A Few Questions

A Few Questions

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) Oct. 1, 2022

             What happened to the obligatory celebrating of women and Blacks when they rise in their chosen fields of work or have won a political race? We’re all supposed to be supportive of all women and Blacks, remember, unless we wish to be called misogynists and racists. It turns out that women and Blacks are worthy of celebration only if they are progressives. North Carolina’s Lt. Governor Mark Robinson is an example. Robinson is an eloquent spokesman if there ever was one but, alas, Robinson is a Black Republican. He has been called an Uncle Tom because he neither chants nor embraces the pro-abortion, anti-parent, all Whites are racists, nanny state government line.

            The best recent example of a conservative woman who is not to be believed or honored – as was not Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett – is the newly elected Prime Minister of Italy, Ms. Giorgia Meloni. Why aren’t feminists joyous over Ms. Miloni’s election? Having just claimed victory this past week in the national election, Ms. Meloni will never receive any congrats from feminists in Europe or America. She is no feminist. In fact, in a campaign speech she raised the question, “Why is the family now an enemy?” Ms. Meloni went on to challenge the LGBQT movement and the “identification crisis” that runs amok in Europe and America.

            “Why can I not identify as an Italian, a Christian, a woman, and a mother?”  Ms.Meloni asked. “We each have a genetic code. Without identity we are perfect consumer slaves.”  Unlike most feminists and transgender proponents, Ms. Meloni does not believe reality is relative. Sounding like a resurrected Phyllis Schlafly or Margaret Thatcher, Ms. Meloni declared, “We will defend God, country, and family.”

            “We” means the Brothers of Italy, the political party she leads, and its supporters. The Brothers are known for their conservative stand on illegal immigration, abortion, and gay marriage. Ms. Meloni has no problem accepting her critics’ charge that she is a nationalist.

            When Ms. Meloni began moving toward victory in the Prime Minister’s race, who should appear but Google-owned You Tube who censored her because of a speech delivered in 2019. Could You Tube’s action be because in her bygone speech Ms. Meloni harshly criticized “global elitists from around the world who no longer believe in national identity, gender, or even the family”? After You Tube’s censorship, the media and even pretty boy Macron, the leader of France, accused Meloni of being … what else? …. a fascist. Fascist has become the media’s label of choice for those who believe in traditional values, institutions, and norms.

            Kudos to the left wing Atlantic Magazine, however, which pointed out that the Italian Constitution under which Ms. Meloni will govern and which was adopted in 1948 “is resolutely anti-fascist.” Indeed, Ms. Meloni has distanced herself from Italy’s fascist past, saying, “Fascism is  history.”

            My interest in Italian politics is twofold. First, I know that my beloved and deceased Italian sister-in-law Antonia who grew up under Mussolini viewed family, faith, and all political issues as Ms. Meloni does. Though the corporation she worked for supported Mussolini, her destitute but knowledgeable family did not. Whereas Antonia grew up under Mussolini and true fascism, I grew up asking her questions about both, learning all the while how special America is and how misled and war torn Europeans have so often been. Second, the small world in which we now live requires that we know at least a bit about what’s going on in other lands, particularly Europe. Europe’s storied but turbulent past and her tenuous present are America’s future if we do not understand from where and from what we came.

            Ms. Meloni’s victory has made her the object of abuse. Talk about being out of step with modern Europe and America! A self-professed nationalist? A defender of borders? A fearless opponent of the LGBQT lobby? European newspapers claim she is the heir of Mussolini. One of her critics however, Professor Alberto Mingardi of the University Institute for Modern Languages in Rome, writes, “There is no risk of authoritarianism under Ms. Meloni. Democracy isn’t toppling.”

            A few more questions, inspired by Ms. Meloni. What has the dire situation on our southern border already brought us, even if it were fixed today? If Republicans win both houses of Congress, will they stick to their guns or, once again, go moderate? What does the crime picture shown to us nightly on television tell us about the condition of the American family?

            Ms. Meloni, age 45, has unashamedly and fearlessly taken an old-fashioned position on every single issue. Will American leaders ever see where we are headed and do something similar?

 

Roger Hines

September 29, 2022

           

What are Liberals Afraid Of?

 

What are Liberals Afraid Of?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) Sept. 24, 2022

            Because conservatives are prone to stand in the gap and yell “Stop!” to foolish notions, some liberals have raised the question, “What are conservatives afraid of?” First of all, one would display serious ignorance to argue that Thucydides, Cicero, William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Rush Limbaugh, Candace Owens, Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, and Thomas Sowell were afraid of anything. Of course six of these are old dead White men and one is an old dead White woman, but the others – all Blacks – are still alive, still conservative, and still unafraid to assert their conservative principles. I suspect their fearlessness has rubbed off on those who admire and appreciate them.

            To the contrary, it is the liberal mind that harbors fear and spreads its tentacles everywhere. I say “the liberal mind” rather than name names because I don’t want to offend any of my liberal friends. When liberals get offended they punch the pause button in order to stroke their offendedness which means that meaningful debate is aborted. Consider the following fears that modern liberals cannot seem to conquer (not classical liberals who stood strong in debate and were often persuasive, but today’s liberals who shout “offensive” or “fascist” at everyone with whom they disagree).

            Liberals are afraid of laughter. Perhaps they don’t laugh because they believe in the perfectibility of man but don’t see much perfection anywhere. Why do the conservatives on Fox and Newsmax laugh and enjoy their work while the liberals on CNN and MSNBC are so humorless, solemn, and angry? I’m very concerned about CNN’s Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer. These two men need some friends. So do their guests. Their sadness is understandable, however. LBJ’s Great Society did not produce a great society. His War on Poverty was a flop. The billionaires and millionaires of America could better address poverty by setting up a private poverty program to which I would gladly contribute. Liberals are sad because government largesse never works. Check out what it has done to poor American families.

            Liberals are afraid of localism. That’s why they don’t like the Constitution too much and want to change it drastically. They abhor the Tenth Amendment which draws the line on what the federal government can do but which has been disregarded by Congress for decades. Liberals simply love big government. To them localism smacks of uneducated types, local yokels, and deplorables who could never wisely govern themselves. Self-determination has never been as valued by liberals as it has by conservatives.

