A Famous Russian and A First Lady: A Disagreement That Continues

                     A Famous Russian and a First Lady: A Disagreement that Continues 

                                                                               Published in the Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 4, 2015

            It happened 37 years ago and still perches in my mind.  Perhaps that’s because the disagreement between two famous people was prophetic.  The positions each held are still argued today.

            In the spring of 1978 Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement address at Harvard University.  The famous writer had been expelled from his beloved country in 1974 for criticizing the oppressive Soviet Union, particularly its gulag prison system.  Having spent a decade in a labor camp for “rebellion against the state,” Solzhenitsyn had a basis for his claims.

  In 1970 Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, a short novel that describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner in a Soviet labor camp.  For revealing such information, though done through fiction, he was branded an enemy of the state.

            Suffice it to say that conditions and treatment of prisoners in the gulag were horrendous.    In his book, Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was even more critical of the Soviet system, claiming that whether in the gulags or in ordinary work places, many Soviet people were literally worked to death.

            Eventually stripped of his citizenship and deported to Germany, Solzhenitsyn received an invitation from Stanford University to come and do his writing in the United States.  Settling in Vermont, the famous dissident began writing about the West, particularly America.  His Harvard speech echoed what he had begun to observe.

            Many Americans were stunned by Solzhenitsyn’s observations.  Perhaps they expected bright descriptions of Western culture, in contrast to Soviet oppression.  However, clumping Europe and America together, Solzhenitsyn charged both places with “loss of manliness,” and “decline in courage.”  Of economics he wrote, “Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.”

            Solzhenitsyn asserted that Americans were falling victim to “television stupor,” and were “losing sight of their own values.”  He described America’s music as intolerable, art as decadent, and our understanding of the price of freedom as nil.

            A few days after Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard address, First Lady Rosalyn Carter addressed the National Press Club.  She disagreed with the great Russian’s assessment of American life, arguing that Americans were strong, not complacent as Solzhenitsyn had claimed, and certainly not as soft.  From the snippets shown on television, the First Lady was a bit indignant.

            The summer after these two spring addresses, I was teaching at the Governor’s Honors Program, a 6-weeks enrichment program for Georgia’s highest academic achievers.  In my class were 30 of Georgia’s finest and brightest high school seniors.  When I presented to them some written notes and direct quotes from the two speeches and required them to discuss the notes in groups before commenting, I was surprised at the responses of 17-year olds.

            All of the students except one agreed with Solzhenitsyn.  In fact they faulted the First Lady for being naïve toward “what’s going on in American youth culture.”  I began to do a quick mental inventory of the music teenagers of 1978 were listening to, to see if I could discern some reasons for their thinking.  Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil” was popular and Blondie was exuding what back then might have been called sensuality, but nothing compared to Miley Cyrus’ scuzz.  Besides, Olivia Newton John’s “Hopelessly Devoted to You” was sweet and commendable.

            Even so, 29 of 30 students stood with the Russian dissident.  When asked to write his “minority report” for delivery the next day, our sole First Lady defender produced this: “Solzhenitsyn and Mrs. Carter are talking about two different Americas.  Solzhenitsyn is an intellectual.  The company he keeps consists of writers, musicians, artists – all the producers of the art he decries.  Mrs. Carter is a product of Plains, Georgia.  Her company has been Southern farm folk whose sturdiness matches that of the stately pines and spreading oaks of Sumter County, Georgia.  It is a human trait to interpret the times in light of the company one keeps.”

            I admired Solzhenitsyn and Mrs. Carter, as well as the young man who taught his peers what perspective really is.  One suspects both Solzhenitsyn and Mrs. Carter were correct.  Solzhenitsyn’s preachments against “decadent art and arid pseudo-intellectualism” are still needed, but so are the words of the First Lady.  Her chief argument was that Americans possess a deep strength that is often beclouded by the sheer amount of publicity given to the decadence Solzhenitsyn described.

No, we’re not in Kansas anymore, but in the land of scuzz and freakiness, so I’m going to remember the First Lady’s perspective the next time I turn on the television.

