Our Present Ongoing Strife

 

Our Present Ongoing Strife

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Feb. 4, 2023

            It is sad but absolutely true, and the truth must be faced. From 1607 and the founding of the first colony in America, on to 1776 and the breakaway of the 13 colonies from Britain, and then to 1945 when America began to establish herself as a military and economic world power,  Americans were a forward-looking people .

 If any one word could characterize the American spirit as it proceeded on through the 19^th and mid-20^th century, that word would be optimism. Slavery was abolished, segregation ended, capitalism thrived, and more and more citizens were able to avail themselves of the so-called American Dream. I’m defining that dream as the deep desire to overcome empty pantries and empty hearts, that is, to have plenty of food, meaningful work, and a measure of achievement and happiness. I should probably add a small house by the side of the road or a big house on a hill, or a life of service to others, depending on the nature and scope of one’s dream.

            The achievement of that dream required two things: a determined dream seeker and a country and political system that allowed and encouraged determined seekers. What if Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, and many others had not sought their dreams? What if the country they lived in had not allowed them individual liberty and initiative? But their country did and it became a beacon to millions around the world.

            But here is the sad part. That beacon has been dimmed, not so much as to stop foreigners from coming here, but enough for American citizens to discern that they are living in a time of diminishing expectations. In other words the American Dream isn’t what it used to be. Historically that dream has required self-reliance, faith in our system of government, ruggedness, and hard work. But all of these requirements have been undermined by government programs, government giveaways, and government regulations. For far too many, the spirit of the little house on the prairie has been replaced by the extended hand reaching out to receive Big Brother’s largesse. Currently one of our two major political parties is totally committed to the continued reach and rule of Big Brother; the other major party, for all its lapses, still is better at preserving individual liberty and free enterprise.

            There is a strife that undergirds all things political in the nation today. That strife is between populism and elitism. Major newspaper editorialists have claimed that Donald Trump bestirred the populist revolt. The opposite is true. The populist movement – the Tea Party, for one example – forged a path into which a figure like Trump could step and lead. Oddly enough it turned out that a billionaire from liberal New York would become the leader of “the folks,” those who were as blue-collared as they were red-blooded, who preferred localism over globalism, and who were all the more riled up when Hillary Clinton dubbed them “a basket of deplorables.”

            These deplorables, coming primarily from the nation’s interior states – certainly not from the “Super Zips” where media celebrities, corporate CEO’s, U.S. Senators, and national anthem protesting athletes live – are still present and powerful. Doubtlessly, some of them will desert Trump for another choice in 2024, but their cause is bigger than Trump or any other candidate. Their cause is deliverance from political and corporate leaders who have little if any understanding of the lives of ordinary Americans, that is, deliverance from the elites.

            But there is another revolt as well that comprises the other side of the strife. The elites of the “Super Zips” and their comrades have revolted against traditional institutions and principles that made America a beacon in the first place. Elites do not accept limits or emotional ties to nations. You know, borders. To transnational corporatists, America is simply one place where they live and do business. To liberal professors, notions of “western culture” are or should be passé. To members of the American Federation of Teachers, schools are for teaching “equity” and transgenderism. To feminists, housework and motherhood are still to be disparaged.  All of this, too, is revolt, consequently our strife.

            Urbanization has not served us well, having moved us from self-reliance to reliance on the elitist village. Nor have out-of-wedlock births or the demise of families and communities. And yes, we need fathers since 24 % of whites and 70% of blacks are born to single mothers.

            These are not dead issues. Failure to address them in 2024 will keep us in strife and keep us disillusioned. We best fight the good fight.

 

Roger Hines

February 2, 2023     

Bow the Knee or Else …

 

Bow the Knee or Else …

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Jan. 28, 2023

            Once upon a time when the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was honored, citizens understood what their rights were regarding the free exercise of religion, speech, the press, and peaceful assembly. That’s because all four of these freedoms are clearly stated in the First Amendment. We should be glad that Patrick Henry “smelt a rat” and initially refused to vote for the Constitution. Without Henry’s boldness, the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments) might never have been added.

            With apologies to poet William Wordsworth, “Patrick Henry, thou shouldst be living at this hour. America hath need of thee.”  Patrick Henry was considered a force of nature. He was the most famous orator of all the Founders. At the Constitutional Convention Henry was unshakeable in his insistence on limited government. According to historian Joseph J. Ellis, Henry was such a burr in the saddle of Jefferson and Madison that Jefferson once said to Madison, “There seems to be no way to deal with Henry except to ardently pray for his imminent death.”

            Present conditions in America call for boldness not unlike that of Patrick Henry. Henry was not one of the big guns who established our nation. Washington, Madison, Hamilton, and Jefferson overshadowed him. As then so now do we need freedom warriors who will stand against the tide, oppose establishment leaders, and fight for the people. 

            There are two current examples of citizens standing up for what they believe and being a bit stubborn about it as was Patrick Henry. One example is the 20 U.S. House members who forced a 15-ballot vote for the new Speaker of the House. What benefit or of what purpose is power if one does not use it to pursue what he or she believes is good? The 20 representatives had the power and they used it. Media talking heads one kept referring to the 15-ballot round as “chaos and confusion.” It was the exact opposite. It was debate, nose-counting, deal-making, and use of persuasive skills, all of which are what goes on in a truly deliberative body. For decades Congress and many state legislatures, Georgia’s included, have gone from being a deliberative body to a fiefdom controlled by a few, namely the U.S. House Speaker and his or her allies or the state Speaker and his or her allies. For the decade I was in the Georgia House of Representatives, genuine debate was rare. Bipartisanship and argued-out legislation therefore suffered.

