Man Cannot Live by Experts Alone

                        Man Cannot Live by Experts Alone

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/24/20

            I submit that neither our government’s policy nor the news media’s coronavirus coverage shows enough concern the financial hardship and the emotional distress that small business owners are experiencing. Nor has enough attention centered on the plight of the 36.5 million who have lost their jobs, thanks to the nation’s shutdown.

            So far what has been emphasized night and day is the number of cases and deaths, both of which are low compared to population.

            The small business owner is the sacrificial lamb in our intentional crisis. My heart goes out to the countless young adult married couples who were brave enough, self-confident enough, and trustful enough of America’s free enterprise system to start a small bakery, a fitness business, or a restaurant. Let’s say their dream was to work for themselves and teach their children what entrepreneurship and hard work are all about. Let’s say they’ve been in business for four or five years and were beginning to see their dream fulfilled.

            But now that dream is dashed. More importantly their sole income has been stopped in its tracks. By design. Their employees are laid off and there appear to be no prospects for starting over. Financially and emotionally what state of mind do you suppose our young couples are in?

            Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick was ridiculed recently for saying he was willing to die so that younger adults could survive economically. I watched two multi-millionaire television commentators mock Patrick though he clearly was not playing the martyr.

            “I’m not being noble and brave. I just believe there are lots of grandparents like me who care more about the country and our grandchildren than anything else,” Patrick stated.

            Understandably, in our free society response to the crisis has created two sides, those who cry, “Follow the science and the experts,” and those who simply plead for common sense and the personal liberty to make their own decisions.  Slavish proponents of the experts believe the medical technocrats should call the shots. The common sense proponents see the dangers of overreach. They acknowledge that unelected experts can help but that they should not replace our duly elected leaders. To them bureaucratic tyranny is as onerous as any other.

            Citizens who insist we blindly follow the science should recall that some scientists, including the good Dr. Fauci, at first asserted that the coronavirus would probably not spread around the globe. Duke University researcher Dr. Wang Linfa in late January said the same thing. His words were, “I have a gut feeling it won’t spread.” 

            Ah! So scientists do have gut feelings. Nice to know.

            The crisis has pretty much paralleled the Trump/anti-Trump divide. Deplorables – the faceless, hardworking Americans, ordinary folks – are anxious, actually desperate to open up the economy. Their pantries are emptying. The elites – the experts, media stars, totally comfortable retirees, stubborn governors – are holding out for safety. They haven’t been hurt. Columnist Peggy Noonan put it best: “The working-class people who are pushing back have had harder lives than those now determining their fate.”

            Design is destiny, and the present design is supposedly to let so-called science lead the way. But science has always held both beauty and terror. Re-read “Frankenstein.” In that famous novel a smart doctor created a man, but things didn’t turn out too well. What he got was a monster. Our monster today is a created, wrecked economy. A wrecked economy means young and old alike are suffering, especially those in the nation’s lower-income households. According to the Wall Street Journal, almost 40% of households earning less than $40,000 experienced a job loss in March versus 19% of households earning between $40,000 and $100,000.

            Our political divide has deepened.  To me it’s obvious that Democrats – ok, some Democrats, or certain Democrat leaders – are doing all they can to prolong the shutdown in order to decrease the chances of President Trump getting re-elected.

             There is even a medical profession divide, but who would know? The media isn’t broadcasting it, but some medical experts disagree with Dr. Fauci.  Dr. Knut Wittkowski, former head of epidemiology at Rockefeller University is one. Wittkowski has stated that social distancing prolongs the virus’s existence. “Without distancing,” the virus would have “created herd immunity,” he argues. In effect, the media has told Wittkowski to hush.

            Given the medical profession’s divide, perhaps when someone says, “Trust science,” we should reply, “Whose science?”

            I’m with Governor Mike Huckabee: “No elected official who orders a lockdown should get a paycheck as long as we’re shut down.”

            The nation needs to get to work. Now.

Roger Hines

5/20/20

           

Politics, Coffee, and Odd Couples

                      Politics, Coffee, and Odd Couples

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/16/20

            It might surprise most people to know how well politicians of different parties actually get along with each other. Legend has it that Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy often told his Republican colleagues from the South to go slam him while campaigning if they needed to. He didn’t mind. We can be sure the Lion of Liberalism was speaking to Republicans who had no Democratic opposition. Or perhaps they did and the Senator needed the Republican colleague’s help on a bill now at hand. So politics often goes.

            Politics is much like marriage and home life. It’s close living. You best learn and abide by the old adage, “In some things, unity. In all things, love.” Members of legislative bodies do more than sit in a large room of beautiful, classical architecture, listen to speeches, give speeches, and vote. Legislators serve on several committees which is where the nitty gritty of legislative work takes place. They also often share offices with fellow legislators of a different party. They do business in hallways, elevators and at traffic lights while waiting for the walk signal.

            If there’s one place where politics ceases and normal friendships reign, it’s in the break room just off the House or Senate floors where the biggest draw is the coffee. Gotta have coffee early in the morning, during an interminable presentation of a simple bill, and whenever the clock is moving on toward 10 PM. Coffee and the loud, crowded break room generally restore everyone’s common humanity.