           

Roger Hines

9/30/15

Goodness and Guns - They're Not Mutually Exclusive

                            Goodness and Guns … They’re Not Mutually Exclusive

                                                                        Published in the Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 11, 2015

            There is nothing more senseless than announcing to the world that where you live, work, worship or attend school is a “gun-free zone.”  Surely those who do so have a romanticized view of human nature.

            Perhaps they believe there is no such thing as bad people.  Maybe they think an evil or sick person will honor their gun-free stance and move along to commit crime elsewhere.  Why would anyone say to anybody, “I am defenseless”?

            Yet this very mindset is being urged, again, by the nation’s president, he who is protected hourly by men with weapons.  Guns, in fact.  It is the height of hypocrisy to tell others they cannot defend themselves while you yourself are defended by an armed entourage.

            The president is right when he says, “Here we go again.  We’ve just had another shooting.  The pattern continues.”  But there’s another pattern that continues as well.  It is the pattern of politicizing every tragic shooting, banging the drums for gun control legislation and telling law-abiding citizens they are at fault.

            If only at Umpqua College in Oregon someone in Classroom 15 other than the shooter had had a gun.  I’m talking about a responsible citizen with a legal weapon who knows how and when to use it.  Such citizens are everywhere, except where guns aren’t permitted.  If only at Charleston, if only at Virginia Tech.  If only at several other places.

            Gun owners are being painted by the president and others (we won’t call any names at ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN; we hardly need to) as violence-prone people who are always eager to reach for a gun.  The opposite is true.  Unlike the suited up network news anchors who have probably never seen a gun and are frightened by the thought of one, seasoned gun owners know quite well what a serious thing a gun is.  Members of the NRA, Gun Owners of America and other such groups respect guns, knowing quite well their history and their proper use.

            I wish the president and all others who get the hibby-gibbies at the very thought of a gun would attend a gun show.  Not to be unkind, but I suspect half of them would faint as soon as they saw the massive display of guns.  But if smelling salts could revive them and if they would hang around, they could meet good citizens from all walks of life.

            We know what the president and the media elites are thinking.  They think that gun show enthusiasts are snaggle-toothed moonshiners who come out of the woods to gloat at the sight of weapons.  On the contrary, gun enthusiasts are lawyers, teachers, ministers, mechanics, merchants, farmers, engineers and physicians.  Many of these are women, a fact that would drive the elite visitors crazy.

            Something that would really impress (or puzzle) the president and his tender sycophants is the congeniality that marks such a diverse group.  Some of them will be avid hunters; others, weapon historians.  Some will have self-defense on their minds; others, marksmanship.  But all of them will be good, regular Americans who know and respect guns and understand the ramifications of gun ownership.  However, they definitely dislike having their freedom abridged.

            Most of them don’t squawk about their right to bear arms, but you can bet they vote and know about the second amendment.

            Three years ago this column space was twice devoted to the folly of the anti-gun lobby’s position.  The first column argued that no school or college should be a gun-free zone and that every school and college campus should have an adequate number of well-trained, psychologically vetted personnel always armed.  The second column pointed out that we seem to be slow in noticing that so many shootings occur at schools and colleges.

            The president’s solution is to restrict the freedom of law-abiding gun owners and potential gun owners.  This analogy would offend him, but he prefers the shotgun approach rather than the rifle approach.

            “Virtute et armis” is a Latin expression that means “by virtue and arms” or “by valor and arms.”  It is the insignia motto of at least two states.  Virtue, of course, refers to moral excellence; arms refers to weapons.  It is not a distortion of this classical expression to argue that it means “goodness and guns.”  In other words, human beings should be virtuous and good, but also wise.  Not stupid.

            It is not wise to think that we can change the behavior of evil or sick people or protect ourselves from them by disarming ourselves. But that is exactly what the anti-gun lobby is arguing.