            Tony Perkins, a former member of Congress and currently the President of the Family Research Council, wrote, “Transferrence of power was never meant to be determined by the powerful few, but by a dynamic process where everyone has a voice.”  I say hoo-rah for the Magnificent 20. Like Patrick Henry they stood their ground and argued their case. How this affects Republican Party unity is not the question. How Congress and other legislative bodies should function is the question, and for decades they have functioned as the fiefdom of a few.

            Another example of standing for conviction is that of Ivan Provorov, soccer player for the Philadelphia Flyers. Provorov was recently sternly criticized for refusing to wear a “Pride Night” jersey bearing the rainbow flag. A Russian Orthodox Christian, Provorov stated that he refused in order to “stay true to myself and my religion.” He further remarked, “I respect everyone and I respect everybody’s choices,” but these words had no effect on the LGBQT community except to increase their vile intolerance for Christians like Provorov whose Bible forbids homosexuality.

            So like the NFL, the corporate world, the Democrat Party, the liberal media, the universities, Hollywood, Big Tech, the American Federation of Teachers, and Lord knows how many more entities, the National Hockey League has succumbed to intolerance. So much for pluralism and independent thought. Just bow the knee to all the crazy stuff. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “Mr. Provorov knows a basic truth. He was compelled to support the tenets of a faith other than his own. And here in America we believe that is wrong.”

            If the nation is ever loosened from the grip of sexual chaos, crime, religious intolerance, political cowardice and anti-Americanism in general, it will be because of boldness such as shown by the Magnificent 20 and Mr. Provorov. For too long normal, hardworking, middle class Americans have been bested by leftist, liberal philosophy and politics. I for one, though, believe that an awakening is happening and that help is on the way. Thanks, Mr. Provorov and you modern age Patrick Henrys.

Roger Hines

January 26, 2023

Teen Culture Then and Now

 

Teen Culture Then and Now

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Jan. 21, 2023

            Walking into the classroom for my first day of teaching was an experience that will live in infamy. In the first period class of ninth graders I made the error of thinking that I already knew how to teach. Had I not planned for this day since I was 15? Had I not watched closely all of my high school and college teachers in order to learn how to teach?         

Yes and yes. However, my confidence was erroneously based on my love for my subject, the English language. Grammar is all about the structure of a language. American literature and British literature are about the ideas and ideals that are foundational to modern western history. Who could not be excited about that? Well, at least half or more of my 120 ninth graders certainly were not.

            My error lay in my ignorance of the realities of adolescence, the rise of the American teenager, and the resulting effect these realities had on student attitudes and behavior. Little did I realize that during the four years I was in college the times they were achanging.

            It was 1966. The Vietnam War was raging. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. The Sexual Revolution was afoot. At Northwest Jr. High School in Meridian, Mississippi I was trying in my first class to “identify with students” (an insipid phrase that was just entering the land of educationese). I revealed that I had just turned 22 and planned to be married the following summer. “Won’t you need a better job?” asked one lad. His question sent me into a tailspin that was intensified when a lass inquired, “Why didn’t you become a coach? Most men teachers don’t teach English.”  I was already losing control. What if the principal were to stop by?

            By year’s end I came to realize that teen culture had arrived and that Americans were besotted with youth. Sociologists were calling it the Teen Mystique. Americans were actually becoming fearful of their teenagers. (“They’re so smart these days.”) I attributed the new teen machine to Elvis Presley, Little Richard, the Beatles, and other rock ‘n roll innovators as well as to the increasingly sex-drenched general culture for unwittingly creating youth culture. Unwittingly because rock ‘n roll singers didn’t set out to change the culture. They simply did their thing, but their thing changed the culture. The sensitive Elvis, reportedly responding to criticism, once said to his mother, “Mama, do you think I’m obscene?”  It’s doubtful that 20 years later members of hard metal bands would ask their mothers that question.

            Since 1960 nothing has been more characteristic of teens than their addiction to music.  The cell phone, of course, is a new addiction whether for music or constant communication with friends. Of course money has played a role. Teenagers became a market. And what big name psychologist would miss the chance to write books on the new field of study called “adolescent psychology”?

            Around 300 BC Plato taught that in order to take the intellectual and spiritual temperature of a society, one must “mark the music.” If we mark the music today we find that even schools, during lunch period and at ballgames, are giving students what they already have. On the ashes of classical and folk music we have laid the premature ecstasy of rollicking rock. Not so at little Forest (MS) High School back in the early ‘60s. Elvis and Little Richard, whom I loved, were hot but we didn’t need schools to supply us with their music. At Friday assemblies and even at halftime at basketball games we were fed a different stimulant: music that fed our aesthetic sense, not our glands.

            Four of my five classes that first year were ninth graders. The fifth class, an incredibly inspiring group of 12-year-old seventh graders, saved me. One of them, Lloyd Gray, former editor of the Tupelo Journal, visited with former MDJ editor Joe Kirby and me about 10 years ago. The three of us drove to Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, GA to hear Steve Forbert, another student in that 1966 class of seventh graders, sing and play his guitar and harmonica. The 68-year-old Forbert, who in his prime was compared to Bob Dylan, will also be performing on January 25th at The Hunt House across from Kennesaw Mountain on White Circle. As Steve Forbert plays and sings, not classical music but folk rock, he will remind me of his class of cute, well-behaved  12-year-old angels who kept me from giving up.

            If cultural history is to the nation what memory is to the individual, we best pay attention to it, especially if we have kids and grandkids.

 

Roger Hines

January 19, 2023

             

Prayer is Back! Or is It?

