It Didn’t Have to Come to This

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 2/20/21

            Oh, the craziness that abounds. Conservatives just aren’t good at protesting and hollering about it. For one thing, they’re at work. They’re not college kids or liberals with time on their hands. Consequently the loudmouths are winning. Conservatives are learning to speak up, however. They’ve just about had enough.

            Readers might recall that many months ago I reported on a visit I made to a Target store. I’ll review just a few details.

            The visit was made to find out if I (a male) could use their ladies’ restroom.  I was naïve to think their answer would be no. I had read that Target was leading the way in the battle for open bathrooms but doubted it was true. No corporation particularly in the South would ever go that far with “equity” (the new word of choice), diversity, openness, transgenderism, gender-denial and all the other lofty goals that progressives wear on their sleeves and that deplorables like me are supposedly so ignorant of.

            Was I wrong! Entering the store I approached three ladies who looked authoritative standing in front of the cashier lines. I asked if I were allowed to use the ladies’ restroom. Turning to me, the youngest of the trio said, “Sir, you may use the restroom you identify with.”

            “What do you mean by identify with? “ I asked.

            “I mean that if you identify with a particular restroom you may enter it.” (In 10^th grade English that’s called being redundant.)

            But the bathroom issue is history, some argue. There are more serious issues. That’s true unless you have daughters and granddaughters and understand how sick and evil people can be.

             Let’s put the issue in a context that perhaps our new president and his supporters can buy into. While their holy trinity is still abortion, race, and socialism – or is it grievance, victimhood, and rage? – they also like to chant, “Follow the science,” so let’s follow along but ask some questions.

            Think hard. How many genders are there? Progressives (what a misnomer for those who think rebellion against nature is progress) are now saying there are three: males, females, and non-binary. Could there be four? How many does it take to produce a baby? Since when did “identifying with” anything change biology? Wherever he lies buried, Aristotle, the father of scientific reasoning, is either scoffing or shaking his head in disbelief. No, this issue is not dead.  If you think it is, look at the long list of President Biden’s executive orders. You’ll see that one of those orders does not follow science but literally rejects biological science. It attempts to re-set human sexuality.  It would deserve a loud hoot if its consequences were not so serious, namely confused children and teens.

            Let’s follow the science with pregnancy as well. Let’s look at the pictures of weeks-old unborn babies, long dismissed by radical feminists and now by a president, as “tissue” that’s “not viable.” Question: how “viable” is a happy, healthy, three-month-old baby that was allowed birth? Answer: He or she is no more “viable” and no less dependent than the baby that was aborted. If Americans had truly followed science and accepted what sonograms showed us, perhaps we would not have aborted over 62 million unborn babies since that fateful year, 1974.

            How did it come to this? How did we arrive at the sexual chaos that pervades the culture? However it happened, there’s hope.  As recently as 2019 Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins University declared that sex changes are biologically impossible. In Cornwall, England Dr. Tammie Downs has an increasing following of other doctors who are boldly moving toward her pro-life position.

            There’s more hope. Of the 17 women elected to Congress in 2020, 16 of them are pro-life conservative Republicans who also reject transgender politics. The female governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, is strongly pro-life and anti-same sex marriage. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ run for Arkansas governor should also encourage conservatives.

            I had rather be canceled by a firing squad than to yield to the craziness of “de-programming,” “transformational re-set,” and all of the other anti-intellectualism of the left. Some things are more precious than life and one of them is freedom of speech and conscience.

            “Follow the science” is a bumper sticker chant totally unheeded by those who chant it. It leads to the shoddy science of Planned Parenthood and to the total anti-reality of the transgender movement.

After all, the word science (from Latin, scio, meaning “I know”) actually means knowledge. And the greatest of scientists, or knowers, have always disagreed with each other. Suffice it to say that “science” devoid of common sense and reality is suspect. We best not follow it.

