For Everything There is a Season

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 8/21/21

            If Grant and Lee could show deep respect for each other at Appomattox and if the rabid abolitionist Horace Greeley could pay Jefferson Davis’ bail, Americans today should be able to handle their political/social differences peacefully.

            But today is not a season to talk about peace. In fact, it’s time to fight. Since violence has moved to the suburbs, if an evil man with ill intentions enters my house at 3:00 AM, it’s time to fight. On a much broader scale, if domestic forces bent on transforming America continue their onslaught on America’s values and heritage, it’s time to fight those forces as well.

            The war for what America will be like within the next quarter century has been waged. It’s clear that freedom of expression is being limited like never before, thanks to the government, the media, corporations, social media moguls, the university, and now, medical authoritarianism. Regarding the latter, anyone who dares listen to any medical researchers who disagree with Dr. Fauci is considered absolute nuts. Never have Americans been as subservient as now. Never have we allowed ourselves to be so browbeaten and so driven to one perspective without allowing other perspectives voice. Never has rejection of establishment wisdom gotten us fired.

Will America, then, remain the beacon of freedom and the example of prosperity-producing economics to the rest of the world?  Is she allowing her heritage of individual liberty to be aborted by the false gods of safety and unchallenged bureaucratic wisdom? Consider the following areas in which America has slipped, largely because those who don’t like America have chosen to diminish her and blame her for sins which she long ago acknowledged, addressed, and sought to repair.

            Our nation is now being undermined by what writer Irving Kristol called “the adversary culture.” Trading liberty for safety, college students around the country are arguing against freedom of speech, opting instead for “safe speech.” Un-chastised by their stockholders, corporations have become social activists, taking positions on everything from bathrooms to race to sexual identity. We’ve all heard the expression, “Shut up and sing.” Corporations need to shut up and make money. But somehow they have become the arbiters of social justice and “sexual freedom.” You know, the transgender/binary gender/choose your own pronoun foolishness, not to mention all the corporate support given to the riot-loving Black Lives Matter organization.  

The media, abdicating their role of providing news, have become the Commentariat. The medical profession that knows better but won’t say so, yields to the nonsense of asking on its paper work for one’s “sexual identity.” Many schools that should be teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic are delving deeply into ideology, telling children and youth alike what to think, particularly about race. As for the military, what more needs to be said about its departure from its purpose than to quote the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley: “I’d like to learn more about white rage and believe our troops should as well”? 

In sports, team owners allow spoiled 20-something-year-old millionaires to disrespect the flag and put down the country that, for Heaven’s sake, allowed them to get rich in the first place.  In short, craziness abounds.

            And that’s why fighting is in order. If a major political party will so agreeably yield to its fringe that calls into question capitalism, free speech, free enterprise, and love of country, the nation’s future is bleak unless that party is denied leadership and unless ordinary citizens do certain things. The Tea Party was successful. America needs another such effort.

            What can be done? There are many things deplorable, God-fearing, America-loving, hardworking, taxpaying citizens can do, and all of them will require not so much time or effort as simply the willingness to disturb our busy lives. Here are some: vote for sure; call or write your elected officials to tell them what you think; warn/teach your children not to follow the crowd and to question their teachers or professors whenever they teach something contrary to what they were taught at home; join and/or give money (small donations add up) to organizations that hold to your beliefs including political parties; speak up more whenever social or political topics are brought up.

            Finally, be inspired by the great poem, “Be Strong,” by Maltbie Davenport Babcock: “Be strong / We are not here to play, to dream, to drift / We have hard work to do and loads to lift / Shun not the struggle, face it / ‘Tis God’s gift. / Say not, ‘The days are evil. Who’s  to blame?’ and fold the hands and acquiesce / Oh shame! / Faint not, fight on / Tomorrow comes the song.”

            Yes, fight we must.

 

Roger Hines

8/19/21

               

 

Roger Hines

8/19/21

 

                       Questions for the First Day of School

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 8/7/21

            Welcome, class, to the course on Contemporary America. You understand that to be educated is to know how things came to be as they are. Not all things, but at least those ideas/theories, people/movements, issues/controversies, and discoveries/events that have most significantly affected us.