 

Prayer is Back!  Or is It?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Jan. 14, 2023

            Many were surprised that prayer was so freely offered up recently at an NFL ballgame. The onsite praying for injured Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills, as it turns out, was well received by the general public. The nation was ready for this scene.

             The much praying that went on and continues to go on for Hamlin has been sincere and abundant. For those who don’t follow professional football, the Monday, January 2^nd game between the Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals came to an abrupt halt just after Hamlin tackled Cincinnati’s wide receiver Tee Higgins in the first quarter of the game. After the tackle, Hamlin stood but then went instantly into cardiac arrest and fell to the ground. The game was postponed after the 24-year-old Hamlin was taken away in an ambulance.

            As Hamlin was being attended to and then driven away, many Bills team members began to fall to their knees singly, visibly overcome by grief. Eventually a circle of praying professional athletes developed, many of them weeping, all of them attempting to give emotional support to each other. Spotted here and there were players from the Bengals’ team kneeling as well. America witnessed big, strong athletes praying and baring emotions. Real men, I call them.

            While some news outlets ignored the praying, emphasizing instead the question of what would be done about the game, ESPN did not ignore it. In fact the day after the game, ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky, an outspoken Christian and an NFL veteran, uttered these words on NFL Live: “I’m gonna do this out loud. I’m gonna close my eyes. I’m gonna pray out loud. It’s on my heart.” In his prayer, Orlovsky said the following: “God, we come to you in these moments. We believe that coming to you has impact. We believe you, God.  We’re sad and angry and we have questions and we know that some things are unanswerable, but we want to come to you and lift up Damar’s name. We pray for strength for Damar, healing for Damar, and comfort for Damar and peace for Damar’s family. If we didn’t believe in prayer we wouldn’t ask. We believe in prayer. I lift up Damar’s name in your name. Amen.”

            Orlovsky’s two ESPN analyst colleagues commended him for his sincere prayer, one of them adding, “Football is so secondary now. We’re all praying for Damar.”

            During this same week of Orlovsky’s praying, the U.S. House of Representatives began every day of its proceedings with prayer led by the House Chaplain. Because a Speaker was being chosen, viewership of these proceedings on C-SPAN was at a new high. Americans got a chance to see that our nation’s lawmakers have not ceased having prayer. Indeed the official brochure that details the House Chaplain’s duties reads, “To bring a dimension of faith to human events, giving praise and thanks to God for what God is doing in the world, in the nation, and in and through leaders and ordinary citizens.”

            Oops! Who knew that so “religious” a statement appeared in a document that details the duties of the House Chaplain? Today’s vastly over-reaching Judiciary will have no part of such transcendent talk or emphasis in our schools – where it’s needed most – but thank God our lawmakers can still have prayer. And thank God for a bold believer like Dan Orlovsky.  Truth is the House and Senate have always had prayer, but with the growing bias against all things religious, many citizens probably assumed that even Congressional chaplains had been silenced.

            Alas, even Hollywood at least heard mention of prayer this week. At the ever declining Golden Globe Awards show, veteran actress Angela Bassett accepted her Best Actress in a Supporting Role award and commented that her mother had always taught her that good things come to those who pray. 

            Indeed they do. FDR believed so. On radio on the occasion of the June 6^th, 1944 Normandy invasion he addressed “Almighty God.” Referring to troops who would not return but would fall in battle he prayed, “Embrace them, Father.” Further on, “Oh Lord, give us faith in Thee and in each other.” The President closed his prayer by saying “we need not a day of prayer but a continuum of prayer.”

            America needs a prayer meeting. She also needs, as FDR put it, “a continuum of prayer.” Self-sufficiency and denial of all things transcendent are killing us. Anxiety is getting a hold on far too many. Crime is rising. Devilish sensuality is blatantly aimed at our children.  I’m with Orlovsky and FDR.  God is real and we are in bad need of His love and care.

            P.S.  From the Boston Globe: “Doctors are ecstatic about Damar’s recovery.”

 

Roger Hines

January12, 2023

A Republic No More?

 

 A Republic No More?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Jan. 7, 2023

            At least three or four friends have asked why this column space gives more attention to national issues than to local and state issues. Theirs is a good question. The assumption behind it, however, is a bit faulty. If I’m judging their question correctly, it assumes that local issues affect our lives as deeply as do the national issues.

            That assumption would be tenable if our nation were still a true federal system and the Tenth Amendment were still heeded, but neither is the case. Every year America drifts – yea, gallops – further away from republicanism (small “r”), and closer to statism or nationalism, that is, to a strong, overarching centralist system of government. Our founders and the ragtag army of farmers and laborers they inspired to fight for freedom from the world’s mightiest empire must be stirring in their graves.

Ironically, those who oppose our lurch from federalism to nationalism are often called “nationalists” even though they are trying to uphold the constitutional federal system of “a more perfect union” of individual states. Show your patriotism these days, get excited on July 4, wave Old Glory, defend the military, or contend for borders and you’re a “nationalist,” probably even a Nazi or a Fascist. But no, if words and terms mean anything, the nation’s Leftists are the “nationalists.” In other words, they are the ones who decry localism/republicanism and push socialistic measures that destroy it.

To what measures do I refer? Every measure that President Biden has put forth or made law since the day of his inauguration. Consider the $1.7 trillion Omnibus Bill passed recently by Congress and signed by Mr. Biden. How many members of Congress do you suspect read the 4,155-page bill during the 4-day period between its introduction and the vote? We call it a bill, but it’s actually thousands of bills packaged together, consequently the tag “Omnibus.” The package is filled with hundreds of references and cross-references to previous laws that would drive even an English professor crazy.