Roger Hines

10/7/15

What's in a Name? Our Changing Political Lingo

What’s in a Name? … Our Changing Political Lingo

                                                                            Published in the Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 18, 2015

            In Shakespeare’s play, “Romeo and Juliet,” Juliet vents her grief over the conflict between her family, the Capulets, and the family of Romeo, the Montagues.  Because the families’ feud has kept them from seeing each other, Juliet wishes the names Montague and Capulet could just go away.

            “A name, a name.  What’s in a name?” she laments. “A rose by any name would smell as sweet.”  Juliet’s sentiment is now being played out in American politics.  In presidential politics, names or labels are taking a back seat.

            For many decades we have spoken of liberals and conservatives or the left and the right. Because of the Donald Trump phenomenon, the terms left and right are yielding to “the elites” and “the people.”  Imagine it.  Actually, we don’t have to.  It’s real.  Thousands upon thousands of middle class citizens are flocking to hear a billionaire man of privilege, and to cheer wildly at what he has to say about government and the government’s policies.  They seem not to care about labels.

            This billionaire hasn’t exactly had a hard life.  Born into wealth, he chose not to rest on his family’s laurels, creating wealth of his own.  He has also held and expressed opinions that are liberal, conservative and moderate as well, but his philosophical spread seems not to matter.  Most notably, he excites voters of all economic strata. 

            Straight talk is the engine that drives this new political train.  Authenticity is its fuel.  Trump’s insults of other candidates grate.  His occasional slips of bad words make many of us frown, particularly parents and grandparents of young children.  Even so, his clear language and beguiling sincerity seem to cover some of his sins.

            Whether we view Mr. Trump as the real thing or the slickest fellow since P.T. Barnum, he is changing our labels, re-positioning the political poles and driving the discussion.

            Labels are necessary.  To talk about anything we have to call it something.   Despite the efforts of the new organization, No Labels, we will always have them, divisive as they may be.  Actually, labels can be as clarifying as they are divisive.

            In the case of the Trump phenomenon, which understandably has reduced the establishment to dizziness, old labels are being disregarded.  The political spectrum is now the elites and the ordinary folks.  How historically interesting!  How reminiscent of the past!  Our newly labeled divide is actually a return to pre-democracy days.

            Mr. Trump is striking a chord because democracy is waning and Old World class-ism is creeping.  As things are going now, America’s future is Europe’s past.  We sense it. We know it.  But we don’t understand it because we still get to vote, so how is it happening? 

            It’s happening because we now have a political class, a donor class and an elite media class on one side and all the rest of us on the other.  Have we forgotten that the Tea Party emerged because Congress cared more about Wall Street than Main Street?  Could we not tell that Speaker Boehner ran an absolutely top-down, dictatorial operation that, in effect, rendered House members unable to represent their constituents?  All bills had to be approved by his steering committee.  Have we not noticed how candidates (not Trump) allow the media stars to twist them like pretzels so that they wind up sounding wishy-washy?  As for big donors, they expect a return and they get it.

            What better to call the Tea Party, the Trump army and the House Freedom Caucus than a reaction to institutional failure?  The same thing is happening in Europe where grassroots groups and Nationalist parties are now speaking out loudly on immigration.  As with the “nativists” in Europe, so with the Trump supporters: multiculturalism and raw government power can be taken only so far.

            The Trump-ites are a sleeping giant that is stirring and rubbing its eyes.  Forget party labels.   Trump-ites only know there are so many things (immigration, judicial tyranny, executive overreach, un-elected bureaucrats) over which they have no control and against which their elected representatives seem hesitant to speak.  They like the fact that their man, a successful manager, rails against unsuccessful managerial government.

            What else is Obamacare but a whopping instruction manual for managers?  Ask your doctor, who is now a manager, what he or she thinks of this manual.  Do so while he or she pecks away on a computer in order to satisfy the government while doing their best to doctor you at the same time.

            Labels?  How much do they matter when the state continues to grow in size and power?  If both houses of Congress are controlled by conservatives who cannot forge conservative policy, no wonder labels are becoming insignificant.

