Givers, the Sick, and the Dispossessed

                      Givers, the Sick, and the Dispossessed

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal,4/25/20

            Think about it before you dismiss the next sentence. Never have newspapers and television been so full of good news. Who would have thought it? I didn’t say that the bad news has been diminished. It hasn’t. But example after example is being given in the news of givers – groups and individuals as well – who are attending to the needs of others.

            “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world,” chortled Barbara Streisand, quite beautifully, 56 years ago this summer. People who help people are also lucky, if you believe in luck. Some people don’t. They view luck as the meeting of preparedness and opportunity. Currently across our country millions are prepared to receive. That includes the sick, the families of the 48,061 who have died from the coronavirus, and the 26,000,000 who have lost their jobs.

            One of the best examples of givers I’ve heard about is Freedom Church in Acworth. This past Tuesday the Marietta Daily Journal reported that Freedom Church has raised $1.6 million to wipe out medical bills of over 1,000 families in Cobb and two nearby counties. I’ve been told by a friend who attends there that the loud music at Freedom “rocks the Highway 41 traffic as it zooms by.” Even so, it must be music that inspires members to love God and serve people. What with the loud music, the majority of the people there are probably on the left side of 50. If that’s the case, it’s younger adults with families who have so commendably committed themselves to being givers. Kudos to them.

            Both the sick and the 26,000,000 need our attention and concern. Unfortunately we have been thrown the question, “What’s more important, the economy or lives?” The premise behind this question is flawed. It pits the sick against the 26,000,000. It implies that one can live without commerce, that is, without creating and marketing, buying and selling, and working. It’s commerce that builds ventilators, allows us to purchase medicine, and provides pay for dedicated doctors and nurses. Without commerce, capitalism in action, how can we continue to meet the needs of the sick?

            “Stay at home” has undoubtedly checked the spread of the coronavirus. It has also led to the 26,000,000 who are virtually dispossessed and who come overwhelmingly from small businesses. It’s easy to forget that small business is the backbone of our economy. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, there are between 25 and 27 million small businesses in the United States that account for 60 to 80% of all U.S. jobs. Does it take brain surgeon smarts to realize that with so many small businesses shut down the economy will continue to crumble?

            Yet, the mayors of Atlanta, Savannah, of other cities, and CNN have blistered Governor Kemp for his plan for opening up, slowly, our state’s economy. The governor’s critics should be asked if their own incomes have come to a halt. They are among the elites showing contempt for the protestors who cry for the economy to open up. The protestors, however, are refusing to yield to their betters. They probably understand that not all doctors agree with the shutdown strategy, one of the most prominent being Dr John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University. Ioannidis has stated, “Risks are much lower than has been hyped.”

            Many who are not hurting economically are pushing village-guilt on us. Governors and members of Congress are not hurting. The commentariat is not hurting. Speaking of which, why are the glitzy commentators on the networks and cable stations, along with academics and other elites, so critical of the several governors who have begun opening up their states? The bulk of the pro-shutdown group is progressives, Democrats, liberals, socialists, and leftists. Repetitive synonyms, I realize, and their abstract love for the village has blinded them to the concrete reality of individual villagers. That’s why some of us never liked the nice-sounding expression, “It takes a village.” It takes more than a village. It takes some individual villagers who are job creators.

            Democrats can’t deny that their ideas and policies since the days of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society have been socialism-lite, or worse. Their presidential candidate Joe Biden is huge on keeping the country closed down, further hindering the dispossessed. It’s not conspiratorial, but reasonable to conclude that a leftist cabal is trying to level what we have so they can build what they want.

            Meanwhile as the lockdown rebellion builds, givers like those at Freedom Church will attend to those in need, those so often neglected in our great war.

Roger Hines

4/23/20

           

The People versus the Experts

                          The People versus the Experts 

              Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/19/20

In our current age of relativism when people speak of “my truth” and “your truth,” a little absolutism can be refreshing. Not the kind offered humorously by former U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen and quoted recently in the Marietta Daily Journal feature, “The Thought for Today.”

            Dirksen’s quote read, “I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.”

            Dirksen’s playful “unbending principles” were not as unbending as those of my father or of the American patriot Patrick Henry. After a family supper table conversation about a rare robbery that had occurred in my hometown, my father ended the discussion by saying, “Well, starve to death and go to heaven, but don’t ever steal, not even for food.”

            That’s absolutism. Patrick Henry’s famous speech that revealed his moral absolutism was more eloquent than my father’s but no more strongly held. Unfortunately we typically quote only the last sentence of Henry’s famous words. His four preceding sentences actually power his famous utterance.

Addressing the Virginia Convention in 1775 and arguing that Virginia “be immediately put into a posture of defense” against England, Henry spoke the following: “What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God. I know not what course others may take but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”

Not often does one fiery speech catapult someone from obscurity to fame, but this is what happened to the 29-year-old Henry, a representative in the Virginia legislature. After listening to several speeches that favored compromise with the British, Henry rose to present his resolution to prepare for war. With manifold conviction akin to that of fellow Virginians Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, Henry persuaded the Virginia House to take up arms against England.

