Government, Leave My Granddaughters Alone

             Government, Leave My Granddaughters Alone

                                                                 Published in Marietta Daily Journal Feb. 14, 2016

            Levie (that’s a long “e”) is 19, and Nancy Cate will be 6 this month.  They are my oldest and youngest granddaughters.   Levie is a sophomore at Young Harris College; Nancy Cate is homeschooled by her mother, my younger daughter. 

            Of course these granddaughters are beautiful.  Smart, too.  Their parents are rearing them wisely.  Their fathers, my only two sons-in-law, are incredibly hard workers.  Levie’s father, a landscaper, is a giver, an encourager, and a lover of people.  Nancy Cate’s father is a native of Mumbai (Bombay), India.  A restaurant owner, he values and practices free enterprise.  So I’m not worried about my granddaughters’ home life.  Government policy that affects them is what’s on my mind.

            Levie has two sisters, and Nancy Cate has one.  My oldest son also has a daughter.  I don’t know if my son and two sons-in-law will agree with what I’m about to say about their daughters.  It doesn’t really matter.  I can still declare what I think the government should never require, or in this case, never allow them to do.

            Ok, I don’t want my 6 granddaughters in combat, and I don’t want the government to require them to register for the selective service.  But Defense Secretary Ash Carter thinks women in combat is just dandy.   Allowing it, he asserts, will promote equality.  It will allow half the nation’s population to seek a path to high military posts.  Secretary Carter’s recent order allows women to serve in the most physical of jobs, including special operations such as the Army Delta units and the Navy Seals.

            Ah, this wonderful equality.  Even in foxholes it must be an issue.  Forget about winning wars.  Forget about any differences between males and females that could negatively affect a war’s outcome. Can anyone envision a Patton or a McArthur yielding to the “evolving” values of a society that doesn’t understand what the military is for, and believes the military should be part and parcel of the progressive transformation of the nation?

            If  Pentagon Chief Carter is an egalitarian, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is a bigger one.  According to Aaron MacLean, a former Marine Corps infantry officer and editor of the Washington Free Beacon, Marines “are seething over their treatment at the hands of a civilian appointee whose military experience consists of two years in the Navy.”

            MacLean’s beef is that Mabus is being vindictive because of the Marine Corps’ resistance to the integration of women into ground combat.  That resistance took the form of a report which concluded that allowing women to compete for ground combat jobs “would make the Marine Corps a less-efficient fighting machine.”  Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee to present the report, Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller added, “ All-male units are able to better march long distances carrying heavy loads and are able to fire weapons more accurately after marching over distance.”   Imagine the grief Gen. Neller received for saying that.

            Much of that grief came from Secretary Mabus.  Going beyond Defense Secretary Carter’s order to open ground combat units to women, Mabus issued a memo requiring the Marines to make recruit training open to women as well.  Call it co-ed boot camp.  And re-name it Parris Island Finishing School (or San Diego Finishing School for west coast recruits).

            Even though Commandant Neller opposed women in combat, he still told the Senate Committee he favored requiring women to register for the selective service at age 18.

            Back to my granddaughter, Levie.  She is a mountain climber par excellence.  She is a good soccer player.  She is strong.  But the fact that females can be physically strong doesn’t mean that putting 18-year-old (or 35-year-old) male and female recruits side by side is a good idea, whether in training or in combat.  Physiological differences and sexual dynamics render such an idea or action absolutely foolish.

            Why won’t more generals stand firm in opposing such foolishness?  Why are they fearful?  And where oh where were our traditional values Republicans when our new Defense Secretary and our Obama appointee Navy Secretary were using the military to advance social goals?  Isn’t it the Republican Party that most values the military and claims to guard it?  One Republican did stand up to Mabus: Rep. Duncan Hunter of California. 

            Mark my word.  Before the transformationalists leave office, we will hear that the military must make accommodations for the transgendered.  Meanwhile, I’m looking for more generals and Republicans who will help me look out for my granddaughters and who will argue that equality and sensitivity are not very wise pre-occupations on the battlefield.