            Liberals are afraid of narrow interpretations of words and of law. In the spirit and words of their beloved Al Gore they embrace the Constitution as “a dynamic, ever-changing document.” In other words our Constitution doesn’t mean what the Constitution writers meant. It means what contemporary legislators and judges prefer. The Judiciary serves as their natural power base. Therefore, “originalism” and “strict constructionism” have no place in the liberal lexicon and therefore Clarence Thomas is their mortal enemy.

            Liberals – the contemporary ones, remember, but including the older ones who have allowed younger, outrageous liberals to take over – are afraid of expressive religious faith. Regarding such, one of them recently wrote. “Religious views should not – must not – inform public policy.” Dear Lord! Try that on George Washington, John Adams, and all the other Framers plus Abraham Lincoln and a host of others. Argue to an objective, even secular historian that Christianity (a religious “view,” I suppose) particularly the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and the New Testament epistles have not informed America’s jurisprudence and common ethic.

            Liberals are also afraid of anything transcendent. Natural order means little to them or else they would recognize the sexual chaos spreading the land and the rank evil of the sexual grooming going on in only a few school systems in America but in many school systems in Canada and Europe. Maybe liberals don’t read newspapers or watch the news as much as they should. Maybe it’s their addiction to National Public Radio, but something makes them skittish about people of faith.

            Liberals are afraid of conservative parents and Donald Trump. This fear makes total sense in the liberal’s overall scheme of things because the family – being a little unit of government with parents being its reasonable leaders and children being their natural subjects/citizens – is the greatest impediment to the socialist/statist dream that lies deep in the liberal mind and heart. Trump, of course, is simply the most effective outlier liberals have ever faced. The man gives them the hibbie-gibbies.

            Finally, liberals fear this year’s midterm election. This fear is rational.

 

Roger Hines

September 22, 2022

Is America an Empire?

  Is America an Empire?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) Sept. 17, 2022 

            Given the pomp and pageantry associated with the death of Queen Elizabeth II, it’s easy to hold negative feelings about royalty, the children of royalty, and their lifestyle. For instance, most members of royal lines have never worked a day in their lives, or at least not the kind of work that the majority of ordinary Brits and Americans have engaged in. It was the high living of monarchs and their disdain for the working class that led to peasant revolts throughout Europe for centuries.

            To the American mindset, shaped by the ideals of personal liberty and productive labor, monarchy is galling. To a people who venerate the individual as opposed to the state, and who believe in representative democracy, it is galling to read of nations in which a family or families have ruled supreme. The best examples of such are not in England or greater Britain but in Russia and Saudi Arabia. In Russia a royal family ruled the nation for exactly 300 years. The professing Christian Romanovs reigned over the peasantry that constituted 93% of the nation’s population. No wonder Lenin and communism, though their ideas eventually failed, found fertile soil in 1917. Three hundred years of hard peasantry can make a nation try just about anything.

            The same is true for Saudi Arabia. In that oil-rich nation, literally the “land of the Sauds,” the Saud family established an absolute monarchy in 1902 though the family itself emerged in the early 1700s.

            Equally galling is the fact that monarchs around the world have lived and existed on the public dime. For Elizabeth II this is only partially true. According to most sources the Queen received a tax-payer funded sovereign grant each year from the treasury, but she also owned estates and artwork inherited from her father, King George VI, that are worth millions. In 2016 the Sunday Times estimated the queen’s net worth to be 340 million pounds ($442 million). No doubt this figure has grown since then.

            Unlike the Sauds, Elizabeth and her son, the new King Charles III, are constitutional monarchs.  Unlike England prior to the Magna Carta, their duties are performed as heads of state but not heads of government. It might surprise most Americans to know that while Britain essentially gave her empire away, she still maintains a Commonwealth, a loose held group of 14 nations that includes Canada and Australia. These nations are bound by a common language and culture but are in no way subservient to the British crown.

            It’s hard to contradict the argument that the British Empire, before dissolving, exercised soft power upon its subject nations. Wherever her ships sailed and anchored, high culture (education, medicine, pride, inspiring architecture) followed. Who can argue that India, now the world’s largest democracy, or Hong Kong, now a part of China, were not made better places because of the ubiquitous English language and the benevolent rule of monarchs like, say, Elizabeth?

            In 2020 Black Lives Matter protested in several United Kingdom nations. They argued that the UK was as guilty as America of slavery without acknowledging that slavery was abolished there three decades before it was in America.

            If Britain gave the word empire a good name, America has given it an even better one. Yes, America is an empire and has been since 1945. But like Britain, America has not behaved empirically. After crushing Japan, America picked her up. After soundly defeating Germany, America cleaned her up. Empires can do bad things, but good things as well. It was the pulpits of New England that ended slavery in America and the nearly single-handed work of one man, William Wilberforce, who ended slavery in Britain. But it was the British Empire that spent the rest of the 19^th century ending slavery around the world.

            Just who is still the world’s greatest military power today? The greatest economic engine? The most charitable nation on earth? The answer is America. But empires die. Rome did, Britain did, and the Soviet Union did.  Americans should worry about how our behavior in Afghanistan affected our world status (withdrawing without informing our staunchest allies). If we are not concerned about the violence sweeping the nation, we should be. And if we heed the leftist voices who denigrate our nation at every turn, we’re finished.

            It is not a selfish act for either an empire or a small nation to first promote the prosperity of its own people, but the most powerful actor on the world stage must also seek the well-being of other nations. Americans best select for leadership men and women who fully understand this and are fully committed to this noble imperial task.

 

Roger Hines

September 15, 2022   

When Words Lose Their Power … Because of Alteration

When Words Lose Their Power … Because of Alteration

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) Sept. 10/11, 2022

            “What’s in a name? A rose by any name would smell as sweet,” cried Juliet to Romeo. Juliet’s grief was brought on by the fact that her family and Romeo’s family were feuding. She, a Capulet, and Romeo, a Montague, were not allowed to marry because of the feud. Their problem was their names.

