Why Trump Should be Elected in 2024

 

Why Trump Should be Elected in 2024

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Oct. 15, 2022

I have little doubt that the 2024 Democrat nominee for President will be Hillary Clinton. Who else could rally the Democrats, so many of whom are drifting away from their party because it is ignoring spiraling crime, wrecking the economy, kowtowing to its radical wing, and showing its lack of sure-footedness in foreign affairs? Who else could the Democrats call on? Unlike Republicans, the Democrat team has no bench. They have only one experienced player and that’s Hillary. 

The Republican bench is strong. It has several male and female presidential and vice-presidential possibilities, none of whom are so politically challenged that they would make parents their enemies, declare children their charges, view police as objects of scorn, deem rioters the justified victims of racism, or raid the homes of pro-life activists.

 Democrats are no longer the party of blue collar America or of the broad middle class. Amazingly, a New York billionaire is largely responsible for this political sea change. How interesting that a wealthy city-boy could become the leader of the working class. Donald Trump did not arouse the 74 million Americans who put him in office. Rather, it was the already aroused voters who saw in Trump a confident, fearless leader and a glimmer of hope. In 2016 Trump knocked off his every Republican contender  by attacking the liberal Democrat media, addressing the issue of borders, challenging the power of transnational corporations that felt little allegiance if any to America, calling out timid Republicans, wooing religious conservatives, and doing so by veering from fancy, exalted speeches to speaking plainly to voters.

Trump is paying dearly for what he did. An unforgiving media, the unrelenting members of Congressional committees, government bureaucrats, and personal enemies from his past are not making his life easy. His inordinate language is terrible though it should be noted that our current president and a good half of the members of Congress have joined him in the filthy mouth department.

Despite his faults, Donald Trump brought to our attention the demise of our norms and institutions. Having fizzled, the ‘60s Peter, Paul, and Mary approach to changing America with a working class rebellion has been altered. The left has turned its attention and goals from the working class - the proletariat – to the intelligentsia, that is, the university and also to the broader culture, particularly public education. It appears that all of those working stiffs were just too dumb (actually, too smart) to fall for Joan Biaz, the Kingston Trio, Jane Fonda and other liberal voices. Today university students are denied conservative speakers. Public school classrooms as close to my house as Chattanooga, TN are being exposed to sick-o drag queens and “gender education.”

Most remarkable is the left’s success in winning corporations to its camp and away from the Republican Party. Disney announced publicly its opposition to the Florida law that banned discussion of gender identity in elementary classrooms. Fortunately, Disney has been chastised. According to researcher Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, Disney has had significant cancellations of cruises and of planned trips to theme parks. Yet Disney, hundreds of other corporations, pro sports, Big Tech, public health agencies, and the military are still bent on espousing the left’s social issues agenda: support of the LGBQT lobby, transgender politics, anti-gun legislation, open borders, and “equity.”

What scares Democrats is Trump’s success with judicial appointments (we now have a conservative Court), deregulation, tax cuts, and his favor with the deplorable masses. What scares RINOs/Never-Trumpers is actually Trump’s adherence to basic Republican principles. What scares them both is the favor Trump enjoys from parents who believe that they and not the schools should determine what their children are to be taught.

When pressed to comment on the supposed alcoholism of his great General Grant, Lincoln said, “He still fights.” So, with all of his shortcomings supposed or real, does Donald Trump. There are two main reasons why he should run and be elected in 2024. One is that he does not parrot the global narrative but believes a government should and must first serve its own people before it can be a leader of nations. Consequently, his America First theme. Another reason is that the Biden administration, in addition to weakening the nation, has weakened America’s standing and leadership in the world. Compare how Russia and China view Biden to how they viewed Reagan or Trump. Consider the dangerous ramifications of this difference. 

The Democrat Party long ago abandoned Middle America’s values and needs. Trump can and will restore sanity to a nation that is now veering off the tracks. He’s done it before by defeating the one he would most likely face again.

 

Roger Hines

October 13, 2022

Then and Now

  Then and Now

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Oct. 8, 2022

            It is good when the past can be linked with the present.