            Let’s deal with some questions that all of us should care about. You give me your questions; I’ll give you my short answers which you can either entertain or ignore. Who has questions?

            Question 1: Is a populist revolution really occurring in America? Answer: Yes. Populist means “of the people.” Typically the word refers to the work-based, faith-driven citizens of America. Broadly, it means the middle class but more precisely it is both manual laborers and professionals, blue collars and white collars alike who, in the words of columnist Salena Zeto, have been “hidden in plain sight.” If the “silent majority” doesn’t quite fit them, we can certainly call them constitutionalists, pragmatists, and localists. In other words they want government to be limited, competent, and close to home. They are voters who in 2016 fought successfully for their cherished American ideals and won. Interestingly enough they basically come from the interior states, not the two coasts. Though they lost the 2020 presidential election, they are reshaping American politics by rightly questioning or ignoring the media and by speaking up more on all issues.

            Question 2: What is it about Critical Race Theory that the populists don’t like? Answer: Almost everything. I say almost because CRT does start with the basic truth that in America’s past, slavery and segregation were despicably wicked. But CRT adherents see racism in the heart of every white person. (It doesn’t matter that whites elected and re-elected a black president.) One of its founders, Kimberly Crenshaw, wrote, “CRT aims to revitalize traditional race consciousness.” A la Calvinism, CRT claims all whites are predestined to be racists. CRT, then, is white supremacy in reverse and yes, “the people” are standing firmly against it.

            Question 3:  Why do so many populists either question or totally dismiss all of the talk about climate change? Answer: Populists don’t always agree on this question, but consider this. Remember the term “global warming”? Why do you suppose it has been dropped? I mean, Al Gore received a Nobel Prize in 2007 for his advocacy of global warming. Uh-oh. That same year the International Climate Conference predicted that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. However in 2010 the Conference reported its own errors, asserting that this melting would not happen then.

            On a personal note, my father kept a diary from 1941 to his death in 1979. For every single day of that 38-year period (the Conference’s projection was for a 28-year period) my farmer father recorded the high and low temperature. From the diaries I possess and the others I have checked, summer temperatures were essentially the same throughout those nearly four decades . Also, in 2009 the United States experienced extremely frigid weather in February. So, since the global warming theory is void of scientific validation, let’s just say that its believers have nervously opted for a softer term, one that’s presumably more easily swallowed: “climate change.” Feel the softness.

            Question 4: You said that populists are “faith-driven.” What does that say about populists and the culture wars? Answer: Plenty. Not all populists are people of faith and neither is fake news limited to politics. For instance, consider the myth of the dying church. Check out Glenn Stanton, director of Global Family Formation Studies (global family here refers to the universal Christian church, not to “we are the world” feel good-ism). His 2019 research indicates that “conservative Biblical churches are holding strong while liberal churches are hemorrhaging members” and that “young adult attendance at Biblically faithful churches is at a 50-year high.”

            As for culture broadly, yes, the nation is awash in junk culture. Do I need to mention Hollywood’s moral drivel, ubiquitous erotic fiction (listening, Stacy Abrams?), uninspiring, even filthy music, homeless-looking dress, anti-Americanism, or increasing profanity? Even great patriot Sen. Ted Cruz cannot talk five minutes without saying “Damn” and “What the hell.” Yes, figuratively and sometimes literally (check out the name Rod Dreyer) some populists are pulling out of the culture. I beg you not to.

            Question 5: What’s happened to the Durham Report? Answer: The WHAT? Ohhh … you mean the investigation of the DOJ’s counterintelligence operation against the 2016 Trump campaign. Don’t waste your time waiting for it. There are other hills to die on.

            Oops!  The bell. Let’s pick up there tomorrow. Don’t be discouraged. You’re not alone in the fight, but fight you must.

