A Defense of “Religious Conservatives”

   A Defense of “Religious Conservatives”

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Nov. 5, 2022

            “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide / In the strife of truth with falsehood / For the good or evil side.” – James Russell Lowell, 1845 

            Not all conservatives are “religious,” though many are. The following argument is about political conservatives who are people of faith. I will yield to common English usage and refer to them as religious conservatives.

             Religious conservatives who oppose homosexuality and same-sex marriage are often labeled homophobes. This charge makes little sense, a phobia being an anxiety disorder or a deep fear. It is unlikely that true people of faith are afraid of homosexuals or that they deal with anxiety all because of someone’s sexuality. For the last few decades religious conservatives have been given a bum rap in regard to sexuality issues. Maligned and misrepresented, they have been characterized as bigots. They have been taunted for not “changing with the times,” an ill-informed phrase since homosexuality was widespread in ancient Rome and ancient Greece, and also practiced in Israel. There’s nothing new about it except the LGBTQ Lobby’s success in permeating our schools.

            While the issues of same-sex marriage and transgender politics are at the fore of our debate, homosexuality itself constitutes the heart of the sexual chaos that benights America. There is a reason religious conservatives are deeply concerned about the chaos. That reason is the Bible. Christian conservatives throughout the nation do not and cannot ignore the fact that the Bible forbids homosexuality. In the Old Testament, Genesis chapters 10-19 deal with Abraham’s nephew Lot, and how Lot “pitched his tent toward Sodom.”  Chapter 19 tells of the men of Sodom who went to Lot’s house seeking homosexual relations with his two male guests. They demanded that Lot bring them out so that they might “know them carnally.” Sodom became known as a vile place of sexual perversion. Religious conservatives also know that Leviticus 18:22 reads, “You shall not lie with mankind as with womankind.”

            The New Testament also prohibits homosexuality. In the epistles of Romans, First Corinthians, and First Timothy, the Apostle Paul is clear about the matter. One of the clearest prohibitions is found in Romans, chapter 1, which speaks of “men with men doing that which is unseemly.” Those who do not believe the Bible are free to say so and most certainly do say so, but those who do believe it should be expected to obey it and to resist public policy that violates it. It isn’t hate but devotion to their faith that leads religious conservatives to their position on sexuality.

 Yet, some incredibly argue that at a point religious beliefs should be set aside. As Senator Diane Feinstein said scornfully to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, “The dogma lives loudly within you.” Ms. Barrett was “too Catholic” for the Senator just as religious conservatives are “too religious” for many progressives.

            Religious conservatives are also troubled by transgender ideology.  One reason is the Biblical declaration, “Male and female created He them.” Another is common sense: men can’t be women and women can’t be men, no matter how they mutilate themselves or attempt to manipulate nature. So argues Dr. Paul McHugh, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.

Religious conservatives also point to the great harm done by transgender policy such as impairment wrought by transgender drugs and surgeries. They see athletics being gutted by the transgender bandwagon. The Boston Marathon’s decision to create a new category called “non-binary runners” is one example. Marathon applicants no longer must identify themselves as male or female.

             Guess how religious conservatives feel about drag queen hour for school children. Don’t tell me it isn’t spreading. Hatred of the natural is now an obsession fed by corporations, academia, Hollywood, the media, the LGBTQ Lobby, and even many pulpits.

            Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the nation’s sexual chaos is the re-defining of marriage and family. Before the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, marriage was about children and their need of a mother and a father, which is to say a family. Since Obergefell v. Hodges, gay and lesbian “marriage,” in which children are irrelevant, has unraveled the institution of marriage. This unraveling, coupled with the blasé view of babies held by abortion defenders, means that children simply are no longer considered blessings from God. Of course progressives are always into dismantling institutions which formerly gave us meaning and structure.

            Religious conservatives are conservatives of the heart. Stirred politically by Irish Catholic Pat Buchanan in 1992 at the Republican National Convention and buoyed by their deep love of God and country, they will definitely be praying for the upcoming election and for a nation whose current leaders have forsaken honored truths and abandoned reality.

