce gathering, Allegood encouraged business leaders to make giving a priority during the Christmas season.  Acknowledging that Cobb County is already a giving community, the mayor challenged Chamber members to dig a bit deeper this year to help the needy.

            The article pitched my mind back to the early years of married life when I almost abandoned tithing because I thought I could no longer do it.  Tithing was just too difficult, or so I thought.   In the third month of my non-tithing, I sat down to pay the monthly bills. Within moments I decided I could no longer contend with the gentle tweeting of my deceased tenant farmer father who had perched on my shoulder for the last two months.

            Beyond tithing to his church, my father would often reach into his overall pockets and retrieve a dollar for tramps at the train depot where he parked in town on Saturdays.  He would do the same for poor Choctaw families walking past our house toward town.  Before writing bills on that third month, a thought bombarded my mind: if Daddy can tithe, anybody can tithe.  The church I was attending at the time would not have missed my tithe check, but the small country church of my youth probably would have missed my father’s, despite its small amount.  However, the size of our checks was not the primary issue. The issue was the bar of our own conscience.

            Mayor Allegood’s plea also turned my mind back to 30 plus years ago when our oldest child was a freshman at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.  A private Christian college and not a cheap one, Samford was Christy’s deep desire.  She being a high achiever and a precious child, my wife and I knew we had to make her desire a reality.  We knew we would have to double up on two of our three financial principles: spend wisely and save methodically.  As for the third principle, give generously, we would just have to see.

            Toward the end of Christy’s freshman year, we received an envelope in the mail with no inside address.  It contained an anonymous note with kind words and a check for $1,000. A month later, a check for $500.  The third check was for $1,000 again.  Toward the end of Christy’s second college year and after several more checks, the total came to $10,000. I began to pray my benefactor into the choicest spot in Heaven whenever his or her time came. 

              At Christy’s college graduation, instead of giving full attention to the tremendous words of the great Coach Bobby Bowdon, I stood at the bar of my conscience.  Some voice other than my father’s was whispering: “Rich folks should give but poor folks should too.  You’ve got to give more.”

            In December of 2000, Governor Roy Barnes spoke with conviction and power to the incoming freshmen class of the General Assembly.  “I believe,” he said, “that one reason Georgia has fared better economically than our sister states is that we tried harder to do the right thing about race.”  From his words I took spiritual import.  You do the right thing; you get blessed.  Not always instantly, but eventually.  My supposedly well-off benefactor and my definitely poor father were blessed, I believe, because they blessed.  Whether with race relations or with giving, doing the right thing is rewarded, though not always materially.

            There are numerous organizations that need our support.  There are also individuals we meet daily who have needs.  Why not this Christmas an outrageous $50 bill or more for a restaurant server? Why not anonymously pick up the tab for a young family in a restaurant whose overheard conversation revealed they could use the help this Christmas?  Since Marietta has been dubbed the most generous city in America with populations above 50,000, maybe we in the county or in other Cobb County cities should emulate Mariettans.

            Those who know the Mayor and the Governor know they are givers of their time and resources.  I want to be like them and my dear old dad. 

Let’s all end this difficult year with giving.  If we do, Christmas for sure will be Merry.

 

Roger Hines

12/14/20

           

             

 

              Education: the Next Frontier for Conservatives

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal. 12/4/20

            Conservatives have cracked the media, but haven’t touched education. America’s political left still dominates almost every major institution in the nation including the judiciary, entertainment (especially comedy), the arts, fiction literature, professional sports, and most thoroughly, the university.

            How sports? By the fact that so many team owners who, instead of reminding their athletes who is the boss, have cowardly acceded to their social/political protests such as refusing to honor the American flag. Talk about the animals running the farm, professional athletes appear to have their owners eating out of their hands. In the not too distant past, one value of sports was that they took our minds off our cares and differences, but no more. Sports have been politicized and it’s a shame.

            As for the media, it wasn’t cable television or even talk radio that got the first conservative foot in the door. In the late 1950s Texas oilman H.L Hunt funded the excellent radio program called “Life Line.” The program was totally conservative, monologue commentary. It warned the nation of the spread of communism and rightly so. At the time, the Soviet Union had enveloped Eastern Europe and swallowed the eastern half of Germany.  Soviet Russia was also planting missiles in Cuba only 90 miles from America’s shore. Thus anti-communism was the main tenet of the conservative gospel.

            It came to pass that the Federal Communications Commission used its Fairness Doctrine to quiet conservative voices. The FCC compelled political commentators to give equal air time to opposing points of view. In 1987 the FCC terminated the Fairness Doctrine whereupon Rush Limbaugh in 1988 became the radio voice of conservative Americans. Mr. Limbaugh’s success is well known.

            Less well known is the success of Newsmax and One America News, two cable networks that are clearly trumpeting the conservative perspective and are growing rapidly. The conservative New York Post has also increased its presence and influence in recent years. Suffice it to say that liberal voices like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post no longer rule the roost. They are being challenged.

