The Difference Between Seems, ‘Tis, and ‘Tisn’t

              The Difference Between Seems, ‘Tis, and ‘Tisn’t

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/29/18

We know what Thomas Jefferson meant, so let’s not quibble too much.  But he actually was wrong when he implied that truth is “self-evident.”  In classical 18^th century prose, Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” then went on to name five truths in his famous Declaration of Independence.

            Some 1800 years before Jefferson’s day, Cicero declared, “If truth were self-evident, there would be no need for eloquence.”  Or for debate of any stripe, we might add.  Historically, people have attended debates because they wish to discern the truth about a matter and hope that debate will somehow help them hammer it out.  Some, of course, attend debates simply because they enjoy a verbal contest.

            Our current culture is proof enough that truth can be elusive, not in and of its own nature, but because so many are now trying to alter it, cloud it, or even deny it exists. 

            There are certain indisputable truths that no one can deny.  One is that everybody has a mother and a father.   Does this fact not imply that we all need a mother and father?  Do the image and the reality of a mother, a father, and a child not provide a societal nucleus, a fitting little unit of government?  Did the tribe not pre-date the state?  And did the family not pre-date the tribe?

            “Nay, not so,” says the LGBTQ lobby and its sympathizers.  A family is merely a “social construct,” a tradition.   For those who believe that, country singer George Strait has “some oceanfront property in Arizona.”

            Family-to-tribe-to-state is something that family-deniers just don’t like.  Family being mere sociology, we can re-construct or re-define it any way we wish.  Two mommies, two daddies, no mommies, no daddies - what’s the problem?

            The problem is biology, chromosomes, anatomy and physiology, and the human heart.   Those who are so bent on normalizing homosexuality, same-sex marriage, bisexuality and other such formerly unthinkable aberrations are trying to cram their aberrations down our throats.  We could say they are engaging in social constructs themselves, denying true science.  Little does it matter that for millennia, civilization has been well served by the model of a mother, a father, and a place called home.  But why does this matter?  This is the 21^st century.  Let’s try arrangements beside family, the argument goes.

            But the human heart resists.  It wants a mom and a dad and a pillow.  Consider what is happening now, all because of fatherlessness.  Today in almost every major city young men gravitate to gangs because gangs provide them a family.  Countless former gang members have so testified.  Fatherless, with single, unmarried mothers who are away at two jobs, many 14-year-old boys have sought family – not just money or drugs – in gangs.  Gangs satisfy their emotional needs.  They can become “men” fast.

            In his article, “Wanting More in an Age of Plenty,” psychologist David G. Meyers states that if one had fallen asleep in 1960 and woke up in 2000, he would be awakening to a tripled teen suicide rate, a quintupled prison population, sextupled percent of babies born to unmarried parents, sevenfold increase in cohabitation, and a soaring rate of depression ten times the pre-World War II level.  It was during that 40-year period that the sexual revolution took root, sprouted, and bore its fruit.

             Prince Hamlet, Shakespeare’s most famous character, argued with his mother, despairing over her quick marriage after the murder of his father.  His mother, the Queen, says to him, “All lives must die.  Why seems it so particular with thee?”

            Hamlet replies, “Seems, madam? I know not ‘seems.’ ‘Tis!”

            Unlike the brooding Hamlet who knew the difference between “seems” and “tis,” truth-deniers hold to no absolutes.  Gender is a myth, marriage is out of style, and sexuality is a mere physical characteristic, and a fluid one at that.

            G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”  As more fences fall, I wouldn’t be surprised if the grandchildren of the sixties eventually rebel against the emptiness their grandparents and parents bequeathed them and look for meaning that “free love” didn’t provide.  Offspring of a self-centered generation, they could well re-establish the loving family, one that again has fences.

 “‘Tisn’t beyond belief,” Chesterton would say.  Seeing there are no pearls in the hog pen, they might search elsewhere.

I pray for the day that a generation of youth will see exactly what their parents’ culture has led them into.  Only then will the yearning hearts of children and the confused, angry minds of teenagers be assuaged.