 Surprisingly, CNN’s Jonathan Wolf said, “Nobody really knows what’s in it.” Among provisions that have nothing to do with funding the government, we find one that gives $11 million to “LGBQT Projects” at San Diego Community College. Some of the pork in the bill evokes laughter: a provision for a chauffeur for the IRS Commissioner.  As the New York Post put it, “What’s another $1.7 trillion when you’ve taken the national debt to $31.4 trillion?”

Don’t think that Republicans didn’t contribute to this yearly year-end shenanigan. Retiring Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby got his Democrat buddies to inject $656 million including $35 million for a small Alabama college and $100 million for a bridge. Retiring ultra-conservative Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma also leaves D.C. this week with half a billion that includes $40 million for a Tulsa airport. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas isn’t retiring but he voted for the bill. Tom Cotton?? 

Local taxes, public schools, roads, law enforcement, infrastructure and such are very important, even necessary for citizens to prosper and for local communities to be functional. But the actions of Congress are more far-reaching and have more potential for curtailing liberty. Judiciary power that imbalances the other two branches of government, attempts to pack the Supreme Court, efforts to do away with the Electoral College, and crazy laws that re-define male and female are all far weightier than the practical services provided by local governments. Because of proximity, city, county, and state governments are more easily held accountable than are our U.S. Representatives and Senators. Most citizens are simply too busy to know what’s happening to them via the actions of Congress. This must change if centralism is to be abated and republicanism is to be restored, else Professor Victor Davis Hanson’s concept of “the dying citizen” will continue to move closer and closer to reality.

The excesses of the Department of Justice and the FBI (seizing and arresting prominent citizens in the dead of night; hiring 87,000 more FBI agents), the proposal of student loan debt forgiveness (a vote-getter if there ever was one), and talk of reparations (how much will Oprah get?), are all reasons to ponder how we ever strayed from limited government to governmental largess and tyranny.

The whole business indicates how fast we are moving from Topeka to D.C., from Main Street to Wall Street, and from good ole frugality to outrageous, flagrant spending. And it’s all because we now view our national government as our sugar daddy. That’s not a republic form of government. It’s a damnable welfare state, the likes of which Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus says is the cause of our “increasingly lazy and fat labor force.” 

 

Roger Hines

January 5, 2023

Ah, Christmas!

 

   Ah, Christmas!

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

            Christmas is a bundle of contradictions. Or is it? Peace on earth?  Where? Yet all around us around the world there are many people in dire circumstances who truly do experience peace and anxiety-free lives. They are realists who are well aware of the condition of the world, yet they not only cope but thrive and are somehow able to keep the misfortunes of life from getting them down.  Many consider their misfortunes an opportunity to help bring to others the comfort and joy they themselves experience.

Superficially, Christmas is all about lights and celebration.  Store owners and home dwellers can do magical things with decorations.  The attention that all of the superficiality garners is evidence that we all seek beauty, joy, and light.   

Who but a Grinch could not find satisfaction in the happy faces of children?  Who could seriously argue that the overall effect of Christmas is not positive?  Buried beneath the commercialism, hope seems always to stir – hope that things will get better, that soured relationships will be restored, that more goodwill will prevail in the year ahead, and that darkness of all stripes will be dispelled.

 Christmas is big stuff.  In fact it’s too much stuff.  I’m persuaded that for those who are sad at Christmas, their sadness is not caused by seeing and envying others who are joyful, but by seeing and bemoaning the obvious void that all the stuff creates.  Trinkets, new clothes, money, and gift cards are all nice, but they typically have a short life span after which many are back in their slump.

That slump can be more easily dealt with if one considers how the Christmas story has affected three continents.  Ironically, the land where Christmas started is not primarily a Christian region.  Europe and the Americas are the lands that have cradled the Christian gospel and given it to the world, not just the babe in a manger account, but the schools, hospitals, and orphanages that have followed it.  Christmas when rightly understood and received has always changed hearts, sprouted legs, and sought out the needs of others.

Yes, Christmas is about a birth and how that birth affected the world.  One of our most popular Christmas carols contains the words, “Long lay the world in sin and error pining / ‘Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.”

Sin we understand.  It’s wrong to murder, to lie, to steal.  Error we sometimes miss.  It was error for ancient men of nobility to sincerely believe that certain people had no worth except to serve the nobility.  Perhaps the human soul began to feel its worth because of the humble origins of the One who claimed He was God come down.   It was error (and sin) for modern man to perpetuate the ancient world’s injustice and political tyranny, error to think that God indwelt idols, error to think that our five senses are the highest reality or that matter and energy are the only realities.

Many psychiatrists have spoken of the loneliness experienced by so many at Christmas.  The good news is that, if the Christmas story is true, nobody is alone.  Christmas – that is, Christmas beneath and beyond the superficialities – says that God put on an earth suit and dwelt among us.  The title Emmanuel means “God with us.”  We had better hope that the Christmas account is true.  The human race is in dire need of it.  We’re not controlling our selfishness too well.  We chase the wind.  We even let prosperity be our undoing.  We need an internal governor of sorts that sublimates our self-centeredness and shows us how to look out for our fellow man.  The Christmas message purports to do just that and has done it for millions. In short it saves us from our sins, our error, and ourselves, but only if we sincerely embrace it.

Reviling the supernatural, an MDJ letter writer back in 2019 claimed that Thanksgiving was intended as a day to give thanks not to “some god,” but to “mothers and fathers, cooks and farmers, and kind relatives.” That’s not exactly what Lincoln and FDR had in mind.  Neither was such broad application what President Grant had in mind when in1870 he instituted Christmas Day as a holiday.  Grant rightly believed Christmas Day would help re-unite our torn nation.  It did help.