            Not so the American university. Its grip is sure. Its fads go unchallenged. Its undergirding ideology is always the craze of the moment: diversity, tolerance (as the university defines it, of course), transgender “studies,” feminist “studies,” race, “rights,” sexuality (sexuality “transformed,” that is), social justice, and economic transformation (weasel words for socialism). Somewhere underneath all such indoctrination, we suppose, lie math, science, history, and language.

            What is it about the field of education, particularly higher ed, that draws people from the political left? It could be that liberals love labs and incubators, for labs and incubators are what classrooms are. In a classroom (lab) students can test their knowledge and intellectual strength and discover their deepest interests if not a line of work. In a classroom (incubator) students can receive help for their intellectual development. Academic labs and incubators are the left’s chief tools.

            But classrooms are also transmission stations. Conservatives argue that schools and universities should transmit the knowledge and values that produce good, productive citizens. Liberal educators typically push the notion of students becoming “agents of change” or challengers of the status quo.

            Says the conservative, “Give my kid the facts; teach him to read, write, think, and analyze, but don’t go indoctrinating him. And no putting down his country as you are in the habit of doing.”

            In other words liberals want our children so they can set their paths straight. Conservatives are not so willing to turn their children over to the village. According to political scientist Jon Shields only 10% of university professors identify as conservatives. California State University illustrates Shields’ research. It currently requires a course in social justice as do many other public and private universities.

            Public schools are not untouched by progressive dogma, as their lingo indicates. Consider the following inane principles: “the teacher should be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage;”  “the best teaching is facilitating, not direct instruction”; and “facts are not as important as thinking skills” (as though facts are not essential for logical thinking).

            A Biden administration does not bode well for solid, subject matter-centered schooling. Get ready for regs from the federal Department of Education that require schools to emphasize racism, gay rights, and social justice in order to receive federal funds.

            Conservatives are no longer content being strangers in a strange land. Having taken on the media and given the fact that a down ballot blue wave didn’t happen on November 3rd, they will resist the next four years of progressivism with their frontier spirit and love of individual liberty all in tow. Their children and grandchildren are at stake   

 

Roger Hines

12/2/20

             

 

 

                      Where in the World  Are We Headed?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 11/20/20

            Calls for unity from presidential candidate Joe Biden, if heeded, would lead only to fake unity. These are no longer the more cordial times of Reagan and Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neil or, more locally, of Johnny Isaacson and Roy Barnes.

            Biden’s call for unity was preceded by four years of Democrat rejection of Donald Trump’s “illegitimate” presidency, not to mention name calling: Russian spy, traitor, racist, and self-serving egotist. And now we’re being urged by the oh-so-conciliatory Democrat candidate to join together and be civil?

            Come together, they say. The election is over. No, there are a few more steps between now and January. Media stars don’t get to “call” elections. Voters do. Meanwhile, as those legitimate steps are being taken, Democrats  who dragged a duly elected president through the mud, refused to attend his inauguration, and sanctimoniously looked down on his 63,000,000 unwashed, uneducated supporters are now calling for unity. And don’t forget “Russia, Russia / collusion, collusion / impeachment, impeachment and ventilators, ventilators.”  Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrats. 

Never before has politics been about so much more than just politics.  Aristotle’s definition of politics was “the affairs of the polis,” the city, that is. Aristotle lived when great city-states like Athens and later Rome were the centers of power. Nations as we know them now with distinct borders were yet to come. Localism, not distant governance, was the order of the day. “The affairs of the polis,” of course, always involved power, and power is addictive. It’s the drug of the emotionally needy.  

This is not to say that all who hold political office are power-hungry. Cincinnatus wasn’t and had to be persuaded to leave his fields to lead Rome. George Washington wasn’t, refusing all efforts of the few who wanted him to be a king (Hamilton among them, duh! Kings are what we gained independence from!).  

Yes, politics is now more than politics, far more than love of and care for the polis. It is now the ideological vehicle upon which revolutionaries have hopped and seized the steering wheel. How else do we explain the Democrat defense of the Black Lives Matter organization? (I said the organization, not the concept which, even so, has been sullied; all lives matter.) And Antifa? How many Democrat leaders have disavowed them? Had Portland been burned down by right wing thugs instead of by the Democrats’ ideological buddies, Democrats would have gone ballistic.

Leftist politics is now anchored to the notion of “transforming” the nation. Transform the police, the electoral college, the Supreme Court, health care, our narrow, out-of-step notions of human sexuality, our union itself by creating more states (guess why), and most transformative of all, the definition of free speech. The 1960’s flower children heralded free speech to the strains of Peter, Paul and Mary yet their grandchildren have turned free speech on its head. If it’s news they don’t like, that news is a “conspiracy theory.” If it’s you they don’t like, you’re canceled.