Roger Hines

4/25/18

Reason Fails and Enlightenment Fades

                      Reason Fails and Enlightenment Fades

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/22/18

                 Growing up without running water has tremendous instructional value.  It can teach you to appreciate water for the rest of your life.  It can also train you to conserve and never waste water or anything else.

                 Imagine what it’s like to be sparing with water, even drinking water.  Think “Little House on the Prairie” and you’ll get the picture, but don’t just think 19^th century.  For many rural Americans the absence of running water continued well into the 1960’s.

                        Let’s just say that the Industrial Revolution had not yet reached where I lived.  And I’m talking about as late as 1966 when the last chore I performed before leaving home was to haul water.  I might add that the Age of Reason and the concurrent Enlightenment sidestepped much of rural America as well, though not totally.

                 Each of these important historical periods improved the living conditions of the human race, particularly the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840).  Yes, the Industrial Revolution brought child labor, pollution, and other evils and ills, but its undergirding effect was to lighten the load of laborers.  The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment of the 18^th century freed Europeans and Americans from the superstition of the dark Middle Ages.  Their emphasis on science became the new dogma.

                 But on our way to perfecting the human race, making life easier, and elevating reason over religion, we have hit a snag.  It appears that man is not perfectible after all, and that machines, scientific theories, and ever-increasing knowledge have not helped us to love our neighbor or to control violence.

                 Our teachers and professors have told us that the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment gave us the modern world.  These two movements, however, were not just about scientific knowledge.  They encompassed philosophy and belief systems.  They denigrated faith and deified reason.  Yes, human reasoning as in the reasoning of Rousseau who elevated “the child” to angelic status, thereby influencing the field of education to this very day and rendering young 21^st century parents fearful of spanking or of any other form of much needed shock and awe discipline.

                 Yes, human reasoning such as that of the brilliant Napoleon who, seeking to destroy and then “rebuild” continental Europe, carried millions to their deaths.  Would that “the Little Corporal” had heeded the words of Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, who opined, “Never, being mortal, ought we cast our thoughts too high.”

                 Actually we moderns are casting our thoughts too low as we edge into dismissal of all things transcendent while our movers and shakers, as well as most intellectuals, editorialists, media stars, and movie makers lead the way.

                 As for elected officials, do they not see the huge, full parking lots of the mega churches, the schools, universities, hospitals, and orphanages built by people of transcendent faith, or the continuing proliferation of pregnancy centers and homeless shelters built by faith organizations?  Why don’t elected officials speak up more and louder for people of faith?   Have they been convinced that we are all secularists now?  Have they accepted secularism as the new wave just because that’s what secularists wish us to believe?

                 The Age of Reason and its modern day proponents ridicule people of simple faith as being believers in blind faith, yet theirs is a blind faith in reason, the faith that Rousseau, Napoleon, Marx, Freud, and Voltaire advanced.

                 Today’s “reason,” which is the fruit of the Enlightenment, declares war against nature (same-sex marriage, transgenderism) and declares itself “free of religion.”  But all beliefs are religion.  Secularists say, “I can declare my beliefs because they are not religious, but you can’t declare yours because they are religious.”

                 Good try, but in a way the secularists are right.  Many a local government has forbidden “religious expression” in the public square while allowing secularists free rein.

                 Where is enlightenment, where reason, where freedom, when bakers and florists are being fined for not bending to same-sex marriage?  Or when contraceptive mandates are hurled at Catholic colleges?

                 When the great Russian dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, found refuge in America in 1974, we assumed he would turn his pen to praising American culture.  Instead, he argued that America could no longer be emulated.  In a Harvard address he asserted that Enlightenment thought had transformed Americans into materialists who saw man’s accomplishments as the measure of all things.  “Reason,” he claimed, “gave Americans control over nature and possession of riches, but shrouded her with moral poverty.”

                 No running water? No problem.  Such needs are the least of our problems.  I was rich, because the man who helped me fill the water jugs, my father, had taught his 17 children what riches really are and are not.