Roger Hines

2/10/16

Colorful Cobb: There Are Reasons for It

                                Colorful Cobb:  There Are Reasons for It

                                                     Published in Marietta Daily Journal Feb. 7, 2016

                                                         

Let’s talk family a bit, or community if you prefer.  Because of the modern age we’re in, with its rapid-fire communications and fast moving screen images (even at the gasoline pump), we have all become close neighbors.  Indeed we are such close neighbors that whatever touches one of us affects all of us.

            To a large degree Cobb County is a homogeneous community.  To use a word I hate, Cobb has or is its own distinct “brand.”  There are reasons for this.  One is the leadership which voters in the county and its 6 cities have chosen over the years.  In recent times Cobb has provided the state a governor and now claims the state’s attorney-general as one of its citizens.  Whether or not you supported them, I’m only saying that Cobb produces leaders. 

Though free people will always have their differences, political rivalry in Cobb, at least in the last 40 years, has never brought things to a grinding halt as it has in other counties.  Cobb’s mayors, commissioners, and boards of education have kept the wheels of government and education greased and turning.  The decisions that elected leaders must consider will always be and should be debated.  In a free society, controversy is our lot.  Even when political rivalry runs deep, after elections Cobb has had a way of moving on.

            Another reason Cobb is distinct is that its citizens embrace the future without scorning the past.  Like the motto of a church in west Cobb, Keystone Baptist, Cobb’s motto could well be “Where Tradition Meets Today.”  I have always believed that one reason Cobb is a good place is that the majority of our leaders – political, religious, business, educational – and citizens as well honor the area’s past.  Perhaps we are all in agreement with one of William Faulkner’s best sentences, “The past is not over yet.”

            But our community doesn’t cling to the past either.  Over a decade ago at an institute for newly elected legislators, then-Governor Roy Barnes made a statement that I cannot forget.  For me the statement had moral and spiritual implications.  His statement was that he believed one reason Georgia had fared better economically than neighboring states was that we tried harder to do the right thing in regard to race.  “Doing the right thing bodes well for every area of life,” he said.  Seems to me most of Cobb’s mayors and county-level leaders have shared this outlook.

            In no area has Cobb been more blessed than in education.  Cobb schools are still strong. This, too, is in large part because of leadership.  Given the level-headedness and practical wisdom of Superintendent Ragsdale, it is obvious that, educationally, Cobb is experiencing an era of good feeling.  Educational leaders who preceded him, superintendents and otherwise, are numerous.  Some whom I particularly appreciated are Kermit Keenum, Larry Hinds, Don Murphy, Stanley Wrinkle, Stella Ross, James Wilson, Dexter Mills, and Dale Gaddis, all good people who enjoyed their work and gave more time and energy than any contract would ever require.

            From three members of the current board of education I have taken great satisfaction.  Two of them, Susan Thayer and Randy Scamihorn are former colleagues.  Like so many of Cobb’s teachers and administrators, these two are incurable “school people.”  They revel in seeing youth learn, mature, and set themselves on a good path.  Fairly new board member David Chastain is also eminently qualified to be an educational policy maker.

 A former English student of mine, Chastain’s humor and playfulness in class was matched only by that of Superior Court Judge Tain Kell.  Unlike Chastain, however, Kell never came to class with half of his face a neat beard and the other half cleanly shaven.  Unlike Kell, Chastain never made fun of the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

            No doubt due to their raising, these two current leaders never let their playfulness in class go too far.  It’s no surprise to me that, choosing to live and work where they were reared, they are now partly responsible for the type of community Cobb is.

            Today the world is in strife.  It always has been, but that strife is now being brought to our attention 24 hours a day.  In the midst of it we need some islands of civilization, that is, civility.  Whether it’s a county, a state, or a region, the world needs examples of places where civility is practiced, leaders are servants, and neighborliness is the norm.

            We might ask ourselves what we can do to make sure we remain a civil, well-functioning county even as we become less homogeneous.  That will be our test.

