Saturday, August 8, 2020

 

                                  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

                                               

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Leaving a Democrat Upbringing

                           Leaving a Democrat Upbringing


               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 7/29/20


            My political conversion was gradual. Salvation didn’t come to me in a moment. It took two brothers, a columnist, a presidential candidate, and 7 years to be born again.

            A political junkie by age 13, I grew up under segregationist governors in Mississippi and studied all of them. Some were serious politicians; others were showmen. All were segregationists and Democrats.

So were all of Georgia’s governors until Jimmy Carter’s inauguration day conversion.  Arkansas had Faubus, Mississippi had Barnett, Alabama had Wallace, and Georgia had Maddox and Carter. In fairness, Carter changed course in his inaugural speech. Nobody can say, however, that he campaigned as a racial healer. He was one-third segregationist (he praised Wallace and promised to invite him to come and speak in Georgia), one-third anti-segregationist (he spoke kindly-when not disparagingly-of Martin Luther King), and one-third populist (he called his lawyer opponent Carl Sanders “cufflinks Carl”).    .

            Alas, neither the Mississippi, the Georgia, nor the national Democrat party has yet to acknowledge its racist past. Nary a word was ever raised about the KKK past of Robert Byrd or South Carolina’s pride and joy, Strom Thurmond, before he left the party to become a Republican. Today Democrats want every Republican to apologize for every sin they ever committed, despite their own unacknowledged racist past.

            Typically when we speak of peace, we’re referring to peace among nations. But today America’s chief concern is domestic peace. This past Monday night marked the 61st consecutive night of rioting and violence in Portland, Oregon. The three networks and the cable stations have shown mere snippets of the nocturnal lawlessness but online, Breitbart News and other outlets have offered extended viewing of each night’s hours-long destruction, abuse of police, the burning of stores, and the dumping of garbage in front of the police and setting it afire. Democrats are still defending the disorder.

            The carnage is of a magnitude we have seen on television many times, but in other countries. Surely it appears to the world that America is no longer a field of dreams.  Democrat leaders are absolutely silent about the carnage. So are most Republican leaders. The destruction, however, is taking place in Democrat-ruled cities. Democrat mayors and governors are the ones responsible for quelling the lawlessness.

            The whole picture reminds me of my ideological conflict from age 13 to 20. I grew up in a Democrat family. Republicans were oddities. Little did we know that our two older brothers, less than ten years removed from action in World War II, were changing from Democrat to Republican. They admired Eisenhower. They argued with our father about race. The war had changed them politically. Democrats were still fostering the prejudices my brothers had shed because of their military life.

            I often asked myself, “Who is right? Daddy, or Paul and Pete?” The emergence of JFK didn’t help any. He was idealistic and appealing, but Paul and Pete were afraid he, though a war hero, might be a secret racist. After all, he was a Democrat.

            Lyndon Johnson’s candidacy and presidency settled everything for me philosophically. Assuming the presidency after JFK’s assassination and elected in his own right in 1964, Johnson successfully shepherded the Civil Rights Bill through Congress, but all of his other policies led to what big government always leads to: centralized power, excessive regulation, and dependency. It was obvious that LBJ’s future was FDR’s past: government, government, government.

            By age 20 I sensed that America’s Little House-on-the-Prairie spirit and ruggedness were dying. The Great Society nanny state was the culprit. Dependency on government was spreading. Black intellectuals like Ward Conerly, Shelby Steele, and Thomas Sowell have argued that Johnson’s War on Poverty increased poverty, especially for blacks, because it enabled and heightened a spirit of poverty, not a “can do” spirit or work ethic.

            It came to pass, however, that conservative columnist William F. Buckley entered my world, cultivating it for the conservatism of Senator and presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. With the help of Buckley’s columns and Goldwater’s little book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” I came to know what I truly believed. I knew that my brothers were right and my father and other Democrats were wrong.

            Today LBJ’s “children,” (government employees, bureaucrats, public health experts, Democrat politicians) are insisting we must have an indefinite lockdown. They, of course, have secure, “essential” jobs. They have no fear of unemployment.

            Buckley and Goldwater’s children are standing at the precipice and are yelling, “Stop!” My two brothers are looking down – at Portland and other cities – and are shaking their heads at what is going on in the nation for whom they trudged across Europe, often going hungry.

 

Roger Hines

7/29/20