Roger Hines

4/18/18

American Culture: What is Its Center and Will it Hold?

         American Culture: What is Its Center and Will it Hold?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/8/18

            Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

             Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote these disturbing words in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I.  Yeats was rightly disturbed.  The war was over, but what was the peace like?  Countries were in shambles.  The victors were redrawing national lines.  The world was unsteady.

            At the time, America was not exactly a world power, but was rising fast.  Freedom tends to lead individuals and nations to great heights.  Industrially, America was on the move.  Culturally, the nation was no longer British-America.  A frontier people hardly over one hundred years old, we could now aptly speak of “American culture.”

            I was 20 years old before I correctly understood what “culture” means.  I thought culture was the collective term for such high-tone things as classical music, art, ballroom dancing, and elaborate architecture.  My world of Southern Gospel, cornfields, protestant Christianity, country and western music, livestock shows, and dinners on the ground surely wasn’t “culture.”  But of course it was.

            America has always been multi-cultural.  It’s more precise to say we are a nation of subcultures that are marked by interests, tastes, and geographical distinctions such as dialects.  Our regional differences, unlike so many divisive ones across Europe, have been a source of fun and jokes.  Southerners know that Yankees talk funny; Yankees know that Southerners can’t read, but they sure can write, even though they go barefooted.

            Today our nation is beset by a cultural shakiness that is both striking and dangerous.  One must ask, as did Yeats, what is our center?  What customs, values, and principles do we hold that are decidedly American and are the glue that binds us?

            Political differences are not America’s chief problem.  Who but political wonks watches all of the food fights on cable TV?  Some of us are still at work.  Television newsyness is now theater and we are not as politically divided as that theater tries to reflect.  Nor are we so racially divided.  I see good race relations several times a week.  Our common pop culture, particularly sports, unites us far more than we realize.

            There is no great divide between Americans.  In fact, what we are doing together poses a greater problem.  Together, we are surrendering all sense of cultural norms.  For instance, how many definitions are there of the word family?  How many genders are there?  How are we defining achievement?  Why does dress no longer matter?  Why have parents ceased to be self-confident authorities over their children, yielding to the view that children should be treated tenderly and youth are to be consulted?   

            No one would have asked these questions 50 years ago.  Everyone knew what a family was and why families were needed.  We knew that dress was far more about respect than it was style.  We knew that language is the dress of our thoughts and that if we talk ugly, we reveal an ugly thought world.  As for parenting, we knew that the pot does not inform the potter.

            All of these matters transcend race and socio-economic class.  In these matters we are quite unified.  Unified downward.  The majority of us are dressing down, no matter the occasion, not realizing that casualness is the enemy of excellence. Ours is a culture of narcissism, one in which the “I’s” have it.  We demand enjoyment.     

            Many preachers are leading the way with sloppy dress, in effect arguing we must become like those we wish to influence.  We’re calling graffiti “urban art;” perversion, an alternative lifestyle.  On Mondays, elementary teachers must fight Dave and Buster’s sensory overload.  High school teachers fight the mind-warping, mushy effects of television, smart phones and mall culture. 

Robert Bork says we are “slouching toward Gomorrah.”  Georgia’s Phil Kent describes current conditions as “the marks of a decadent culture.”

            Dark thoughts, I know. But we don’t dispel intellectual or cultural darkness by embracing it.  Rather, we reclaim old landmarks, resurrect sturdy values, think neighborhoods, and become good Samaritans again.  We start teaching our children well again and stop catering to them. 

            Finally, we must overcome what C.S.Lewis called “our fear of the Same Old Thing” and accept the fact that verities are verities.  “Cultural norms” may be an old-fashioned expression, but without them we travel not in a wilderness where there is some delight, but in a cultural cul-de-sac that spins us into numbness and eventual meaninglessness.

Roger Hines

4/5/18

           

Stormy Days for Evangelicals, or Not?

                     Stormy Days for Evangelicals, or Not?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Marietta Journal, 4/1/18

            Recently a friend remarked that because of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Revolution, most Americans hardly realized that the Sexual Revolution was taking place.