“Is life so dear … ?” Already Henry is implying that life is not (to him at least) the most precious value. What husband/father reading this column would not rise up at 3 AM and defend to the death his wife and children from an armed intruder? How much does his own life matter to him in that moment?

“… or peace so sweet …?” With these words Henry expands his scope of affection. He is not referring now just to his own life or his own brood, but to all Virginians. It is civil peace that Henry mentions here.

Decisions that America’s president and governors now face are not too dissimilar to those of the colonies who were being oppressed by the British. Though ours is not a military war, it is a war still and voices of reason and courage are needed. Instead of 13 rural colonies against the western world’s third greatest empire, we now have the people versus the powerful proponents of consensus science. Consensus science has its experts, numbers, charts, graphs, and prognostications. The people have common sense and arithmetic. But they lack a Patrick Henry to point out that small business owners and employees are suffering most. Those with microphones and power – the media, politicians, government officials, and corporate heads – are doing quite well. The “little man,” the real creator of wealth and the sustainer of our economy, is the frontline foot soldier in our current war. What will he go home to?

Our president and governors are receiving counsel from doctors and numbers crunchers. The people are hesitant to criticize doctors, realizing that medical workers are sacrificially saving lives. Still, our healthcare system is a distinct part of our free enterprise economy and indeed flows from it. Yet, the two have been pitted against each other: saving lives versus saving the economy.

What a false and dangerous dichotomy the president and governors have embraced. Let’s recast Patrick Henry’s questions. Is life so dear that the world’s most successful anti-poverty program – capitalism – must now be socialized? That’s what government largesse leads to. Is peace so sweet that we cannot speak out against the statistical calisthenics of medical experts? Is our collective intelligence in such throes of death that we cannot figure out how to medicate the sick and allow those well to go to work? Whence comes healthcare if the well from which it is drawn runs dry?

There are different kinds of death, financial and emotional among them. As for absolutism, we are absolutely causing deaths of different kinds, all because we have shut down the country. Many livelihoods have already been destroyed. The “little man” is sick and suffering, all because of a wrongheaded war strategy.

Roger Hines

4/15/20 

           

When things are turned on their heads

                      When things are turned on their heads

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/11/20

            Yes, it’s grown children now saying to their parents, “Get back in that house!”  It’s graduating seniors in high schools and colleges who could well have already seen many friends for the last time. For others it’s the lost job and the endangered mortgage.  In degree, it’s all of us.

            Already, however, we are learning things about ourselves. Some of those things are bad, some good.  Not for a long time have Americans used the word “we” as much as we are using it now. “We the people” are now we the locked in and locked out, locked in our homes and locked out of our work places. But in it all we are being educated and somewhat united. Anyone who has lived life for, say, 20 years should understand how America works. In America you can chase your dream, but sometimes that dream is stymied and one has to wait, re-coup, and try again.

            Another positive is that we have seen once more the neighborliness of Americans, and not just from next door neighbors. Individuals, families, service clubs, and even corporations are all extending themselves to help meet the needs of others.

            We are also learning a great deal about learning. Just when, why, and by whose counsel did we begin lining students up in rows of desks with the teacher standing authoritatively before them? It wasn’t done that way in the beginning (Socrates held a disdain for it) and it’s not done that way now in homeschooling. When Jefferson in 1779 proposed a public “two track education for the laboring and the learned,” and when in the 1830s Horace Mann promoted “age grading,” surely neither visionary wished for a school with hundreds of children or youths together in one place. Today, though, we crowd them together in “comprehensive” schools and then wonder where our child’s bad influences come from.

            If we didn’t know already, we’re learning that high tech is also low touch. Parents are reporting that their children and teens are yearning to see their teachers, not just their friends. Technology, a blessing and a curse, cannot give love or encouragement as well as a human being can. Could our current isolation be pointing us toward consideration of, say, three days at school and two days at home with distinct assignments for the home days? With so many parents doing online work at home anyhow, schools don’t really have to be the babysitters they used to be. Are we about to experience “back to the future” and to understand there is nothing new under the sun, particularly when it comes to our emotional needs?

            The bad thing, maybe the worst, about our isolation is its political and sociological implications, particularly our docile acceptance of the government’s actions. Why aren’t governors seeking the wisdom of the electorate, the will of the people, before they declare their closures? Why are we relying on arguably overeducated experts and their significantly overstated “models” instead of on simple arithmetic, namely the comparison of cases, recoveries, and deaths to population? Why haven’t governors sought more counsel from state legislators who represent the people, particularly since freedom of assembly and freedom of worship are now being affected?

