This Time It’s Not the Economy

 

                    This Time It’s Not the Economy

             Everybody needs a roof, food and water, and some mode of transportation to get to work. Economic needs are real. But man cannot live by bread alone. Our mental, emotional, and spiritual needs are just as important. Pity the man who thinks his body is the only thing that needs attention.

            Economically, many things are now shaky for U.S. citizens. Inflation, job loss, the U.S. dollar’s impending loss of status in global trade, and debt which Congress recently once again chose to kick down the road are all reasons for concern. But as uncertain as these matters are, there are other issues that are equally important. Feed only the body and the bank account but never the soul or the mind and you will experience one or more of the following conditions: loneliness, joylessness, fear, failure, or suicide. It appears that our economic worries have blinded us to two problems that are already pervasive and visibly destructive. I’m referring to the crime and moral perversion that are sweeping the country, and I predict that as we move closer to 2024, Middle America is going to make these two issues the primary ones.

            There are signs that the silent middle is beginning to make noise. Throughout the country parents who have been politically uninvolved are attending local school board meetings in unprecedented numbers. They are protesting curriculum choices and what amounts to indoctrination of their children and teens. More than a few have addressed their board to argue that schooling is for sound subject matter instruction, not ideological persuasion on subjects that are not the schools’ business in the first place.

            Perversion is a loaded word and is often misunderstood. Perversion is not an opposite but a twist. The Oxford English Dictionary says perversion is “the alteration of something from its original course or state to a distortion of what was first intended.” Perversion of justice is a sad matter but perversion of human sexuality is more far-reaching and more deeply damaging. Here we are moving toward the middle of Pride Month with its outrageous drag queens, its Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and its full support of homosexuality and the transgender epidemic. Of course the nation’s president heartily approves. Does anyone think Mr. Biden and other liberals would approve of the Sisters if they were making fun of Mohammed and Muslims instead of Christ and Catholics?

            Is there any guess as to what is coming next in our headlong rush toward deeper and deeper sexual anarchy? The U.N. can help us answer that. Its recent approval of a report of the International Commission of Jurists, a worldwide “human rights organization,” indicates that the U.N. is hunky-dory with adults having sex with adolescents. “Enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 to make decisions about engaging in consensual sex,” reads the report of the Jurists. Who is surprised? People whom we thought were normal have been saying for some time that even children should be honored and heeded when they claim they need to be “transgendered.”

            Bible believers – and there are millions in America – have no choice but to reject and resist the LGBQT’s perverted view of sexuality and they will continue to be criticized and slandered for it. Christians are being told by the Democrats, by corporate America, Big Tech, Pro Sports, and the military to shape up and “think as I think.”

            As for skyrocketing crime, a truth about this issue must be faced as well. Watch television. View the videos. Overwhelmingly it is young Black men who are looting the stores, beating up elderly citizens on the streets, destroying property, and accosting pedestrians at will. Thank goodness for the voices of Black leaders like Ben Carson, Pastor Tony Evans of Dallas, Texas, and Lt. Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina who fearlessly approach this issue and refuse to pamper criminals because of their color.  These gentlemen need far more support from Black citizens.

            Americans no longer feel safe. They know that crime has moved from the inner city to the suburbs and rural America. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that small town sheriffs and prosecutors are overwhelmed with violent crime cases and that violent crime in rural areas has risen above the U.S. average.

            Crime is a sin against God and man. Sexual perversion is no less. Sexual anarchists have already redefined marriage. But the gay mafia is pressing its luck in messing with our children. I for one believe that Americans are awakening to this and will vote accordingly. If we do not … go read about the fall of the Roman Empire.

 

Roger Hines

June 8, 2024        

We Cannot Escape History

We Cannot Escape History

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) June 3, 2023

Learning from last week’s Marietta Daily Journal that Marietta and Cobb County schools will graduate 8,800+ students this year, I began to reflect.

I’m not sure which group I most enjoyed teaching. Was it high school seniors, college freshmen, college English majors, or prison inmates? All four groups had at least one thing in common: their minds were on the future. Yes, even the minds of the inmates in two of Georgia’s state prisons: the twenty-somethings, the pastors, the successful businessmen and business women, nurses, lawyers, and a few former ne’er-do-wells who had run with bad company.

            Believe it or not, thinking about the future was as characteristic of the high school seniors as it was of any other group. Many people tend to think that high school seniors have their minds either on partying and “getting out of here” or on relaxing a bit their last year since after all, seniors know everything anyhow. No such attitude was held by the seniors I’ve taught in two different states and four different high schools. Most I’ve taught evidenced a sense of seriousness and in some cases worry. What’s next for me? Toward what line of work do my abilities point me? How long will Mom and Dad let me hang around? Knowing as early as the 10^th grade that I wanted to teach, I often felt sorry for seniors who had little or no clue of what they should or could do after high school. Sad uncertainty lay on their faces.

            I left the high school scene after 37 years of public school teaching. I left college teaching after 14 more years. Both experiences were equally rewarding. Over those 51 years chalk boards and dust yielded to white boards and markers, then white boards and markers yielded to computer screens and loss of the human touch, but students –whether youths or adults – did not change. In 2022 they were just as respectful, just as disrespectful, just as hardworking, just as lazy, just as inspiring, just as non-inspiring, just as engaged, just as neglectful, just as confident, and just as needy as they were five decades earlier. Modern times and technology have not changed human nature.

            To teach is to hold one’s grip on the pulse of the times. To teach is to watch history in the making. Perhaps the most exciting thing about teaching is that teachers and what they teach are essentially about the past but are for the future. Today the growing number of absent fathers, the weakening of the family, the beckoning of Hollywood’s moral poison, and the influence of sexual chaos on children and youth are all things with which teachers are very familiar. If only parents knew what teachers know about the negative influences their children face.

            It is the possibility of a brighter or, with some, a less dark future that keeps many young people and adults going these days. The same is true of the imprisoned, whatever their age or background. Better than anyone else, prison inmates know that you cannot escape history, particularly your own. Would that those who have never been in prison could realize this truth.