 

Roger Hines

February 15, 2021

           

 

 

                           This is No Time for Unity

               Published in Marietta (GA) Marietta Daily                       Journal,2/6/21  

            The dumbing down of words is both misleading and dangerous. Consult any reputable dictionary (a watered down collegiate dictionary won’t do) and you’ll find that insurrection has a very serious definition. It is much more serious and far-reaching than a bunch of thugs dressed in stupid costumes, breaking into a government building and bashing everything in sight.

             The Oxford English Dictionary, still the principal historical dictionary of the English language, reads “an organized attempt to seize a government and take control of a nation; a violent, organized revolt against a sitting government.”

            Yeah, the January 6^th caper in Washington, D.C. was exquisitely organized and executed, wasn’t it. One could tell that like Oliver Cromwell and George Washington the rioters were people of high purpose, discipline, and reasoned intent. Did everybody see on television the well stationed brigades out away from the Capitol awaiting signals from their leader? Did anybody see anything other than bad boys and girls acting up stupidly and illegally? Neither did I.

            No, this was no Cromwellian seizure of the British throne, and no legitimately aroused colonists telling the British what they could do with their tea. This caper was goons who, as it turned out, supplied Democrats and their fawning media with a gleeful last jab at Donald Trump.

            Changing the definitions of words is a political art. Tolerance is a word that is changing also. How ironic that those who have typically preached tolerance have become absolutely intolerant calling for “de-programming,” suppression of free speech, and for silencing those who disagree. Since the January 6^th  “insurrection,” members of Congress and the media have called for the examining of emails of any National Guard members who might have engaged in “hate speech,” another un-American concoction. Peter, Paul, and Mary probably don’t recognize today’s political left, so different is today’s left from their long ago 1960s ancestors.

            Conservatives had better wake up. Liberals are not what they used to be. In decades past liberalism actually practiced liberality. Liberals broke the back of slavery. They brought attention to the plight of the poor. If their tactics were wrongheaded or bore error, their hearts were right. But that was then and this is now.

            The most recent egregious change in liberal thought and the most serious definition change in the liberal lexicon is that of the word unity. President Biden has called several times for unity, even as he takes snipes at his predecessor. Senators and other political and business leaders have called for unity. But unity centered on what?

            When progressives speak of unity they are actually thinking and in effect saying, “Think as I think.” Unity  in the eyes of the nation’s political left means you must accept their argument of systemic racism even if you can name hundreds of well known and not so well known Blacks who have succeeded and who reject the progressive argument that America is a racist nation.

            Unity no longer means “Come, let us reason together.” It means come and embrace my ideology or you are a cad. It means you must approve of open borders, of Big Tech’s censorship of conservative commentary, of abortion, and of undeclared wars that have drained our treasury for half a century. And if you won’t, you are not willing to come together to heal the nation’s wounds. And you’re probably from rural America and uneducated.

            The government, corporations, and public schools can help you, though, if you can’t accept their new definition of unity. To cure you of your bias there are videos you can (and in many cases must) watch, videos akin to the one by Magic Johnson which I refused to watch since I didn’t think he was exactly qualified to talk to teens about sexuality.   

            Unity means getting used to transgender talk with its new pronouns such as now required at several universities, all because not everybody likes their gender and should be respected if they view themselves as something other than what they are. It means opposing Donald Trump’s alleged enticement to riot at the Capitol on January 6^th while dismissing Chuck Schumer’s threats (search them out) to Judges Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on the steps of the Supreme Court.

            You get the drift. But calling a cabbage a king doesn’t make it so. Instead of unity, our times now call for fighting for what we believe. The problem is Americans have always done our “fighting” in our deliberative halls with debate. That debate is what Democrats want to stop and that’s why they want new voters from Central America, two senators from D.C., popular elections for president, and a packed Supreme Court.

 That kind of unity will kill America and it must be opposed and stopped.