            During the ‘60s and early ‘70s our minds were on Martin Luther King, racial turmoil, Jane Fonda’s endorsement of our enemy, North Vietnam; and Walter Cronkite’s nightly report of our Vietnam dead.  All the while, Hugh Hefner was beginning to turn America’s sexual attitudes upside down.

            “Make love, not war” was the chant of college students around the country.  “Free love” was in the air.

            Troops returning from Vietnam, whether severely wounded or lifeless, were unheralded.  Some were spat on.  Other than Governor Ronald Reagan of California, there were few if any public officials who openly challenged the college protestors.  

             Somehow, the Civil Rights Revolution affected me more than Vietnam, as dreadful and endless as the war had become.  I had seen enough injustice to believe that Martin Luther King was sizing the picture up accurately.  Except for a few of his lieutenants who later became rank racists themselves, King’s agenda, in my estimation, was long overdue.

              In 1967-68, teaching in an all black school deepened my concern about racial injustice.  News that my college roommate had been injured in Vietnam and was on his way home created in my mind a tug of war.  When would we either win or depart this eternal Southeast Asian conflict?  But when, also, would the region I loved and grew up in acknowledge its failings and grant respect to black citizens?

            While Americans were consumed by either the Vietnam War or the civil rights struggle, Chicago’s pajama-clad Hugh Hefner continued his march toward “sexual freedom.”  His work and person received accolades from the media and, of course, from Hollywood.  Hefner was considered a liberator.  His Playboy Magazine and Playboy Mansion brought little embarrassment to a changing culture.

            Hefner’s New Morality, which Billy Graham dubbed the Old Immorality, raised such questions as “What’s wrong with the human body? Why shouldn’t we look at pictures of nude women? 

            As Playboy, Playmates, and Playboy Bunnies proliferated, so did the concerns of conservative, evangelical Christians.  While the Roaring Twenties had produced a significant break in tradition (think “flappers” – women who danced but also smoked and drank), its boldness was eclipsed by the dark clouds of World War II.  The Sizzling Sixties lingered, however, reaching deep into America’s traditional values and toppling long-held beliefs about sexuality and morality.

            Hugh Hefner should have died proud.  His soft porn led to hard porn.  AT&T loves it; movies utilize it; smart phones provide it; fortunately, Hilton Hotels have recently forsworn it.

            Yes, the Sexual Revolution is over and both sides lost.  Marriages have been diluted; homes have lost joy and unity; fifteen year olds have lost their innocence; infidelity has been ramped up.

            Why then is the media astride such a moral high horse?  Why aren’t they happy about the fruit of their friend, The Hef?  It’s true that Donald Trump has lived the Hugh Hefner life, yet his media accusers and finger pointers had no problem with the seed planter, Hefner.  For five decades he was their darling.  Today, their darlings are Hefner’s Bunnies and porn stars.  The bunnies and porn stars are OK; their former consensual partner – a playboy, the president – is not OK.  Why was this standard not held for Kennedy and Clinton who are still adored by the media?

            Evangelicals, according to certain media critics, should disengage from Trump on moral grounds.  Think about that for a moment.  (I can supply media names upon request, as though that’s needed.)

            No, evangelicals had to make a choice in the last presidential election.  Not all of us made the same choice.  Arguing, however, that Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice for conservative Christians is odd in the extreme.

            As for who is consistent and who is not, why has the media obsessed over Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, having ignored Bill Clinton’s accusers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broderick?

            I for one will not allow the media or fellow evangelicals to shame me for something which five decades they ignored or gaily endorsed.

            Supporting Trump doesn’t mean that evangelicals are “trusting in princes.”  It means, among other things, that they could not support a candidate or a party that was cavalier about the unborn and who “trusted in princes” (the government) for virtually everything.

            As well as being a communicator, Trump is a clarifier.  Comfortable in his own hedonistic skin, he has laid bare the hypocrisy of his critics and revealed the forgiving spirit of his evangelical supporters.