Those who will have an empty pantry or an empty chair at their table this year are the ones to whom Christmas should drive our minds and legs.  And if granted a New Year, we can sing along with Elvis, “Why can’t every day be like Christmas?”

To millions around the world every day is.  That’s the Ah! of Christmas.

 

Roger Hines

12/18/19

Is it Time to Stop Fighting?

 

Is it Time to Stop Fighting?

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

            One trio of great world leaders who taught us to fight well and wisely was Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul, two western world politicians and a Polish pope. More than once this trio has been hailed for their part in bringing down the Berlin wall, thereby ushering in the demise of the Soviet Union.

            Everyone knows the back story. Reagan’s advisors urged him not to say the line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” before he delivered, with fervor, one of his most heralded speeches right at the western side of the wall. Unlike Reagan, his advisors were afraid of possible consequences. Unlike the prime ministers who have followed her, Thatcher was focused singly on keeping the power of tyrannical governments at bay. And unlike the present pope who so often dallies with the spirit of the age – wokeness, that is – John Paul was resolute.

            Happy we should be that these three leaders were contemporaries. Although the Eastern Europe portion of the Soviet Union was already cracking, Soviet power needed a final blow. These three leaders delivered it. Incredibly, Gorbachev relented. Soviet Union dissolution was underway.

            Compare these three to the western rulers of today. Currently the United Kingdom’s leadership is visibly shaky. America’s president and the leader at the Vatican are think-a-likes when it comes to cultural social issues. As recently as 2006 the president spoke strongly for traditional marriage. (Google Meet the Press/Biden/2006.) What a conversion Biden has undergone. Pope Francis is simply squishy, sounding like John Paul one day only to depart from orthodoxy the next.

            Today in America many conservatives are giving up. They are weary. I have a small handful of Christian friends who say they have stopped keeping up with the news because it is so “bleak,” “negative,” and “scary,” even though their Bible tells them to “fight the good fight,” and to “not be weary in well doing.”

            Such an outlook is defeatist and totally lacking in hope which scripture enjoins believers to hold to. The news has it that schools throughout the nation are grooming children to “understand” and accept drag queens, transgenderism, and sexual deviance and perversion. Are our children not worth fighting for?  Is there never a justification for righteous anger? Don’t throw the newspaper down because of the words “deviance” and “perversion.” This is no attack on anyone. It is simply a plea that we look at what’s happening. A deviance is a departure from the norm, which homosexuality certainly is. Perversion is not an opposite or an “alternate life style,” but a twist or aberration from what is natural and real. It is an intentional effort to sway or lead astray. Look up the words for yourself.

             Try this for a sign of the times. The Merriam-Webster dictionary as well as the Cambridge dictionary in their most recent editions have re-defined “woman.” M-W reads, “having a gender identity that is opposite the male” while Cambridge clumsily presents the following word salad: “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.” Note the use of the word identity, a usage that automatically denies what even 10^th grade biology teaches about x and y chromosomes. As for “preferred pronouns,” they represent a detachment from biology that deserves nothing but ridicule.

            Beyond grooming, beyond the crazy, biology-denying left and its grip on our universities, corporations, entertainment, and sports (whose most woke crusader is Nick Saban), consider the increasing crime that is moving into suburbia and rural America. Consider the previously unthinkable attack on free speech and religious freedom, aimed solely at conservatives. Ponder the inordinate spending that Congress is now engaged in. Ask why the Detroit school system recently removed Ben Carson’s name from Ben Carson High School of Medicine and Science. Not a good time to leave the battle field.

            Since all of this is evil it must be resisted. If conservatives surrender to the fatigue of battle, we forsake our children and grandchildren. Scripture’s command to love our enemies doesn’t mean we should deny that our enemies exist, which is what timid Republicans – not all, but the timid – are doing. We delude ourselves to think things will be alright in time.

            As for the Respect for Marriage Act, with Republican help Democrats gave us not only a sterile revised view of marriage.  They smashed the traditional view. That alone should be enough to keep the fighting spirit alive. It would also put a smile on the faces of Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul.

 

Roger Hines

December 15, 2022

           

Post-election Musings

 

 Post-election Musings

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Dec. 10, 2022

            On what happened this week …

            “Blue must be the color of the blues,” twanged George Jones back in the 20^th century. Republicans of the 21^st century are now moaning, “Blue must be the color of Cobb County, Georgia,” a county that once upon a time was called Newt country. Cobb was once to metro Atlanta as Orange County was to California, a bastion of conservatism beside a sea of liberalism.

             Cobb County gave more votes this past week to Democrat Raphael Warnock than to Republican Herschel Walker. Cobb County is a highly educated county with a high standard of living. It is the home of large conservative churches and of an aircraft company that has long fueled the nation’s military might. Cobb is known for its good schools, the school board of which currently has a Republican majority membership.

            But, today more securely than ever, Cobb County is governed by non-Republicans. As the saying goes, “the old order changeth.” Currently Cobb is 27% Black.  The Cobb County Commission is predominately Democratic as is the county’s legislative delegation to the General Assembly. Its sheriff and county attorney, both Blacks, are Democrats. These developments in Cobb County will certainly be given strength by the victory of Warnock.

            On why it happened …

            Was it that bundles of voters in Dawg Nation defected? One’s guess may be as good as another’s. Many voters in Cobb were concerned about the quality and the preparedness of the Republican candidate, Herschel Walker. Frankly, this is a new concern. Neophytes have generally been attractive to Americans generally. Sometimes the only way to get rascals out, the thinking goes, is to get new blood in, preferably candidates who have had absolutely no experience and are not tainted by “the system.”