            But how are schools handling history? Primarily they give us political history (wars, dates, elections, etc.) and little if any intellectual history (ideas, say, of Jefferson, Socrates, Cicero, Benjamin Franklin, and others). Political and cultural revolutions, wars, and economic depressions spring from actions which spring from ideas. No political leader has influenced us more than the ideas of Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Dr. Spock. How many wars, religious controversies, and personal/family struggles can be traced to Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Dr. Spock? The answer is almost all of them. Yet, we all studied what these four opinion-givers caused rather than what they first thought up and wrote. Failing to examine the ideas behind our wars and our poor parenting, we therefore repeat our errors.

            Mississippi novelist William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past isn’t over yet.” Indeed it never will be. What our 8,800+ graduates learned is that America in its beginnings aspired to be a different kind of nation, one that shook off the tyranny of the Old World and fought for freedoms that had never been enjoyed by any nation before. But what they face today is a nation of group identities with group grievances. Teddy Roosevelt warned us that if we lost the vision our framers intended, we would become “a tangle of squabbling nationalities.”

            History has been defined by several scholars as “a rich weave of many threads.” I pray that our graduates will awaken to this fact and do their part to stop the unraveling that is now occurring in America.

Haven’t Gotten the Memo? It’s Coming

Haven’t Gotten the Memo? It’s Coming

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) May 27, 2023

It’s sad when an individual knows little or nothing about his or her parents and family background. If one doesn’t know from where or from whom he or she came, then one doesn’t really know who he or she is.

            At the personal level, ignorance of one’s origins is sorrowful, but at the national level it is downright dangerous. An individual with uncertain parentage can survive by making friends and creating a family of friends, but a nation must have far more connections such as a considerable measure of common culture: common values, traditions, and a body of known facts about its founding. If not, tribalism reigns.

            The diversity/global gospel is driving America to tribalism. Thus, the constant verbal warfare on television “news” and our ubiquitous division. Genuine diversity is one thing, but using the term diversity as a Trojan horse is another.  Indoctrination of every ideology under the sun will eventually mean death to America. Diverse means unlike. The question is how much unlikeness can we take without committing cultural suicide?

            That question has nothing to do with race or one’s national origin. From the start America has always been a nation of nations. The question has to do with ideology. As Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker recently put it, “We in the West are in the grip of an ideology that disowns our genius, denounces our success, disdains merit, elevates victimhood, embraces self-loathing, and enforces it all in a web of authoritarian rules.” We in the West are also yielding to the cry that science is subjective, gender is a spectrum, and that universities must aggressively pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion. Forget intellectual growth.

            Ponder Baker’s statement above. Count the times you have seen members of Congress on television claiming victimhood, denouncing capitalism, putting America down, or clamoring for reparations for a sin none of us have ever committed.

            Our problem is our prevailing forgetfulness and the silence of those who actually haven’t forgotten. Forgotten is 1776 and knowledge of what the American Revolution was all about. We’ve forgotten that Western Civilization, birthed by the ancient Greeks, cradled more than is realized by the Romans and perpetuated by the British, is the foundation upon which America rests. Alas, we’ve forgotten that there’s no civilization without civility.

              Recall Jesse Jackson’s famous appearance at Stanford University in 1992. Leading a crowd of protestors at Stanford, he chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.” Jackson and his clamorers were protesting Stanford’s “Western Culture and Humanities” emphasis, the university’s effort to beef up its Western Civilization curriculum. Actually Jackson was ahead of his time. Using the term long before it was cool, Jackson argued to Stanford administrators that Western Culture was not “diverse” enough. Of course Stanford did what universities and corporations do best. They caved. Forsaking their broad constituency and caving to the few who screamed the loudest, literally, Stanford’s administration changed their “Western Culture” program to “Our Many Cultures.”  That 1992 moment of cowardice was the beginning of what we have today: denial of a cultural identity and surrender to loud progressive voices who  wish to give the nation a make-over with their soft tyranny, one that would bring tears to Jefferson, Madison, and every other framer. Soft tyranny never stays soft for very long. Reread Constitutional Amendments I, II, IV, VI, and X and see if you think they have been infringed or ignored.

            Yes, the memos are being sent out, not just from universities to students, telling them how they must view this, that, and the other, but from corporations as well. But from Fox Corporation? Yep! And CVS, Kohls, Target, and you name it. Don’t forget banks. Even Goldman Sachs, that lion of global investment banking, has joined the growing line of cultural revolutionaries. Goldman’s memo to its employees calls for “rainbow pronouns” such as “ze,” “zir,” and “zemself.” God help us when such foolishness reigns.

            In recent decades Western tradition, particularly its Judeo-Christian underpinnings, has been targeted by memos. Its philosophical cornerstone is under assault. Sexuality, science in general, jurisprudence, higher education, and now the youngest of elementary school children are all affected by the handed down memos: “This is how we will from now on address each other.” “Here are words you must not use.”  “Show respect for LGBQT.” Etc.

            The memo wheel is well greased. If you work for a corporation, an educational institution, or the federal government, your memo is coming. I beg you to resist. And please tell your kids and grandkids who and what they are: they are – for right now – the envy of millions around the world who risk their lives to get to America.

Does Lady Justice Peep?

 

Does Lady Justice Peep?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) May 20, 2023

            Events in the life of a friend I admire have prompted me to give thought to Lady Justice.

             Though less well known than Lady Liberty, Lady Justice is a centuries-old statue that vividly portrays and illustrates the Western values of fair and equal treatment before the law. As the saying goes, “The ground at the feet of Lady Justice is wondrously level.” That’s because Lady Justice is blindfolded and unbiased. She listens. She seeks only the truth.

            Lady Justice also never peeps. She stands solidly undisturbed by opinions, preferences, excuses, and lies. She listens to all of them but objectively hears all sides. Her solemnity does not suggest disinterest. It simply reminds us that she clings to values, truths, and principles that are not temporal but eternal. Truth cannot be changed but it can certainly be twisted or simply ignored. My good friend is definitely in need of Lady Justice.