Roger Hines

3/28/18

Viva La English!

                                                      Viva La English!

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal,3/25/18

            Long before the expression “American exceptionalism” came into use, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville explored the concept and ended up touting the advantages America had over the Old World.

            In his 1835 masterpiece, “Democracy in America,” Tocqueville not only described our  48-year-old nation.  He celebrated it.  Struck by its political structure, freedom, and individualism, Tocqueville wrote, “The American is the Englishman left to himself.”

            The French nobleman was implying that although England was advancing as a democratic nation, she was not as “boundless free” as the rugged Americans.  She was, however, the possessor of a spirit of freedom that would soon mark every corner of the globe that was English-speaking.

            At the time, England was changing socially.  Two years before Tocqueville’s masterpiece was published, Britain abolished slavery throughout the Empire.  As far back as 1807 Britain had abolished the slave trade.  Observing and making copious notes during his nine-month tour across fledgling America, Tocqueville dubbed the new land “British America.”  He admired what he saw.

            Look at a map of the world.  Notice that the English-speaking nations are the ones that are devoted to freedom, law, and individual rights. What’s going on?  No doubt the same thing that was going on in the mind of Churchill when in 1956 he completed his four-volume work titled “History of the English Speaking People.”  To Churchill, speakers of English had a manifest destiny.

            Please, dear reader, spare us of any instant conclusion that Churchill, or Tocqueville, or this writer is bigoted or “nationalistic.”  What’s wrong with having a nation (borders, language, and culture) anyway?  Again, look at a map of the world, or a history or linguistics book.  From the beloved Alfred the Great (849-899), whose language was “Angle-ish,” to Chaucer (1340-1400), who popularized the peasant language, to Shakespeare (1564-1616), who made it most quotable and quoted, to the silver tongue of Churchill, the trail of  English has led to the trumpeting of freedom.

            The world’s most cosmopolitan language, English now belongs virtually to everyone.   Sprung from an island nation about the size of Alabama, English was spread chiefly by British navies of the 17^th through ^19th centuries and American soldiers of the 20^th.

            We seldom think of how significant is the language each of us speaks.  It is French that makes a Frenchman a Frenchman and English that makes an Englishman an Englishman.  We speakers of “American English” have abandoned many of the customs from the motherland of our language, but we haven’t abandoned the chief characteristics of the Anglo-sphere, those noted by Tocqueville in America: churches, private organizations, charitable giving, localism, a strong belief in equality before the law, and an exceptional legal system which, incidentally, exists in most English-speaking nations of the world today. 

            Precisely what has contributed to this phenomenon, this fact that the English-speaking world is freer and typically more advanced?  Is it isolation that has enabled such nations to live as they wish, absent the influence of close bordering nations?  Australia is a continental island nation.   New Zealand is an island.  America is bordered and in large measure protected by two great oceans.  Canada is stretched far to the north, seemingly unbothered by the flow of geo-politics.

            Is it the Christian faith that fostered love of neighbor, good will, and honest labor?  Consider the impact of English translations of the Bible found in these nations.  Would free enterprise have anything to do with it?

            Whatever we may attribute the phenomenon to, it’s clear that in regard to the amount of freedom and to standard of living, the English-speaking nations of the world have led the way.

            When President Obama was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, he replied, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”  In other words, “No.”  If everybody is exceptional, nobody is exceptional.

            Fifty-six years ago at a small high school in little Forest, Mississippi, stellar teachers and excellent coaches and administrators taught, required, and modeled excellence.  Friday assemblies showcased the exceptional speechmaking, singing, instrumentalism, memorizing, and acting of hardworking students.  With joy, Martha Hays, Margaret Richardson, Durwood Smith, L.O. Atkins and others made their expectations clear.  No flip-flops, sit up straight, raise your hand, speak clearly, don’t dare come to class without a book and pencil, and say thank-you to the lunch room workers.

            Nationally, this productive, soul-satisfying ethic has waned.   I fear that the Anglo-sphere is becoming more like the government-reliant Old World it escaped from.  If I am right, exceptionalism may be reaching its twilight.  How I hope and pray I am wrong.