            As for a candidate’s level of intelligence or mental capacity, four simple specific things are necessary for success in a legislative body: the ability to read, to weigh and thoughtfully consider legislative proposals (bills), to influence/argue/persuade others, and to keep close contact with one’s constituents. Oratorical skills and a brain like Einstein’s are not required for political success. Neither, regrettably, is hard work. Lazy legislators can ride for decades on backslapping, winking, and even devious behavior, but even if they are honored at their funerals, their poison has been spread. The numbers of such hangers-on who don’t take politics seriously and are not in it to improve people’s lives are legion. Often, thankfully, the successful politicians are the quieter ones who work hard, care for people, and stay in touch with them. If Walker was misjudged for intellectual incapacity, his defeat was a travesty.

            Doubts about Walker were surely not the only reason for his defeat. There were other issues. One wonders if college student voters age 18 to 22 didn’t turn out in droves because of Warnock’s support of President Biden’s college student loan forgiveness, one of the most unfair ideas progressives have ever proposed. There are many thousands of college students and graduates in Georgia, particularly in Cobb County. Although the President’s forgiveness plan was tabled just before the election (Biden must have gotten the message that non-college folks don’t like the idea of paying for someone else’s college education), college students may have been trusting Biden when he said he would resume pushing the issue come spring.

            If Walker’s personal issues were the chief concern of Republicans who abandoned him, let’s hope that they railed against the personal lives of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and all the Warren G. Harding- type Republicans whose lives weren’t always exemplary.

On what it forebodes …

            So Georgia has gone blue. Or maybe she hasn’t. Georgia has two liberal U.S. Senators who are already vigorously pursuing the progressive agenda, but Governor Kemp is still popular. If he challenges Ossoff, we might see that the Warnock-Walker election was not a contest of political philosophy as much as a contest of personalities. Many voters like Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan declined to vote for either candidate.

            What we can be sure of is that Georgia’s two Senators will chase the false, misleading trinity of diversity/equity/ inclusion while ignoring the invasion of our southern border. They will promote homosexual marriage which Warnock’s Bible forbids and will be hunky-dory with requiring bakers to decorate cakes for homosexual weddings. They will stay tight with the deniers of free speech, labeling the things they disagree with as dis-information. They will be ok with a woke military and with the sexualization of our children and grandchildren via sheer, bald-faced indoctrination.

            But that’s what Georgians chose and both Warnock and Ossoff will deliver.

 

Roger Hines

December 8, 2022

           

Is it Time for Some Poetry?

 Is it Time for Some Poetry?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Dec. 3, 2022

            Hold on men. I know what you’re thinking. I felt the same way until I was 17 years old. Oh, I could take “Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house …” because Christmas is wonderful and the qualities of poetry can easily convey its wonder.  I was moved by “In Flanders Fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses row on row …” because my entire childhood and teen years were wrapped in past and present wars. Two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam tend to reside in you forever if either you or your loved ones were involved in them. But except for a few poems that made sense to me, I seriously believed that poetry was probably meant only for girls. Life itself has taught me I was wrong.

            Today we are living in somber times even though there is no declared war, no deep economic Depression as of yet, and no pervasive civil unrest. Somber times call for contemplation, introspection, and prayerfulness, three things that good poetry can provide. By good poetry I mean poetry that deals with things that matter and is cast in vocabulary that is neither far flung nor overly literary.

Having wound up 51 years of teaching English language and literature in December of 2021, I submit that our nation needs some poetry. Good poetry is not fast food. It is healthier and richer than that and requires a desire for depth. It is food for the soul. Don’t think that high school boys or young college men are automatically turned off by it. They are not.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, who was not a poet, a good poem can run a mile while a lengthy essay – or newspaper column – is getting its pants on. Poetry is musical. It has been the chief purveyor of much of the world’s wisdom. It doesn’t seem ready to die: “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November.” “I think that I shall never see a poem  lovely as a tree.” For millennia poetry has appealed to the working man and the intellectual, the downcast and the excited patriot, and to the young and the old alike.

            Consider “In Flanders Fields,” referenced above and written by soldier/physician Lt. John McCrae during WWI. Read slowly and study the picture McCrae paints: “In Flanders Fields where poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row / That mark our place; and in the sky / The larks so bravely singing fly / Scarce heard amid the guns below.” Re-read these lines and note that they suggest war and death, but a measure of beauty as well.   

            Written from the point of view of fallen soldiers, the poem continues: “We are the dead /  Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow / Loved and were loved and now we lie in Flanders Fields / Take up our quarrel with the foe / To you from failing hands we throw the Torch / Be yours to hold it high / If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep though poppies grow / In Flanders Fields.” An uneducated brother-in-law of mine who dropped out of school at age twelve to help s his family hold on to their farm was required to memorize this compelling poem in the seventh grade. With pride and joy he quoted it many times to my younger brother and me. Lt. McCrae fed Stanley’s soul and enriched his mind.

            Forty-seven years ago at Wheeler High School I asked a senior class to explain what poetry actually is. An astute young man said, “I read somewhere that poetry is a controlled departure from the rules of writing.” So it is and its power to challenge the mind and grip the soul has not waned. Consider Longfellow who wrote, “Not enjoyment and not sorrow / Is our destined end and way / But to act that each tomorrow / Find us farther than today.”  See? No concern for subjects and verbs, but dashed thoughts with much substance.

            A New Year’s suggestion: find a collection of poetry. Try Longfellow, Frost, Dickinson, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes, Kipling, and King David. These poets will feed you concepts and truths that will cure somberness. Then check-out specifically “Be Strong” by Babcock. 2023 will necessarily be better – in your world at least. The nightly news will no longer control you.

            The astute young man who explained what poetry is now serves as the chairman of the Cobb County School Board. I don’t recall whether he enjoyed poetry or not, but I suspect he would acknowledge its power.    