Roger Hines

10/14/15

Partisanship Extended, Partisanship Accepted, and Civility Practiced

                                  Partisanship Extended, Partisanship Accepted, and Civility Practiced

                                                                            Published in the Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 25, 2015

            In late September presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, spoke at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.  According to news reports, Sanders was treated with respect by students and received scattered if tepid applause throughout his address.

            For 4 years my family and I traveled back and forth to Lynchburg to see our daughter Wendy, a student at Liberty.  Each visit increased our appreciation for the university and the vision it stood for and aspired to.  Sanders’ invitation and kind reception are an indication that our daughter’s alma mater is still committed to letting all voices be heard.  If only this were so for all the tolerance-preaching universities across the country.

            Rutgers University, the bastion of tolerance that it is, disinvited former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  Brown University didn’t disinvite New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, so students fixed that by shouting him down.  At Liberty students who showed such disrespect for a guest speaker would get a good talking to.

            Most major universities in the country, public or private, are usually hostile to conservative speakers who oppose or veer from liberal orthodoxy.   At such schools students often revile the speakers they disagree with if the president or student government association hasn’t disinvited them first.

            Liberty, instead of protesting voices it disagrees with, invites them to speak.  Many a speaker has come to Liberty probably expecting to feel like a stranger in a strange land, only to find that common courtesy abounds.  This attitude has always been Liberty’s stance.  How odd that all universities don’t teach and expect the same thing.

            Liberty is a Christian university, not unlike Harvard, Princeton and Yale during their first century of existence.  It was founded by Jerry Falwell, the Lynchburg native and pastor who along with the nation’s most widely read columnist, Cal Thomas, launched the Moral Majority.  The largest Christian university in the world, Liberty houses 14,000 students and has over 100,000 online.

            Those surprised by Liberty’s hosting a leftist like Bernie Sanders are probably unaware of “the Liberty Way” which consistently urges students to respectfully engage the culture, not withdraw from it.  Critics probably don’t know that over two decades ago one of Liberty’s speakers – one who endeared himself to students personally, though not philosophically – was liberal lion, Senator Ted Kennedy.  Kennedy’s invitation emanated from his friendship with Falwell, Liberty’s then Chancellor.  Absolutely an odd couple, the two men were what today’s lingo would call “frenemies” or “best enemies.”

            It must have been a genuine friendship, for when the health of Kennedy matron Rose Kennedy took a turn for the worse at her Florida winter home, Ted Kennedy called Rev. Falwell to ask him to come and pray for his mother.  Falwell flew to Florida.

            A recent occurrence at Duke University illustrates the difference between Liberty and so many other universities.  Over the summer Duke assigned all incoming freshman a graphic novel titled “Fun Home: A Family Tragedy,” a coming-of-age story of a young lesbian. (“Graphic novel” nowadays doesn’t refer to content, but to type; they are actually pictorial, glorified comic books.)

            When an incoming Christian student objected, the Washington Post pounced and asked him to explain why.  He answered, “Without the sexual images or erotic language, I would have read it, but viewing pictures of sexual acts, regardless of the genders of the people involved, conflicts with the inherent sacredness of sex.”      

            Presumably, Duke was attempting to “broaden” its incoming freshmen, but the “broadening” amounted to indoctrination.  More than a few universities as well known as Duke charge a pretty $40,000 or more a year for their “broadening” efforts.  At Liberty, “broadening” takes place by sending their teacher candidates around the world to do their student teaching  (our Wendy landed in Kenya), and by training debate teams that were number one – yes, defeating Harvard and others – from 2005 to 2011.  Going beyond mere “tolerance,” Liberty gives differing viewpoints a microphone.

            “Tolerance,” which has become a religion in academia, isn’t tolerance at all.  It is agenda-driven nonsense, selective freedom of expression and partisanship gone wild.  There is no civility in shouting down speakers of any stripe on a college campus.  Nor is there any respect in having students read salacious material in the interest of “sensitivity training,” especially when the material is over the top and violates a student’s religious convictions.

