Moral High Horses and Selective Disgust

   Moral High Horses and Selective Disgust

                            Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 16, 2016

It was James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, who pressed the campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  That slogan was code for “Let the Republicans have the abortion issue and any other issue that’s not economy-related.”

             Republicans, fearing Carville’s strategy, urged presidential candidates Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney to ignore the social issues.  All three candidates played down their platform’s pro-life stance and Planned Parenthood’s hand in the federal cookie jar.

            “Character issues,” Carville argued, are a matter of personal belief.  Bill Clinton’s character was inconsequential.  Job performance was what mattered. 

            After Bill Clinton was impeached, members of his cabinet and White House staff assembled on the White House lawn to assure reporters and the nation that they were still OK with their man. Monica Lewinski and the Arkansas women who had accused Clinton of sexual assault didn’t matter.  They were placed within the category of Carville’s other verbal flourish: “Drag a 5-dollar bill through a trailer park and there’s no telling what you’ll get.”

            So here we are in a season of déjà vu all over again.  Suddenly we’re back to character matters.  It matters because we need something to hold over Donald Trump’s head.   It now matters to the networks even though 24 years ago they ignored Paula Jones, Kathleen Willy and Juanita Broderick when they first revealed that Clinton assaulted them.

            Offensive, repulsive words are one thing.  Vile acts are another.  Vile though Clinton’s acts were, he didn’t pay for them, unless one thinks the $850,000 he paid to settle with Paula Jones was enough. 

            The word “apologize” wasn’t blurted from the lips of very many people in 1992.  Nobody, certainly not Republicans, was demanding that Clinton apologize.  Remember, character and morality didn’t matter.   Hillary Clinton’s treatment of her husband’s victims didn’t matter either.

            So why the sudden concern for moral standards in speech, namely Donald Trump’s?   Historically, wrongdoing is what we punish people for, not wrong thoughts (“hate crimes”) or words.  The case before us in the presidential race is a candidate who said some things and a former president and his candidate wife who did some things.  The ex-president and his wife are getting off scot free.  The Republican candidate is being raked over the coals. 

Neither did the media “out” JFK.  He was their boy as well.

            Trump’s media critics have no basis for their feigned moral outrage.  They themselves are amoral.  Yet on their moral high horses they are giving “freaking out” a new name.  They react in horror to Trump but are hunky dory with the likes of Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, the aging Madonna, the lyrics of too many rock singers to count, and all the other cultural icons who have turned entertainment into a moral cesspool in which our youth are awash.

            The New York Times recently “reported” that “Trump has made gutter attacks on women.”  Get this weekend’s issue of the NYT and take a peep at its Arts, Movies, and Entertainment section.  See the ads the NYT is willing to take money for.  Browse a few pages of “50 Shades of Gray” and you’ll see what millions of suburban women (they who supposedly are most offended by Trump’s video) are reading.  Why is the NYT surprised that the decadent culture it has helped spawn has spawned a presidential candidate?

            The network that out-ed Trump’s salacious video is a purveyor of the very thing for which it criticizes Trump.  The networks push and sell sex virtually every hour of the day, and they do show men groping women.

            So let’s call it selective disgust.  JFK and Clinton were not disgusting.  Trump is.  JFK and Clinton committed actions and are still championed.  Trump spoke words and is lacerated.

            During the Clinton era we were supposed to shut up about the Ten Commandments,  Judeo-Christian values, and character.  All of that is personal belief.  From the 70s through the 90s social conservatives tried to challenge the culture.  They lost the culture war, but don’t despair.  Now we can decide for ourselves if we are male or female.  That’s nice, I guess.

            As for the Republicans who are jumping ship, does anyone think they would be doing so if Trump’s poll numbers had been 8 or 9 points ahead of Hillary when his video came out?  I do not.

            The Democratic Party is the party of secularism and abortion, and suddenly it is concerned about crude words.   Abortion versus crude words.  Ponder that one.

Our presidential choice is clear, and Bernie Marcus put it best.  “It’s 4 years of Trump or 25 plus years of liberal Supreme Court justices.”