 

Roger Hines

2/4/21

 

             

 

                                                          Elitism’s Failures

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 1/16/21

             Today our national capital is armed to the gills. Cops and troops are rightly everywhere, some even sleeping on the floor of the Capitol building. Individual states are also shoring up security for next week’s inauguration.

            As Democrats and their media outlets would cast it, more peasants are headed toward the palace with their pitchforks. You know. The unwashed, uneducated, cultish conservative thugs, those who, according to the elitist CNN “contributor” Eugene Robinson, “need to be re-programmed.” Robinson wasn’t referring only to the thugs who stormed the Capitol, however. He made it clear he was referring to all of the supporters of Donald Trump.

            How sad, how despicable, that the lengths to which the federal government has gone to protect itself were not extended to the business owners, cops, and other non-elites in Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis. Why no rage when Black Lives Matter and Antifa filled the streets and battled with police for three solid months? The answer is obvious and two-fold.

             First, simply because the little people whose shops were burned down by the radicals during “the summer of love” were not elitists but just normal folks. Neither were their places of work hallowed, columned structures of marble. Second, because Democrat mayors and governors not only turned aside from the summer violence but also defended the destructive “protestors” as well.

            Said elitist Kamala Harris, “The protestors are not going to let up and they shouldn’t let up.” This, while cars were being smashed, police stations were being burned, and even government buildings were being destroyed. Elitist-in-Chief Nancy Pelosi, when asked about the rioters, appeared to be at a loss for words then muttered, “People will do what they do.” Ponder the double standard for violence. Ponder who incited the summer violence, excusing it with the phrase, “justifiable frustration.”

            Compare these comments to the words of President Trump just before the Capitol storming took place, words I have read and watched three times. I challenge any reader to quote me a single sentence from the president’s speech that incited anyone to riot. Shortly after the storming of the Capitol, another elitist, Senator Mitt Romney, used a word that has since been seized and repeated by anti-Trumpers.

            “Embarrassing,” moaned the Senator. What, then, is the word for the action perpetrated upon the little people of the cities named above? I doubt that the ordinary citizens whose livelihoods were lost, whose lives were endangered and put on hold ever thought about embarrassment. They were thinking about food, housing, mortgages, their immediate future, and kids, things rich man Romney has never had to worry about.

            As for the dumbing down of the word “insurrection,” a word Democrats need to look up, the taking over of a section of a city and claiming sovereignty over it is far more seditious than trashing the House Speaker’s office, engaging in antics, and making fun of her. True insurrectionists don’t waste time with foolishness. Ne’er-do-wells do. And every political party has its share of ne’er-do-wells.

            Yes, the Capitol, the seat of our government, is hallowed and sacrosanct. But so is the common man’s “castle” and workbench. Even the wealthy FDR made clear his sincere belief in “the sanctity of the commoner.” That’s why he was considered a traitor to his class. Regard for the common folks far away from our storied capital city was what distinguished us from Europe in the first place. It was the far away folks whom Donald Trump aroused, the huge middle class who had been ignored by elitist, globalist Democrats and Republicans alike. The goons of January 6^th don’t represent this vast portion of America’s citizens. To be precise, the beautiful Capitol they trashed is but a symbol of what is hallowed and sacrosanct, namely our freedom.

            For four years uppity elitists in both parties have sullied every word President Trump has uttered. With overwrought language they have attacked his family, questioned his sanity, belittled his intelligence, rejected his election and impeached him twice. It is they who incited the January 6^th goons.

            Anyone who thinks Trump’s base will fall apart hasn’t followed politics and doesn’t understand the power of numbers. 74,000,000 Trump supporters are not going to evaporate. The tepid Republicans who bolted will fade. If they are truly conservatives they will regret their lack of discernment within six months. It has escaped them that because of Trump the middle class is doing better, borders are now meaningful, Blacks are exiting the Democrat party, Arabs and Jews are talking, and “America First” is gloriously infectious.