And of course the Covid “pandemic” (let’s talk about that word) has not been wasted by the President’s enemies. A pandemic is “an outbreak of disease that affects many lands.” Pan, the goat-headed Greek god of nature, darted everywhere around and outside the city. His name is always in reference to the number of nations, not the depth of a disease within a nation. Divide 330,000,000 (the USA’s population) into 11, 025,046 (the number of cases as of this writing). Divide 330,000,000 into 246,108 (the number of deaths). Then decide whether or not you really need to cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So where are we headed? Toward unity with those who are ho-hum about infanticide? Toward more non-ending wars? Toward Biden-Bernie socialism/theft that takes from producers (the villagers) and gives to the village (the government)? Toward sanctimonious Christians who can’t forgive and forget a President’s past? Toward forgetfulness of a billionaire president who energized good, common sense folks?

These questions will be answered by the Georgia U.S. Senate race in January. Never has any local election determined so greatly the direction of the entire nation.

There’s hope for conservatives, however. Even though the cemeteries went strong for Biden, Black and Latino support for the GOP increased. Pollsters again embarrassed themselves. Their power to influence is waning. By 2022 for the off-year Congressional elections, deplorable strength will have increased. In 2024 if the Republican nominee isn’t Trump it will surely be a candidate who espouses Trump’s agenda.

 Re-elected or not in our still undetermined current election, Donald Trump has remade his party and the world. His army of deplorables are by no means down and out.

 

Roger Hines

11/18/20

 

 

 

           

 

                                 Newt Country No More

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 11/6/20

      

            In 1974 at age 31 an assistant history professor at West Georgia College decided to try his hand at politics. Make that elective politics. The young PhD in modern European history had already been active in teaching political history. He knew the landscape, both ancient and modern, of the Western world and held strong views about what would keep the Western world free and what would not. His run for Congress in 1974 was but a natural, predictable step in realizing his vision for the nation.

            Good teachers are learners. They like to tell others what they have learned. Good teachers are often restless. There’s so much their young charges need to know, and often that knowledge beckons even the teacher to some sort of action. Such was the case, or so it appears, with Professor Gingrich. Teaching alone could not satisfy. If forty years of Democratic rule in the U.S. House of Representatives wasn’t cutting the mustard, it was time to teach via action.

            For Professor Newton Leroy Gingrich, or just Newt as both friends and foes now call him, the foray into elective politics began in 1974 when he ran for Congress against an established Democrat in Georgia’s 6^th district. Newt lost. He lost again in 1976. In 1978 his election to the House began an18-year career in national politics. His backbencher status would ultimately become first tier, given his election to Speaker in 1995.

Brash, smart, and full of ideas about government and governing, Newt took conservatism seriously. From the start he desired and pressed for a Republican party that was aggressive and active. Eschewing the old saw that says the essence of conservatism is restraint, Newt led the Republicans with their Contract for America, a substantial document that promised and attained welfare reform. Falling short of its goal of term limits for Congress, the Contract for America still served as a rallying cry for conservatives and conservative government.

Newt’s stock rose. Orator, author, philosopher, historian, strategist, and an effective political evangelist, Newt Gingrich became a household word in Georgia’s 6^th Congressional district, the state of Georgia, and the nation. The constant simmer between him and Georgia’s House Speaker foretold the day Tom Murphy would be defeated and Democratic control of Georgia would end. Newt’s skirmishes with his predecessor in the U.S. House, Speaker Jim Wright, showed conservatives that Republicans could fight and would fight, no longer content with being a nice, quiet minority. In 1994 Newt was Time magazine’s Man of the Year.

After Newt led the Republican takeover of the House, President Bill Clinton in his January, 1996 State of the Union address acknowledged what had happened. Nearly the political genius Newt was, and knowing he was whipped, Clinton stated, “The era of big government is over.”

Well, we wish. Not only did the era of big government not end. It lingered and continues, else why is the swamp bigger and why does at least half of the nation’s voters support the presidential candidate who called the swamp creatures out?

Alas, why is Newt’s old district of northwest Atlanta/Cobb County turning purple?  Why the fate of Karen Handel, Neil Warren, Mike Boyce, and others? For Cobb County government proper, conservatives cannot deny it was a blue wave. Expect higher property taxes.

There are many different reasons why candidates lose and they are not always ideological. Personality/likeability matters deeply as does single issue voting. Yet, in recent Republican losses in Newt’s old territory something deeper is being revealed. It’s called the sweep of history.

“Now there arose a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph,” the Exodus account puts it. Joseph, the Jew who had risen to Prime Minister of Egypt, had died. Despite his leadership, and the favor given to Jews, Joseph is now forgotten and the Jews in Egypt are being persecuted.