             I have known David Moerschel for almost 20 years. I first met him when he invited me to join the board of a non-profit that he was starting. David is a highly specialized medical worker and a trained crisis chaplain. He is a committed Christian, a devoted husband, and the faithful father of three small children. David became worried about his family’s safety during the riots of 2020. Learning that the organization Oath Keepers had a good reputation for protecting families and businesses during riots, he joined its chat group three weeks prior to January 6, 2021. Recall that there were bands of black-clad people frightening neighborhoods all over the country in 2020.

Because of his medical background, Oath Keepers asked David to be in Washington, D.C. to assist medics. He agreed to go. At the Capitol David walked up the steps to look for the medic and found the doors closed. A dense crowd soon assembled on the steps as he was looking for the medics. Before long, the Capitol doors were opened, a cheer of “Push, push” went up and the crowd behind him stampeded, pushing its way into the Capitol. David had no choice but to go in the same direction as the crowd behind him lest he be stomped to the ground.

            David went up the Capitol steps to provide medical assistance, not to protest. He never did harm to people or damage to property. He did not enter the Capitol willingly. He was pushed by the stampede. He observed that the police were not escorting protestors out or telling them to leave, or even engaging them in any way.         

 David never shouted, never commiserated or communicated with rioters, was never accosted by any of them, all the while seeing police officers walk casually by. He was in no way involved with or a part of the goons who stampeded the Capitol. He was there to do his work as a crisis chaplain and to assist medics. David climbed the Capitol steps to be the active missionary, the helper, he always had been. His mission, however, was thwarted. Fortunately he was able to get out of the Capitol eleven minutes after entering.

              Five months after January 6, at the end of May, 2021 David, to his surprise, received a call from the FBI. The FBI later interviewed him in person for three and a half hours. He was arrested on July 2, 2021, charged with sedition and other “thought crimes,” and was convicted a long year and a half later in January of 2023. He will be sentenced on June 2, 2023. This kind of story is getting more and more familiar. His plight brings to mind the 1000 plus other Americans whose lives are still being ruined, many of whom never set foot in the Capitol. David has expressed his concern for those individuals and their families as well.

            David Moerschel is one of the most exemplary men I’ve ever known. He has a Master of Divinity degree and has done missionary work around the world. His children are home schooled by his wife. The family has had no income since he was placed under house arrest. Needless to say, their lives, particularly their financial status, have been drastically altered.

            Readers who wish to help David’s family can contact https://www.givesendgo.com/davidlegalfund. David and his wife are particularly asking for prayer. Because I know this man, his wife, his incredible in-laws, and his character, I’m giving and praying hard for him regarding his June 2 sentencing.

 

Mama, Lord I Miss You!

  Mama, Lord I Miss You!

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), May 13, 2023

            The year was 1947. In three months I would be three years old. A black ambulance drove slowly up the long path from the graveled road to our house which sat in the middle of a vast cow pasture. As with tenant houses throughout Mississippi that so often sat in the middle of a cotton field, there was no yard as such and no fence or any type of border to separate the house from  the pasture. Cows could and did often graze right up to the front porch, prompting us to shoo them away lest they fill the surroundings with “cow patties.”

            The ambulance had no driveway to follow from the road to the house. My father had no vehicle and needed no driveway. The ambulance merely wove its way here and there as it traversed the foot path that the Hines kids kept beaten down with their daily treks to the school bus and mailbox. I had seen few motorized vehicles but enough to know that the ambulance wasn’t an ordinary one. This shiny, odd-shaped vehicle was bringing Mama home from the hospital with her seventeenth child, Carlton. He and I were the only ones not born at home.

            My sister Tressie, two years older than I, was in the front “yard” with me. Our much older sister Authula was overseeing our play. The slow arrival of the ambulance that interrupted our play scared me. I was accustomed to mule-drawn wagons, a few pick-ups, and aging T-Models but nothing so flashy as this funny looking … truck?.

             While Tressie and I stood in silent awe, Mama and her newborn were taken inside. We were shortly allowed to see them up close. Authula has reminded me many times over the years that I didn’t like the new baby and that I also showed a measure of disapproval toward Mama for showing up with him. I take Authula’s word for that since I don’t remember that detail. I do remember that during the years I was five, six, and seven Mama’s love for Carlton was beyond measure. A visitor would have thought this child was her first.

            But how could that be? How could the weariness, the toll taken on her body by sixteen other births not limit even the joy brought by yet another child? I say the answer lies in Mama’s strength of character. She was obviously blessed with physical strength but beneath her physical strength lay a foundation of faith, hope, and a love of life that even seventeen childbirths couldn’t diminish.

            My memories of Mama center on her personality as well as her character. She lived each day with joy and laughter while bearing up and doing without. I see her now at 6 o’clock in the afternoon wiping Daddy’s brow with a damp bath cloth because he once again worked in the field too long and appeared to be fainting.

            “Walter, I wish you wouldn’t stay in those fields so long,” she begs while rapidly passing the cloth across his face. Within minutes Daddy is revived and Mama heads to the kitchen. Truth is Mama didn’t like the kitchen. Her favorite place was the garden and the fields with Daddy.

            At age sixteen, now living in a different and slightly better place, I selfishly said something to Mama that I regret to this day. One morning after breakfast which always meant “meat” (we never said bacon for some reason), biscuits, syrup, and fried eggs, I said to her, “Why do we always have the same thing to eat?” Mama was standing inches away from me. As soon as the words left my lips, I watched as her face drooped. Without comment she walked away. Were I not already late getting to the road to catch the school bus I would have fallen all over myself getting to her to hug her neck and apologize.

            My mother was always saying “Lord,” as in “Lord, that’s a beautiful song!” or “Lord, that sun is hot today,” and sometimes, to express a bit of exasperation, just “Lord!” I don’t believe she was taking the Lord’s name in vain and if she had any inkling that she was doing so she would have ended the habit immediately.

            It wasn’t the birthing of seventeen children that brought Mama down at age 65.  She had labored on for seventeen years after her last child was born. Her death was hastened by kidney stones.

            We never celebrated holidays except July 4^th, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. No birthdays, Mothers’s or Father’s Day. That’s why every Mother’s Day I have a great deal of celebrating to make up.           

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama!