Roger Hines

3/21/18

Casey at the Bat vs. Progressives in the Boardroom

            Casey at the Bat vs. Progressives in the Boardroom

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/18/18

            The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day / The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play / And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same / A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

            A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest / Clung to the hope which springs eternal in the human breast / They thought, “If only Casey could but get a whack at that / We’d put up even money with Casey at the bat.

            Surprisingly, this classic poem ends with  mighty Casey striking out.  It appears, however, that a non-fiction Casey, Lt. Governor Casey Cagle, has not only not struck out, but has hit a homer.  His opposing team?  Delta Airlines.  Casey won.

            Before rehearsing the familiar details about the real-life Casey’s turn at bat, let’s raise a few questions that lie at the heart of the Lt. Governor’s concerns.  Since progressives generally loathe corporations, why do corporations defend them, thereby supporting practically everything social conservatives morally oppose?  Things like same-sex marriage, abortion “rights,” common bathrooms, and Planned Parenthood funding.  Why are corporations dismissive of their many employees and customers who proudly qualify as Hillary Clinton’s deplorables? 

Consider whose side the corporations typically land on.  They land with the LGBTQ community and transgender activists.  Disney, no longer the standard bearer of all things wholesome, has been a leader on homosexual rights.  The positions of two other companies, Wal-Mart and Koch Brothers, are also mystifying.  Neither company is loved by progressives, yet Wal-Mart has barred Confederate merchandise from its shelves, and the Koch brothers are pro-choice, pro-homosexual, and pro-amnesty.

Another question.  Why must corporations announce their position on social/cultural issues in the first place?  Why can’t they just hush and sell their product?

Preening like a peacock and trying to look diverse, inclusive, and all of that, Delta Airlines got its comeuppance from a real Casey.  Seems that Delta wanted to “reach out” (their own tweeted words) to the NRA to let them know “we will be ending their contract for discounted rates through our group travel plan.  We will be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website.”

It further seems that the real Casey, a candidate for governor, brought attention to the fact that Delta receives from the state of Georgia a big chunk of corporate welfare: a jet fuel sales-tax exemption worth $50 million. Tweeted Cagle, who is also president of the state senate, “I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA.  Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.”

According to the anti-Trump magazine, The Weekly Standard, “Cagle’s bluster was off-putting.  Using the power of the law to threaten a private company is the sort of behavior one expects from a raging dictatorship.”  But if Cagle was blustery, Delta was sanctimonious, trying to make sure it stood with Hollywood elites, not those rural types or crazy gun owners.  Where was public relations expert Dick Yarbrough when Delta needed him? 

Other corporations have been just as sanctimonious.  To corporations, inclusion doesn’t include social conservatives. Corporations view social conservatives as does columnist Kevin Foley who, in opposing Cagle’s action, put it this way: “… the reality is, outside the Perimeter, this state is as provincial and parochial as they come.”

Now that’s elitism.  Shows what my new friend Foley thinks about the good people from such places as Kennesaw, Sylvester, Hahira, and Mr. Yarbrough’s beloved Pooler.  

Corporate Man is craven.  For protection, which he thinks always lies in numbers, he will cater to those who don’t even like him.  He’s not a rugged capitalist after all, but a robber baron / J.P. Morgan model of “corporate management.”

True, corporations were granted “personhood” as far back as 1809.  By law they are citizens or “artificial persons” with the same free speech rights as individuals.  Consequently, corporations exercise their rightful power, but they do not always exercise it rightly.  If self-protection (gun ownership) isn’t a life and death issue, what is?  But corporate types condescendingly view guns (religious liberty, too) as concerns of working stiffs, not of thinking people.

To Corporate Man, social issues don’t matter, except when they get in Corporate Man’s way.  

Casey Cagle’s action was the right one.  When corporations take money from the public trough, they are beholden at some point.  Besides, there are no empirical studies showing that incentives given to specific corporations foster significant economic growth.