Newt Gingrich has fought the good fight for conservatism ever since his departure from Washington. But the 35-year-old voter of today was born in 1985. He or she knew not Reagan or Newt unless from personal reading, knowledgeable parents, or an astute American history teacher. Today’s 35-year-old has been brought up with the availability of conservative talk radio, but also with college history teachers, historians, and ubiquitous media stars who invariably bend left and religiously court our youths. “As the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”

Whoever wins the presidential election, Newt, Reagan, and Trump are all still alive. All three esteemed the common man and common sense. If conservatism and the common man are down in 2020, they’re still not out. History sweeps both ways. And freedom lovers will fight another day.

 

Roger Hines

11/4/20

             

 

                                   Is Atlas Shrugging?

               Published in Marietta(GA) Daily Journal, 10/30/20

            Picture, if you will, the Charles Atlas weight building ads that for decades appeared in magazines across America. Charles Atlas was an Italian-American who created and marketed a popular bodybuilding course. Though Atlas’s name was actually Angelo Siciliano, he legally changed it after being told his physique resembled the statue of Atlas, the Greek titan.

            The mythological Atlas, punished for attempting to topple the head god Zeus, was confined to bearing the weight of the world and the heavens on his shoulders for eternity. Hence the statue of the bent but muscular Atlas holding up the world. Hence the commercially inspired pictures of the well-muscled Charles Atlas who taught American men how to get buffed.

            Drawing from the mythological Atlas, novelist Ayn Rand in 1957 authored her 1000-page novel titled Atlas Shrugged. A stern libertarian who unlike most anti-statists was an avowed atheist, Rand came from Russia to the United States in 1926. She became an eloquent opponent of collectivism and the leading literary proponent of capitalism. Rand had reason to reject collectivism. The Bolshevists disrupted her family’s comfortable life and confiscated her father’s business. Her family almost starved under Lenin’s socialism.

            Given academia’s ingrained leftist ideology, we can be sure that few if any universities made Rand’s books required reading. Even so Atlas Shrugged has been rated in several surveys (Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club among them) as the second-most-influential book of all time behind the Bible. The book’s central theme is the evils of tyrannical government.

A child prodigy, Rand understood what was happening in Russia. Enthralled by America’s freedom, bigness, and particularly the skyline of Manhattan, she cried “tears of splendor” upon viewing it. Contrasting America to Russia, Rand became an American citizen and an anti-communist activist.

            There is no Atlas holding up the world, but something or Somebody is. We know that physically the planet we live on is suspended in air, but that awe-inspiring reality is not of great moment in turbulent 2020. Currently we must give our thoughts to more immediate realities such as human civilization, behavior, governance, and keeping tyranny at bay.

            For ages man’s major enemy was tyrants and their tyranny. For centuries man yearned to be free but was everywhere in chains. In ancient Greece glimmers of political freedom appeared, but only glimmers. Actually not until 244 years ago did there emerge on the globe a momentous, radical, and lasting revolution that freed man from kings, queens, princes, dukes, popes and the like. 244 years is not a long time. Chronologically America is still a babe in arms.

            Americans, a freed and self-governing people, sullied their character and defiled their claims of equality when they tolerated slavery and segregation. Those ills, however, were addressed. Americans have since elected and re-elected a Black president. But even the election of a Black citizen to lead the nation has not tempered the anger of domestic, racist terrorists. Crime, particularly vandalism, rioting, and Black on Black murder, is raging. Many political, business, and religious leaders are excusing the rioting. The vandals are justifiably venting, these leaders claim.

            Figuratively, the mythical Atlas is shrugging. He cannot station himself securely and hold us up when free people reject the results of their elections. In 2016 the losers rejected election results, igniting civil unrest. They, not the winner of the presidential election, caused Atlas to shift his feet in order not to fall.

            If political conservatives lose the election next week, they must accept it and sharpen their persuasion skills during the next four years. If they follow the bad example of their liberal counterparts of 2016, incivility will persist. If liberals lose the election next week, they too had better consider the chaos their refusal has caused. To lose and then continue fighting as the loyal opposition is noble. To lose, become a crybaby, and attempt a coup is ruinous.

            The socialism Ayn Rand fled is the socialism that awaits us if Americans elect the wrong person.  Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are totally in the hands of the government. When private producers are destroyed (a la Marx, Lenin and Bernie), free enterprise is destroyed.

  Public schools and Medicare are not socialism. For Karl Marx, socialism was the transactional, interim social state between capitalism and communism, a fact Democrats don’t like to admit. Americans can have it if they wish, but choosing it will negate the courage of the ragtag farmers and small businessmen who only 244 years ago whipped the world’s most powerful empire, thereby giving a new nation constitutional government.

            If America shrugs next Tuesday, the world will shrug also, heading straight back to tyrants and tyranny.

 

Roger Hines

10/28/20     

           

             

 

                                      Is Atlas Shrugging?

              Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/30/20

            Picture, if you will, the Charles Atlas weight building ads that for decades appeared in magazines across America. Charles Atlas was an Italian-American who created and marketed a popular bodybuilding course. Though Atlas’s name was actually Angelo Siciliano, he legally changed it after being told his physique resembled the statue of Atlas, the Greek titan.

