This is No Time for Unity

               Published in Marietta (GA) Marietta Daily                       Journal,2/6/21  

            The dumbing down of words is both misleading and dangerous. Consult any reputable dictionary (a watered down collegiate dictionary won’t do) and you’ll find that insurrection has a very serious definition. It is much more serious and far-reaching than a bunch of thugs dressed in stupid costumes, breaking into a government building and bashing everything in sight.

             The Oxford English Dictionary, still the principal historical dictionary of the English language, reads “an organized attempt to seize a government and take control of a nation; a violent, organized revolt against a sitting government.”

            Yeah, the January 6^th caper in Washington, D.C. was exquisitely organized and executed, wasn’t it. One could tell that like Oliver Cromwell and George Washington the rioters were people of high purpose, discipline, and reasoned intent. Did everybody see on television the well stationed brigades out away from the Capitol awaiting signals from their leader? Did anybody see anything other than bad boys and girls acting up stupidly and illegally? Neither did I.

            No, this was no Cromwellian seizure of the British throne, and no legitimately aroused colonists telling the British what they could do with their tea. This caper was goons who, as it turned out, supplied Democrats and their fawning media with a gleeful last jab at Donald Trump.

            Changing the definitions of words is a political art. Tolerance is a word that is changing also. How ironic that those who have typically preached tolerance have become absolutely intolerant calling for “de-programming,” suppression of free speech, and for silencing those who disagree. Since the January 6^th  “insurrection,” members of Congress and the media have called for the examining of emails of any National Guard members who might have engaged in “hate speech,” another un-American concoction. Peter, Paul, and Mary probably don’t recognize today’s political left, so different is today’s left from their long ago 1960s ancestors.

            Conservatives had better wake up. Liberals are not what they used to be. In decades past liberalism actually practiced liberality. Liberals broke the back of slavery. They brought attention to the plight of the poor. If their tactics were wrongheaded or bore error, their hearts were right. But that was then and this is now.

            The most recent egregious change in liberal thought and the most serious definition change in the liberal lexicon is that of the word unity. President Biden has called several times for unity, even as he takes snipes at his predecessor. Senators and other political and business leaders have called for unity. But unity centered on what?

            When progressives speak of unity they are actually thinking and in effect saying, “Think as I think.” Unity  in the eyes of the nation’s political left means you must accept their argument of systemic racism even if you can name hundreds of well known and not so well known Blacks who have succeeded and who reject the progressive argument that America is a racist nation.

            Unity no longer means “Come, let us reason together.” It means come and embrace my ideology or you are a cad. It means you must approve of open borders, of Big Tech’s censorship of conservative commentary, of abortion, and of undeclared wars that have drained our treasury for half a century. And if you won’t, you are not willing to come together to heal the nation’s wounds. And you’re probably from rural America and uneducated.

            The government, corporations, and public schools can help you, though, if you can’t accept their new definition of unity. To cure you of your bias there are videos you can (and in many cases must) watch, videos akin to the one by Magic Johnson which I refused to watch since I didn’t think he was exactly qualified to talk to teens about sexuality.   

            Unity means getting used to transgender talk with its new pronouns such as now required at several universities, all because not everybody likes their gender and should be respected if they view themselves as something other than what they are. It means opposing Donald Trump’s alleged enticement to riot at the Capitol on January 6^th while dismissing Chuck Schumer’s threats (search them out) to Judges Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on the steps of the Supreme Court.

            You get the drift. But calling a cabbage a king doesn’t make it so. Instead of unity, our times now call for fighting for what we believe. The problem is Americans have always done our “fighting” in our deliberative halls with debate. That debate is what Democrats want to stop and that’s why they want new voters from Central America, two senators from D.C., popular elections for president, and a packed Supreme Court.

 That kind of unity will kill America and it must be opposed and stopped.

 

Roger Hines

2/4/21