            The legendary former Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives Tom Murphy didn’t like the break room. One morning during the 2002 session Murphy scolded House members for going back and forth to the break room during debate. He thundered forth, “If ya’ll would eatcha’ some breakfast before you come here, you could stay away from that coffee and donuts and we could get some work done.” Murphy was powerful but he couldn’t keep House members from their coffee and their place for common humanity.

            During the 2000 decade I was typically the second member to reach the House floor every morning. Nobody could beat the former and now deceased state representative Bobby Franklin of east Cobb County who arrived early and mastered every bill. Truth is many reps of both parties leaned on Franklin for bill information without reading the bills themselves.

            Speaker Murphy was early too. It was his quick visits to the floor each morning between 8:00 and the 10 o’clock convening hour that allowed us to become friends. One morning my two grown daughters were with me. When the aging speaker came by I introduced him to my daughters. He quickly turned to them and said, “Now how can an ugly man like him have two beautiful daughters like you?” He then recalled a visit I paid him years before with a Cobb County friend, Carolyn Sanford, to plead for his support of the so-called “creation bill.”

            “So you’re a Southern Baptist, I believe,” he said one morning with his famous half smile. “Well, you Southern Baptists are just about as primitive as us Primitive Baptists.”

            Murphy was totally clothed in gruff but his heart was tender.

            It was in the break room of the Georgia House that I met and became friends with state representative Tyrone Brooks, one of the House’s most well-known black members. Brooks was an activist, always in the forefront of the civil rights movement. During the lunch hour Brooks and I often found ourselves on the break room couch. Only one year apart in age, we reminisced about the sixties. I related my sorrow over segregation and the benign neglect toward blacks that enshrouded my growing up years. He reached to shake and squeeze my hand when I told him about volunteering to teach in a black school to help the city of Meridian, Mississippi get desegregation underway.

            One year Brooks finally convinced Republican House Majority Leader Jerry Keen and me to march with him at Selma. As fate would have it, Brooks was unable to make it to the Selma march the year we were set to join him.

            Tom Murphy died in 2007 after 28 years in GA politics. The state, particularly its capital city, bears the stamp of his contributions.

            Tyrone Brooks resigned from the House in 2015 and pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud and no contest to federal wire and mail fraud charges.

            I’m glad I knew both the cantankerous cigar-chomper and the formidable civil rights leader. As Brooks put it, “You and I might be proof that a Democrat and a Republican can love each other.”

Roger Hines

5/14/20

The Mess We’re In

                                  The Mess We’re In

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/9/20

             “We’re all in this together.” When spoken in reference to the coronavirus, these words are meant to be comforting. Comfort is a wonderful thing, but a clear understanding of a situation can afford far more comfort than bumper sticker phrases.

            The mess we’re in is multifaceted. It’s political, medical, and economic. Politically, individual liberties are being violated, an election year is being muddled, and reformers are gleefully anticipating a new and different America. Medically, people are dying, the living are drowning in uncertain information, and unelected experts are running the show. Economically, joblessness abounds, small business is being crushed, and socialists are frothing at the mouth over the possibility of seismic social change.

            Yet another facet that undergirds all of the above is a philosophical one. Globalists like Bill Gates, Theresa Heinz Kerry, George Soros, and Bernie Sanders view our mess as an argument for “global solutions.”  Let’s give the globalists credit for sincerity. Bill Gates certainly doesn’t need money. Neither do Kerry and Soros. Sanders? Let’s not grant him sincerity until he spreads around the book money that made him a millionaire socialist.

            What globalists have in common is a political philosophy quite unlike the one from which the American experience sprouted and grew, producing economic prosperity and individual liberty. Prosperity and liberty are the reasons Americans don’t have to risk their lives to flee to other countries for a decent life.

            We once called globalists one-worlders. Pat Buchanan adroitly referred to them as trans-nationalists. Whatever they are called, their view of the world includes no borders, international law, a cashless society, climate change (formerly global warming), love, joy, guaranteed income, and for background music, “We are the world / We are the people.”

            Are these goodies what Joe Biden was referring to when he said the coronavirus gives us an opportunity to transform the United States?  One thing is certain. If the globalists need a flattened America on which to build their paradise, the nation is just about as close to flat as it has ever been. Emotionally, millions are distraught. With few dreams because of low incomes, their goal has been to pay rent and get enough food. They’re not lazy. They’re the working poor and our small towns and rural America are full of them. By the way, they’ve just been laid off.

            Such is the situation, the mess, brought about by a planned economic lockdown not justified by the numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths. Somebody divide 75,000 (deaths) by 333,000,000 (U.S. population). Stand the answer beside the economic hardship and violation of constitutional rights. Then ponder.

            The government has never before taken so much control over our lives. First the restaurant booth was forbidden then, unbelievably, the church pew. Do we not see the slow progression of the loss of liberty and how it edges closer and closer to our everyday personal lives?  If a vaccine is ever required of all citizens – Bill Gates is pushing that very idea – it will be time to echo Patrick Henry and Martin Luther King with a “Just send me to jail.” Who wants the government requiring them to put something into their body?