            The mythological Atlas, punished for attempting to topple the head god Zeus, was confined to bearing the weight of the world and the heavens on his shoulders for eternity. Hence the statue of the bent but muscular Atlas holding up the world. Hence the commercially inspired pictures of the well-muscled Charles Atlas who taught American men how to get buffed.

            Drawing from the mythological Atlas, novelist Ayn Rand in 1957 authored her 1000-page novel titled Atlas Shrugged. A stern libertarian who unlike most anti-statists was an avowed atheist, Rand came from Russia to the United States in 1926. She became an eloquent opponent of collectivism and the leading literary proponent of capitalism. Rand had reason to reject collectivism. The Bolshevists disrupted her family’s comfortable life and confiscated her father’s business. Her family almost starved under Lenin’s socialism.

            Given academia’s ingrained leftist ideology, we can be sure that few if any universities made Rand’s books required reading. Even so Atlas Shrugged has been rated in several surveys (Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club among them) as the second-most-influential book of all time behind the Bible. The book’s central theme is the evils of tyrannical government.

A child prodigy, Rand understood what was happening in Russia. Enthralled by America’s freedom, bigness, and particularly the skyline of Manhattan, she cried “tears of splendor” upon viewing it. Contrasting America to Russia, Rand became an American citizen and an anti-communist activist.

            There is no Atlas holding up the world, but something or Somebody is. We know that physically the planet we live on is suspended in air, but that awe-inspiring reality is not of great moment in turbulent 2020. Currently we must give our thoughts to more immediate realities such as human civilization, behavior, governance, and keeping tyranny at bay.

            For ages man’s major enemy was tyrants and their tyranny. For centuries man yearned to be free but was everywhere in chains. In ancient Greece glimmers of political freedom appeared, but only glimmers. Actually not until 244 years ago did there emerge on the globe a momentous, radical, and lasting revolution that freed man from kings, queens, princes, dukes, popes and the like. 244 years is not a long time. Chronologically America is still a babe in arms.

            Americans, a freed and self-governing people, sullied their character and defiled their claims of equality when they tolerated slavery and segregation. Those ills, however, were addressed. Americans have since elected and re-elected a Black president. But even the election of a Black citizen to lead the nation has not tempered the anger of domestic, racist terrorists. Crime, particularly vandalism, rioting, and Black on Black murder, is raging. Many political, business, and religious leaders are excusing the rioting. The vandals are justifiably venting, these leaders claim.

            Figuratively, the mythical Atlas is shrugging. He cannot station himself securely and hold us up when free people reject the results of their elections. In 2016 the losers rejected election results, igniting civil unrest. They, not the winner of the presidential election, caused Atlas to shift his feet in order not to fall.

            If political conservatives lose the election next week, they must accept it and sharpen their persuasion skills during the next four years. If they follow the bad example of their liberal counterparts of 2016, incivility will persist. If liberals lose the election next week, they too had better consider the chaos their refusal has caused. To lose and then continue fighting as the loyal opposition is noble. To lose, become a crybaby, and attempt a coup is ruinous.

            The socialism Ayn Rand fled is the socialism that awaits us if Americans elect the wrong person.  Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are totally in the hands of the government. When private producers are destroyed (a la Marx, Lenin and Bernie), free enterprise is destroyed.

  Public schools and Medicare are not socialism. For Karl Marx, socialism was the transactional, interim social state between capitalism and communism, a fact Democrats don’t like to admit. Americans can have it if they wish, but choosing it will negate the courage of the ragtag farmers and small businessmen who only 244 years ago whipped the world’s most powerful empire, thereby giving a new nation constitutional government.

            If America shrugs next Tuesday, the world will shrug also, heading straight back to tyrants and tyranny.

 

Roger Hines

10/28/20     

           

             

 

                              How Then Shall We Educate?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal 10/16/20

            For yours truly December of 2019 ended a 53-year stint as a teacher. Many things changed from 1966 to 2019 but students stayed the same, being always predictable, always exciting and excitable, and above all, always malleable. Even the rebels and smart alecs were malleable. Many teachers will disagree with this, but based on my own 5-decade experience, students simply never changed. But their parents did, as did the world around them.

            Over the years it has been amazing and puzzling that students were not more deeply affected by their changing world. Societal changes and attitudes did not make them smarter, lazier, better students, or worse students. 53 years have not changed youth’s desire for acceptance or their need for guidance.

The first societal shift during my half-century of teaching was divorce. I observed fellow teachers as they cushioned the harsh blow of divorce for countless students, shepherding them through their time of sad disruption. But divorce doesn’t change human nature or the resilience of youth.    