Roger Hines

10/12/16

Why Trump Will Triumph

                       Why Trump Will Triumph

                    Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 9, 2016

             How many times did columnists, commentators, and competing candidates assert that Donald Trump was a flash in the pan?

            In spite of all of his deniers, Trump is the Republican nominee and continues to draw crowds in the thousands. To his critics’ dismay, Trump is now in a very competitive, winnable race.  There are at least four political realities that point to a Trump victory.

            First, populism is in the air and it is thick.  Populism still means “of the people.”  A political term and outlook, it extols the virtues and addresses the plight of the common man.  Simply put, it focuses on the little guy as opposed to catering to big banks, big corporations, big oil, crony capitalism, and political elites.

            The American political landscape is sprinkled with figures who were bona fide populists.  Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, and George Wallace come to mind.  But so should the 1972 liberal Democratic candidate George McGovern who proved that some populists lean left.  On the cover of Time Magazine, McGovern, U.S. senator from South Dakota, was dubbed “the prairie populist.” 

  All populists, of whatever stripe, have addressed the concerns of factory workers, farmers, small businesspeople, and manual laborers.  Donald Trump is not the first wealthy presidential candidate to do so.  Theodore Roosevelt was also “to the manor born” but built his career on opposing the railroads and banks and courting America’s working class. 

Trump’s base, with its thousands of rally goers, is a resurgence of the silent majority, the moral majority, the Tea Party, independents, libertarians, and even Democrats who are barely left of center.  This resurgence spreads over the nation like a blanket.  It constitutes a band of Americans who simply think “America First” makes sense for both their own interests and for other nations that still need America’s example of a city on a hill.

Secondly, Trump will win because evangelicals are practicing what they preach. Often ill-defined, evangelicals are Christians of many different denominations who believe in evangelism, that is, sharing their faith.  Following the example of Christ, they also believe in the expression “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”  This phrase itself is why countless well-known evangelical leaders have refused to let Donald Trump’s sins keep them from endorsing him.  They know that they, too, are sinners.  Their Bible says so.

Not all evangelicals support Trump, but an impressive number does, 76% according to Pew Research Center.   Evangelicals have constituted a large voting bloc since the 1970s.  Often accused of self-righteousness, evangelicals have certainly not been self-righteous regarding Trump. Some evangelicals are embarrassed by Trump, unlike many Democrats who never seemed too bothered by Bill Clinton’s White House shenanigans or his Arkansas escapades.  Even so, Hillary Clinton’s stance on abortion and homosexual marriage has tethered evangelicals  to Donald Trump.

Thirdly, the nation’s deplorables may not all have college degrees, but they aren’t dumb and far outnumber intellectuals.  Already effectively wooed by outsider Trump, deplorables were getting registered to vote long before Hillary Clinton so labeled them.  Intellectuals make their living with words.  Deplorables make their living with their hands.  They care little about any candidate’s faculty lounge pedigree or decades of governmental experience.

One intellectual, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, couldn’t defeat North Vietnam.  Another intellectual, constitutional scholar Barack Obama, can’t defeat ISIS.  But a deplorable Missouri haberdasher, Harry Truman, decisively ended a major world war.  Such realities are what led conservative columnist William F. Buckley to say he would rather be governed by the first 100 names in the telephone book (deplorables, that is) than by the Harvard faculty.

Lastly, Trump will triumph because there is a healthy rebellious spirit in the land.  It is a rebellion against globalism, loss of jobs, border insecurity, and denigration of law enforcement; against a hypocritical media that approves of Hollywood’s vulgarity but is apoplectic of Donald Trump’s, and against a conservative party that, while in control of both houses of Congress, has fought timidly, if at all, for conservative measures.

Trump understands that Hillary Clinton’s deplorables are actually the nation’s ignored citizens.  Many party regulars think Trump’s strategy of appealing to the ignored is dumb.  Actually it is politically astute.

Populism is not hovering; it’s spreading.  Evangelicals are not waiting for a perfect candidate; they’re praying for the one who will best represent their strongly held beliefs.  The deplorables are not humiliated by Hillary Clinton’s characterization of them; they’re wearing it on their t-shirts. And amongst voters there is an appetite for what we might call sufficient anger.