 

Roger Hines

December 1, 2022

The Craziness Continues

 

The Craziness Continues

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Nov. 26, 2022

            How today’s progressives ever came to be called progressives need not be a mystery. Just a few reminders of American and European history can inform us of the reason for their name change.

 The Progressive Party of 1912 was founded by former President Teddy Roosevelt. But that third party effort dissolved in 1920. Formed after Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination to William Howard Taft, it gathered up liberals, labor leaders, and left-leaning Republicans. It embraced and advocated women’s suffrage and a minimum wage for women. Also called the Bull Moose Party, a caricature of the toughness and unquestionable physical strength of Teddy Roosevelt, the newly formed party actually was forward looking, thus the term Progressive.

            But contrast this early 20^th century political effort to the progressives of today. Today’s progressives are yesterday’s liberals and liberal they still are. After William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan pounded liberalism and revealed it for what it is, which is communism-lite, liberals eventually sought a different name. But their hearts never changed. Their core belief is still the sanctity of a strong national government – not a federal one - and the requirement that individual citizens get used to it. Hanging their hat on the same rack as TR doesn’t work because TR, for all his big government ideas, never put the village above the villager. Socialism could never fit on a rugged cowboy like TR.

             Purporting to look forward, progressives are actually throwbacks. Their love of Big Brother and their belief in the necessity of his power is as old as the Asian and Persian tyrants. Their war against the natural order – males and females, husband and wife, biological sexuality, masculinity and femininity, family life – is as old as licentious Rome and Greece. Let us say then that progressives are actually reactionaries, a tag they have always applied to conservatives.

            Consider the progressives’ affinity for Rome. Outside of three or four so-called “good emperors,” the Roman Empire was ruled by rank sensualists, Caligula being the prime example. Sexually, it was “anything goes.” Harems were ubiquitous. Homosexuality was rank. Although Epicurus was Greek, his philosophical argument that pleasure was the highest good spread to Rome where it took root and flourished. During the first century the Christian gospel, via multiple translations of the Bible, began to push back the prevailing Roman and Greek emphasis on sensuality and kept it at bay for centuries. By the time of America’s founding, Europe was essentially a Christian continent. So became the New World. By the 1960s the kind but strong Billy Graham was declaring that the New Morality was nothing more than the Old Immorality. Graham was apparently a student of ancient history and its top down licentiousness and rebellion against nature.

            One wonders what progressives love more, abortion or sexual chaos. Confusing freedom with license, they resist natural order, arguing that gender depends upon personal choice or “the way we present” ourselves. One can “identify” as he or she (or is it “shem”?) wishes.

Who, I ask, needs a college course in “gender studies” when the facts of the matter are all around us, clear as day? Yet most universities today are awash in such nonsense. Lay aside separation of church and state for a moment. What the world needs now is separation of science and state. Until recently scientists worked independently in labs. They meticulously reported their findings which they never considered “settled.” Nowadays many “scientists” are agents of the government. (Everybody say “Fauci.”) Progressives and their fake scientists have set their faces against anything permanent. Consequently, transgenderism and the insistence that there is another gender beside male and female. 

            Progressives argue that they support policies that progress the nation toward social justice. But simultaneously they defend barbaric abortion. How is this different from ancient child sacrifice?

            Consider the following illustrations of progressive craziness. NBC reporter Ben Collins recently argued that taking children to drag queen shows would teach them that transgendered people are human beings. The ACLU and GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) continue to discredit and badger Focus on the Family, one of the nation’s most respected family support organizations. Disney can no longer be trusted with our children, having joined the sexualization of children bandwagon. Virginia’s Fairfax County Public School system is revising its standards in order to make them “gender combined.”

            Truth is that so-called progressivism has infected the nation’s brain. What else explains the huge political successes that the progressive left enjoys? Our only hope is to keep fighting, voting, and declaring boldly that our children belong to us, not to the deniers of the natural order.

 

Roger Hines

11/25/2022

Performance versus Personality

 

 Performance versus Personality

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Nov. 19, 2022

How often have the pundits been wrong about Donald Trump? How many more times will they say that Trump can’t do this, that, or the other? Even National Review, the magazine responsible for helping me understand at age 16 what I really believed about politics, sociology, and government, has already given a big, loud “No!” to Trump’s candidacy for President. How many times do supposedly well-informed people have to be wrong before realizing they’re misreading the tea leaves?

            Mick Mulvaney, former acting White House Chief of Staff, says his old boss is the only Republican who can’t win the 2024 presidential election. Mike Pence says, “I honestly believe we’re going to have better choices.” The Wall Street Journal declares that “what we need is Trumpism without Trump,” thus giving approval to Trump’s governance but not his personality. Maybe half of a concession is better than none, but please, did it matter what George Patton’s personality was like?           

 Only a few days before Election Day,   newscasters and commentators from the left and the right were agreeing that red would flow everywhere by midnight of November 8th. Wrong again. Makes you wonder if we need pollsters, television – or columnists – to help us keep up with politics.

Leaving Trump’s personality for a moment, let’s examine his performance as President. Let’s see: energy security, deregulation, taxes, facing down smarty media celebrities (actually conquering the liberal media), defending Israel, standing up to Iran, achieving the Abraham Accords, appointing judges. Oh yes, judges!  Roe v. Wade was overturned all because a president with a sharp, salty tongue sided with those who believe abortion is barbaric and kept his promise to attend to it.