            At the recent unveiling of the portrait of Cobb Superior Court Judge Grant Brantley, an event highlighted by the Marietta Daily Journal, I was reminded of a thought that has flitted across my brain many times for the past 51 years. It was the thought of how similar in spirit Cobb County is to the county in which I grew up.

            My hometown is Forest, Mississippi, a small but lively haven beautified still by its stately pines, its good people, and excellent community leaders. Forest lies almost smack in the middle of the state on Interstate 20. “Hometown” doesn’t mean I actually grew up there. It means that Forest was the nearest incorporated town where we bought groceries and went to school. In other words we lived out in the country.

            Of course, the town, county, and state were all Democrat. Forest and the surrounding area had only one Republican that we knew of. His name was Robert McDonald. He drove a shiny, new Oldsmobile that looked mighty odd because it was tubular and balloon-looking. A good man with a great family, McDonald blew his horn and waved every time he passed by our house. We always wondered why he was a Republican. He was far too nice and friendly to have come from the North. Maybe his parents had come from up there but he had finished drying off. At any rate, McDonald and all the Democrats got along well. In fact the wealthiest of Forest never met a stranger.

            In August of 1971 at age 27 I became a proud Georgian. Landing in Marietta my wife, our two-year-old daughter and I got our first glimpse of Georgian hospitality at Roswell Street Baptist Church. It was a large, growing church with a conservative theological message and a genuine heart for all people. The Cobb County School System for which I worked had excellent leadership. There was tension on the school board at the time but none that deterred the school system’s progress. Lockheed was popping, its C-5A having recently been delivered to the military. Vietnam was waning. Watergate was looming. Whether the best of times or the worst of times, they were marked by vision and optimism.

             Throughout the next four decades I observed superb community leadership like that which my father had appreciated back in Mississippi. In Cobb, Republican numbers were increasing but that didn’t kill off civility amongst Cobb’s community and political leaders. Commissioner Ernest Barrett was never ambiguous about where he stood on any issue but was not known as a divider. The rising Democrat native and legislator Roy Barnes didn’t seem to be bothered by Republican advances. As is his habit he simply plowed on confidently and joyfully. Laden with collegiate and law school honors that would have caused many politicians to feel self-important, Barnes remained himself.

             At the unveiling of Judge Brantley’s painting it was Barnes the walking encyclopedia who cast my mind back to Forest and its non-elitist elites who treated each other and all the surrounding country folks with dignity and respect. Chronicling Judge Brantley’s career path to the courtroom, the former governor informed and entertained the crowd of Democrats, Republicans, and probably every other political stripe that lives in Cobb. Cobb GOP chair Salleigh Grubbs was present as was Democrat turned Republican Mike Bowers, Georgia’s former attorney general. Former Congressman Buddy Darden did his part in showing respect for Judge Brantley and humorously recounting his own defeat by Bob Barr in 1994. The event bespoke the spirit of the county in which I had grown up and of the county in which I have lived for the last half century.

            The reason for all the unity, of course, was Brigadier General Judge Brantley himself. Deservedly praised by all speakers as a great man and an exemplary leader, Brantley personified in my mind the goodness of Scott County, MS and Cobb County, GA. Cobb has its Brantley; Scott Co. had its Roy Noble Lee. Cobb had its Ernest Barrett; Scott County had its Hobson Harvey. Other examples and parallels abound. 

            Cobb County may be changing but we can hope that the spirit that has guided her for decades will not cease. If so, then we can agree with Shakespeare that the past is prologue or better still with Mississippi’s William Faulkner that the past is not over yet. It is outstanding figures like Brantley, plus those who praised him, who have made Cobb County the good place that it is today.

           

Roger Hines

October 6, 2022         

A Few Questions

A Few Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Roger Hines

September 29, 2022

           

What are Liberals Afraid Of?

 

What are Liberals Afraid Of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Roger Hines

September 22, 2022

Is America an Empire?

  Is America an Empire?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Roger Hines

September 15, 2022   

When Words Lose Their Power … Because of Alteration

When Words Lose Their Power … Because of Alteration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Roger Hines

September 8, 2022  

Colleges, Biden, and Labor Day

Colleges, Biden, and Labor Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Roger Hines

September 1, 2022