Donald Trump has tapped that sufficient anger and he will be rewarded.

Roger Hines

10/5/16 

Are Race Relations Worse Under a Black President?

         Are Race Relations Worse Under a Black President?

                          Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 2, 2016

            Waiting for the school bus, I saw them coming.  I sensed something was wrong with the picture, but my childhood values were not developed enough to understand that I was observing a sorrowful tradition.

            Every school day morning, waiting to ride into town to an excellent school, I, a white boy, watched as 10 to 15 black children and teenagers walked from the edge of town on past our house to a rickety shack.  There was no signage on the shack or the grounds.  The shack was a school for black children.  Its grounds were never kept.

            I know nothing of the quality of instruction received there and doubt that anyone wondered.  Segregation had a way of numbing the human spirit and the conscience.  Tradition can inspire or debase.  It can foster nobility or ignobility.

            Segregation fostered ignobility.  But segregation wasn’t an active evil.  More horribly, it was an unquestioned social order.  I never saw or heard of any mistreatment of black people.  My parents, as well as all of the adults I knew, would have quickly punished their children for the mistreatment of anyone, regardless of their color.

            Nevertheless there was no questioning, and seemingly no awareness, of an existing social order that was absolutely de-humanizing.  It must have been de-sensitizing as well, because as a college freshman I wrote an essay titled “A Defense of Legal Segregation.”  (Segregation was the law.)  If nothing else, the essay indicated that something which grieved me at ages 8, 9, and 10 no longer bothered me at age 19.  Apparently, tradition sucked me in.

            The essay received much attention, mainly because my English professor showed it to other professors, all of whom praised it highly.  I wallowed in their praise.

            The following summer I attended College Student Week at Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly in North Carolina.  I simply desired to grow spiritually.

            Did I ever!  At Ridgecrest, a man whose current social and political views I don’t share spoke on race.  At the time, Bill Moyers was Deputy Director of the Peace Corps.  A Baptist minister at that time as well, Moyers laid bare the truth about man’s inhumanity to man and how a Christian should respond to it.

            I was convicted.  Leaving the meeting, I wept.  How, within a decade, could I have allowed a tradition to change me from what I felt so keenly at age 8?  How could I have written that essay and enjoyed the attention it garnered?

            Back home, I tore up the essay.  My shame was instantly replaced by release and even joy.

            But how genuine was my conviction about race if I did not act on it?  Maybe I could string together some paragraphs on race for the college newspaper.  I did, but it wasn’t quite time for the student editor and faculty advisor to allow “pro-integration thought.”

            Four years later in my second year of teaching, I volunteered to teach at an all black school, resulting in one of the most memorable years of my life.  The outstanding faculty at Carver Jr. High in Meridian, Mississippi endeared themselves to me.  Their grasp of the race issue and their hopeful acceptance of gradualism were inspiring and instructive.  Mrs. Kornegay, teacher and wife of the city’s only black physician said often, “Mr. Hines, we’re making progress.  Let’s just keep it up.”

              My efforts to help promote racial unity over the years have been miniscule.  Unlike so many others, I have paid no price.  I’ve only received satisfaction and unforgettable black friends. 

So here’s my beef.  Why has racial conflict intensified under the leadership of a black president?  Why has he not taken a stand against rioters and thugs who call themselves protestors and have set back hard won gains? Why hasn’t he spoken out strongly on how to respond to the police?  Why has he not encouraged black citizens to observe the progress made in race relations, his election being a prime example?

Why haven’t Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Young, who paid so much, tried to influence the direction of our errant president?

Our black president has been elected twice.  Our nation’s lawyer is black.  So is the head of the nation’s homeland security.  My home state of Mississippi has more black elected officials than any other state.  The first state to secede from the Union has an outstanding black U.S. senator.  Every week I see good race relations everywhere I go. 

A black president who could have moved us forward has clung to the attitudes of professional, no-real-job protestors, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.  He could have extolled the self-reliant, forward looking mindset of accomplished men like Ben Carson and Herman Cain.