            Bill Shakespeare produced this bit of language analysis for us, but American poet Emily Dickinson analyzed words far less dramatically. “Some say a word is dead once it is said,” she wrote. “I say it just begins to live that day.”

            Words can and do live forever, or almost. When my father said to me, “Son, you can’t do anything right,” the words pierced my soul and lived there for eight years. I was fourteen. Although I held the words close, I knew my father didn’t mean what he said. I always did exactly what he asked me to do and in the way he expected. Having bungled a task that caused him much distress, I actually understood his dissatisfaction. Even so, his words lived on.

            Eight years later on the day before my college graduation, I asked my aging father if he still planned to go to the ceremony. My mother had died just four months earlier and my younger brother and I were the only children still at home. Characteristically my father began to rub the back of his neck to ponder my question. Then he said, “Son, I don’t think I can make that long trip after all. You and Carlton go on without me. You know I’m proud of you and you know Mama would be too.” Words can and do cancel other words.

            Words can also flip in meaning. Rhetoric comes to mind. Historically the word has meant “the art of speaking and writing effectively.” Today in most usage the word means hot air as in “The candidate was engaging in rhetoric.” Such pejorative expressions – those that take on negative meaning – are countless. Tyrant once simply meant ruler. Today it means a brutal ruler, thanks to Genghis Khan, Stalin, and others who polluted leadership.  

            Alas, our political lexicon is also undergoing semantic change. The words liberal and conservative are becoming less and less useful to describe our political views. Never-Trumper Republicans and neo-cons are moving so close to liberals they can hardly be called conservatives. Are we, like the Brits with their new “conservative” but former liberal Prime Minister becoming a “uni-party” nation? Not as long as MAGAites and other deplorables stay engaged. Political parties live and die. Heart-felt beliefs live on under one name or another. Does anybody believe the Tea Party is really over? Only its name and leader have changed.

Twenty years ago it would have been accurate to claim that the essence of liberalism is tolerance and that the essence of conservatism is restraint. That was before weasel words took over. Tolerance has been turned on its head. Today’s liberals are the best example of intolerance. Liberals have forsaken their grandparents’ 1960s cry for free speech, now discounting anyone with whom they disagree and canceling history they don’t like. On college campuses liberal students have shouted down conservative speakers for the last eight or nine years, claiming that conservative views make them feel unsafe. Animals have been allowed to run the farm not only in places like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Berkley, but at the University of Texas, University of Missouri, and small colleges everywhere.

 What’s happening is the fulfillment of George Orwell’s prophecy. This British writer, once a democratic socialist, warned Britons and Americans that convoluted language would one day be the favorite tool of politicians to sway thought. Think “reproductive freedom” which really means abortion; “disinformation” which means any idea that varies from the accepted leftist position of the day; “equity” which is the weasel word for the totalitarian trinity of socialism, communism, and fascism; and “postmodernism” which argues that all things including gender are a social construct, not a natural order.

Well, at least my father didn’t use weasel words when I disappointed him. It’s a shame that for eight years I held his words against him. It’s also a shame, and dangerous, that too many citizens are not paying attention to the words being tossed around, and altered, by the liberal establishment: by government, media, corporations, education, medicine; you name it.

Language, like politics, is downstream from culture. If words are the vehicles on which our thoughts ride, we best check out the vehicles of every person or institution who wants our vote or our children.

 

Roger Hines

September 8, 2022  

Colleges, Biden, and Labor Day

Colleges, Biden, and Labor Day

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) Sept. 3/4, 2022

            One morning during my eighth grade year in school I handed my first period math teacher, Coach Durward Smith, a note from my parents. It explained why I had been absent the day before. In my mother’s barely legible handwriting it read, “Please excuse Roger’s absence yesterday. We had to keep him home to help dig sweet potatoes.”

            Coach Smith, an affable guy, read the note then looked up at me and said, "Hold your hands out.” After I nervously obeyed, he added, “Well, I see you really did dig sweet potatoes.” He was referring to the grimy sticky spots of sweet potato juice that had clung to my hands in spite of all efforts to wash them off.

            Recalling this occasion recently, I began to ponder the status of the work ethic today. Are Americans still hard workers? Have we become so educated that we now look down on labor and laborers? Are we teaching our children that work of whatever stripe is honorable and beneficial? How many members of Congress have never held a private sector job? Since our President has been in office since age 27, what could he know about the private sector or common labor?

            For anyone who wonders how we got from Plymouth Rock to President Biden’s loan forgiveness notions, consider the fact that when the Pilgrims landed in the New World in 1620, it was work or die, meaning produce your own food or die. Walmart had not yet reached the shores of New England. Frozen or processed foods had not been thought of. It would be 155 years before the sturdy settlers had a national government and 312 years before that government would  implement its first pervasive welfare system. Amenities we take for granted today being obviously unthinkable at the time, work was required of men, women, and children alike. Besides, did their Bible not declare that “he who will not work will not eat?”

            Nothing has undermined the rugged American work ethic as much as higher education. I remember when the “Get thee to college” chant began. Actually it began in the late 50’s. Which makes me wonder: Is the fact that so many product labels read “Made in China” a result of our half-a-century emphasis on higher education and our de-emphasis of labor skills? What happened to Industrial Arts?

            Has anyone noticed that when it comes to self-importance, acquiring great amounts of money doesn’t really puff people up so much, but education along with its degrees and titles does? When paid “contributors” or other guests on cable news are interviewed from their homes, why do they position themselves in front of their esteemed bookshelves? I would be pleased to see them in front of a barn, beside their lawnmower, or fresh out from under the hood of their car.

Just who are our essential workers today?  They are not college graduates. They are primarily truck drivers, electricians, plumbers, automotive mechanics, and farmers, to name only a few. The average age of plumbers in the United States today is 60, which should tell us something about our labor force and what we are not doing about it.

Truth is the nation is currently run by the Intelligentsia, college-educated people who have never worked on a car, driven a truck, plowed a field, or dug sweet potatoes. Very few political leaders are former surveyors like Washington, or store owners like Truman. A background in government, absent of any experience in labor or entrepreneurship, can turn one into a socialist who thinks government planning and government subsidy are and should be the cure for all ills. Thus, the doofus idea of college loan forgiveness, an idea that has non-college graduates paying the bill for college graduates.