            An ethic at a university that teaches “Be ye kind one to another” is far more likely to be open-minded about differences of opinion than one that feeds its students social drivel. I suspect Bernie Sanders would now agree.

Roger Hines

10/21/15

In Praise of the Long, Fast Highways

                                  In Praise of the Long, Fast Highways

                                                                        Published in the Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 1, 2015

            Locals and passers-through alike can’t help but notice the highway construction alongside Interstate 75 through Cobb County.  When the job is completed, travelers who wish to do so can escape traffic on the existing lanes by cruising above it on a high bridge-like structure.

I can’t wait to see it.  In fact, I wish I could sit on a bank near Canton Highway, Marietta Parkway or Windy Hill Road and watch its construction as it rises into the sky.

            As were the mighty Mississippi River and its steamboats to Mark Twain, so have been the interstate highways and their fast moving vehicles to me.  I love the interstates.  I know, to most people in a metropolitan area like Atlanta, interstates are merely their route to work, a route that is often a parking lot.  I still say those who belly-ache about interstates have never been without them.

            There’s a distinct reason for my affection.  For two summers during college days I worked for the Mississippi Highway Department on a survey crew.  Our job was to stake out through thick woods and across vast pastures a wide path that would eventually become Interstate 20.  (I didn’t even know it would lead to Atlanta.)

            Both summers my sole assignment was to reach into a bag strapped on my shoulder and take out a wooden stake.  With marker in hand, I would then stand and wait until the crew chief leaned into his tripod scope, read from the measuring stick across the way and yelled, “Cut 5 / fill 3,” or whatever his reading prompted.

  Driving the marked stake into the ground, I felt important knowing I was directing grading equipment operators on how much dirt to remove or add for this soon-to-be  “superhighway.”  It also felt good knowing that one day I could breeze down a limited-access highway that would stretch from Florence, SC to Pecos, TX.  And on that drive I would not have to endure mosquitoes and ticks, and watch out for snakes and the occasional polecat as we surveyors had to do.

            The Interstate Highway System was initiated in 1956 by a Republican president who had grown up hitching horses to hitching posts alongside the dirt streets of Abilene, Kansas.  With the IHS, the largest public works project in the nation’s history, Dwight Eisenhower brought dirt and distance under control.  It’s still 1500 miles or so from Florence to Pecos, yet the two cities are closer.

            One of Eisenhower’s main supporters of the interstate system was Senator Al Gore, Sr. of Tennessee.  Most likely Senator Gore favored the interstates because he envisioned what it could do for the South.  Stirring economically but still lagging behind the nation in 1956, the South needed an extensive distribution idea like the limited access interstate highway.   

            Everything has a downside.  Interstates have done to small towns what Wal-Mart has done to Mom and Pop.  My own father didn’t share my excitement for the “superhighway” that would lie just 2 miles from our house.  Said he, “We’re living too fast already.”  Neither was Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev impressed by them while paying a visit to Eisenhower in 1959.  His comment to the President was, “Your people do not seem to like the place where they live and always want to be on the move going someplace else.”

            I don’t know what Eisenhower’s response was to Mr. Khrushchev, but he could have replied that the best thing about the interstate is that it allows you to get home faster.

            Like Mark Twain’s beloved river, the interstate highway holds for me a grace and a beauty.  I admire the skill of the engineers and laborers who built them.  Highways beckon.  They point to somewhere and help you get there.  In a fashion they remind us of the American spirit of exploring and seeking.  Even a short ride on them is a form of escape, except of course when they become a parking lot.

            And let’s not forget their bridges.  Believe it or not, in the late fifties there was still a considerable chasm between the North and the South, residue from the Civil War. The IHS itself became a needed bridge, symbolically and literally.

            If there is a formal opening of the high “bridge” stretched through Cobb County, I plan to sit on a nearby bank and watch.  Doing so will remind me that Americans have always been builders.  It will also renew my admiration of builders of all stripes, but especially those who build our roads.  I’ll also recall once again the mosquitoes, ticks, snakes and polecats and will probably smile.