What a waste we have witnessed of an incredible opportunity.

Roger Hines

7/28/16             

Targeting Target: Identifying vs. Being

                             Targeting Target: Identifying vs. Being

                    Published in Marietta Daily Journal Sept. 25, 2016

            The following account is not concocted.  It is an honest, accurate description of an actual event.

            Three weeks ago I visited a Target store near where I live.  My objective wasn’t to make a purchase, but to see if what I had been reading about Target was true.  The information I had been receiving was that Target was leading the way in the Battle for the Bathrooms.  It was only fair to Target that I see for myself and ask a few questions.

            Once inside the store, I looked around for the manager.  Not seeing anyone who was thusly tagged, I decided to approach anyone who looked authoritative.

            Ah!  Standing at the front, facing the endless row of cashiers and exiting customers were three ladies who seemed to be surveying their domain.  One appeared to be in her forties; the other two were definitely twenty-something.

            Approaching the three of them, I asked, “Ladies, is it ok if I use the ladies restroom here in your store?”  The oldest lady, with a half-laugh and a tad of consternation, quickly answered “Nooo!”

            Instantly one of the two younger women, who obviously had more authority, laid her hand on the older woman’s forearm as though to restrain her, and said. “Wait, now!”  Turning to me she said, “Sir, you may use the restroom you identify with.”

            “What do you mean by ‘identify’?” I asked.

            “I mean that if you identify with a particular restroom, you may enter it.”  (In 10^th grade English they call that a redundancy.)

            I want to help make America sensible again.  We can start the journey to sensible only by fighting the forces that have slain common sense, stretched “equality” to the breaking point (not to mention trivializing it), while clothing themselves in something called “tolerance.”  I also wish to awaken parents to what we are letting happen.

            So, I forged on with one more question.  “So if I choose right now to identify as a female, I can go right now into the ladies restroom?”

            “Sir, all I can tell you is you may use the restroom you identify with.”

            Despite all the redundant vagueness, the answer I got was quite clear.  Target stands guilty as charged, or at least that particular store does. (Are dads of small or teenage girls keeping up with this issue?)

            This whole business, of course, is part and parcel of the transgender culture war.  And don’t we just love and admire the REAL men of the NFL and NBA who are defending my “right” to go into the ladies room?  Pro athletes were once the last vestige of masculinity.  Now they have caved, giving in to cultural currents that defy reason.

            But Dr. Paul McHugh, former Chairman of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, hasn’t caved.  Still a voice of reason, the good doctor, who ended sex-reassignment surgery at Johns Hopkins, rejects the argument that gender is a “social construct,” unrelated to biology.

            The mainstreaming of homosexuality took a long time.  Not so, that of transgenderism and gender equality.  Last year’s Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, that granted civil-rights protection to homosexual marriage, was more than a foot in the door.  It opened the door wide, through which, no doubt, will march “trouples” and any other marital arrangement people prefer. Through it supporters of non-gender bathrooms  have already marched.

            Unlike most politicians, Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina is standing firm.  It was North Carolina’s House Bill 2 that over-rode local ordinances like the one in Charlotte which allowed use of public facilities by either sex.  Because of HB 2, the NBA is moving its 2017 All-Star game out of Charlotte. 

            The so called men of the NFL, the NBA, and scores of corporations are rejecting  biology, chromosomes, the created order, and the fact that we are male and female.  They are rejecting what gender equality rejects which includes modesty, privacy, dignity, safety, comfort, and vulnerability.      

            Upon learning about the president’s directive regarding school restrooms, Texas governor Greg Abbott earlier this year tweeted, “JFK wanted to send a man to the moon.  President Obama wants to send a man to the women’s restroom.”  What a difference in goals and vision.

            The push for transgenderism and gender equality has led to public policy based on whim and the principle of the squeaky wheel. It also casts doubt in the minds of children and youth about an issue that for millennia has been settled.

            If “gender dysphoria” is a legitimate condition, surely there are other ways to sympathetically address it than by creating laws that defy nature and by government reaching into the schools and toilets of local communities.

            Time to say “Enough!”