In 1966 the school counselor at Northwest Jr. High in Meridian, Mississippi announced at a faculty meeting that a student’s parents were getting a divorce. She urged the faculty to pay special attention to the student. Instantly a collective, audible and sorrowful moan spread over the faculty. So unusual was such news that silence prevailed for several seconds. Divorce led to sad children and angry teenagers, but it didn’t affect teachability for very long. Teachers filled the emotional gap, ministering to hurt while trying to keep English, math, history, etc. at the center of things. If only educational experts from afar could understand what teachers must do and gladly do in order to help students learn.

There is and always will be in students a potential for good and for evil, for greatness and mediocrity, for accomplishment and dependency. As one wordsmith put it, there is in all of us a potential Hitler or a Mother Theresa. The one we become is the one we feed.

The question is what have we been feeding our children and youth? Of late at the college level and often in public schools, we have fed them “diversity/sensitivity training.” Is there anything more shallow, wrongheaded, or un-American? As currently packaged, such “training” is actually obedience training, in both the corporate world and in education. There is A Way we are supposed to think, and shame on those who don’t accept it. There is A Way/The Way to view gender and sexuality (it’s up for grabs), abortion (it’s choice), racism (it’s systemic), immigration (it’s inconsequential), America (she’s not exceptional), and education (it should be therapeutic).

This not so new gospel was addressed as long ago as 1895 when American novelist Stephen Crane penned these words: “Think as I think, said a man / Or you are abominably wicked. / You are a toad. / And after I had thought of it, / I said, I will then be a toad.”

Crane and other late 19^th century writers focused on the theme of individuality versus conformity. To them, the societal pressure from the nation’s increasing urbanization was affecting people’s ability to think independently. How ironic that universities, formerly viewed as centers for reflection and intelligent debate of ideas and issues, have become centers of conformity. How odd that corporations would go soft and hop on the “sensitivity” bandwagon. “Sensitivity” is all about feelings, and feelings are now the main concern of the university. Forget the sometimes harsh but true facts of history. Forget knowledge. Forget intellectual stretching.

Higher education’s reputation for free inquiry is currently in tatters. Its concern is our supposedly racist, sexist, homophobic society which needs diversifying.  Its diversity emphasis sounds tolerant but it has the makings of manipulation. Today’s college students are expected to goose-step to academia’s party line.

The grandchildren of children of the 60s haven’t changed either. In the 60s, student riots and violence were on campuses. Today they are on city streets. But they are guided by the same spirit, anti-Americanism.

Objective subject matter knowledge can afford students opportunity. Catering to students cannot. Diminishing the trades and arguing that everyone should go to college cannot either.

There are simple, time honored ways to achieve what “diversity and sensitivity training’ supposedly seek: Teach, yea require, children and youths to respect others, no matter the color of their skin. Assure them the world is not fair. Make clear to them that they are not the center of the universe. Model kindness, generosity, and forgiveness.

These are mighty old concepts, but once we start living by them, diversity/sensitivity will follow. And it will be genuine, not faked, forced, or packaged in a school curriculum or in a corporation’s required “workshop.”

 

Roger Hines

 

 

 

 

 

                             The Source of our Discontent

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/2/20

            It is both relevant and fair to pose the following questions: Who is chiefly responsible for the nation’s partisan divide and our inflamed political discourse? Who started the acrimony and still feeds it constantly? Who has obviously sought to use that divide for their own political gain?

            Sometimes questions can be answered with other questions. For instance who in 2016 refused to accept the results of the presidential election? Who, instead of accepting defeat and serving as the loyal opposition, has since sought to personally discredit the duly elected candidate at every turn? Who went unsuccessfully from “collusion, collusion” to “Russia, Russia” to “ventilators, ventilators” to impeachment, to “ineffectiveness in a time of pandemic” to “the president hasn’t paid his taxes,” further indicating their disregard for a legitimate election? On whose side of the political divide are the thuggish, destructive “protestors” and their cheerleaders?

            Furthermore, who abandoned the time-honored tradition of losing an election with honor, then working to elect their preferred candidate in the next election? Conservatives never behaved so unseemly during the eight years that gave them gay marriage, apology tours, initiation of socialized medicine, and warnings about “cynical voters who cling to guns or religion.”   

            These questions require no pondering. We all know the answers.

            Precisely our division is centered on race, economic ideology, and our political system itself, that is, how we are governed. Regarding our political system, the divide is a matter of representative government versus government by unelected judges, bureaucrats, and “experts.” Regarding the economy and economic ideology, the division is purely and simply capitalism versus socialism. As for race, the division is supposedly over justice versus injustice. In order to achieve justice, it is apparently now legitimate to bash store fronts, shoot cops, and set cities aflame.

            The most foundational of these three areas is our political system. America is a representative democracy. Understanding that a pure democracy is functionally impossible in a continental nation, we elect people to speak and vote for us. This system is now under attack. Abolish the Electoral College, the dividers are crying, knowing full well that doing so would leave rural America and small states out of the loop, bestowing total electoral power upon the population centers of the nation.                                               

            And just which party now controls the major population centers of the nation? Which one wants to further “transform” our political system by packing the Supreme Court?