            Trumpism is not dead because populism is very much alive. To maintain their power, Democrats and their elitist Republican sympathizers might need to look up populism since it’s coming toward them. The Biden agenda will strengthen it.

 

Roger Hines

1/14/21 

           

 

                   Thank you, Mr. President, for dividing us

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 1/2/21

            C.S. Lewis, the atheist turned Christian, professor at Oxford and Cambridge, and author of great renown said it best. In his little book titled “The Great Divorce” Lewis argued that good and evil cannot co-exist. One or the other must win and will win.

            Lewis’ absolutism alarms many people today. Had he not died less than an hour before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the world would probably know him better. And if he were still living, Lewis would still be alarming us. Lewis believed in objective truth and acknowledged that truth is always narrow.

            “Life is not like a pool,” Lewis wrote, “but like a tree. It does not move toward unity but away from it. Evil cannot develop into good. Time does not heal it.”

            Ayn Rand, having endured evil Russian communism before coming to America, wrote the following in 1957: “When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing, when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods but in favors, you may know that your society is doomed.”

            Lewis and Rand, total opposites on matters of faith, were both dividers who forced clarity.

            Division is sometimes not only preferable but essential, if the good and right are to prevail. We juxtapose ideas during a political debate in order to compare them and then embrace one and discard the other. We acknowledge that more often than not, two cannot walk together except they be agreed.

            Rodney King, allegedly beaten badly by cops but continuing a life of petty crime until his death, famously said, “Why can’t we all just get along?” Today during the corona virus visitation, many are saying, “We’re in this together.”

Well, no we’re not. There’s little togetherness in America. Too much mixed information is tossed us. Too many commands are being given. Too many unelected bureaucrats are running the show, politicizing a pandemic. Our representative democracy, if not at stake, is surely being tested. If right wingers become violent, watch for the difference between the official response to them and the non- response to the leftists who rioted and even took over portions of cities.

            Division is often good, and there are several divisions that our current president brought about. His critics have aptly called him a divider and indeed his role as a divider has been well received. Apparently 74 million voters – practically half of the voters in the November election – approve of the role he assumed. Here are just three of those divisions.

            He divided the general populace and the news media. Not that the media was deeply loved by the populace in the first place, but for the most part we accepted the fact that news had become commentary and simply shook our heads in disgust. The president would not do this. He challenged media elites and actually jerked them around on a string, displaying their disdain for ordinary folks, particularly conservatives. Consequently most media personalities are consumed by Trump-hate. Consequently Americans are now taking “news” with a grain of salt.

            He divided nationalists and globalists. For decades many Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike have been globalists. Ignoring the needs of the vast middle class, they allowed jobs to spread abroad, not to heartland America. The very words, “America First,” scare them. Globalists ignored the fact that America’s heartland isn’t New York and Wall Street but Peoria and Main Street.

It’s interesting that a New York billionaire, recently named the most admired man in the country, spoke to and won the hearts of the heartland rather than trafficking in the rarified air of entities like the U.N., the World Health Organization and the World Bank. Globalists, who definitely include most of America’s corporate CEOs, like to keep the gravy train running, fueling it with cheap labor. (Guess what percentage of Walmart’s suppliers are in communist China.) Forget that globalism destroys national, homogenous cultures. Consumerism and moo-la, not borders, are what matter to globalists.

            The president also divided secular elites from religious commoners. Secular elites, having lost their minds, have given us post-birth abortion, white-shaming, emasculated cops, and “What gender do you prefer?” Conservatives are asking, “What in the world can be next?” And they’re ready to fight it. Such division is good. 

            Division is often the price we pay for needed correction. C.S. Lewis and Rand, like Patrick Henry, Churchill, Reagan, and other true lovers of freedom, simply believed there was a time for “Yea, yea” or “Nay, nay.”

            Georgia’s senatorial election is such a time. The socialism that Lewis and Rand have disdained and the President has fought is up for a vote.