Federal student loans and grants were initially intended to help low-income Americans. They have become what the Wall Street Journal has called “all-you-can-eat entitlements.” And we know why. The current President needs the votes of college kids.

Colleges have more deans than Amazon has delivery trucks. Colleges can profit from taxpayer subsidies without accountability. Their costs, like medical costs, have been out of whack for years. Student loan forgiveness enables colleges, leading them ever closer to the free-flowing spigot of government largesse.

So Monday is Labor Day, a holiday made official by Congress in 1894, the year of my hard laboring father’s birth. Now that is a significant co-incidence. My father hated for any of us children to miss school, but everybody’s gotta eat and sweet potatoes rot easily if not gathered soon.

Come Monday, my thoughts will turn to deplorable people, men and women like my parents who still keep things running. Happy Labor Day.

 

Roger Hines

September 1, 2022

On Stacey Abrams, Alisha Thomas Searcy, and Richard Woods

 

On Stacey Abrams, Alisha Thomas Searcy, and Richard Woods

Published in Marietta Daily Journal August 27/28, 2022

Stacey Abrams and I grew up in Mississippi and have had conversations about our native state. Alisha Thomas Searcy and I shared an office in the GA House of Representatives and talked often about House business. Richard Woods and I traversed the state of Georgia, separately, as contenders for State School Superintendent and ran into each other frequently. I have tales to tell about all three of them. They probably have a few to tell about me.

Stacey Abrams has a mind like a bear trap. She is an engaging speaker and a walking encyclopedia. She is also a prolific writer of soft porn novels, but more on that momentarily. Alisha Searcy is smart too. She has boundless energy and an inquisitive mind. She is also observably ambitious.

Richard Woods is a quiet man of character and great knowledge. A man of no bluster, but of substance and high purpose, Woods is a lifelong educator. He has taught school, supervised teachers, owned a small business, and has served as Georgia State School Superintendent since 2015. He is currently running for re-election.

 All three of these public figures are “defined by their ideology,” as the media likes to put it. My association with them began in 2001 when Searcy and I entered the Georgia House. Abrams became a member of the House in 2007. Woods and I became contenders and friends in 2010 but the contest for State School Superintendent was won by John Barge. In 2014 Woods challenged Barge and won the race.

After serving in the House for two terms, I became the House Messenger for Speaker Glenn Richardson. Most of my duties took place on the House floor, assisting the Speaker with the organized pandemonium. One early morning duty, however, took place in his office where I had to take calls from legislators who wished to speak during “Morning Orders,” that portion of time when legislators could speak on any topic or concern of their choosing before debate on bills began. House members were required to call me by 9:00 AM.

One morning Rep. Searcy called me at 9:20 to ask for a speaking slot. I reminded her that 9:00 AM was the cut-off time and that the morning schedule was set. She persisted and persisted. So let’s see … Alisha and I are suite mates; we’re fellow Cobb Countians; I respect her; there’s one slot left. The Speaker won’t like my breaking the rule but I’ll give her the slot.

10:00 AM. The Speaker gavels members to order. After the devotional and prayer, Morning Orders begin. Rep. Searcy is the last speaker. She delivers a tirade on race. When her time expires, the Speaker gavels her, but she continues to talk. The Speaker gavels over her repeatedly. Instead of ending her speech she continues to rail and then to sing “We Shall Overcome” as she heads for the House door. Members of the Black Caucus follow her on outside the House floor.

With anger I phoned her when the day’s session ended, telling her that she had betrayed my friendly gesture of breaking the rule by allowing her to speak. Her unapologetic reply was “Well, sometimes we just have to break the rules.”

Learning that Rep. Abrams had written several novels, I invited her to talk to my freshman English class at Chattahoochee Tech when the legislative session was over. She did so and for an entire hour held students and the teacher in the palm of her hand as she explained and illustrated the importance of clear communication. Thank goodness she didn’t read from any of her novels. A few weeks later I sought out her books but couldn’t find them. After learning that her pen name is Selena Montgomery, I finally found her novels. Yes, they contain verbal porn.

Superintendent Woods is being challenged currently by Ms Searcy. Everybody knows that Ms Abrams is challenging Governor Brian Kemp. Lately, media pundits have been sadly claiming that conservatives are “defined by their ideology.” Of course they are. So are progressives. One’s ideology is one’s beliefs. Abrams and Searcy are fellow ideological progressives. In fact they have the attention and support – big time – of progressives around the country. Abrams has been unsuccessful in playing down her defund the police stance. If elected, Searcy would turn public schools into “government schools” for sure. Woods is no progressive, for sure.

I’m just saying it’s wise to know what every candidate’s ideology is as well as what kind of books they write.

 

Roger Hines

August 24, 2022

The Present is No Time for Unity

The Present is No Time for Unity

Published in Marietta Daily Journal August 20/21, 2022

            I’ve had only two fights in my life and I won both, not because I was strong or knew how to fight, but because a sense of justice lit a fire in me and rendered me momentarily uncontrollable.  That’s not to say that I lost control of my emotions or my senses. It means that my three opponents could not control me. A burning desire to instantly right a wrong was all that enabled me and produced success.

            Fight one. We had all had enough of Jimmy Bailey. It was an outdoor P.E. class. It was the eighth grade which means I was thirteen or fourteen.

            Jimmy Bailey was a bully. I watched him push and shove others around. When he struck Otis Massey, I knew I would have to do something. Otis was extremely timid. His family was even poorer than mine. When “the Bailey boy” without cause or reason walked up to Otis and hit him in the ribs, something came over me. I rushed over and struck Jimmy Bailey in the face with the heel of my hand. He reeled, sat down, and began to cry. I’ve no doubt that shock served to correct him as much as my sure blow. Fights were fairly common so our teacher, the football coach, did nothing. As for Jimmy Bailey, he changed his ways.

            Fight two. In college I was known as Bill Ladd’s roommate. Bill Ladd was my best friend and was tall, dark, and handsome. Although he could have whipped a bear, he was a gentle giant known all over the campus for his looks, personality, and athletic ability. I was pleased to walk along in his shadow. Knowing his character, I was pleased and eager to defend him as well.