Roger Hines

10/28/15

When Joe Came to Dinner: A Journalistic Get-together

                      When Joe Came to Dinner: A Journalistic Get-together

                                                                             Published in the Marietta Daily Journal Nov. 8, 2015

            September of 2014 brought one of the biggest delights of my life.  Any meal cooked by my wife Nancy is a delight, but enjoying one of them along with two outstanding newspaper editors is an event to remember. 

            During most of the meal I was content just to listen in on the conversation between the Marietta Daily Journal’s Joe Kirby and the editor of the Northeast Mississippi Journal (formerly the Tupelo Journal).  I never taught Joe Kirby although, given the difference between our age, I could well have done so.  However, I did teach Lloyd Gray, the Mississippi editor who was dining with us.

            I taught Lloyd when he was a cute 7^th grader at Northwest Jr. High School in Meridian, Mississippi.  In a column in early 2014 I chronicled how the class he was in literally kept me from leaving the profession after just one year of teaching.  All 30 of the 12-year-olds in this future editor’s class were a teacher’s dream and would have given even a pessimist hope for the future.

            Through Facebook, Lloyd Gray learned about the MDJ column, read it, and gave me a call.  I had not seen or heard from him for 4 decades.  While we were on the phone I invited him to come visit us and to go see one of his best friends who was in the same 7^th grade English class.  That friend, Steve Forbert, with whom I had had recent contact, was a singer and was playing at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur.  Lloyd and his wife agreed to visit us.

            A few days later it occurred to me that Joe Kirby might enjoy getting to know another editor and attending the concert.  When I called and told him about Lloyd Gray and Steve Forbert, Joe said, “You taught Steve Forbert?  He’s the one who recorded ‘Romeo’s Tune.’  He was often compared to Bob Dylan.  He was …” this, that, and the other.  I never knew that Joe was a music historian.  As it turned out, he knew more about my former student turned rock star than I did.  Anyhow, he agreed to come and dine with us, meet Lloyd Gray, and go hear Steve Forbert sing.

            At the dinner table Joe and Lloyd, of course, talked journalism.  But how did Joe know so much about Mississippi history and politics?  His knowledge of Tupelo and Elvis I understood, but when he began to bring up names of Mississippi officeholders, things about Mississippi’s racial past, about the Delta and the birth of the blues, as well as Jimmie Rodgers, the Meridian brakeman and “Father of Country Music,” my unexpressed thought was this man knows everything.

            Joe did know just about everything.  In fact I thought I was the nation’s biggest news junkie until I met Joe.

            After the concert at Eddie’s Attic, I introduced Joe to Steve Forbert.  He was delighted to hear Steve burst into quoting every word of “Abou Ben Adhem,” a poem which I had required the 7^th graders to memorize 47 years before.

            Not given to much joking around, Joe could still throw a zinger.  Once I playfully challenged his right to call himself a Southerner since he grew up in Washington, D.C.  “Even if D.C. is south of the Mason-Dixon, we know it’s not really the South,” I kidded.  “Oh, I see, you’re one of those who truly believe that the North begins on the upper side of Ellijay.”

            At the 2014 Christmas luncheon for MDJ employees, I found myself seated between Joe and MDJ columnist Lauretta Hannon.  Upon learning that the two of them enjoyed Seattle “grunge” music, I asked how in the world two intelligent people like them could enjoy such loud, distorted music.  “It lets your inner rebel out,” he said.  “But you told me you like Pat Boone so you probably don’t have much rebel in you.”  Joe never failed to carry an argument through.

            As for editing, Joe was the best.  I seldom handed him any spelling or punctuation errors; however, I did on at least two occasions give him cause to question my logic.  (How far more serious is that?)  His correction went like this: “Ok, consider what you’ve written here.  Don’t back yourself into a corner for criticism when it’s not necessary and be careful not to contradict yourself.”  Embarrassed, I quickly took the advice of the master.