 

Can Capitalism Be Improved?

 

Can Capitalism Be Improved?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) May 6, 2023

            What do Jesus, Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and Martin Luther King have in common? More than we might think according to co-authors Aaron Hedges and Paul Knowlton. Hedges and Knowlton’s book, “Better Capitalism: Jesus, Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and MLK JR. on Moving from Plantation to Partnership Economics,” is a thorough and interesting examination of our capitalistic system. 

            Upon first seeing the title of this book, I wondered if it might be a subtle attack on the economic system that has produced more food and fulfilled more dreams than any other economic system known to man. My fears were abated as I found not an attack but a reasonable challenge to certain aspects of our economics. The book is not a collectivist manifesto.

            A quick review of the identity of Adam Smith and Ayn Rand might be in order. Adam Smith is the Scottish philosopher and economist who has been dubbed “the Father of Capitalism,” though Hedges and Knowlton persuasively assert that he is not the father of today’s capitalism. Ayn Rand is the successful Russia-born writer whose family’s life and livelihood were disrupted in 1917 by the Communist Revolution. After coming to America in 1923 Rand wrote prolifically, excoriating Marxism, extolling capitalism, and penning, among other works, her famous novel “Atlas Shrugged.” Unlike most anti-statists and conservatives, Rand was an atheist. Knowing of her atheism and her distaste for altruism, I was surprised that “BC” casts a favorable light on the stern and often hostile Rand. But wait until you read the chapter on Rand   titled “The Mother of Capitalism” before casting judgment on the book for placing her with the other figures in the book’s title. Rand, “BC” states, “explicitly rejected gaining for self at the expense of others.”

            The book is a very readable 278 pages, exquisitely organized. Previewing the chapter titles (“Our Corporate Work Isn’t Working,” “Our Corporate Work, Working?” and others)  tempts one to read ahead to see what each chapter holds. The book’s central thesis is that “plantation economics” needs to be replaced with “partnership economics.” The term, “plantation economics,” could be faulted for being too stern but it is clearly defined and supported (it addresses exploitation) and provides a contrast to and a fuller understanding of “partnership economics.”

            Contrasting plantation to partnership economics, the authors bemoan America’s last four decades shift from a “market economy” to a “market society,” asking “What isn’t for sale?” The authors quote philosopher Michael Sandel who wrote that “a market economy is a tool – a valuable and effective tool … A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor … a place where human relationships are made over in the image of the market. Do we want a market economy or a market society?”

             The quote from Sandel nudged my dislike for huge school name signs that post ads for the several companies that support the school in some way: CENTRAL HIGH … UNIVERSAL PLUMBING SAYS GO TIGERS; COCA COLA LOVES OUR TEACHERS (an example only). This lends support to “BC’s” cry, “Corporations are created by society – society should not be created by corporations.” Politics already pervades all of society. Must economics do the same, and at the school house?

            As for Adam Smith, “BC” heralds him as a man of ethics. Why? Because Smith wrote, “Concern for our own happiness recommends to us … concern for that of other people,” and because Smith measured all governments’ value “in proportion as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live under them.”

            “BC,” then, is a book about economic philosophy. Its arguments are undergirded by moral, ethical principles and questions. Economics will be better, the authors argue, when we read for ourselves what the sources/texts of our ethical values state, i.e., the “theological grounding of the Declaration of Independence,” Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and the Torah, all of which have much to say about economics.

            The authors could well have included in their title the name of John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Mutual Funds. In his famous book, “Enough,” Bogle also pleads for better, ethical  capitalism and for what some have called “a moral structure around money.” Bogel is granted four pages in “BC,” however, and praised as well. Praised he should be. Partnership economics didn’t keep him from having more than $5 trillion under Vanguard’s management.

             The authors invite readers to email their thoughts to info@partnershipeconomics.com.

            Lawyer Paul Knowlton and CEO Aaron Hedges are not professional economists, but their knowledge of economics, and experience in business are broad and deep. I have secured copies of their book for all four of my grown children.

Lunacy, Thy Name is Corporate America

 

Lunacy, Thy Name is Corporate America

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) April 29, 2023

How odd that corporations, whose chief purpose has historically been to gain more customers in order to make more money, have turned their attention to social goals.  They’re telling employees and customers what they should believe about every social issue of the day.  As though Big Brother weren’t increasing his tyranny daily, primarily via his unelected, regulation-loving bureaucrats, Corporate America has become his lackey. Examples abound.

            Transgenderism? Embrace it, you lowly, unenlightened customers who have made us the big corporations we are today. Forget biology. Male and female is an ancient social construct that has outlived its usefulness. If you shop in our stores you may use the bathroom of your choice. If you’re what we formerly called a male and wish to be considered what we formerly called a female, assert yourself and go apply to play on any sports team that tickles your fancy. Throw off the idea that there are innate physical differences between so-called males and females. Don’t let today’s conservative bigots deny you your happiness. Big Sports will support you all the way, as will most members of the National Chamber of Commerce, though not necessarily your local chapter. Don’t worry about those Republicans. We detached from them sometime back. They talk too much about local control and Mom and Pop businesses.       

            Equity? Embrace it also. The goal at our corporations is to treat all people fairly. Yes, we want your business, but for you and all the other middle class folks who have made us great we desire equal social outcomes. Join us as we attempt to make America equitable again. One of our goals is equal numbers of Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and Others among our employees.

            The LGBTQ Lobby? Look, we love all the children of the world. “Red and Yellow, Black and White, they are precious in our sight.” Remember this ditty from long ago? Well, we apply it to sexuality and marriage. We need to drop the time-worn belief that men shouldn’t marry men and women shouldn’t marry women. Accept the fact that all of those traditional views of human sexuality are so yesterday. We’ve accepted the modern view. With glee.

            Free speech? Ok, we believe in free speech, but anything can be carried too far. Consider the deserved plight of Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. This guy was rightly fired for disinformation, misinformation, and whatever else it’s being called. Right after his last show he gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation and made references to prayer, knowing quite well that there are many people in America who don’t believe in prayer. Carlson, the creator of the most watched cable news show ever, is a bigot through and through as are the millions who watched him. We know that many of our customers love Carlson, but we still believe that he “does not appeal to our better nature,” if we may use one of our tired liberal lines.