            It was an intra-mural basketball game in the college gym. Suffering from a bad back I was reduced to keeping stats on the bench for our dorm’s team. At a point in the game, I happened to look up from my clip board and saw that my heroic friend had just grabbed a rebound but for some reason had been attacked by two guys on the opposing team. Jimmy Bailey! Otis Massey! Consciously, again, and again infused by a lightning strike of justice I threw my clip board down, slung one of my dear friend’s attackers on the floor and gave the other my Jimmy Bailey special. Eventually, they both got up to apologize and all was well.

            How is it that contemporary politics recently returned my mind to Otis Massey and Bill Ladd?  I say it’s because we are sitting idly by and allowing chaos, violence, double standards, and sheer tyranny to prevail. Yes, I’m referring to the chaos of transgender politics that defies human biology, messes with the minds of children and allows men to control girl sports. I’m referring to the violence of our major Democrat-run cities that is seeping out into small town and rural America, to the overlooked violent “summer of love” and the obsession over goons who stormed the Capitol and who could have been thwarted but weren’t. I’m referring to the double standards applied to Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, and other Democrat operatives versus those applied to former President Trump and God knows how many of his present and former associates. I’m referring to the tyranny of an administration and its party that has already legislated that IRS agents be increased by 87,000 to ferret out our pocketbooks, and to the outrageous border crisis that our not so nimble president cares nothing about. I refer to the dying yet still poisonous and poisoning media that hates Donald Trump so much that it will overlook the corruption of our president and his family. About half the voters in 2016 voted for Trump, yet his enemies continue to hope that one more attack against him will be their charm.

            It’s time for lovers of freedom not just to vote but to solicit others in any way they can to fight the present tyranny. When unity is impossible, victory is necessary.

            Decades ago at Meridian (MS) High School, long after Otis Massey and Bill Ladd, six excellent coaches just for fun held  Saturday classes for male faculty to teach them self-defense.  I learned from these great coaches how to defend myself. I appreciate the skills they taught us; however, I still don’t believe that physical readiness is as reliable as a sense of urgency brought on by the recognition of a need and a deep desire for freedom from tyranny. That need is now.

 

Roger Hines

August 18, 2022 

America’s Turmoil

 

America’s Turmoil   

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) July 9/10, 2022                  

            The British writer G.K. Chesterton wrote, “All revolutions are doctrinal. You cannot upset things unless you believe something outside them.”

 The same is true of every belief of every stripe, including atheism and secularism. Atheism and secularism are philosophies, and they are essentially the same.  In effect they are both religions. I’m happy to say that I have friends who are devout atheists or secularists. These friends are good people of accomplishment and they care about people and the country. They are not hostile to people of faith. With all respect they take exception to faith and anything transcendent, truly believing that what you see is all there is. I see and understand the distinctions they make between themselves, but I reject their insistence that they are not religious. A belief system is a belief system.

These friends like to point out to me that the U.S. Constitution does not contain the name God, and they are right. However the Declaration of Independence, while not law, is the document that set in motion the intention of 13 colonies to be free from a European power. The Declaration, with fire and high purpose, birthed the Constitution. In so doing, it did and does acknowledge the Creator and even claims that it is He, not monarchs or government, who endow human beings with “certain unalienable Rights” in the first place. This acknowledgement is found in the second sentence.

In the Declaration’s final sentence, which is a clear prayer of supplication, its writer appeals to “Divine Providence” for His support as the signers “mutually pledge to each other (their) lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.” Of the five textbooks from which I have taught this esteemed political document, three have omitted this final sentence.

Consider America’s present turmoil. Ponder the revolutionary spirit that fills the air, a spirit fraught with notions and policy ideas that have not sprung from either the Declaration, the Constitution, or the Judeo-Christian ethic that spawned both of these documents. Notions of governmental power, of human sexuality, and of freedom itself are being proposed that would shock not only our founders but also the general population of merely 40 years ago.

            Regarding governmental power, one of the nation’s two major parties has turned almost entirely to “democratic socialism.” It has stated publicly its desire to pack the Supreme Court, to curb the right of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, and to mark as “racists” or “nationalists,” those who believe a nation must have borders. The other major party – more precisely its leaders – often caves to the socialist party in the interest of unity and out of fear that revolution will break out if there is not “bipartisanship.” These peace-lovers are the ones who need Chesterton, Edmund Burke, and Patrick Henry the most. A 10^th grade world history student can understand that the “democratic socialist” party has wrapped its views of governance with the philosophy of Karl Marx. Its solution for every problem is the Nanny State.

            Regarding human sexuality, one of the two nation’s major parties has gone absolutely mad. With corporate America covering its every flank, it has re-defined for us sexuality itself. We all hem and haw about this but the issue can be boiled down to one word, homosexuality. Or as the Apostle Paul put it in the religious book most used by Americans, “men with men doing that which is unseemly.” Pride Month was all about celebrating homosexuality and, yes, Seattle’s parade with fully nude men in front of children was a good example of where we should have known the LGQBT “community” would lead us. Seattle, thou art America. Why is it not okay to criticize the LGQBT crowd? Why should they be shielded from criticism when not one other segment of the culture is? Living their chosen “lifestyle” is one thing. Flaunting it is another.

            As for freedom itself, wherever he lies buried Patrick Henry weeps. Every year our freedom is restrained more and more. The FBI has recently raided the homes of enemies of the Democratic Party in the dead of night. A Congressional committee, calling its meeting a “hearing,” continues to bring charges against a former president, disallowing cross examination of its fear-induced witnesses. How cowardly to slam a former president or anyone else and allow no rebuttal. How pitiful of the corporations to bend their weakened backbones in any direction the cultural revolutionaries wish.    

            One of my atheist friends agrees with me on our loss of freedom. Denying freedom’s God, he‘s with Chesterton on the doctrine (the beliefs) of revolutions. He knows that progressives don’t like America because they do like things that America has never stood for.