            Another source of our discontent is the unabashed embrace of socialism by Bernie Sanders. Ditto the Democrat Party’s joyful embrace of Sanders and his Children’s Crusade. Their claim that public schools and Social Security render us socialist already indicates their need to return to 12^th grade economics. From the very start America has thrived from capitalism. It was a Democrat, Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, who thundered from the Senate floor, “If we’re gonna have capitalism, we gotta have capital, and if we’re gonna have capital, we gotta have capitalists.” Long’s party has long since morphed. Its face is that of 20-somethings who truly believe there is such a thing as free stuff.  

            As for race, a quick relevant story that’s close to my heart: Fifty years ago a personal friend became head football coach at the high school I attended in Forest, Mississippi. 1970 was the first year of integration in Forest. Coach Gary Risher’s team was undefeated and won their conference title. His assistant was James Clark who had been head coach at the Black school, E.T. Hawkins High. Only 6 of Coach Clark’s players chose to remain on the team. Two weeks ago all 6 Black players attended a halftime program that honored the 1970 team, including Edmond Harvey who drove from Las Vegas and picked up Lee Evans in Shreveport to head toward Forest. When my brother Carlton related to me the news of this exciting event, he added, “Tells you something about Forest.”

            Which it does. It also reminds me that here in Georgia I observe good race relations every week of my life. Yet, charges of racism have become the standard cudgel of the party that doesn’t seem to like their country.

            No one can blame conservatives for the nation’s great divide. On election night of 2008 conservatives accepted their fate, assumed the role of the loyal opposition, and set their sights on 2012. Let’s see if Democrats will do likewise come November 3^rd by calling off their thugs, checking their obsession with race, and acknowledging that Forest, Mississippi is a microcosm of the entire nation. In fact, a good nation that is not racist and that will never tolerate the group-think and collectivism Democrats are planning for us.

 

Roger Hines

9/30/20

             

 

                          The State of our Pilgrim Journey

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 9/18/20

 Former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neil famously declared, “All politics is local,” but that was before his party embraced the so-called progressive agenda, moving from socialism-lite to doctrinaire socialism, from law and order to the defense of lawlessness, from scientific facts to individual “preferences,” from religious freedom to government telling churches what they can and cannot do. Today politics and news point to the state of our union. Our nation and liberty itself are at center stage and also at stake.

 America is at risk. How did we lose the rugged individualism of our founders and of their pilgrim predecessors who risked their lives on 3,000 miles of unsure waters? How could we, a once hardy frontier people, become so fearfully tolerant of anarchy?

Since 1607 from every corner of the earth have come pilgrims to a land that would allow them to pursue happiness. Emma Lazarus’  “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” have not ceased to come. We were and are a nation of pilgrims, simply desirous of freedom and plenty.

 But we have met the enemy and he is us. Compare the leadership of our past pilgrim leaders to today’s mayors and governors who evidence no appreciation of the American spirit.  Consider the vision and leadership of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, FDR, Martin Luther King, JFK, and Reagan, all of whom eschewed fear as they espoused freedom.

Today Americans are fearful. How could those who came of age in the last decade not be? Their universities became therapy centers. Their college presidents assured them that the college they chose would be “supportive,” “safe,” and “nurturing.” Their parents now fear that rioters will move to the suburbs.       

 Modern college-age pilgrims from other nations, particularly Africans and Asians, are appalled when they observe the ideological confusion of their American classmates. But what produced that confusion? Ironically, their educators. Not all educators, but those who whispered Freud and Marx into their young charges’ ears. The result has been the triumph of therapy and collectivism, the waning of self-determination, and the chipping away of freedom.

Since politics is downstream from culture, we should be able to understand what is happening on the streets of Portland and other Democrat-run cities. Portland is in the great Northwest. Brave were those who first headed there. Gutless are the mayors and governors who now refuse to protect their people from thugs. Negligent were the parents who never switched the thugs when they were children. Now lawlessness prevails. The bad fruit of fatherlessness lies everywhere.

At least five things are at stake in America today and all five are issues in the November election. One, laissez-faire capitalism is on the scaffold. The broad and deep influence of Bernie Sanders on our nation’s youths is dangerously transformative. With Sanders being Biden’s alter self, the November election will decide whether America will stick with Adam Smith or do a sure turn to Sanders and his idol, Karl Marx. We’re talking the fate of free enterprise and limited government.

Two, law and order is now considered racist. If those who govern us will allow 100 consecutive nights of vandalism because “rioters are expressing their frustrations,” we have no future except that of lawless, failed nations that we formerly only read about in the newspaper. The charge of “racist” scares corporations, NFL owners, and Democratic politicians, so they cave to fake protestors, inhibiting the enforcement of law.