Roger Hines

9/21/16

The Liberation of the Commoners

                      The Liberation of the Commoners

                Published in Marietta Daily Journal Sept. 18, 2016

            Amongst so-called common folks there is a wisdom that confounds the wise.  I saw it while growing up.  Why, I wondered, were the uneducated farmers up and down our graveled county road so smart?  Why were they so content and constantly at peace with themselves and their world?

            I’m thinking of at least ten men, all of whom were landowners, and their happy families.  My father wasn’t among that ten.  A tenant farmer, he often worked for one or more of them.  But he was their peer as far as smarts, a happy family, and a life of contentment were concerned.

            During that time, President Eisenhower smiled down on the nation, and his successor, President Kennedy, lent the nation idealism and vision.  Post- World War II prosperity was sprouting, along with a new spirit, even though the Korean conflict, segregation, and the looming Vietnam era cast their shadow.

            The ten men I’ve referred to were men of faith.  They were neither rich nor poor.   All of them voted and regularly discussed politics and public policy.  They took pride in their land which they often referred to as their “place.”

            As an older teenager, I concluded, rightly or wrongly, that the satisfaction I saw in these men came from their faith, their land, and their labor.  Land and labor, of course, was more than soil and sweat.  It was food, family, and fellowship.  It was also identity.

            Most of the era I’m referring to pre-dated LBJ’s Great Society, Carter’s Department of Education that enabled G.W. Bush’s overreaching reshape of education, and Obama’s Affordable Care Act.  Because this era predated these and other big government programs, there  was plainly less regulation and more liberty.

            Have we noticed that free people are inventive, ingenious, productive, and happy?  And that slaves, peasants, and victims of bureaucracy are not?  Yes, it was religious and economic liberty that produced the joy in our little corner of the county which, incidentally, was called the Liberty Community.

            But Liberty Community was also peopled with carpenters, welders, house painters, bricklayers, and store owners.  I’m persuaded that this hardworking “class” of people amongst whom I grew up and to whom I owe so much, are the grandfathers of many of Donald Trump’s supporters.

            No wonder their hardworking grandchildren have been engaged by Trump’s words.  Consider what Trump said to the Detroit Economic Club: “American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring.  We will put new American metal into the spine of the nation.  American hands will rebuild this country and American energy – mined from American sources – will power it.  Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo.”

            “Steel,” “spine of the nation,” “American,” “hands,” and “new credo” are powerful, emotional words.  They may not inspire lobbyists, D.C. bureaucrats, or Cable TV talking heads, but they certainly excite Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and other such commoners who build our houses, transport our food, police our cities, and repair our plumbing.

            It is such commoners who still have the common sense that our political class has let slip.  It is the “deplorables” who are confounding the political consultants, the party leaders, and CNN.  How can commoners support a billionaire, they ask.  Because they like what he says and do not like how liberal and conservative elites alike are characterizing them.

            Long before Hillary Clinton labeled half of Trump’s supporters a basket of deplorables, President Obama warned one of his audiences about Americans who “cling to guns and religion.”  That wouldn’t have set well with those farmers whose practical wisdom shaped my life.

            Time Magazine’s Joe Klein recently called Trump’s supporters an “idiot fringe of half crazed, disgraceful, barbaric racists and hatemongers.”  (Newt Gingrich, Mike Pence, James Dobson, Rudy Giuliani, and Phil Robertson?)  And we thought Trump could throw zingers.

            Donald Trump has given the working class a voice.  Leaders of both parties and their political consultants are nervous.  The Trump phenomenon is an apt comparison and parallel to the Brexit vote in Britain.  52% of British voters opted to exit the Brussels-based European Union.  Like America’s political class, Britain’s political and business leaders are aghast that voters said “Enough!”  Britain’s victorious common folks expressed unequivocally their preference for their own flag and fiscal policy over that of the European Union, especially regarding immigration.

            Brexit was the middle class’s kick in the seat of Britain’s leadership.  Trumpism is sending the same message in America.

            The independent-minded farmers for whom my father and I worked would stand with Britain and America’s commoners.  They too favored localism, not the tyranny of centralization or the regulatory state.