 

Roger Hines

December 30, 2020

 

 

                       

 

                            Generous Givers and Christmas Blessings

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/18/20

            When Baptists realize they have sinned and are grappling with the right response to that sin, we call it “being under conviction.”  A news article in the Marietta Daily Journal this past Tuesday reminded me of two times when I was convicted of not being a giver.  I felt “condemned at the bar of my own conscience,” as one theologian puts it.

            The MDJ article reported on a speech by Acworth Mayor Tommy Allegood.  At a Cobb County Chamber of Commerce gathering, Allegood encouraged business leaders to make giving a priority during the Christmas season.  Acknowledging that Cobb County is already a giving community, the mayor challenged Chamber members to dig a bit deeper this year to help the needy.

            The article pitched my mind back to the early years of married life when I almost abandoned tithing because I thought I could no longer do it.  Tithing was just too difficult, or so I thought.   In the third month of my non-tithing, I sat down to pay the monthly bills. Within moments I decided I could no longer contend with the gentle tweeting of my deceased tenant farmer father who had perched on my shoulder for the last two months.

            Beyond tithing to his church, my father would often reach into his overall pockets and retrieve a dollar for tramps at the train depot where he parked in town on Saturdays.  He would do the same for poor Choctaw families walking past our house toward town.  Before writing bills on that third month, a thought bombarded my mind: if Daddy can tithe, anybody can tithe.  The church I was attending at the time would not have missed my tithe check, but the small country church of my youth probably would have missed my father’s, despite its small amount.  However, the size of our checks was not the primary issue. The issue was the bar of our own conscience.

            Mayor Allegood’s plea also turned my mind back to 30 plus years ago when our oldest child was a freshman at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.  A private Christian college and not a cheap one, Samford was Christy’s deep desire.  She being a high achiever and a precious child, my wife and I knew we had to make her desire a reality.  We knew we would have to double up on two of our three financial principles: spend wisely and save methodically.  As for the third principle, give generously, we would just have to see.

            Toward the end of Christy’s freshman year, we received an envelope in the mail with no inside address.  It contained an anonymous note with kind words and a check for $1,000. A month later, a check for $500.  The third check was for $1,000 again.  Toward the end of Christy’s second college year and after several more checks, the total came to $10,000. I began to pray my benefactor into the choicest spot in Heaven whenever his or her time came. 

              At Christy’s college graduation, instead of giving full attention to the tremendous words of the great Coach Bobby Bowdon, I stood at the bar of my conscience.  Some voice other than my father’s was whispering: “Rich folks should give but poor folks should too.  You’ve got to give more.”

            In December of 2000, Governor Roy Barnes spoke with conviction and power to the incoming freshmen class of the General Assembly.  “I believe,” he said, “that one reason Georgia has fared better economically than our sister states is that we tried harder to do the right thing about race.”  From his words I took spiritual import.  You do the right thing; you get blessed.  Not always instantly, but eventually.  My supposedly well-off benefactor and my definitely poor father were blessed, I believe, because they blessed.  Whether with race relations or with giving, doing the right thing is rewarded, though not always materially.

            There are numerous organizations that need our support.  There are also individuals we meet daily who have needs.  Why not this Christmas an outrageous $50 bill or more for a restaurant server? Why not anonymously pick up the tab for a young family in a restaurant whose overheard conversation revealed they could use the help this Christmas?  Since Marietta has been dubbed the most generous city in America with populations above 50,000, maybe we in the county or in other Cobb County cities should emulate Mariettans.

            Those who know the Mayor and the Governor know they are givers of their time and resources.  I want to be like them and my dear old dad. 

Let’s all end this difficult year with giving.  If we do, Christmas for sure will be Merry.

 

Roger Hines

12/14/20

           

             

 

              Education: the Next Frontier for Conservatives

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal. 12/4/20

            Conservatives have cracked the media, but haven’t touched education. America’s political left still dominates almost every major institution in the nation including the judiciary, entertainment (especially comedy), the arts, fiction literature, professional sports, and most thoroughly, the university.