 

Roger Hines

November 3, 2022

America, 2022

     America, 2022

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Oct. 29, 2022

            Today chaos and uncertainty lie everywhere. Nations, governments, economies, and families are wavering throughout the world. The U.K., the world’s 6^th largest economy, is in political shambles. War still rages in Ukraine where Russian troops are gathering up orphaned children, carrying them to Russia. Russia and China are still the bad boys they’ve always been. Neither North America nor the continent of Europe currently has a ruling Churchill, a Thatcher, a Truman, or a Reagan who can look dark clouds in the face and still be lighthearted and inspiring. In the recent words of Reagan’s speechwriter Peggy Noonan, “Today America is a Worried Land.”

            As for the land that birthed America, the United Kingdom may still be strong economically but she is no longer the exporter of civilization that she once was to many areas of the earth. Before uniting with Scotland and Ireland to become the U.K., little England, about the size of the state of Alabama, via her small ships and large spread her culture and language throughout the world. One would be hard pressed to argue that the English language and English culture did not improve every land where English ships docked. Before rightly giving her empire away, England also abolished slavery 32 years before America did.

            In regard to governance, the U.K. and the USA are wading through what England’s John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, called “the slough of despond.” After serving 44 days, the recently elected Prime Minister resigned only to be replaced by a globalist of all globalists, 42-year-old multimillionaire Rishi Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker. Welcome back to Number 10 Downing Street, globalists of the world, as well as those of you who fought Brexit and still want to be governed from Brussels. Feel free to walk on by, you Conservative Party members who wanted to make the U.K. great again. Globalism is back. Sovereign nations are passé.

            America’s governing situation is similarly shaky. One wonders if President Biden will be able to serve another full year. Standing straight up this past week during an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, the president closed his eyes and absolutely dozed for a few seconds. Seeing what was happening, Capehart forcefully said, “Mr. President!” and the president woke up. How unsettling is that? 

But who would be president if Biden resigns? We know the answer and that answer is equally unsettling. Throughout the western free world, leadership is in crisis. Turmoil in American is like none since the War Between the States. Not all of the turmoil is purely political. It’s also social and moral. Consider the following factoid that’s more than a factoid: “The U.S. Social Security Administration said it is allowing people to select their gender in its records, a move the agency said would give more  options to transgender and gender diverse people” (Wall Street Journal, 10/21/22).

Try one more: A June Gallup poll revealed that 72% of Americans have lost confidence in public schools because schools “are focused more on how race and gender should be taught than on helping students get back on track” (National Review, 9/12/22).

Yes, gender, gender, gender; race, race, race; honoring homosexuality; transgender sexual mutilation of children; the President sitting and hobnobbing with a silly man posing as a woman, all going on with background music from the nation’s corporations, celebrities, most universities, the NFL, liberal media stars, and you name it. Lost in it all is broad daylight crime to which a few Democrat mayors and governors have begun – wonder why, November 8^th ? – to pay a little attention.

Our turmoil is also related to morality. Time was when the Super Bowl halftime show was the supreme display of licentiousness. No more. The recent regular season NFL Raiders-Texans game, featuring that unclad paragon of sexiness, Iggy Azalea, reset the norm even lower. So that’s why the Raiders left Oakland for Vegas. Anyone who doesn’t think public morality, ever increasing nudity, pervasive porn, and filthy language doesn’t take a negative toll on high school and college students needs to teach at one or the other for one year. The point here is what kind of climate do we need for producing quality, visionary leaders of rectitude in the first place? How is America’s moral climate doing now?

But hope springs eternal in the human breast, someone wrote. There are many men and women in the nation who could make things better and many are ready and willing to lead. The question is will we choose the right ones to lead or continue to be swept away by the social/moral hurricane that now swirls around us?

 

Roger Hines

October 27, 2022

“Hear ye, hear ye!”

 

   “Hear ye, hear ye!”

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Oct. 22, 2022

To assess fairly the national news media, it’s necessary to separate the cable news “shows” from the “nightly news” on ABC, CBS, and NBC.

