Right Minded Comments

Is Occupy Wall Street the American Spring?

2011-10-20T09:20:00.000-04:00

This column first appears in the October, 20, 2011 edition of the North Florida Herald.

When a local liberal whose writings I enjoy recently compared the Occupy Wall Street protests that have spread throughout the country to the "Arab Spring," I couldn't help but chuckle.

Last week an Iranian general made an identical comparison by calling those protests the "American Spring," and predicted they would bring an end to America's evil capitalistism. He cited corporate greed and the gap between rich and poor as his reasoning.

The Ayatolla Ali Khamenei echoed those sentiments last Wednesday.

Which led me to ask: why is it that American liberals always sound just like America's antagonists? You could have put the Ayatolla's words into the mouths of any of the protestors and no one would have known the difference.

The occupiers like to carry around signs which read, "We are the 99 percent!" The statement whines that most of America's wealth is concentrated into one percent of the population.

One blog that is often cited as the biggest marketer of the 99 percent slogan summed up the meaning this way:

"We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent."

We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything?

Really?

Nothing and everything?

That sounds a lot like a frustrated 2 year old who isn't getting his way with his sibling's stuff.

Ponder for a moment what that statement does not consider.

It doesn't consider how well off a very sizable portion of that 99 percent is. Many of those 99 percenters have two cars, nice homes, wonderful vacations, good food, iPods, Macs, Xboxes, tablets, smart phones ...

America's middle and lower middle classes, have a dizzying array of choices, influence, comfort, possibility and freedom compared to most of the world.

Those 99 percenters who exist at that level and who are concerned enough about the plight of those beneath them to protest those above them, should consider freely giving over some of their own evil and disgusting wealth.

I'm guessing many of those 99 percenters are just as "greedy" as the one percenters.

Even if someone falls out of their class into American poverty, there is a myriad of charitable, and government organizations that can keep most able bodied people at substistance levels long enough to get back up again.

Their childish statement sure as hell doesn't consider what poverty outside the United States looks like. It doesn't consider places where people literally have no food, and no clothes, and no medical care of any kind. Or that many of the countries that have even a modicum of those things are still excruciatingly poor compared to America. Many of them have economic systems similar to the kind for which the occupiers are advocating.

And just who in this country is legally working with "no rights?"

But let's look at just two solutions that have been offered.

1) Call an immediate moratorium on home foreclosures for the millions of Americans under water due to reckless speculation on sub-prime mortgages by Wall Street investment firms, followed by a prosecution of bankers and investors who are said to be responsible for the mess the country is in.
That idea might just pass muster if we can also consider prosecuting the politicians who advocated for and legislated an unfeasible system that both encouraged and coerced Wall Street recklessness and the lending that led to the those foreclosures. Democrats Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama come to mind.

2) Make hoarding of profits in overseas banks in order to avoid paying corporate taxes illegal.
That suggestion is only workable with a part two. Make it illegal to move your whole corporation overseas when the government that is supposed to protect your property starts telling you what you can and cannot do with the wealth it earned.

That would be right in line with the thinking that made the Iron Curtain so impenetrable for those wanting to leave the poverty of the Soviet Union or China.

Oh, those are two other American antagonists that would feel right at home in Zucotti Park.

If You Disagree With Al Gore, You Are A Racist.

2011-09-15T13:01:00.000-04:00

Late last month, Al Gore,the former vice president of the most powerful country on earth, and the highpriest of Global Warming (or climate change, or whatever we're calling it thesedays) tried to use a liberal's most potent weapon against those who interpretthe world a bit differently than he does.

He compared them toracists.

Yes, I know it's hard tobelieve that a dyed-in-the-wool liberal would cry racist to insulate hisargument against criticism, but it's true, he actually did it.

In an interview with AlexBogusky, Gore compares "climate change deniers" to racists bydescribing his younger years during the civil rights turmoil of the raciallydivided south.

He described seeing BullConner turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators, and then he related acurious question he says many were asking during that time.

He said, "Mygeneration asked old people, 'Explain to me why it is ok to discriminateagainst people because their skin color is different,' "and when theycouldn't answer that question with integrity, that's when the change reallystarted."

He continued, "There came a time when friends orpeople you work with or people you were in clubs with - you’re much youngerthan me so you didn’t have to go through this personally - but there came atime when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation andin years past they were just natural. Then there came a time when people wouldsay, 'Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don’t go forthat so don’t talk that way around me. I just don’t believe that.'"

He said, "That happened inmillions of conversations, and slowly the conversation was won." He thenwent on to argue that the national climate change conversation must be won inthe same way -- just shut down the conversation with ruffled moral disgust.

But there's quite a bit of a problemwith his analogy.