            Higher Ed?  Yes, we corporates have given our fair share to our universities. How could we not? After all, they have been faithful, just as corporations have to be, in promoting and protecting their “brands.”  Universities are smart. They understand that to recruit students they must spark things up a bit with palatial buildings and resort-facility dorms. Gotta hand it to conservative state legislators, though. They’re right when they claim that universities spend too much money on branding and too little on educating their students. However, just as we like for customers to stay with us, so do universities like for students to stay with them for five, sometimes even six years, to finish a four-year degree. But hey, we corporates need higher ed just as we need the media.

            Oh yeah, the media? Look, we own the media, and in more ways than one. I mean, you’ve heard of Disney’s ABC News Network? That’s a corporation. Fox News? That’s the world wide Fox Corporation. Oh, there are smaller networks but we rule the roost when it comes to news and entertainment, Mr. Carlson notwithstanding.

            Our sincerity? Well, the wokest of us all, CVS, has put it best in its “Guidelines for Supporting a Colleague who is Transitioning.” CVS is out there ahead of all of us. I know, seems weird that a place where you get your medicine would lecture employees about “proper pronouns,” but their customers either don’t know of their wokeness or don’t care.

At any rate, join us in changing America. She’s merely one of many nations in which we do business, but we need her still.

 

College Kids, Country Folks, Venison, and … Revival?

 

College Kids, Country Folks, Venison, and … Revival?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) April 22, 2023

            This past weekend my wife and I returned to Mississippi for a family reunion. Of the seventeen children in my family, ten are still living. Seven of those are sisters, five of whom could not get to the reunion because of either bad health or distance. That means that only five of “us kids” were there but we five were blessed to be in company with boocoodles of nieces and nephews.

            Truth is I was as excited about another matter as I was about seeing my family members. I was determined to go far out into the country on Sunday morning, even further out from where we grew up, to attend the ongoing revival occurring at now-not-so-little Salem Baptist Church near Lake, Mississippi. But first, what’s going on at Salem has a context. A big part of that context is Wilmore, Kentucky and Georgia.

            As the world knows by now, for sixteen days in Wilmore at Asbury University an around- the- clock prayer meeting and songfest occurred. On February 8 around 20 students lingered after a chapel service at Asbury and continued praying and singing. As some of the students trickled back to their dorms and classrooms and told their roommates and classmates about the extended service, more students headed to Hughes Auditorium. There was no highlighted speaker, there had been no announcement of a prayer meeting, and there was actually no designated leadership for the praying and singing. There were no physical healing miracles, no dark room with beaming lights, no sense of a production, and very little noise except  spontaneous praying, singing, and quiet communicating among the Asbury students. Within seven days 50,000 students from around the country had joined them. Asbury professors and university staff members ventured in as well to participate in the worship.

            Departing worshippers would describe the happening as “a strange peace,” and “the presence of God.”

            Among evangelical denominations, the word “revival,” which is not mentioned in the Bible, is often used to refer to renewal, to an outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, and in the case of non-Christians, to their coming to Christ in repentance and faith. There were no efforts by Asbury University to publicize this revival. Tucker Carlson and other news outlets were asked not to come when they contacted Asbury, and Carlson respectfully honored Asbury’s wishes though he covered the story. Groups with American flags were asked to leave their flags in their cars since “the service is about Christ, not America.”

            For the last few years spiritual revivals have been occurring in rural Georgia as well, though different from Asbury. In Millen, Cassville, and in Little Chicago, an area in Columbus, hundreds have publically professed their Christian faith. In Omega, a town with under 2000 people, some 400 men gathered at Bethel Baptist Church in February for a Beast Feast (deer, elk, etc.) After a testimony by outdoor television show host Chuck McAlister, 41 men publicly announced their newfound faith in Christ. In Blackshear, Georgia in January at a venison supper (what is it about meat?) 19 men announced their recent faith and 28 re-dedicated their lives to serving Christ.  

            Not all such happenings at colleges or churches have been Baptist. Lee University in Tennessee where an Asbury-like revival has occurred is associated with the Church of God. In Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and throughout the Midwest nondenominational churches and Wesleyan Methodist churches are also reporting growth via new believers recently converted. The myth of the dying church may be just that.   

            As for Salem Baptist in Mississippi, it also is experiencing a visitation of joy, peace, and revival. The pastor of 29 years, Rev. Larry Duncan, is a family friend. No church could be more rural, yet more than 400 worshippers from a 30-mile radius are packing the pews every Sunday. Baptisms are occurring regularly, meaning that people are publicly professing their faith in Christ.

            No doubt this rural spiritual awakening has its detractors. I can only attest that at Salem the joy is real, the Bible is preached, the pastor/preacher is the humblest of men, and the church is positively impacting a large rural area.

            What my wife, our grown children and I observed and experienced at Salem is what can fill the emptiness of college students and cure the fatherlessness-caused crime that besets our cities and is reaching rural areas as well. In an age of crime, fear, and broken families, transcendence is the need of the hour. So claimed the prophets, the Apostles, Martin Luther, the Wesley brothers, many a Catholic bishop, Billy Graham, and others.  And so claims Pastor Larry Duncan.  

             To God be the glory!

 

How Fares American Culture?

 

 How Fares American Culture?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) April 15, 2023 

            If my house were burning down I would care not one whit about the race, the social status, the educational level, or the personality of neighbors and firemen who were rushing to lend help. My only interest would be saving my family and my house. My only sentiment would be gratitude for those who cared enough to help stop the destruction.

            Like never before America is afire. Literally so only two summers ago as Defund the Police mayors of major cities ignored arsonists and looters as well as their victims, and figuratively so today as competing ideologies continue to collide. If and when 2024 arrives I’ll give my vote to the firefighter who can best extinguish the fire, defeat the social arsonists, and bring us back to normalcy.