Roger Hines

9/14/16 

“Arf, arf” or “Let There be Speech,” Which Was It?

      “Arf, arf” or “Let There be Speech,” Which Was It?

                Published in Marietta Daily Journal Sept. 11, 2016

            Evolutionary theory, a million miles wide and a quarter inch deep, still covers the earth like the dew.  How could it not?  It is the dogma of science education and the default position of modern biology.  It is the belief system heralded by such evangelists as the militant atheist Richard Dawkins, and the popular, TV “Science Guy,” Bill Nye.

            If your children or grandchildren are in a public school, they are being sufficiently schooled in evolutionary theory.  What else is there to consider when students are presented only one view of things?  The National Science Teachers Association makes sure that evolution is extolled and that anything approaching intelligent design is fast debunked.

            Departing from Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, NASA pioneer Wernher von Braun, and other imminent people of science, today’s evolution evangelists still cling to the conclusions of Charles Darwin.  Darwin actually gleaned his theories from his ailing contemporary, Alfred Russell Wallace.  Together, these two men advanced the notion of “survival of the fittest,” arguing that the earth is populated with an impressive display of creatures, all of which developed from a smaller, less “fit’ ancestor.

            But Wallace and Darwin had a problem.  They didn’t know what to do with language and speech.  Was speech also gotten progressively?  Did the sounds we produce with our tongues, lips, teeth, and hard palate also evolve over time?

            Glance at all of the words on this page or screen.  Ponder words long enough and you might begin to marvel.  Words are actually symbols that stand for something much larger than themselves.  They signify thought and mental processes.

              Language being the wonder it is, how do you suppose humans first learned to use it?  Language (speech) is the combination of sounds that have meaning in a particular cultural community, but how did we first learn to combine those sounds meaningfully?

            Theories abound.  The Heave-ho theory argues that language emerged from grunts and utterances, as when early man picked up a felled log, grunted, and heaved it into place for fortification.  Fanciful?  Many things about evolution are.

            The Bow-wow theory asserts that our speech evolved from animal sounds.  Wallace, Darwin, and even some major linguists “reasoned” that animal sounds led to our own.  This conclusion is questionable as well.  A dog’s “Arf, arf!” and a bird’s “Tweet, tweet” are a long way from “Amanda, light of my life, Fate should have made you a gentleman’s wife,” and I suspect Wayland Jennings would agree. 

            Another theory of language origins is the Divine Gift theory.  Universities don’t like this one.  It contains a “religious” word that could offend their students.

            The question is, is language the result of chance?  Did dog or baboon barking and bird whistling eventually develop into the sparkling words that brought fame to Cicero and Churchill?

            Darwin basically ignored the issue in his most famous work, “On the Origins of the Species” (1859), but in a lesser known work, “The Descent of Man” (1871), he asserted that animal sounds did eventually slide into human language.  Then why do dogs still bark and birds still sing is what I want to know.  If there is a missing link between ape and man, there also appears to be one between Lassie and Rin Tin Tin on one hand and Cicero and Churchill on the other.

            Could Wallace and Darwin not acknowledge that language is one thing that makes humans human, that speech is a human activity, that animals can communicate but cannot talk?  No, they could not, all because of their philosophical presumptions. Evolution is also philosophy.  It cannot pass muster for Aristotle’s scientific method: observe, record, and theorize.  Neither Wallace nor Darwin was there at the dawn of time to observe and make notes on language acquisition or anything else.  That, obviously, did not keep them from theorizing.

            Oh, the philosophical webs of guess work that we weave when we refuse to accept that life contains marvels and wonders such as human language.  Wonders that our minds will never fathom and our theories will never rightly describe.  I’m grateful science has brought us out of ancient shadows into electricity, clean water, medicine, and instant communication, but it has also brought us disenchantment, almost emptying us of the majestic and the supernatural (as in the Divine Gift theory).

            Yes, man is a special species, as his language indicates.

            Science still has not taught us to love our neighbor or to even go meet him.  Our success or failure in “saving the planet” hinges on language and our ability and willingness to use it wisely and well and for good purpose.