Roger Hines

3/15/18

           

The Path Not Taken

                                The Path Not Taken

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/11/18

There are three paths down which the current gun debate is taking us.  Not one is good.

            One path is that of utilizing youths to drive public policy.  Those who oppose guns are shamelessly pushing teenagers in front of television cameras.  Teens in Parkland, Florida and around the country are being manipulated by adults.

            Oh, the wisdom of youth.  Except that the youthful “wisdom” we’re seeing on television isn’t wisdom at all.  It’s the well sharpened words of media-savvy teens.  But media-savvy doesn’t equal maturity. 

Are most high schoolers capable of addressing the implications of a tragedy just hours or days after the tragedy has occurred?  CNN’s fake Town Hall meeting encouraged teenagers to try.  The result was youthful disrespect for a U.S. Senator and the blaming of over 5 million law-abiding gun owners for the tragedy at Parkland.  Watching CNN’s staged anti-gun rally, I kept thinking “Shall the pot command the potter?” as youth after youth stood to scold Senator Rubio and point their young fingers at the NRA.

            This path is also the path of emotional striptease.  Inordinate grief has become a characteristic of Americans.  There was a time when we were taught to grieve manfully, to be strong when bad things happen, to interpret the events of life with hope.  Television cameras and widespread grief counseling have ended that.

            Counselors are one of the best things about public schools.  Young people need them.   But when we dispatch grief brigades to every scene of tragedy, we’re teaching teenagers to wallow in grief, to weep, to mourn.  I’ve seen my share of this approach, and it doesn’t help or teach youths to bear up.  It does the opposite.

 The trauma industry, bent on helping us “get in touch with our feelings,” has eroded self-reliance.  With the best of intentions it has fostered emotional self-absorption, the sharing of feelings, the baring of our hearts.  The result has been emotional fragility.

            The second unfortunate path the gun debate is taking is the neglect of rural America.  America has become so urbanized (80.7% according to the 2010 census) that urbanites look askance at rural citizens.  In rural America, a 19 or 20 year old is not a child.  Rural America would be severely hindered if we raised the age for purchasing a firearm to 21.  Rural citizens need guns for hunting food, for self-defense whenever the nearest law enforcement officer is miles away, and for intrusive wild animals. Unlike dogs, coyotes and rattlesnakes are not man’s best friends.

 No offense, city dwellers, but in the country you grow up faster and learn responsibility sooner.  Lawmakers need to remember this when they hear the argument that all 18 to 20 year olds are children who can’t handle guns.

            Finally, the gun debate path is heading straight to the school house where, positioned in the middle of it all, teachers are viewed as absolute wimps.  To the contrary, if I were still in the high school scene, I would this very day volunteer “to carry.”  If this sounds like bravado, it’s because few people understand the sense of responsibility teachers have for the students they teach.  What an insult to think teachers don’t have the stomach to protect their charges.  “In loco parentis” is buried deep in the hearts of teachers.

            Not every teacher should be or needs to be armed, though I doubt I have ever taught with a man who would not volunteer to.  Also, I’m thinking at this moment of 15 or 20 women with whom I’ve taught who would not hesitate to carry.  Femininity and courage are not mutually exclusive.  Neither are femininity and gun skills.

            Courtrooms, legislative halls, and the White House are safe because we have made them safe – with guns  Not only have we not made schools safe; we’ve stupidly erected nearby signs that read “Gun-free Zone,” an open invitation to a sickened mind or a depraved heart.

            The path we are not taking is the path to the larger picture: that of violent, numbing entertainment, absent fathers, weakened homes, and the waning influence of and dismissive attitude toward religious faith and training.

            For what it’s worth, I drove a school bus at age 17.  Gerald Smith kept a rifle in his pickup gun rack and parked on the street right beside the school.  But soon the family imploded, children started having children, parents traded parenting for “identifying,” and troubled youths lost meaning and purpose.

If we think the real issue is guns, we’ve been flummoxed by emotionalism and softened by urbanization.  The larger picture, the path not taken, beckons.

Roger Hines 

March 7, 2018