Roger Hines

2/3/16

Coming Out ... Because of a Magazine

                                Coming Out … Because of a Magazine

                                                             Published in Marietta Daily Journal Jan. 30, 2016

The magazine that helped me find myself has committed folly.  It has rebuffed many faithful readers with a move that was just plain uppity.

            A bit of background.  By age 16 I knew that the nation’s trending political philosophy was not one that fit my worldview.  Sooner or later I would have to come out and break my father’s heart. 

            I respected my father, but for the sake of self-respect, I still had to come out.  Ideas are powerful things, and it was the ideas set forth in a magazine that led me away from the politics of my FDR-worshiping parents to a philosophy of limited government and self-determination. 

            The magazine was “National Review,” a journal of news and commentary that became a trumpet for conservative thought.  Sounded from the wilderness of liberalism and initially drowned out by established voices, that trumpet was eventually heard across the nation.  Its young Yale-educated editor, William F. Buckley, vowed that with his new magazine he would “stand athwart history yelling, ‘Stop,’ even when no one is inclined to do so.”

            Stand he did, with arguments dripping with intelligence and clothed in vocabulary that sent readers dashing for their dictionaries.  Still fresh from his success with “God and Man at Yale,” a critique of how Yale and other universities were denying their religious roots, Buckley gathered around him other young conservatives.  Together they began pressing forth with classical conservatism, resurrecting such voices as England’s Edmund Burke and Scotland’s Adam Smith.

            Because I kept seeing references to NR (it was only 5 years old at the time), I was determined to find a copy.  In that pre-internet age, I knew of nothing to do but call the editor of our local county newspaper.  The editor, a Democrat, told me he would gladly find and send me a copy.  Within two weeks I was drinking from the well of Buckley and his comrades.  Pro-religion, pro-free enterprise, pro-Republican, and viciously anti-statist, the magazine became a wallowing ground for my mind and heart.

            NR buoyed me through many a college class taught by leftist professors.  A Catholic, Buckley taught me, a Baptist boy, much about Catholics and the social issues they hold dear.  His magazine has continued to feed my thought world for decades.

 Come 2016, however, this fine publication has taken a very untoward step.  Recently editor Rich Lowery marshaled 20 conservatives to write articles informing us of how uninformed, unprepared, simplistic, superficial, and menacing is the man Donald Trump.

            Mr. Trump is not my candidate, or not yet, but in excommunicating him, the NR and its 20 henchmen have revealed just how out of touch they are with America’s middle class.  Their verbal assault is an assault on Trump’s millions of supporters.  The writers are all intellectuals, meaning they make their living with words and arguments.  Mr. Trump has garnered the interest and acknowledged the frustrations of those who make their living with tools, trucks, cash registers, tires, motors, lumber, guns, appliances, furniture, crops, and sweat. 

Try to envision the 20 writers making their living this way.  Dream on about their understanding of blue-collar America.

            These writer-intellectuals apparently consider Trump’s supporters “menacing” as well.  From their ivory towers they fail to see that political planets are re-aligning, that the old liberal versus conservative spectrum is fading.  It seems they would know that in politics the old order is always changing.  If the peasants are revolting, the intellectuals might consider asking why.

            These writers are saying to Republican voters, “Get with it and get with us.”  The problem is “us” includes Congressional Republicans who have refused to be the opposition party.  Unlike Democrats, Republicans just don’t seem to enjoy fighting for what they say they believe.  Think borders, traditional values, jobs, IRS excesses, and Planned Parenthood’s government-funded atrocities.  Hence, the Trump phenomenon and the anger it has unmasked.

            I have deep respect for some of the conservative scribes who participated in NR’s assault, particularly Cal Thomas and Thomas Sowell.  Some of the others are limousine Republicans or academics who know little about working people and their frustrations.

            Just as surely as I came out decades ago, so are many conservatives coming out today, out from the party to which I was fleeing.  NR would have best tried to understand Trump’s  supporters instead of slamming them.  After all, there are far more working people in America than there are intellectuals. 