            Arf, arf!

Roger Hines

9/7/16

Clothes No Longer ‘Make the Man,’ or the Woman Either

        Clothes No Longer ‘Make the Man,’ or the Woman Either

                    Published in Marietta Daily Journal Sept. 4, 2016

            I’m sorry, but the way people are dressing these days is driving me nuts.  Appropriate dress has always indicated respect for a particular occasion or perhaps particular guests.  If a bunch of 1960’s farmers up and down Old Highway 80 in central Mississippi consider it proper to “dress up” a bit for church, or a wedding, or a funeral, then surely today’s more educated and refined folks could pay similar respects.

            I know, it all depends on one’s raising.  But before you start judging me for judging others, let me hasten to add that I’m not arguing for tuxedos or long, flowing gowns or even for coats and ties.  No, I’m arguing against something, namely the exposed bosoms of women, the accentuated, blue jean-clasped derrieres of teenage girls and women alike, and hairy legs of men of all ages.

            Please don’t consider me creepy for bringing it all up or for noticing it in the first place.  Anybody reading this newspaper knows what I’m talking about, which is the loss of grace and self-respect, not to mention respect for others.

            Why do judges wear robes?  Why do graduates wear them?  Why do TV news anchors look nice?  Why don’t brides just saunter down the aisle in cut-off jeans while chewing gum?  (I’m a little afraid for that last sentence to appear in print.  People these days get crazy ideas and will do anything for fun.)  Anyhow, need I say more about the chaotic, libertine state of American dress?

            More and more people are caring less and less about their appearance.  No, I take that back.  They do care how they look, and they want to look like others.  In other words, people want to be “in,” not “out.”  I’m talking about adults.  

            Since the advent of youth culture which I’m placing in 1956 and for which I’m primarily blaming Elvis Presley (hey, I loved him too), youth have always insisted on being “in,” not “out.”  Funny thing, though: for exactly 6 decades teenagers have clamored for individuality and have hailed non-conformity, all the while conforming to their peers in dress and lingo.  So much for individuality and non-conformity.

            But teenagers are young.  We should understand their desire to be accepted and should tolerate (some) of their testing of limits.  However, people age 20 to 95 are not teenagers.  Somebody help me tell them.

            Several years ago while in Nashville, TN I attended a large suburban church.  Worshippers were of all ages, all styles of dress, and all smiles.  The minister happened to be wearing a coat and tie.

            One year later at the same church, worshippers were still dressing in all styles, and were still comprised of all ages.  The minister looked different.  Same man, but instead of coat and tie, his garb – I wouldn’t lie about a minister – was flip-flops, shorts, and a beach shirt.  But for his spiked hair, I would have thought my former college mate, Jimmy Buffett, was approaching the platform.

            The minister’s new “in” look didn’t change his message or its sincere, passionate delivery, but I did have trouble getting my mind off Jimmy Buffett’s gentle ballad, “Come Monday.”  (Google it, but don’t Google any of his other songs.)

            More importantly, I couldn’t get my mind off one of Chaucer’s best lines, “If gold rusts, what then will iron do?”  That is, in this case, if leaders insist on being “in,” what do they expect their listeners to do?

            I know, I know.  Their goal is to “reach” people, whether the reachers are ministers, politicians, or teachers.  No concept has ever been so stretched or so flawed.  The poor can’t help the poor, the addict can’t help the addict, and the man in a ditch can’t help another man in the ditch.  True, one must get in the ditch to help someone in it, but you don’t stay in the ditch.  Nor do you have to dress like a drunk to pull a drunk out of the ditch.  Ask successful veteran teachers, who love both their work and those in their charge, if they’ve had to dress or talk like their charges.

            Our rush to casualness is calculated and fairly recent.  With it has come the capitulation of adults to youthful tastes and habits.  Instead of forming and informing our children’s tastes, we have adopted their tastes.  If a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, then adults should say so to youth instead of wallowing with them in the ordinary.

            Today we are not helping our offspring aim high.  Casualness, calculated or not, is the enemy of excellence.  And casualness is winning.

Roger Hines

8/31/16