 

Roger Hines

August 5, 2021 

 

           

           

           

 

                                A Slam and a Sham

          Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 7/31/21

            Yet another slam and sham is in the make. The Congressional committee to investigate the January 6 “insurrection” is called to order. But first some essential background.

            For three months in the summer of 2020 – May 24 to August 22 – Democrat mayors, governors, and members of Congress sat like contented frogs while looting, rioting, burning, and total destruction of livelihoods took place in at least 8 major cities. Violence in city streets surged to new levels. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), more than 10,000 demonstration events occurred across the nation.

            One 2020 summer evening I watched as CNN’s Ali Velshi stood in Minneapolis in front of burning automobiles, crumbling buildings, and thieving looters and declared that “protestors have not become unruly.” My jaw hit the floor. Had the scene not been so horribly destructive, Velshi’s claim would have been laughable.

            Equally incredulous was the shameful characterization of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan who dubbed the nationwide riots a “summer of love.” Her comparison of the summer of 2020 to the summer of 1969 and the Woodstock Festival of Love was not humorous. Mayor Durkan even cheered the Black Lives Matter organization and other neo-Marxist revolutionaries who set up their CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) and declared it a secession. On June 29^th protestors marched to Durkan’s home to protest for even deeper cuts in police funding. Perhaps alarmed that angry protestors had come to her front door, Durkan on July1 launched an offensive on the protestors and the dismantling of CHAZ began.

            On Father’s Day weekend in the City of Fatherlessness (Chicago), 104 people were shot. Fourteen people were killed, including 5 children. In San Francisco, Velshi’s “unruly protestors” used the holiday to tear down more memorial monuments, those of President U.S. Grant and Francis Scott Key. Neo-Marxists aren’t just after Confederates. They’re after the American way, which is to say constitutionalism, federalism, and capitalism. In other words they’re socialists.

            It came to pass that in 2021 on January 6^th skullduggery hardly equal to and certainly no greater than that of 2020 took place at the nation’s Capitol. No, the nation’s Capitol is no more to be revered than the store fronts of Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and New York. No, the well suited elected officials inside the Capitol are no more to be revered than the displaced small business owners and employees – the little people, so to speak – of those cities. And no, the work of the suits inside the Capitol is no more to be revered than that of the unknown, burned out “summer of love” victims who were simply making a living. Yet, we’re to believe that storied columns, paintings of politicians, and history-besotted halls and chambers are more honor-worthy than America’s workbench. Talk about elitism. Jefferson himself, an intellectual and leader extraordinaire, would have been repulsed by such self-importance.

            The political party that chose to ignore the “summer of love” is now turning its attention to the goons who dared to smash their hallowed building and interrupt their most honored tasks. Makes one wonder whether or not all the smashed Moms and Pops of 2020 are still dealing with insurance companies or whether or not they have somehow made it back to solvency.

            The Committee on the January 6^th “Insurrection” should reach for a dictionary.  An insurrection is a formal, intentional seizure whose purpose is to take control of a government. So which of the clowns storming the Capitol was to be the President? What plans had been made regarding takeover of America’s military? Was there a modern cavalry waiting outside of D.C. in case they were needed? Now things are getting laughable. By day’s end the destructive buffoonery was over. Would that business owner victims of 2020 could have had it so easy.

            Democrats know this was no insurrection. They know that the vast majority of those in attendance at the Trump rally on January 6 went home. No, they’re fearfully thinking Donald Trump must be slammed, not really for the fictitious “insurrection,” but for winning the hearts of 74 million Americans. Thus, the Committee. Thus, the sham crocodile tears of the committee members, male and female, that began to flow shortly after the committee convened on Tuesday.

            Dear reader, is it not time that ordinary citizens protest against the perpetual craziness that surrounds us? Has an alarm not sounded? Should Jefferson have sought common ground with King George? Should Churchill have sought to convince Hitler to be a good boy? No, these leaders knew that defeat of the enemy was a total necessity. So must we view those who today are trying to destroy a former president and to “re-imagine” America.

 

Roger Hines

7/28/21