 

Roger Hines

7/2/22

Go Plant Some Turnips … or Something

 Go Plant Some Turnips … or Something

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) July 2/3, 2022

            It’s a bit late to plant turnips, but late summer or early fall will afford gardeners another opportunity.  Turnips, like their cousins the collards, prefer cool weather, so early spring or early fall planting can produce the best results. Full disclosure: I’ve defied the experts and the Master Gardeners several times regarding tomatoes and flowers and have achieved what I sought, but I don’t recommend that. Those Master Gardeners know what they’re talking about. They can make anything look beautiful or tasteful.    

            It’s not really turnips or tomatoes or tulips that are on my mind.  It’s the fact that Americans have become so far removed from the good earth that our minds and attitudes are getting messed up. We are so urbanized and so immersed in politics that we need release.  And it’s not just children and teens who need to get outdoors.  Adults do as well. Vitamin D is one good reason for the outdoors, but mental health is as important as physical health. I’ve no doubt that good doses of outside air, more views of the trees around us, and more chats with our next-door neighbors would affect even our politics for the better. Dirty hands can help too. And sweating never hurt anybody.

            It’s also not just our kids and grandkids who think that groceries come from grocery stores.        I’ve no doubt that adults as well saunter through the grocery store aisles giving no thought at all to the origins of all the wondrous things they are beholding.  I wonder if they consider what they’re beholding as wondrous.

            How wrong President John Adams was: “Our boundary will reach the Pacific in no more than 300 years and we will build a great democracy every step of the way.” Talk about British understatement. Adams was truly an American politically, but like so many others he was still drying off from British English. The early Americans were firmly established in California by 1846. The happy urge to get outside, explore, and build or plant something, just would not allow early Americans to stay inside.

            Most people reading this may as well forget about raising a hog, keeping a calf that you must vaccinate or neuter, gathering corn, or pulling up peanuts.  We live too close together for all of that.  But somehow  we’ve all got to do something that reminds us of who and what we are and were, where and what we came from, what the earth we live on is like, and what its many benefits are.  After all what we eat still comes from the earth.  That means dirt.

            Yet dirt is not respected.  There’s no money in dirt or manual labor any more, we’re told.  Besides, dirt is dirty.  So get thee to a college and get a degree.  Think corporate world.  Major in feminine studies, international law, or something else eclectic, whatever that means. Your future lies not in your functioning hands but in your functioning brain. Nope, wrong again. The average age of plumbers in America is 60. That means we better stop steering so many youths away from a future of physical labor. Besides, plumbers, cattlemen, electricians, farmers, mechanics and such have to have good minds to do their essential kinds of work and their rewards or pay are far more than a pittance.

            My family was cotton and corn. My wife’s was cotton and dairy cows. We shucked corn. My wife’s mother stepped carefully down into a well hidden, rocky-clad spring to place butter in a naturally refrigerated little cave. How did two country kids become teachers of poetry? I suspect it was because we had experienced the poetry – the rhythms and beauty – of the seasons and of the agrarian, rural life. Cows move slowly. Corn grows fast. Everything about cotton is wretched. A nearby garden of colorful vegetables can take the edge off of the cotton field.           

Americans are one nation under therapy and one reason is that a few decades back, we began to ignore and eventually ceased taking advantage of the healing, therapeutic qualities of the outdoors.  But let me back away a bit from the above claim that we live too close together to do certain outdoor things.  Most houses and apartment back yards have enough space for four or five tomato plants. For the sake of our individual and collective sanity as well as for the sake of the American spirit, please go plant something.  Then care for it, watch it grow, and see what it does to you long before you harvest and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

 

Roger Hines

6/29/22

On Going to the Woods and Learning

 On Going to the Woods and Learning

 Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) August 13/14, 2022

Recently for a solid week my wife Nancy and I fought -  no, let’s just say we dealt with – ants, bugs, spider webs, pesky though beautiful deer, armies of crickets, and the smell of horse manure. It was glorious.

            Why the word “fought” even came to my mind is a mystery to me. We knew what we were getting into when we signed up for the cabin in the woods with two barns on one side and a gigantic lake on the other. Such sights, sounds, and smells we grew up in and they all grew in us. They also grew us up. That’s why we chose the humble wooded cabin near Lake Hartwell a few miles east of Hartwell, Georgia.

            We were not in Hart County primarily to re-live our growing up or to enjoy the woods and the huge farm, though Nancy was able to do much of the latter. I was there for work.        The work that took me back to the countryside literally and nostalgically was a week of intensive teaching at Whitworth Women’s Prison near Hartwell. Oh, how we allow words and ideas to lodge in our heads, ruling out all other possible ways to accomplish a goal. Words like “semester,” when it comes to formal learning. Tradition says we must have at least a semester of this, that, or the other to truly learn anything. But not if the learners have time on their hands and are so totally dedicated to their studies that they are willing to face six-hour classes for five straight days. Such an arrangement would never work for a knowledge-based subject such as history, but for skills-based subjects like writing, it certainly does. 

 Tradition says sit down, take notes, do homework, and make a certain score on a test. Reality says education is Aristotle or Abe Lincoln on one end of a log and anybody else on the other end, if but for an hour. Tradition says, “Tell.” Reality pleads, “Don’t just tell me; show me.”

But how do you show someone how to write? We can watch plumbers plumb, watch doctors doctor, and watch engineers draw or build, but we never watch writers write. So what does the teacher of writing do? Mark Twain’s suggestion was to get the learner’s mind off of learning to write and “throw their minds to where they grew up, to what they enjoy, to what they find despicable, or to what they consider beautiful, then entice them to tell about it and to use the right word and not its second cousin.” Perhaps a fair summary of Mark Twain’s suggestion is to think about something that makes you mad, sad, or glad.

Fortunately, though because of misfortune, all of the women in the Composition class at Whitworth had plenty to say and write about madness (anger), sadness, and gladness as well. Brenda (not her real name) had made big money as a teenager selling drugs. Lacy, a Registered nurse, was the only one in the class who had not come from a large town or city. The city slickers in the class insisted daily that Lacy and I tell them more about the woods, cows, baling hay, tending fields, and gathering cotton and corn. I kept wishing that Nancy, who began milking cows as a child, could have been with me for them to hear a female describe the rural life.