Three, Judeo-Christian culture is pummeled for being exclusive, even though all religions are exclusive.  American culture has not been informed or primarily influenced by Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. Its roots are in the Jewish and Christian ethic, specifically the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. If by design or by sheer default we let go of this undergirding ethic, we shall see the results, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Judeo-Christian ethic has been our moral and ethical mooring for over two centuries. If changed, we change.  

Four, education continues to move toward indoctrination.  Like corporations, colleges are forsaking the traditional for the trendy, promoting group-think: not thinking per se, but what to think – about same-sex marriage, transgender “studies,” diversity, abortion, and alas, America. Embracing “think as I think,” liberals have abandoned the classical liberalism that ended slavery.

Finally, America’s place in the world is at stake.  If America continues leftward, we are finished as a city on a hill and Lady Liberty will beckon other pilgrims to … what? Venezuela North?  California?

Americans have a month and a half to choose what kind of future they desire. One of those choices will end, for certain, our storied pilgrimage. America will be “re-imagined.”

God help us!

 

Roger Hines

9/15/20

 

 

 

 

 

                                  Two Lives Observed

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 8/8/20

It’s worth noting that the recent deaths of black leaders John Lewis and Herman Cain were dealt with quite differently by the liberal media. But then Lewis was a liberal politician and Cain was a conservative businessman.

 In some ways Lewis and Cain were very much alike. Both were Southerners. Both were well known. Well into his adult life, Lewis was called an activist. Business leaders such as Cain are seldom if ever called activists even if they are involved in politics and other social concerns. Let’s just say that both Lewis and Cain were men of action fulfilling the individual yearnings of their hearts.

Politically and philosophically, Lewis and Cain were far apart. Cain was strongly pro-life while Lewis repeatedly received a 100% legislative rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League. Cain was a Republican, Lewis a Democrat.

Who could not admire Lewis for his bravery during the tumultuous civil rights movement? Like his mentor Martin Luther King, Lewis withstood clubs, water hoses, jeers, and cursing. No violence came from Lewis. His reasoned engagement in civil disobedience, his belief in non-violent protest, and his moral and physical courage led to change that could never have been achieved with the destructive tactics of Black Lives Matter or Antifa.

White New England preachers broke the back of slavery. Black Southern preachers broke the back of segregation. An ordained Baptist minister, Lewis spent less time in the pulpit than he did at rallies, marches, and in jails. Like Moses before Pharaoh and the Apostle Peter before the magistrates, Lewis was a holy troublemaker. He had to obey God rather than men. Lewis was one of the “Big Six” leaders of the groups who led the famous 1963 March on Washington, his own organization being the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Lewis was never the angry young black man like former Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed during his Georgia House of Representative days. Nor was he an unforgiving, turbulent Al Sharpton. Perhaps Lewis’ closeness to King helped him follow his moral compass. Whites who lived during segregation, observing its indignity and benign neglect, should grant Lewis his due. He risked his life fighting against something he could not abide.

The life of Herman Cain has not been so heralded. But did he not persist and succeed as Lewis did? Did he not put the lie to “white privilege,” the most racist term ever concocted, by working hard, using his talents, and rejecting self-pity? Instead of crying “systemic racism,” did he not avail himself of America’s systemic opportunities? How is it that “white privilege” and racism didn’t keep Cain from success and business leadership positions?

While marches, rallies, protests, and speeches are not totally symbolic (Lewis’ bloodied head was no symbol; it was real), did Cain not go beyond symbolism and pursue the path of self-help through free enterprise and work? Was his life not therefore a model for young men and women, black or white? His was a joyous spirit; his lust for life, infectious. He never put America down. Like Clarence Thomas, Cain refused to let the negatives of his past dictate his future.

The questions above in no way diminish the life and work of Lewis. They simply illustrate the two different paths taken by two Black men. Lewis was a needed voice crying in the wilderness, and Cain was a needed example of how to seize what was available, namely freedom, and to move on in spite of obstacles. Lewis can and should be faulted for his inconsistency of supporting “abortion rights” while preaching justice.

Those who fault the president for not attending Lewis’ funeral might recall that Lewis refused to attend the president’s inauguration. Both men were being petty.

During Cain’s presidential campaign, he was mocked by the media, particularly by CNN. One CNN guest dubbed him “an Uncle Tom who never understood the black experience.” CNN’s humor-challenged duo, Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper, bemoaned “the very thought of a Herman Cain presidency.” 

Shakespeare wrote, “Tis marvelous to have a giant’s strength but tyrannous to use it like a giant. Men should be what they seem.” Both Lewis and Cain were giants and they were what they seemed. If liberals must berate Cain for not following their script for what a Black man should think, say, and do, conservatives should still take the high road and honor Lewis.

Leadership guru John Maxwell once remarked, “To add value to others one must first value others.” Both Lewis and Cain did exactly that.

 It’s sad that, in death, Cain has been slighted, but at least we know why.

 

Roger Hines

August 5, 2020