            Joe Kirby was a man at peace with himself.  I admired him.  He taught me much.  The eloquent tribute paid to him by Dr. Sam Matthews at his funeral this past week was richly deserved.

Roger Hines

11/4/15

Nanny State Waxes … While Our Representative Government Wanes

Nanny State Waxes … While Our Representative Government Wanes

            Today in our national life there is a growing number of things that are very hard to take.  I’ll be specific and name three.  These three trends illustrate the direction toward which the country has been heading for some time.  I don’t believe for a second that they reflect the will of the people.  In fact, they are being forced on us.

            For starters, it is hard to take that our federal system is fading slowly into a national system.  Federalism spreads power to the states and local communities; nationalism centers power in a nation’s capital.  In the last half century, America has not strayed but has bolted from its historical, prosperity-producing spread of power.  When power is centralized, freedom and creativity are diminished.  Currently the enterprise most sought by the nationalists is education.  We need only to pick up a newspaper to see this.

            Secondly, consider the nation’s First Lady and her initiative to dictate what our children will eat at school.  Why do First Ladies need a “cause” in the first place?  Seems to me that just being First Lady and exemplifying grace, intelligence and concern for others through, say, volunteerism would be “cause” enough.   But no, our current First Lady, though not the first to do so, has taken on policy.  Through the Department of Agriculture and regulatory law (the most egregious kind), she has dictated what children may and may not eat at school. 

            Countless reports have come from local school systems saying students won’t eat the school meals the government now requires.  But so what?  Our nanny government knows better than parents.  If the government can actually require us to purchase certain things, it’s not a great leap to dictate our diet.  This school lunch issue is one of the best examples of regulatory law’s naked power.

            Most onerous, however, is the breakdown of the co-equal branches of government.  We all know that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but what is Congress doing while their own authority is being stripped by both the executive and the judicial branches?  The President’s executive orders and the unelected judiciary’s strike down of state-passed laws are almost a weekly occurrence.    

One case in point is the strike down of state marriage laws.  No silver-tongued devil will ever convince me that a majority of Americans now think it’s ok, or even truly possible, for a man to “marry” a man or for a woman to “marry” a woman. Forget polls.  Look at what duly elected state legislatures do.

 Yet, defying the will of voters in state after state, federal judges are changing an institution that has served the human race for millennia.  And still nobody has answered the obvious slippery slope question, “Why, then, can’t I have four wives if I wish, or two wives and two husbands?  Why should the government not adjust laws to favor any arrangement I can conjure?”

            Yes, the transformation of marriage is being forced on us.  It’s hard to take, one reason being that the co-equal branches of government are now whop-sided with the judicial branch ruling the roost.  Another reason is that the entire same-sex marriage issue defies logic and nature.  If a homosexual couple, for instance, wants to raise a child, what must they do to get one?  They must yield to the laws of nature, against which they have rebelled, and call on one of those old-fashioned, behind the times heterosexual couples to produce a baby.  

            There is no seismic shift in America in favor of so-called “marriage equality,” but there does exist an epidemic of judicial tyranny that would appall Jefferson and Madison. 

            So what do we tell our children?  Well, schools in quite a few states are already telling them: gender is a social construct, not a fact of nature; we can change our gender; “male and female created He them” is out; androgyny is in; one of our state governors is bisexual, so that too is just dandy.

            Accepting this New Sexuality, we are told, is just joining the 21^st century.  No, no, no.  Accepting it is returning to ancient Rome (partially to Greece) where in their last days of empire families disintegrated and “sexual liberty” was rampant.  The most secular of historians chronicle this.

            If our new Congress, that promised much, doesn’t help us with presidential overreach, judicial tyranny, and the slide of our federal system, then it’s time to create new coalitions and gather together people who still view things as did the signers of the U.S. Constitution.

            Those signers weren’t dumb, and neither was their admirer de Tocqueville who wrote, “The chief concern of good government should be to get people accustomed to managing without it.”

           

Roger Hines

2/18/15