            How sports? By the fact that so many team owners who, instead of reminding their athletes who is the boss, have cowardly acceded to their social/political protests such as refusing to honor the American flag. Talk about the animals running the farm, professional athletes appear to have their owners eating out of their hands. In the not too distant past, one value of sports was that they took our minds off our cares and differences, but no more. Sports have been politicized and it’s a shame.

            As for the media, it wasn’t cable television or even talk radio that got the first conservative foot in the door. In the late 1950s Texas oilman H.L Hunt funded the excellent radio program called “Life Line.” The program was totally conservative, monologue commentary. It warned the nation of the spread of communism and rightly so. At the time, the Soviet Union had enveloped Eastern Europe and swallowed the eastern half of Germany.  Soviet Russia was also planting missiles in Cuba only 90 miles from America’s shore. Thus anti-communism was the main tenet of the conservative gospel.

            It came to pass that the Federal Communications Commission used its Fairness Doctrine to quiet conservative voices. The FCC compelled political commentators to give equal air time to opposing points of view. In 1987 the FCC terminated the Fairness Doctrine whereupon Rush Limbaugh in 1988 became the radio voice of conservative Americans. Mr. Limbaugh’s success is well known.

            Less well known is the success of Newsmax and One America News, two cable networks that are clearly trumpeting the conservative perspective and are growing rapidly. The conservative New York Post has also increased its presence and influence in recent years. Suffice it to say that liberal voices like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post no longer rule the roost. They are being challenged.

            Not so the American university. Its grip is sure. Its fads go unchallenged. Its undergirding ideology is always the craze of the moment: diversity, tolerance (as the university defines it, of course), transgender “studies,” feminist “studies,” race, “rights,” sexuality (sexuality “transformed,” that is), social justice, and economic transformation (weasel words for socialism). Somewhere underneath all such indoctrination, we suppose, lie math, science, history, and language.

            What is it about the field of education, particularly higher ed, that draws people from the political left? It could be that liberals love labs and incubators, for labs and incubators are what classrooms are. In a classroom (lab) students can test their knowledge and intellectual strength and discover their deepest interests if not a line of work. In a classroom (incubator) students can receive help for their intellectual development. Academic labs and incubators are the left’s chief tools.

            But classrooms are also transmission stations. Conservatives argue that schools and universities should transmit the knowledge and values that produce good, productive citizens. Liberal educators typically push the notion of students becoming “agents of change” or challengers of the status quo.

            Says the conservative, “Give my kid the facts; teach him to read, write, think, and analyze, but don’t go indoctrinating him. And no putting down his country as you are in the habit of doing.”

            In other words liberals want our children so they can set their paths straight. Conservatives are not so willing to turn their children over to the village. According to political scientist Jon Shields only 10% of university professors identify as conservatives. California State University illustrates Shields’ research. It currently requires a course in social justice as do many other public and private universities.

            Public schools are not untouched by progressive dogma, as their lingo indicates. Consider the following inane principles: “the teacher should be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage;”  “the best teaching is facilitating, not direct instruction”; and “facts are not as important as thinking skills” (as though facts are not essential for logical thinking).

            A Biden administration does not bode well for solid, subject matter-centered schooling. Get ready for regs from the federal Department of Education that require schools to emphasize racism, gay rights, and social justice in order to receive federal funds.

            Conservatives are no longer content being strangers in a strange land. Having taken on the media and given the fact that a down ballot blue wave didn’t happen on November 3rd, they will resist the next four years of progressivism with their frontier spirit and love of individual liberty all in tow. Their children and grandchildren are at stake   

 

Roger Hines

12/2/20

             

 

 

                      Where in the World  Are We Headed?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 11/20/20

            Calls for unity from presidential candidate Joe Biden, if heeded, would lead only to fake unity. These are no longer the more cordial times of Reagan and Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neil or, more locally, of Johnny Isaacson and Roy Barnes.