            Let’s put it this way: NR is blind to political realities; Donald Trump isn’t. Intellectuals, it appears, can neither fathom nor engage “the forgotten American,” but a billionaire can.  What an irony.

           

Roger Hines

1/27/16

Questions to Ponder in 2016

                                                   Questions to Ponder in 2016

                                                        

                                                        Published in Marietta Daily Journal Jan. 24, 2015

            For anyone who wants to learn, knowing the questions is as important as knowing the answers.  Inquiring minds can usually find answers.  The question is do we know the questions.  Here are 7 questions along with a few corollary ones that beg for attention.

            Is there such a thing as “settled law”?  Let’s grant the lawyers their lingo but acknowledge that the expression has been reduced almost to meaninglessness.  Even so, is a Supreme Court decision supreme?  Technically, maybe so, but in the minds of many, Roe v. Wade is not settled.  The issue of abortion is as unsettled and as unsettling as ever.  Will Roe v. Wade ever be reversed?  Is the national conscience absolutely settled?  Does an unborn baby have a right to life or not?  Without a doubt these questions will arise – again – during the presidential election.

            How about “settled science”?  Does anyone remember the 1974 Newsweek cover showing an iceberg and the headline, “The Coming Ice Age”?  As for global warming, columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is neither a denier nor a proponent, asserts that scientists who think they know what global warming will cause 50 years from now “are white-coated propagandists.”  For certain, global warming proponents are about as evangelistic as anybody can be.  Their evangelistic efforts are, in Krauthammer’s estimation, “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.”

            What stands between the Supreme Court’s decision on homosexual marriage and legalized polygamy?  Probably a decade or less.  Certainly no logical argument stands between them.  If two men have a right to marry, or two women, why can’t a man and three women?  If two men argue they love each other and should be granted a marriage license, and are now in fact granted that right, it would be totally inconsistent to deny a marriage license to any type of plural marriage one can imagine.  Harems, anybody?

            Have any liberal Supreme Court justices ever opposed same-sex marriage? Yes. In 1972 three liberal justices dismissed the claim that there was a constitutional right to same-sex marriage: Thurgood Marshal, William J. Brennan and William O. Douglas.

            What is the chief point about the same-sex marriage decision that everybody is missing or is just hesitant to discuss?  It is that re-defined marriage breaks all connection between marriage and procreation.  It re-defines family while ignoring human sexuality. Being a social construct, family can be defined any way we wish, but our sexuality is a physiological fact.  (Transgenderism challenges this, of course.)  The traditional definition of marriage is inextricably tied to heterosexual intercourse.  As though the collapse of traditional marriage weren’t enough, we now have a definition that weakens the bond between marriage and children.  Since homosexual couples cannot procreate, the Supreme Court has in effect declared that marriage has little to do with children.

            What’s wrong with allowing women in combat?  For starters the decision to allow it was a social decision, not a military one.  It was another example of using the military to achieve social goals: in this case, equality.  Even if women can shoot and fight as well as men, there are at least two things they cannot do.  They cannot change the reality of sexual attraction and the fact that it will forever be a distraction to men in the military.  They also cannot keep men from feeling protective of women, a reality that would also be a distraction in times of war.  Using the military to achieve social objectives is a huge mistake.

            What two social behaviors are contributing the most to poverty and crime?  According to sociologist Nicholas Wolfinger, it is the increase in single motherhood, particularly in the number of never-married mothers.  Research economist Robert Cherry adds that poverty and crime are increased by the number of mothers who have children with multiple partners.  One study discovered that 22% of white mothers and 59% of black mothers have had children with more than one man.  According to Cherry, children raised in such families are not only likely to be poor but are at greater risk of child abuse.

            Regarding each of these questions, some would say the horse is out of the barn.  Yes, and when horses get out of the barn they tromp things, doing great damage.  Sometimes horses need to be corralled.  Grateful we should be that Copernicus questioned the “settled science” of Ptolemy, and that the 14^th amendment unsettled the settled Dred Scott decision.