In 1845 the New England essayist Henry David Thoreau, having graduated from Harvard, moved to the woods where he wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essentials of   life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach. I wanted to live sturdily, to drive life into a corner and reduce life to its lowest terms.”

From our cabin each day, across delightful Hartwell, on to the prison, Thoreau and my and Nancy’s background messed with my head. Why are so many of us afraid of silence? Do we need a screen at the gas pump? Are we willing victims of wonderful technology? Do we ever think of where groceries actually come from? Why in so many places has worship gone from at least some silence to obligatory noise? What are we sacrificing when we forsake the outdoors entirely?

We know the answers to these questions: impatience, capitulation to the surrounding culture, and the sheer fear of being still or alone. The woods are a perfect sanctuary.  Check them out next time the city or the suburbs get you down.

 

Roger Hines

August 11, 2022

Wishing Women Well

 

                                                           Wishing Women Well

                                 Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) August 6/7, 2022

                                        This column first appeared in 2018 and is being 

                                       republished as a welcome back to the school year.

            I’m thinking a great deal about women teachers these days, their school year still lying before them.  In fact, I’m going to sing their praises since I know from close experience how important and how unheralded they are.

            Why women teachers?  Frankly, because their influence on me and the debt I owe them is beyond measure.  I’m not referring to the teachers who taught me, though I also owe them a great debt of gratitude, but to female colleagues past and present.  I’m grateful for the men with whom I’ve taught over the years.  Coaches, particularly, are my heroes.  But in the two states, six schools and three colleges I’ve taught in, the women teachers have outnumbered the men more than two to one.  Individually and as a group, these women bear several distinctives.

            Some readers will view the following observations as condescending.  Sorry.  I still open and close the car door for my wife and intend to do so until I’m bent double.  Others might think these observations are out of step with modern times.  I certainly hope so.  There are many things about our exciting present world which I hope I never adapt to such as declining manners, vulgar language, our nation’s passionate love affair with alcohol, and all of the outlandish talk about choosing our gender.  In many ways the present age is better; in many ways it isn’t.

            But regarding women, it’s a long way from the ‘70s cry, “I am woman; hear me roar” to the contemporary “Me Too” movement.  Gloria Steinem, in her first issue of “Ms Magazine” declared, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”  Turns out, quite a few women now need the help of men and other women alike to bolster their claims of past male misbehavior.

            I’ve been surrounded by women my entire life.  Here’s how: one mother, ten sisters, fifteen nieces, one wife, two daughters, two daughters-in-law, six granddaughters, and over 400 stellar women in the teaching profession.  Except for the ten sisters, such a scenario is not uncommon for most other men in teaching.

            For what they are worth, here are four conclusions I’ve drawn from working among females.

            One, they are as protective of men as men supposedly are of women.  OK, risky language for these overly sensitive times, but most female teachers, married or not, parents or not, possess a Mama Bear complex.  To me this is joyous.  The first year I taught school, every woman in the building encouraged and “looked after” me and two other male neophytes.  My second year, at age 23 at an all black school (I’m white), dear female teachers who knew my unstated and un-discussed mission for being there would say, “Mr. Hines, we gonna look out for you and you gonna be alright.”  Lord, I loved those women and still do.

            Women teachers tend to “look out” for their male students as well as for the coaches and all other male teachers.  Such an attitude makes for a productive and enviable workplace.

            Two, their sense of self and self-confidence is neither fragile nor undeveloped.  Women teachers are tough.  You will probably never hear a female teacher demand “safe space” or “sanctuary.”  You might hear a big 6-foot boy beg for safe space from his female teacher.  One of the pleasures of life is seeing a petite female teacher dress down a big, tall, smarty pants boy, reducing him to fear.

            Three, their families perch at the front of their minds.  Please get this.  Female teachers with families deal with children or teens all day, go home and serve their families, and then at 9:30 or 10:00 PM sit down to prepare or review for their next day of teaching.  Standing before people to teach requires ongoing thought and preparation.  Am I trying to evoke sympathy for female teachers?  Yes.  They manage two operations, a family and a full teaching load.  So, of course, do non-teaching working women, but right now I’m celebrating teachers.

            Four, like my wife Nancy, most women teachers could run the world.  Organization and execution are two of their greatest strengths.

            Oh, Nancy, I see you denying yourself, pouring your life into the lives of a husband and four children.  Betty Gray, Sue Gandy, Stella Ross, Jeanette McCloud, and Carla Northcutt, you my five female supervisors, I see you lending your inestimable intelligence and energy to Cobb County Schools, making a mark that still is apparent today.

            God, please bless all of our women teachers and please give them a good school year.

 

Roger Hines

9/26/18

Calling on a Poet and a Minister to Afflict the Comforted

 

                               Calling on a Poet and a Minister to Afflict the Comforted

                                  Published in Marietta Daily Journal July 30/31, 2022

            “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide / In the strife of Truth with Falsehood for the good or evil side.”

            I’m glad that the poem “The Present Crisis,” by James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) was in my high school American Literature textbook. For the most part Lowell has been canceled. Like Longfellow and other nineteenth century New England poets, Lowell was just too homespun and too concerned with what he and his contemporaries referred to as eternal truths. Soul-sick modernity has just about killed off the “Fireside Poets.”

            It matters not that in spite of being Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard, an eloquent abolitionist, and being born into wealth and position, Lowell still possessed the common touch. Nor does it matter that all of the “Fireside Poets” (others were John Greenleaf Whittier and Oliver Wendell Holmes) burrowed deep into the depths of human values, family, and “ideas that make nations great,” as one literary critic put it. Contemplation, love of country, and celebration of western civilization aren’t the main things on the minds of us moderns.  But what is the job of the poet or of the minister if it’s not to afflict the comforted? Consider the following quote from a minister.

“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’ If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s anti-religious laws.”

Martin Luther King, like Lowell, was enumerating what he deeply believed was truth. They both viewed truth as being on the scaffold. In Lowell’s case, his poem was a response to the proposed annexation of Texas into the Union. Knowing that Texas would be one more slave state, Lowell argued against annexation, claiming “It is a truth that all men were meant to be free.” King, like the Declaration of Independence, asserted that freedom itself is rooted in objective truth.