            The 2020 electorate was almost evenly divided on who should be president. Since the 2022 midterm election brought neither a red nor a blue wave, it appears that 2024 might be a repeat of 2020. It’s certainly clear that America’s culture war is not over. Religious freedom is an issue, what with churches being bossed around by the government during Covid. Freedom of speech, like never before, has risen to issue level. Unabated crime now reaches to suburbs and rural America. Indoctrination in schools has rightly riled parents in many states.

            Moral issues are not dead. Letters to the editor around the country have centered on pervasive foul language, the licensciousness of the Super Bowl halftime show, and the moral turpitude of candidates. ESPN, Disney-owned, has come under fire for sprinkling its sports coverage with progressive politics as has Disney World for celebrating, loudly, LGBTQ culture. Customers and stockholders are beginning to speak out and criticize the previously untouchable corporate CEOs who take sides with practically anything the LGBTQ lobby proposes.  Americans, typically far more pragmatic than they are ideological, have begun to see the importance and the necessity of speaking out for the sake of their children. How presidential candidates respond to these concerns will definitely affect the 2024 outcome simply because Middle America is becoming more independent and no longer willing to be a dispossessed class of people.

            Since Democrats always stick together and Republicans seldom do, the 2024 presidential election will hinge largely on how well Republicans unite after choosing their nominee. It is no shame that Republicans don’t always stick together. Rather it is a testimony to their independence and rejection of group think. How many Democrats are willing to take a position against abortion? How many Democrats would stand strong against Nancy Pelosi in the way that The Twenty stood against and achieved concessions from Speaker to Be, Kevin McCarthy?

            One seldom hears a Democrat calling fellow Democrats “deranged disruptors,” yet those were Newt Gingrich’s words for The Twenty who kept McCarthy honest. Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw called them “terrorists,” and Fox News host Brian Kilmede dubbed them “idiots.” Interestingly, all three of these Republicans have either apologized or acknowledged they used overblown words. Most conservatives understand the gravity of the 2024 election and the necessity of unity and the right fireman.

            If unity comes it will be because paleo-conservatives and neo-conservatives see the light and are willing to march together to it. Paleo-conservatives are traditionalists like Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan who stubbornly hold to the old verities of individualism, capitalism and localism. Neo-conservatives like Asa Hutchison and Mitt Romney are more willing to concede than to fight for conservative values. Paleos understand that radical forces are determined to reframe and reset America, both her economics and her social and religious values. Neo-cons either don’t realize this or are complicit. Neo-cons are embarrassed and enraged by Jim Jordan, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson, but Middle America isn’t.

            Such is the landscape as things warm up for 2024. As things go today, the state has become the domineering partner in our nation’s culture. The Biden administration desires to tell us what kind of cars we can and cannot drive and how we should view sexuality. Market forces no longer drive the culture. There is certainly no market discipline on schools as teachers’ unions rule the roost in our major cities.

            Political comic P.J. O’Roark stated, “Winners don’t reach across the aisle. They fix borders and lay down terms of surrender.” This sad truth rubs those who believe in bipartisanship, but bipartisanship doesn’t work when one side is trying to set fire to our institutions and turn the culture upside down. What will work is a confident leader/fireman who believes in the American experience, who views America as exceptional, who can inspire Middle America, and who will effectively dispose of America’s social arsonists.

The Die is Cast

 

The Die is Cast

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) April 8, 2023

            When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg turned a misdemeanor into a felony and ignored the statute of limitations, he put a match to a rich knot of pine. The fire hasn’t flamed up yet but it isn’t about to be doused.

            With the indictment of former President Trump, Bragg set in motion the Old World and eastern world system of persecution politics. He unwisely placed his personal animus for Trump before his concern for the country and the law. We can forget about the good old days of Republican President Reagan schmoozing with Democrat Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil or the dynamic duo of Jefferson and Madison. We can now expect Central America and Southeast Asia-style weaponization of law and political chaos. The chaos is building now, mainly because Trump’s case is being intentionally prolonged to interfere with the 2024 election and because today’s GOP is not the GOP of McCain and Romney. The party now has a coterie of fighters.

             Senator Schumer contributed to our persecution politics. Remember? “I want to tell you, Justices Cavanaugh and Gorsuch, you have unleashed a whirlwind and you will pay the price,” all because the two justices were pro-life. But did CNN and MSNBC play up Schumer’s flame throwing?

            Through a great civil strife, two world wars, a great depression, and conflicts abroad that took the lives of sons, husbands, and fathers, America has come. However, our still young nation now stands to lose its status as the free-est nation ever and as the strongest economic and military power in the world. Just as importantly and even more fundamentally, it is poised to lose its famed freedom of speech and its celebrated peaceful transfer of power. Television can lie, but what it’s showing us now about the treatment of almost 50% of the voters in the 2020 presidential election is no lie. It’s happening before our eyes. Donald Trump alone is not at issue. The 2020 50% is at issue as well.

            It’s not difficult to see how and why our present strife began. The chief reason is that liberals became illiberal. Until a decade ago, one could assert that the essence of liberalism was tolerance and the essence of conservatism was restraint. But liberals are no longer tolerant. Restraint is still the essence of conservatism. In fact conservatives are too restrained and always have been. We delight in restraining government and bad influences on our children, but we are not given to protests, emotional outbursts, and shameless misbehavior as liberals are. We are good at restraining our emotions. Because the die has been cast, this is about to change.

            Liberals, who never saw a protest rally, a parade, a microphone, or a camera they did not love, used to be truly liberal which is to say broadminded and accepting of different ideas. They were actually too broadminded, defining all things broadly, stretching definitions to the point of meaninglessness (think gender), and admirably being the strongest defenders of freedom of speech. It’s their unthinkable abandonment of freedom of speech that has created universities that deny platforms to conservative speakers, corporations that are run by “We are the world” internationalists, military leaders who wobble when asked about wokeness in the military, and unambiguous plans to destroy a presidential candidate they don’t like.

            Liberalism’s abandonment of free speech and of free expression generally has brought us to a dangerous point. Liberals no longer see differences of opinion as opportunity for debate. They have successfully convinced social media platforms to silence conservative opinions. Anything liberals disagree with is now dubbed “disinformation,” for instance the conservative belief that there are distinct scientific differences between men and women. Classical liberalism, along with New England pulpits, ended slavery, but classical liberalism is dead. It has been replaced with leftist efforts to silence all opposition.