            Regarding arithmetic, as of this writing Georgia has 10,189 cases of coronavirus, 369 deaths, and 10 million people. The United States has 434,861 cases, 14,814 deaths, and 330 million people. Sorrow and gravity? Yes. A need for the panic pushed on us? No. Given China mischief on one side and Trump-hate on the other, it’s no longer conspiratorial, crazy, or premature to feel like something is fishy.

            There is simply too little concern for the economy. The economy is not an abstraction. It’s people working, buying and selling, providing jobs, and paying for mortgages and food. Yet, instead of hearing from the practitioner/producers of our economy, we are obeying professors and social scientists who tell us to close our stores. Social science is not a science and neither is political science. Both are studies of socio-political ideas and practices, not of hard facts. But if you have a doctor’s degree we’ll take your word for just about anything.

            Our economy – that means livelihood – is crumbling. If we’re all about saving lives, we had better save people’s livelihoods and homes. Let’s not let social scientists determine what gives us meaning or what risks we should or should not take. We’ve behaved mighty well. Let’s unlock our stores. Europe is already doing so.

Small Business needs a ventilator that costs nothing: an open front door. It’s needed while there’s still something to ventilate.

Roger Hines

4/9/2020   

           

           

                       

Truth on the Scaffold

                                Truth on the Scaffold

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal.4/5/20

            With the country virtually shut down, the question is no longer “Who you gonna call?” but “Who you gonna believe?”

             Is parking the economy wise or wrongheaded? Are small business owners staring into an abyss, or not?

            When questions like these pile high, it’s time to talk, pray, and get philosophical. Philosophical isn’t a highfalutin word. So dedicated are we to science, technology, engineering, and math that we have almost let philosophical questions drop. Here we are in a moment that appears to be turning into months. That moment begs for knowledge of practical economics as well as for attention to the philosophical. Literally philosophy means love of wisdom.

Two down-to-earth definitions mixed and scraped from this writer’s verbal blender might help us. The adjective philosophical means devoted to the study of reality. (Students and the man on the street don’t need that?) But there’s a better definition. Philosophical also means showing a calm and unflinching attitude toward disappointments or difficulties. Example: “Ben was philosophical about losing his small business to the coronavirus.”

This doesn’t mean Ben was in denial or dismissive of a reality. It means he acknowledged it and was stable – calm and unflinching – as he pondered his difficult situation.

There are many Ben’s in the nation today. Brenda’s too. Besides their economic loss, there’s another unknown truth issue. Do they have the virus symptoms or not? Is either of them sick without knowing it? If Ben is philosophical, let’s pray that Brenda is as well and that they’re both tenacious and strong if they have to go back to nothing.

Ben and Brenda also face our question, “Who you gonna believe?” They have to ask if the truth about their health prospects and livelihood is being told, if the truth is being stretched, or if it’s even known.

Here are some considerations they face. According to Dr. Deborah Birx this past week, there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths. To this model the Wall Street Journal responded, “April is going to be a brutal month for America … But as the bad news arrives, it’s important to understand that the worst-case scenarios that many in the media trumpet are far from a certain fate.”

Birx and the WSJ were speaking of the potential death toll, not the economic toll. The media is ignoring the economic toll, creating a lives-versus-the-economy argument. Not spoken of too much in national news is the virus’s effect on rural and small town America. Small banks across the country are woven into the local economy fabric, getting little attention. They must balance the help they give to local businesses with their own bottom line. If Ben and Brenda are rural or small town dwellers, their lives are probably less at stake, but their pantries and mortgages more at stake than those in metro areas.

 Speaker Nancy Pelosi will soon propose another stimulus bill. Columnist Cal Thomas, pleading fiscal sanity, fears Pelosi’s proposal will simply increase our “dark hole of debt,” and adds that Republicans and Democrats “are now joined at the pocketbook.”

So the truth and the best policy lie where? One truth is that America’s federal system doesn’t allow the president to dictate to state governments. President Trump is right to defer to governors. He should counsel them, however, to ease in the reopening of nonessential businesses and at least allow non-seniors to return to work. Addressing economic despair doesn’t diminish our concern for lives. Our frontier and wagon train forebears understood the balance and the risks.

Another truth is that people in charge of the government tend to think they have the answers simply because they have the power. Recently California Gov. Gavin Newsome, one of the many who believe abortion is an “essential service,” declared, “We have an opportunity for re-imagining a more progressive era.” Columnist George Will calls this “virus opportunism.” We had better watch what we are allowing government to do, including governors and mayors. Progressives love enlarged government. Freedom still matters and its future is absolutely in the mix.

We need more advice than just the medical experts or economic theorists. We need to hear from small business owners. How long can we continue with a shutdown economy? Caged people can get ugly.

Poet James Russell Lowell wrote, “Once to every man and nation / Comes the moment to decide / In the strife of truth and falsehood / For the good or evil side.” Truth, Lowell argued, is forever on the scaffold.

 Comebacks are America’s specialty, but to come back from a killer virus, applying a little oil to our economic engine is just as important as washing our hands. Sick is bad. Broke is too.

Roger Hines

4/1/20