But what do we make of these two thinkers and activists, given today’s entrenched relativism? Is truth objective or is it a matter of “my truth” and “your truth”? To many moderns, referring or appealing to truth is an act of intolerance. In higher education, in the media, and alas often in the law, relativism prevails. Paradoxically, relativism denies the existence of truth but insists on its own truth. Evidence of this can be found in President Biden’s efforts to deal with “disinformation.” It is illustrated by the growing practice of college students who either walk out or shout down guest speakers – always conservatives – with whom they disagree.

Other examples are the professional athlete, the corporation employee, and the college professor who refuse to allow their freedom of speech to be abridged and are fired, typically because they disagreed with their superiors and were brave enough to say so. Add the corporate pressure or city/county government pressure to participate in Pride Month. These developments are nothing less than soft totalitarianism.

Speaking of paradox, Lowell, King, and many other true lovers of freedom have experienced their own present crises that called for fighting for justice. But consider: if there is no truth, there’s no injustice. Semantically and ideologically those who claim there is no absolute truth have wrapped themselves in illogic.

In his book, “Live Not by Lies,” Rod Dreyer argues that America’s growing relativism and disdain for absolute truth is now a steady creep. Relativism will not one day dramatically triumph, thus ending the cultural/ideological wars. Rather, the culture war’s end will result in “comfortable servitude run by a technocratic progressive elite and supported by Big Data and a compliant capitalism.” Sad, if Dreyer is right.

Fearing Truth’s loss in the battle, Lowell wrote, “Though the cause of evil prosper / Yet ‘tis Truth alone is strong / Truth forever on the scaffold / Wrong forever on the Throne / Yet that scaffold sways the future / And behind the dim unknown / Standeth God within the shadow /Keeping watch above His own.”

Lowell’s sparkling poetry gained him international fame. “Our Present Crisis” was the springboard of the hymn, “Once to Every Man and Nation.” A voice for faith, freedom, justice and family values, his poetic success was overshadowed by personal tragedy. Three of his four children died in infancy. His beloved wife, Maria, died in 1853. Lowell sought to drown his sorrow by serving as America’s ambassador to Spain and later, Great Britain.

We all know about the fate of Martin Luther King.

 

Roger Hines

July 28, 2022

They’re after our children and always have been

 

                                         They’re after our children and always have been 

                                 Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) July 23/24, 2022

            Let’s say you have a 5 or 6-year-old child or grandchild in a public school. This child is  full of questions, and is of course quite impressionable. As a loving parent or grandparent, you always try to answer the serious and sometimes comical questions the 5 or 6-year-old throws at you (“Why don’t snakes have legs”? “Where does space end”?)

            Given a child’s wondrous desire to learn, it’s wise for parents to know exactly what schools are teaching. Are they teaching things that are contrary to what parents are teaching? Does the curriculum include subjects that are being taught too early or that should not even be addressed? Are schools teaching things parents believe are factually, or morally wrong? Does the curriculum now include outright indoctrination?

            Parents, meet modern education. Kids, meet some ideas and so-called facts which your parents cannot embrace and of which you should keep them fully informed.

            We should have known that sex education, when introduced decades ago, would lead to the present sexual chaos. Facts about human biology and reproduction are one thing. “Transgender studies” are another. Sex and marriage and family living are one thing. A man with a husband and a woman with a wife are another. Kindness to all people is one thing. Being labeled a homophobe for believing homosexuality is rebellion against nature is another.

            So here we are, not just in America, but in the entire western world falling all over ourselves trying to unravel gender. Let me amend that statement. Countless professors, college students, Hollywoodites, media stars, and extreme left liberals – pardon the repetition – are trying to unravel gender. Ordinary folks have always assumed gender was settled. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. Why the fuss? Have leftists never studied genitalia? Were we all not born of a woman? Oh, the nonsense!

            Homosexuality is almost as old as mankind, but the contesting of whether one is a male or female is fairly new, hardly 50 years old in America. Today we are considered bigots by America’s social/political left if we do not accept the notion that one can “identify” as the gender he or she – oops – make that the gender “one” wishes to be. Gender has become optional, therefore changeable.

            Consider the effect that this view of sexuality has on our children, whether they are 5 or 15. No wonder there is so much gender confusion among children and youth. Faith cometh by hearing and so has this confusion. While we should be kind toward anyone who is seriously and sincerely struggling with such confusion, we can be pretty sure that the culture is largely to blame. How often do we hear masculinity being described as “toxic” or femininity as “perceived weakness”? America and Europe both have reduced masculinity and femininity to societal constructs. Pope Benedict XVI who succeeded the beloved Pope John Paul II wrote, “the impulse to liberate ourselves from all authorities, traditions, nature, and God has made us into our own creators. Such an impulse dissolves our understanding of what it is to be human and denigrates our physical bodies. It weakens relationships, especially within the family.”

            From this Baptist to a Catholic Pope, a hearty “Amen!” 

            John Grabowski, gender issues researcher at Catholic University of America, argues that denial of sexual differences, as well as the efforts to change one’s gender, have had ill effects. For post-operative transgender people, Grabowski states, the rate of psychiatric hospitalization is three times higher than for control groups. Suicide attempts are five times higher.

            Even so, “gender ideology” fills the air. Transgendered males are playing on female sports teams, a gross unfairness. The University of Pennsylvania has nominated its now famous trans swimmer Lia Thomas for the NCAA Woman of the Year award. Since sports are now as woke as the military, her win is likely.

            Amidst all the sexual rebellion stand our impressionable children. Sexual rebels are telling children they are the result of mindless chemical and biological processes, processes that can be altered if one doesn’t “identify” with them. Sexual ideologues, many of them educators, are after our children. Following their philosophical father John Dewey, the father of modern public education, (see Dewey’s “Pedagogic Creed,” 1897) they wish to replace parents with “educational conditioners,” or what today are called “groomers.”

            It’s time for parents to make some more noise and time for their nemesis, Attorney General Garland, to be impeached. This could very well happen if Republicans take control of Congress. (See Article II, Section 4 of the nation’s rule book.)

 

Roger Hines

July 21, 2022