            All of the above has led to the current indictment of a former president. Who seriously thinks that Alvin Bragg was acting alone and does not have the support of the entire political left? Today’s liberals, namely Democrats and their reliable media friends, intend to destroy Republicans, not just Trump. If Donald Trump is convicted, I suspect conservatives will shed a great deal of their restraint. Joe Lunchbox, Bill Plumber, and Bob Carpenter long ago surpassed the inaction of conservative elites and they have the numbers to make a difference.

            It was primarily ragtag farmers and very small businessmen who whipped the British. It will be their modern counterparts, not intellectuals, who turn us back to liberty and free speech. America is truly at a crossroads. The law has been weaponized. The time for resistance is now.

 

Say What? A New Temperance on the Rise?

 

Say What? A New Temperance on the Rise?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) April 1, 2023

            We all know that alcohol is deadly, that it kills dreams, reputations, families, and careers, as well as over 140,000 Americans every year. We might not know or realize that Americans, unlike the Mediterranean World and elsewhere, are downright mindless when it comes to alcohol. Or so my Italian sister-in-law observed when she first witnessed the drunken Saturday night drag racing on the road in front of our house, heard about bootleggers, and learned that many of the community’s best citizens fled every weekend to the closest county that wasn’t dry.

            “A-med-i-cans no understand. They no be smart about drinking,” Antonia mused one Monday morning after we all learned of the weekend alcohol-related accident down the road that killed a young woman and left a 17-year-old male mangled for life.

            But Americans gotta have their booze. It actually wasn’t until the early 19^th century that citizens began to be concerned about the effects of alcohol consumption. Under the leadership of pastors, community leaders, and especially women, Americans were made aware of alcohol’s devastation. Yes, alcohol was responsible for much of the crime back then too, as well as for ruined individual lives and ravaged families. So much so that drinkers were urged to “temper” their drinking. Thus began “temperance work” or “the Temperance Movement.”

            Christianity Today, a leading evangelical magazine founded by Billy Graham, reports that throughout the 19^th century, in spite of high class social drinking and “the raucous saloon culture of the American west,” temperance work and prohibition appealed to “a broad swath of society.” Its reporting must have been accurate, given the fact that in 1919 Congress passed the 18^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors.

            The Roaring 20’s ignored the 18^th Amendment and reduced that broad swath for sure, assisted by the rising tide of Hollywood culture and the German families who brought Pabst and Anheuser to our shores. Despite the efforts of Protestant Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, and the Temperance Movement in general, the 18^th Amendment was repealed by the 21^st in 1933. Since then, in regard to liquor, it has been Katie bar the door. Today teenagers still consider their first alcoholic drink the rite of initiation into adulthood. This obviously doesn’t bother brewery owners. It must excite them since they’re building breweries at every crossroads in the land. It doesn’t bother too many sipping community and political leaders either, even though they know quite well that drinking leads to destructive scenes like the one mentioned above by which my Italian sister-in-law was shocked.

            But hold on to your seats. Timothy Carney, senior columnist for the Washington Examiner, argues that a new temperance is afoot. He asserts that the devil’s brew is next in line for cancellation. What he further states will warm the hearts of all teetotalers and of adults who have lost a teen to Friday night drinking. Twitter, Carney says, is filled with promises never to drink again. Vox, the journal frequented by leftist millennials, has run articles on the value of prohibition and the evils of alcohol. Teetotaling, chortles Carney, is once again in vogue.

            I rejoiced to learn of Carney’s prophetic words, and although I have read that nonalcoholic beers are increasing and that booze-free pubs are cropping up, even in D.C., I still figured Carney was too optimistic. Then who should appear on Tucker Carlson Tonight but the affable Joe Germanotta, the father of Lady Gaga Herself. Proudly and happily proclaiming his personal victory over alcohol, “Mr. G.” explained how he is successfully decreasing the amount of alcohol in drinks at his restaurant and how he no longer likes the taste of it. “I feel tremendous and no longer drink rivers of Scotch,” Germanotta declared. A Catholic, he could have passed for a committed Baptist.

            Even so, today we are still the United States of Corn, Barley, Grapes, Spring Break, “Happy Hour,” Feel Good, and Good Taste. But the taste is often that of dependency, embarrassment, and ruin. State Representatives, School Superintendents, Judges, and ordinary folks have been embarrassed because of this fact. Tempering actually doesn’t always work. The temper-er is still tied securely to his or her social lubricant and to the damnable and damning curse of what we call status symbol.

            I choose to take some hope from Carney’s reporting and Mr. G.’s conversion. But given our history, that hope is limited because even though alcohol is more than twice as deadly as guns, Americans gotta have their booze. God help us.

Cultural Cleansing Resumes

 

Cultural Cleansing Resumes

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) March 25, 2023

            In my home atop a bookshelf stand two small flags beside each other. One is Old Glory; the other is the Confederate Cross. I treasure both.

            My grandfather and great-grandfather lived under the Confederate flag. My father was born only 29 years after the so-called Civil War ended. A civil war it truly wasn’t. Most history books and dictionaries define a civil war as one in which two sides within a nation are vying for control of the government. Such was not the case in America from 1861-1865. As Jefferson Davis himself put it, “We do not wish to take control of America’s government or its Capital city. We only desire to be left alone. What a free man joins he has the right to un-join.”

            It’s hard to argue with Davis’ last point. Why, though, after a century and a half, would a columnist bring up a war that settled decisively not whether or not the South had a right to secede, but whether or not the South was able to continue its efforts to secede. The South was not and lost the war.  Call it what you will, this war, like all other major wars of the world, still haunts us. Why? Because the past is not over yet and never will be. Shakespeare said it best, “What’s past is prologue.”

            An effort in the Georgia House of Representatives to continue the war and to cleanse Georgians of their past has been named House Bill 794. If made law 794 would remove Stone Mt. Park’s official designation as a Confederate memorial.