            When Socrates remarked that the unexamined life was not worth living, he was referring to scientists and lawyers of his day who were claiming that all truth was known and settled.  Perhaps our own day is a time to question and unsettle a few “settled” things..

Roger Hines

1/20/16

America Re-Constituted...Returning to First Principles

                          America Re-Constituted … Returning to First Principles

                                                                       Published in Marietta Daily Journal Jan.17, 2015

            It’s not that we don’t care.  Neither is it that we can’t grasp the magnitude of the issues we face.  We are simply so busy working and living that we forget we are fellow citizens, fellow countrymen, and closer neighbors than ever.

            Our forgetfulness leads to escape.  After a day’s work we escape to our dwellings,  thinking we can let the world go by.

            Not all Americans have chosen escape.  Some of us attend political meetings, read up on issues and political candidates, and then vote.  Even fewer, understandably, run for office.  Those of us who do none of these are content to let representative government slide.

            So negligent have we become in participatory democracy that we now have government we don’t like and political leaders we don’t trust.  As Jefferson put it, “The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance,” but we have not been vigilant.  Government has become our master, not our servant.

            So now we’re all snarly, those who have participated and those who haven’t.    Something’s just not right.  That something is the over-reaching tentacles of government.  It’s the reality of an incoherent tax code, laws that went unread before they were voted on and passed, and inattention to our borders. It’s economic uncertainty.  It’s watching America’s standing in the world slip.

It’s also the dashed hopes caused by candidates who said they would do thus and such but instead joined the political class and began making excuses for why they can’t do what they campaigned on.  No wonder dissatisfaction shrouds the land.

            Nothing can re-direct or re-focus minds as can returning to first principles.  Shall we blame schools for not teaching the first principles?  No, schools teach them.  The U.S. Constitution is taught throughout the country.  How can we expect students to remember what they were taught on the Constitution anymore than the rest of us can remember what was taught in geometry or grammar?  People forget things.

            That’s why the nation needs to re-read and talk about her first principles. It takes only minutes to read the U.S. Constitution.  Unlike statutory law, state and federal, that is always written in unreadable English, the Constitution is clear.  Its portions written in the eighteenth century are a bit ornate, but certainly don’t prevent understanding as do most modern laws.

            How can we hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire if we ourselves don’t know what’s in our most foundational governing document?

 I say the nation needs a class.  Almost anybody who can read can be the teacher.  But where can the class, or thousands of classes, be held?  (Here’s where the joy of re-discovery starts in re-Constituting America.)  Classes can be held in living rooms, at Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, the bridge club, homeowners’ associations, county political party meetings (how novel), state political party conventions (more novel still), 4-H meetings, and any other willing venue.

            What would take place at these class meetings?  A leader would read or have a “student” read the Preamble and several Articles.  Another meeting, the remaining Articles and Amendments.  Discussion would ensue.  Or would it?  On most things, our governing document of first principles is crystal clear, inviting almost no discussion.

 But “class members” would see the light: government is doing things which the Constitution never ever sanctioned or mentioned.  Education?  Not mentioned.  And the 10^th Amendment informs us on who should handle those things not mentioned in the Constitution.  Follow-up activity?  Call your Congressional delegation, assert that the Department of Education is un-Constitutional and insist it be abolished. 

            In 621 B.C., workers repairing the Jewish temple discovered a copy of the Pentateuch.  Struck by its forgotten contents and ambitious to re-direct ancient Israel, King Josiah held class.  After several mass readings from the forgotten document, reforms were made in Israel that re-ignited national fervor.

            In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote his line, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”  On Christmas Eve of that year, George Washington ordered one of his officers to read to his beleaguered troops the entire paragraph from Paine’s “American Crisis.”  The next day, 4,000 ragtag American farmers and small merchants surprised and defeated 20,000 Hessian troops.

            A re-discovery of our first principles will probably make us angrier than ever, but it could also give us the freshly informed backbone to say to our leaders, “Get with the Constitution or go home.  Your programs and regulations are abridging our liberty.  We now know what our governing document says.”