            Back when the earth was cooling off, my first extended exposure to national television news was in a college dormitory lobby. My family had never had television. Radio was our joyful conduit to the outside world. For four years in college I haunted the dorm lobby at 6 PM and 11 PM to watch the news.  My obsession was genetic. Particularly, it was my father’s fault. He could tell you why Hoover should never have been elected, why Adlai Stevenson lost to “that Republican general,” and why FDR stood just beneath the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

To me news was history in the make, and the most important reason for studying history was to learn how things came to be as they are. Even though history books taught me much about the world in which I lived, it made sense to me to try to keep up with current events and then see how textbook writers and historians reported and characterized those events.

Alas, I learned early on that television newscasters often tinctured the news in a way that most newspapers never had. In newspapers, opinion was reliably on the editorial page and readers could typically expect news to be fact-based. When Turner Catledge, a fellow Mississippian and executive editor of the New York Times, came to little but beloved East Central Jr. College in Decatur, Mississippi he bid the college newspaper staff to “tell the truth and don’t tell it slant.”  He was referencing and respectfully twisting a poem by Emily Dickinson titled “Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant,” an excellent poem that deals not with the delivery of news generally but with the care one should take when delivering bad news. “The Truth must dazzle gradually,” Dickinson wrote, “Or every man be blind.”

Catledge, who had just moved from managing editor to executive editor of the NYT, told the aspiring junior college journalists that the expression “Hear ye, hear ye” was not originally a cry of boys delivering the newspaper but of medieval messengers announcing the imminent appearance of a king or queen. “But it still fits,” he said, “because journalists are announcers of the truth.” Catledge was long known for sticking to the belief that the purpose of a newspaper is to inform. Today’s New York Times is a far cry from the policy and practice of its venerable editor Turner Catledge who died in 1982.

So what about television news?  It was clear to me, normally sitting alone in the college dorm lobby with my 18-to-21-year-old not fully developed mind that television news was quite different from printed news. While CBS’s news anchor Walter Cronkite seemed balanced, his sidekick commentator Eric Sevareid, would always pull the news leftward, as would CBS’s Mike Wallace. Anchor Howard K. Smith of ABC was also a straight, informing newscaster but not so the liberal Barbara Walters. NBC grumpies Huntley and Brinkley aspired to balance but not so John Chancellor who succeeded them.

Even before cable news came along, the mainstream networks were straying from straight news. On to today, one would be hard pressed to say that Lester Holt of NBC, David Muir of ABC, or Norah O’Donnell of CBS are straight informers, given their added comments to news segments and to their after-work pronouncements about various social issues.

            How then does one separate and rightly size up the objectivity of television news? The evening shows of Fox, Newsmax, OAN, MSNBC, and CNN are news “shows”, centered on ideological commentary pure and simple, and should be judged as such. Supposedly the old line networks are straight news, yet NBC has joined the bandwagon of saying “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant women” and “fetuses” instead of “babies.” With which ideological side does that line up? All three networks visibly relished their coverage of the “Russia, Russia” collusion hoax throughout Trump’s campaign and term in office. CBS and ABC showed absolute partiality during its coverage of the Roe v. Wade Court decision and its pre-announcement leak. All three networks have hidden behind the veneer of their “fact-checking” which always “reveals” that conservatives are in the wrong.

            So the “real news” guys are not clean as a hound’s tooth after all. Corporate media  quickly disposed of the Hillary Clinton emails, only to launch its ongoing avalanche against her Trump-supporting deplorables. Perhaps they should cry “Hear ye, hear ye” and admit that they are news shows and that commentary is their game. It might even help their poor ratings.

 

Roger Hines

October 20, 2022

Why Trump Should be Elected in 2024

 

Why Trump Should be Elected in 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Roger Hines

October 13, 2022

Then and Now

  Then and Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

           

Roger Hines

October 6, 2022         

A Few Questions

A Few Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Roger Hines

September 29, 2022

           

What are Liberals Afraid Of?

 

What are Liberals Afraid Of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Roger Hines

September 22, 2022