            The expression “to memorialize” means to speak, write, or build something that will help people remember something, but Democrat state representatives Mary Margaret Oliver,  Omari Crawford, and Billy Mitchell, want us to forget something. Defending the bill, Oliver stated that 794 is needed “to cease our honoring the Confederacy and adhering to a lost cause.”  Crawford claims that “honoring any Confederate history hinders diversity and is inconsistent with Dekalb County’s present-day values.” Mitchell echoed, “We have been waiting too long for action by the Stone Mt. Memorial Authority to act on needed change to the false history of the park and the Confederate carving.”

            False history? Were the three men carved in stone – reluctant secessionist Jefferson Davis, the much respected Robert E. Lee, and Christian statesman Stonewall Jackson – not truly three of the most prominent Confederate figures? Thirteen other Democrat House members have co-sponsored 794, meaning that at least 16 state representatives believe there are certain things about the past that Georgians should not remember.

            Cleansers / erasers of our culture have been toppling statues they don’t like for decades. Paused by Covid, they are now back at it. They are sanctimonious. If you like what they don’t like, you are evil. If you support anything about the Confederacy, you’re a racist. My question is how do the erasers like those named above know my heart or the heart of any Georgians? How could a white man who honors Confederate memorials as I do volunteer to teach at an all black school in order to help get integration underway?

            There also stands in my home a picture which I treasure much more than I treasure the Confederate flag. It is the picture of my unforgettable colleagues at George Washington Carver Junior High School with whom I taught in 1967-68 in Meridian, Mississippi. Representative Oliver and company must think I’m bipolar. If I am, then so were Robert E. Lee and William Faulkner. Lee loved the Union, but when asked by Lincoln to command the Union forces he declined, stating that he could not fight against the people of Virginia. Faulkner, honored around the world for his writing, answered “Yes, of course” when asked if he would have fought for Mississippi during the Civil War. Typically one likes to defend his own people and region, but that doesn’t mean one approves of everything said or done in his own region.

            Self-appointed cleansers should cease judging people by the color of their skin. Rev. Al Sharpton, a sympathizer of the cleansers, should correct his unforgiving spirit, as so many blacks have, and act more like Martin Luther King. I wish that haters of memorials believed in freedom of expression.

            I also wish that cleansers could have known my Carver Junior High principal who once said to me, “If we should learn anything from history, it’s that ‘what the world needs now is love, sweet love’.” Principal Sykes and I both loved the song that Dionne Warwick would later record. Principal Sykes would not have favored the erasing of history.  

The Rugged Life and the Managerial Elites

The Rugged Life and the Managerial Elites

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) March18, 2023

The house my wife grew up in was built in the late1800s. It stands in middle Tennessee in rural Rutherford County, 30 miles southeast of Nashville. The first time I courted Nancy at her parents’ home I was struck by its beautiful simplicity, its Gone With the Wind-style staircase, and the two red brick chimneys at each end of the structure.

            Rolling into the driveway I instantly began to compare the house to the three different tenant houses where I grew up. I began to wonder if Nancy had leveled with me when she said her family was country folks like mine. They were. I eventually learned that like my father, Nancy’s father kept their “place” clean and presentable. Rakes, hoes, and tools were in a certain location. Firewood was stacked neatly. The front porch was always swept clean. Inside, and most like my father, newspapers and Bibles would be placed here and mail would be placed there.

            But time changes almost everything. Today the Milligan place appears not so well kept. Its front yard, still beautiful and welcoming, is deceiving. The barn is caving in, and the back yard is filled with junk. The country road that the house faces takes a 90-degree turn north along the side of the house, making junk car parts, appliances, and old furniture fully visible.

            And what is the judgmental attitude that I and so many others are so wrongly prone to take when we see junk? I say we presume that junk owners have no aesthetic sense and are probably uneducated. Deplorable conditions, we assume, are caused by deplorable people.

            Not so with the current occupants of Nancy’s home place, for in the very back of the junky back yard stands a large enclosed shed filled with canned food, clothes, paper towels, diapers, and old refinished furniture. It’s all organized and is clearly no small operation. Its name is “Helping Hands.” The occupants, a retired mail carrier and his wife, built and stocked the shed in order to lend assistance to nearby needy families. The back yard is actually the prepping place for some of the items in the shed. The junk yard owners are neither junky nor needy. Nor are they deplorable.

            Today around the world there is a growing schism between working people of the middle and lower class and the professionally well established managerial elites. How did this schism ever develop in America, given the fact that our nation owes its existence to the most rugged and risk-taking people the world has ever known?  On the surface our schism appears to be one of urban and rural, but it is actually one of values and beliefs versus the outlook that allows no limit to the words nation and place. Nations are passé. The world is our oyster.

            Americans convinced their youth that they should go to college and they did. Consequently the average age of generally well-paid plumbers is 60. Economically and militarily America is still chairman of the board – for how long is a different matter – but as for “e pluribus unum” (out of many, one), we are divided. “Diversity,” which sounds so appealing, has led to the opposite of what its contenders wished, placing one’s skin color and class above one’s willingness to work and achieve. For all practical purposes Martin Luther King’s words have been abandoned.

            We’ve all heard of the “revolt of the masses” and have usually championed their aims. Today we’re experiencing the “revolt of the  elites,” meaning those whose outlook is global, whose houses and boats await them around the world, and who for the sake of profit, disdain borders as well as those who believe in borders. Formerly believers in free speech, they now label as disinformation the perspective of middle class working stiffs who disagree with them.

            As for morals there is today no shame. Only prudes care what their children see on the Super Bowl halftime show or at the elementary school’s drag queen show. As for the three philosophical pillars of modern education – Marx, Darwin, and Freud – two were atheists and one claimed theism one day and atheism the next.

            Our modern temper holds contempt for place and native homes. The ever-quotable Churchill remarked, “We shape our buildings and our buildings shape us.” Country singer Miranda Lambert sings, “The House that Built Me.”  I’d like to invite four or five of our nation’s chief globalists and political elites to take a ride with me and visit those rugged, self-dependent, selfless, junky middle class angels who occupy Nancy’s childhood home. It might convince them that such local angels, not globalists/internationalists/elitists, are the salt of the earth.