            My first class will be held in my home or in a nearby location, come spring.  Stay tuned, stay snarly, and bring your Constitution.  Then hold your own class.  America itself is at stake.  And the joy of re-discovery – and freedom – awaits us.

Roger Hines

1/13/15

The High Cost of Rings vs Their Low Returns

               The High Cost of Rings vs Their Low Returns

                                                                      Published in Marietta Daily Journal Jan. 10, 2016

            As soon as I deliver this column to my editor, I’ll be leaving town.  Mainly because there is no columnist protection program that I know of.

            I’m even a little nervous about my two grown sons reading this.  Both of them were high school athletes, are still sports lovers, and can give you the bio and statistics on every college and professional athlete and coach in the nation.  I say only “a little nervous” because I’m also thinking they might – might – agree with me.  While they were growing up they occasionally made comments that indicated they were critical thinkers, even about things they loved and believed in.  That’s good, but … regarding this topic, we shall see.

            First, my respectful, obligatory bow to those with whom I am taking issue, namely college presidents who allow football to rule the roost at their institutions, fans who think colleges exist to provide them with four months of pleasure per year, and politicians who make life easy for billionaires.  Their hearts may be right, but their designs are fraught with error.  More on this momentarily.

            Notice that I didn’t include coaches or athletes.  Perhaps I should, perhaps not.  I hasten to remind us that a huge number of college athletes are all of 19 years old.  They are in a system not of their making.  They are merely taking advantage of it.  For many of them, football is a ticket out of poverty via an eventual professional career, a ticket for getting a college degree, or simply a ticket for pursuing a game they love.  

            As for the coaches, they are cogs – incredibly well-paid cogs – in a wheel they didn’t construct.  They have, of course, kept the wheel strong and functional.  Not all coaches are obscenely remunerated, but the ones I’m thinking of right now certainly are.  You know the ones I mean.  At any rate the athletes and the coaches are not the gatekeepers for the issue I’m raising.  College presidents, rabid fans (particularly rich alumni/donors), and politicians are.

Another bow before I proceed.  Coaches are one of the best things in America’s educational system.  I say this because of the ones who coached me, coached my sons, and those with whom I taught school for 4 decades.  Coaches have always symbolized and illustrated masculinity.  They have set many a youngster on the right path.  They have shown non-coaching teachers effective methods for teaching, as in “Don’t just tell’em; show’em.”  Coaches are normally considered icons in the school building.  I have often wondered if coaches realize the influence they have and the positive difference they make, even with students they don’t coach or teach.          

            That, of course, is the high school scene.  What about the college scene?  Just what are college presidents doing wrong?  They are allowing the tail to wag the dog.   They are allowing a non-academic endeavor to be the face of their institutions.  So you disagree?  What is the first thing you think of when you hear the words University of Alabama, University of Ohio, University of Georgia, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Boston College, University of Florida … you get the drift. The list is long.  College presidents and enabling fans assume that everybody loves football and that the world therefore turns on it.  Forget the mathematics and history professors, as well as the students who are in the library on Saturday afternoon.  Never mind that students are in college to learn, not to be totally distracted for one-third of each year by the athletic juggernaut.

The emphasis on winning national championship rings is excessive.  When Georgia coach Mark Richt stated that football is about more than just getting rings, his destiny was sealed.  But Richt was right.  Unlike the NFL, college football is indeed about building men, or should be.  If not, why is it part of our educational enterprise?  Men who get their tickles from football should turn on the pro games and let colleges be the educational, people-building institutions they were intended to be.

           As for pro sports, here is one taxpayer tired of helping billionaires build their stadiums.  Let them build their own. Their games will still bring business to restaurants and hotels and help local economies.  As things stand now, taxpayers in quite a few cities are helping pay for stadiums they don’t care to go to, even if they could afford the tickets.  Besides, the stadiums will be torn down in a few years’ time for yet some other type project that a billionaire and some elected officials got together on.

           With colleges it is education gone awry.  With pro sports it is crony capitalism. National championship rings are too costly for the few they honor.  It’s time for a correction.