In his recently released book, “So Help Me God,” Mike Pence actually praises Trump. This honest man, despite the turbulent last few days of his relationship with the President, does not hesitate to give praise where it is due. Referencing his book on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Pence declared that “around Donald Trump, the ground was level.” Pence was describing Trump’s high regard for working people and how, like FDR, Trump could aptly be called a traitor to his own social class. Like his outlier father, Trump trafficked with manual laborers.

Back to the WSJ columnist who suggested Trumpism without Trump. If that’s not an acknowledgement of Trump’s success in governing, what is? Yet, we are being asked – no, prodded and shamed – to disregard policy success because of a president’s personality.

If we boil down Trump’s policy agenda, we find two major themes. One was his claim that the American dream was becoming less and less a reality for the middle class generally and young adults particularly. Regulation and immigration were creating social immobility. The famous Black poet Langston Hughes addressed this reality: “A dream deferred is like a raisin in the sun. It festers like a sore and then it runs.” A billionaire who can see such a need in the body politic should be commended.

Trump’s second claim was that political corruption abounds. An effective phraseologist, he called his efforts for dealing with it “draining the swamp.” Perhaps the reason Republicans had not already dealt with the swamp is the fact that the swamp is a bipartisan habitat.

Trump’s presidency also brought to the fore two respectable words that have been sullied and dragged through the mud. Populism and nationalism have become no-no words. They are evil, the refuge of fascists, racists, and extreme right wingers. Or so say the swamp’s thought police and language police, and those who believe in drawing back from freedom of speech.

Populism is a political philosophy. Its adherents, populists, simply strive to recognize and appeal to ordinary people. The word actually means “of the people.” Since it echoes Lincoln’s noble line from his Gettysburg Address – “of the people, by the people, and for the people” – how did it become disdainful to so many? A partial answer is that the word does imply that a society contains at least two groups, the people and the elites who govern them. Remember, Hillary’s word for the populace was deplorables.

 Dubbed by radicals as patriotism taken to extremes, nationalism is nothing more than reasonable love of country. Trump unashamedly touted America while the political left openly showed their contempt for America. In his candidacy announcement Trump made it clear that nations must have borders, that gender insanity must be stopped, and that he is not about to ride off into the sunset.

Neither, I suspect, are the millions who have supported him from the start. I suspect this because all the pundits are saying the opposite and they have been wrong so often.

 

Roger Hines

November 17, 2022

What’s Next in Education?

 What’s Next in Education?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Nov. 12, 2022

            First it was simply a broad path, a strip of mud lined on both sides by humble mercantile stores, a local bank, a doctor’s office, a sheriff’s office, and possibly a hotel, depending on the size and location of the emerging town or village. There were no side paths just yet, only one long strip. After many long, long decades the muddy strip, now called a street, would either be partially covered with boards – commonly called “planks” – or gravel if the area was blessed by a nearby “gravel pit” or quarry. Gravel or small rocks would be a vast improvement over the muddy mess created by heavy rains and defecating horses and mules tied to posts just outside the commercial establishments. Years and years hence would bring asphalt or concrete.

            No, this isn’t just a scene from a western movie. It is the way we were as our American forefathers trekked from New England three thousand miles across a new continental nation, building towns here and there. As the nation moved its boundary westward, the villages that were built changed over the years. The first major change was from a strip town to a town square. Now each town had a center around which commerce and community activities gathered. Marietta, Georgia is a good example of a city that still manages to maintain a vibrant town square. Not destroyed by a nearby interstate highway as some towns have been, Marietta is unique.

            Commercially, the history of American towns has taken the following path: 1) a strip of a road that would typically become Main Street, 2) a town square that became a social and political as well as commercial center, 3) a “strip mall” on the edge of town that drew shoppers from the square, and in the case of larger towns and cities, 4) a mall that would become a walled city within itself further drawing shoppers from downtown. But now we’re told that malls are in their last days. What’s next for our small towns and cities and populous rural areas?

            Notice that in the above scenario there were no schools that lined the muddy streets of the New World’s first “population centers.” But that doesn’t mean there was no learning, no transmission of wisdom, and no interest in the educating of children. It means that parents had to take care of those responsibilities themselves. For starters, children were taught the basics, that is, how to acquire food and water, how to keep a roof over their heads, how to gather fuel, how to acquire transportation, and how to secure a line of work. While the northeast had a measure of public funding for schools in the late 1780s, the concept of free public schooling would not begin its slow spread until the 1830s.

            Spread it has. Today every state provides free public schooling and also has compulsory school laws. Since 1979, thanks to President Carter and his debt to the National Education Association, the US has had a federal level Department of Education despite the fact that the 10^th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits it. The one-room school house is no more and bureaucracy reigns.

 Compulsory education is a good idea but drag queen hour is not. Local school boards are what the Founders intended but strict limitations on what parents can say at board meetings is not. The teaching of language, mathematics, science, history, computer literacy, and the broad humanities is good. Turning biologically-based sex ed into acknowledgement of every deviation under the sun is not. Teaching teens to think for themselves is good. The “What is your preferred pronoun” malarkey is not. Cultural literacy is good. Multiculturalism that pretends America is not special is not.

            In a previous column I related my surprise at how my four children, all products of our public schools, chose  either home schooling, private schools, or a planned mix to educate their own children. While they all loved and appreciated their teachers, it turns out that they knew more about the halls and restrooms and negative peer pressure than I did after 37 years of hall duty and restroom duty. Neither parents nor teachers can know the undertow of what is going on when hundreds of teens are in one place having far more influence on each other than parents ever have.

            Covid and the war on parents have taken a toll on our schools. Homeschooling and private education are growing. If our schools are on fire as many are claiming and if the sexualization and the indoctrination taking place in liberal states continues to spread, it will be time to make some changes again. I sense we best be ready to make them.

 

Roger Hines

November 10, 2022