            Biden’s call for unity was preceded by four years of Democrat rejection of Donald Trump’s “illegitimate” presidency, not to mention name calling: Russian spy, traitor, racist, and self-serving egotist. And now we’re being urged by the oh-so-conciliatory Democrat candidate to join together and be civil?

            Come together, they say. The election is over. No, there are a few more steps between now and January. Media stars don’t get to “call” elections. Voters do. Meanwhile, as those legitimate steps are being taken, Democrats  who dragged a duly elected president through the mud, refused to attend his inauguration, and sanctimoniously looked down on his 63,000,000 unwashed, uneducated supporters are now calling for unity. And don’t forget “Russia, Russia / collusion, collusion / impeachment, impeachment and ventilators, ventilators.”  Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrats. 

Never before has politics been about so much more than just politics.  Aristotle’s definition of politics was “the affairs of the polis,” the city, that is. Aristotle lived when great city-states like Athens and later Rome were the centers of power. Nations as we know them now with distinct borders were yet to come. Localism, not distant governance, was the order of the day. “The affairs of the polis,” of course, always involved power, and power is addictive. It’s the drug of the emotionally needy.  

This is not to say that all who hold political office are power-hungry. Cincinnatus wasn’t and had to be persuaded to leave his fields to lead Rome. George Washington wasn’t, refusing all efforts of the few who wanted him to be a king (Hamilton among them, duh! Kings are what we gained independence from!).  

Yes, politics is now more than politics, far more than love of and care for the polis. It is now the ideological vehicle upon which revolutionaries have hopped and seized the steering wheel. How else do we explain the Democrat defense of the Black Lives Matter organization? (I said the organization, not the concept which, even so, has been sullied; all lives matter.) And Antifa? How many Democrat leaders have disavowed them? Had Portland been burned down by right wing thugs instead of by the Democrats’ ideological buddies, Democrats would have gone ballistic.

Leftist politics is now anchored to the notion of “transforming” the nation. Transform the police, the electoral college, the Supreme Court, health care, our narrow, out-of-step notions of human sexuality, our union itself by creating more states (guess why), and most transformative of all, the definition of free speech. The 1960’s flower children heralded free speech to the strains of Peter, Paul and Mary yet their grandchildren have turned free speech on its head. If it’s news they don’t like, that news is a “conspiracy theory.” If it’s you they don’t like, you’re canceled.

And of course the Covid “pandemic” (let’s talk about that word) has not been wasted by the President’s enemies. A pandemic is “an outbreak of disease that affects many lands.” Pan, the goat-headed Greek god of nature, darted everywhere around and outside the city. His name is always in reference to the number of nations, not the depth of a disease within a nation. Divide 330,000,000 (the USA’s population) into 11, 025,046 (the number of cases as of this writing). Divide 330,000,000 into 246,108 (the number of deaths). Then decide whether or not you really need to cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So where are we headed? Toward unity with those who are ho-hum about infanticide? Toward more non-ending wars? Toward Biden-Bernie socialism/theft that takes from producers (the villagers) and gives to the village (the government)? Toward sanctimonious Christians who can’t forgive and forget a President’s past? Toward forgetfulness of a billionaire president who energized good, common sense folks?

These questions will be answered by the Georgia U.S. Senate race in January. Never has any local election determined so greatly the direction of the entire nation.

There’s hope for conservatives, however. Even though the cemeteries went strong for Biden, Black and Latino support for the GOP increased. Pollsters again embarrassed themselves. Their power to influence is waning. By 2022 for the off-year Congressional elections, deplorable strength will have increased. In 2024 if the Republican nominee isn’t Trump it will surely be a candidate who espouses Trump’s agenda.

 Re-elected or not in our still undetermined current election, Donald Trump has remade his party and the world. His army of deplorables are by no means down and out.

 

Roger Hines

11/18/20