Roger Hines

1/2/16

Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant or Maybe Not

                               Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant or Maybe Not

                                                                 Published in Marietta Daily Journal Jan. 3, 2016

Martha Hays, the 20th century’s most stellar English teacher, ignited a little rebellion when she required her 11th grade class to read and discuss a poem written by 19th century New England poet, Emily Dickinson.

Understand it was a respectful rebellion. Time and place would not have allowed any other kind. The time was long before the Age of Disrespect. The place was inside the walls of Forest High School in little Forest, Mississippi. (Georgians who traverse Interstate 20 west might know that Forest is about halfway across the state — an area of stately pines, the most beautiful of oaks, occasional persimmons and more than enough sweet gums, hence the name Forest.)

The class rebellion centered on the lifestyle of Dickinson and the thesis of her assigned poem. The boys didn’t like Dickinson. We understood what was meant by “Southern belle” and could not understand why a reclusive, plain, non-communicative woman poet was, of late, being dubbed “the belle of Amherst” (Massachusetts). A belle didn’t stay inside all day and write short, hard poems with no titles. Belles got outside and pranced around. They were crowned “Miss Watermelon,” “Broiler Festival Queen,” or “Miss Hospitality.” Emily Dickinson was not a belle.

The girls in the class were more sophisticated. Ignoring Dickinson, they got right to the point of her poem and outright protested: “Mrs. Hays, she’s saying, ‘Don’t tell the truth!’”

I was never one to say much in class, but I surely knew how to listen, learn and then process and apply later. I remember feeling like a leech, though never failing to appreciate every other class member and what they taught me.

I could also read teachers like a book. Indeed, I constantly studied them because I had already decided to be a teacher and figured I had better start watching closely. Watching Martha Hays that day, I could tell she joyfully anticipated a little controversy. All of us were either Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Pentecostal, and we weren’t about to accept any notion of slanted truth.

The poem had no title, but its first line was “Tell the Truth but tell it slant.” Its last two lines were “The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.” Only eight lines, but they hit their mark just as our astute teacher planned.

Perched on her stool, the wise, beguiling teacher simply let the lesson happen. A good Presbyterian herself, she knew her students. That day the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Pentecostals were all on one side; Emily Dickinson was on the other. The non-committal stance of our teacher drove us nuts.

Finally, Connie Craig got it, and Martha Hays beamed. The rest of us felt foolish. Connie Craig cited line eight where Dickinson declares that truth must be eased in “With explanation kind.” To which the teacher said, “Why did Jesus teach with parables? Why didn’t he go ahead and preach a loud sermon?”

For decades, I have wished I had spoken up and said, “The poem’s not talking about truth as in response to ‘Who stole my pencil?’ but Truth generally and how it is best handed out.” Not that I was thinking such thoughts then. I was one of the 29 whom Connie Craig and our wondrous teacher enlightened.

OK, so what’s the “balance” to all of this which modernity demands? What’s the other side of the story? Hasn’t one of our presidential candidates struck a chord because he has spoken the truth, as so many see it, and has spoken bluntly without slant? To be sure, he has virtually neutered the national media, that mighty institution that hardly believes in objective truth.

The other side, the “balance,” is that sometimes we need to be slammed with the truth. On the road to Damascus, the apostle Paul was not dazzled gradually by a still small voice. He was hit by a 2x4. And not to quibble too much with the likes of Thomas Jefferson, but before implying that truth is self-evident, he should have recalled Cicero’s claim: “If truth were self-evident, there would be no need for eloquence.” Or slamming.

So which is it? Dazzling gradually or slamming? All I know is I’m glad Martha Hays ended the lesson with a quote from James Russell Lowell: “Once to every man and nation / Comes the moment to decide / In the strife of truth with falsehood / For the good or evil side.”

The point is truth is forever on the scaffold. “Yet that scaffold sways the future,” Lowell also wrote, implying that every man and nation must choose well.

Let’s pray we will do so throughout this new year.

Roger Hines
12/30/15