            The most egregious prospect to which the present crisis could lead is that for which globalists yearn. That would be central planning carried out by Big Brother. Doing away with the Electoral College is mild compared to ditching federalism and creating an all-powerful central government.

Since Woodrow Wilson, there has been a drip-drip move toward global governance. Examples abound. Wilson’s League of Nations failed, but FDR’s United Nations did not. Neither did the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the International Court of Justice, and the World Health Organization. One reason for President Trump’s election was his opposition to the United States contributing so heavily to these entities.

            Does anyone remember the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?  Russia swallowed 14 nations, but her experiment, called the Soviet “Union,” collapsed after 69 years of central planning. Even the communist leader Gorbochev could see and acknowledged that centralized government – socialism – wasn’t providing enough groceries.

            Don’t think that mention of a socialist America or of world governance is stretching the coronavirus issue too far. Bernie Sanders raised a vast army of 20-somethings and presidential candidate Biden is already promising them the moon. Europe’s 20-somethings are socialist to the core. If individual liberty is always just one generation from extinction, it’s wise to take note of what the younger generation is thinking.

            Our mess is shrouded with the ideals of the globalists, the collectivists, the socialists. If their party wins the November election, centralized government is our future. Federalism will be our past.

Roger Hines

5/6/20   

           

           

Education the Oakwood Way

                                          Education the Oakwood Way

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/3/20

            It was Cobb County’s summer school of 1992. While my senior English class did research in the library, I sat and graded papers. Soon Dr. Carla Northcutt, the summer school principal, walked in and took a seat at my table.

            “I’m looking for a good, hardworking English teacher to join us at Oakwood,” she said.

            Twenty-eight years later I’m still surprised that I replied, “Well, I’m hardworking.” My answer surprised her as well since it implied interest. Oakwood was an alternative high school, Dr. Northcutt its principal. Its faculty was a creative bunch who knew how to engage students with diverse methods. Northcutt knew I was a traditionalist. For many years I had been the English department head at Wheeler High School and she was one of the department’s most effective teachers and the most non-traditional.

            Northcutt knew that I required – and that students enjoyed – modest amounts of memory work. She knew I required students to teach a lesson, engage in formal debate, write constantly, and read regularly. She knew that students understood the second bell was for starting class, not for last minute dashing into the room. She well remembered that, regarding literature, I was a strict constructionist, that is, I taught that an essay means what the essayist meant (just as the U.S. Constitution means what its writers meant and not what history scholars say they could have meant). She knew I believed that Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s rightful status was just below the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How then could I fit in at an alternative school with those abundantly creative teachers?

            “So you are interested?” Northcutt pressed.

            “Oh, I’ve thought about Oakwood a few times, but you know me. I’m probably not what you need.”

            Northcutt began to insist that Oakwood students needed traditional teachers too. I relented, and although the new school year was fast approaching, my North Cobb principal, Dale Gaddis, was very kind to release me from North Cobb.

It’s August of 1992, my first day at Oakwood. Three very pregnant girls and two pink-haired ones walk into my classroom followed by a young man clad not in a T-shirt but a doggone for real undershirt. Uh, Dr. Northcutt had oriented me on certain alternative school issues, but a boy coming in wearing an honest to goodness, old fashioned undershirt wasn’t one of them. I must be true to myself. I ask him if he perhaps had left his shirt in his car. “Naw sir, but I can find me one.” He leaves and within minutes returns properly dressed.

The school is small; the classes are small; teachers are granted much latitude. Wise school board members, realizing that students have varied educational needs, had continued to fund the low-enrollment school. While this first class of 15 enters, I’m sitting at a desk in the back. After the last bell rings, the deep-seated mischief in me rises up. I try something.

With elevated voice I spoke. “Please rise while the teacher proceeds to the front.”  Every student stood up, even the pink-haired girls! I never let on that I was messing with them.

 Early on I learned that two girls in the class had been in Advanced Placement classes at their home schools. Why did they choose the alternative school? “I got tired of the morning announcements that didn’t pertain to me,” one testified. That response is illustrative of so many high schoolers who are “drifting on the periphery of the pack” as C. Bradley Thompson puts it in his book, “Our Killing Schools: How America’s Schools are Destroying the Minds and Souls of our Children.”

To see how I managed at an alternative school for 11 exhilarating years, see paragraph 4 above. My teaching changed not a whit, though my pace did. Students who had come to Oakwood didn’t need a different curriculum, just a little more time and attention. They wanted academics and a diploma, not socialization or football. Frankly, they needed love.

The pregnant girls, the pink haired ones, the recovering druggies, the rebels, and all the rest inspired me, but nothing was as uplifting as the sparkling teachers, males and females. Among them was Marietta’s current First Lady, Jean Alice Tumlin who particularly showed this traditionalist how to be himself, enjoy students, and still be … a strict constructionist.

Our current pandemic lockdown is altering educational methods. Ideally it will lead to more innovation – more Oakwoods, perhaps - where teachers and students can be closer, where high tech doesn’t kill high touch, and where fewer students are on the periphery.

The departed Dr. Northcutt would smile down on that.

Roger Hines

4/29/20