It is one thing to discriminateagainst a person because of the color of his or her skin. It is quite another thingto have civilized public discourse about a topic on which many intelligent andmoral people disagree.

Racial discrimination issomething that is intrinsically wrong, and moral outrage against it is veryappropriate.

People in America had been asserting that truth for some timebefore the civil rights era.

But the planet warming up hasnothing to do with intrinsic morality, unless that warming is something causedby unnecessary human activity.

And whether Gore wants to admitit or not, the fact is that smart people in the scientific community do notmonolithically agree on what is causing the planet to warm up. Some of them even rank human activity (if itis a cause at all) as a low causal factor.

So to shut down conversation, ashe describes in his recollection of casual racist discussions, sounds a lotmore like the old people he remembers who were unable to answer a question withintegrity than it does with establishing a new and better environmentalmorality.

The whole exchange between Goreand Bogusky is so bizarre that one must ask some questions of the former secondmost powerful person on earth.

1)Is his environmental positionso weak that the most tenuous of comparisons seems to him strong?

2)Does he (like many liberals)misunderstand the nature and severity of racism at a very core level?

3)Does he (like many liberals)naturally use a history of racial disparity for political (or worse) policygains?

4)Is he crazy?

It's really pretty hard tosay. This isn't just because Gore hasproposed so many weak arguments in the past, or because he probably hasn'tgiven much thought to racism outside of its political utility. It isn't even because he has seemed a little"off" in his thinking before.

It is mostly because the rhetoric of race istoo cheaply used by the leaders of the team to which Gore belongs.

And this is a significant problemfor everyone involved. It is a problemfor racial minorities. It is a problem for liberal credibility. It is a problemfor the nation.

But the biggest problem of all isthat it diminishes true racial antipathy, while at the same time diminishingthe credibility of true future environmental concerns.

Rest In Peace Fellow Servant. Larry Blalock Oct. 14,1938 - July 26,2011

2011-08-04T07:38:00.000-04:00

Last week the battle between a good, kind, and loving man named Larry Thomas Blalock and the earthly evil of Death ceased. But Death did not win that battle. It suffered a crushing blow. The best it could do was claim Larry's mortal body through a pernicious cancer.

The next best it could do was cause those who loved him to feel loss. But these are only fleeting victories for death, because for many of us that loss is as temporary as Larry's mortal body was. We know that we will see him again one day.

Death, where was your sting? Not in momentary loss.

The war that Death wages on every human being is fought on two fronts. First, it wages its war against our physical bodies which we know won't last anyway. And by waging that war on our bodies, it is attempting to have victory over a more important second front -- our spiritual lives. Death knows that if it has victory there, it has victory over the whole human being.

Such a victory is far worse than the loss of a body that's only temporary.

Death is acutely aware that the human spirit, more than anything else, determines a human's vitality. And death knows that damage to one human spirit helps it to develop inroads into the spiritual lives of other human beings.

But Larry's strong and positive spirit was armored well by a shield of faith -- a belief that all things work together for good for those who love God and have been called according to His purpose.

Those who knew Larry know that he loved the Lord and was called by Him on this earth for divine purposes.

What must Death have thought this past Saturday when it saw Larry's family have a celebration and homegoing service instead of a funeral? What must death have thought when it saw in the midst of melancholy over the loss of a husband, a father, a coach, a mentor and a friend, that there was laughter, and love and strengthened devotion to death's greatest enemy?

Death, where was your sting? Not in laughter and love and devotion.

Larry was a friend to my children. In fact, he was a friend to all children. He coached kids in basketball for 35 years. He coached volleyball for 5 years. He volunteered at Irby Elementary for 9 years. He faithfully involved himself in Sunday School. He mentored kids both inside and outside of church. He did it with love and enduring patience.

And even when it was difficult to see the fruits of that work, even when it sometimes looked like no one cared, Larry remained faithful to the mission that God had given him to guide children through life.

When other people gave up on their work because of difficulties, and because of what they saw with mortal eyes, Larry did not. He walked by faith. And that made him different and special.

This Saturday one girl wrote in his memory book, "Thank you for coming over to my house and helping me with my math in the third grade. You taught me so much in math that when I was in fourth grade I was the best in math."

A former Sunday School student wrote, "He helped me through many tough times and he will continue to help me through what he taught me."

That young man realized that Larry's life would be influential beyond the grave. He realized that his life, and Sunday School teaching, and the echoes of his spirit would continually provide help and guidance.

Another person wrote, "He was a father to the fatherless. He was a testimony for Jesus' love for everyone he met. I pray for a Godly man like him for my daughter."

The legacy of Larry's life lives in the people he moved to gain the same positive spirit with which he was gifted. And Larry passed that gift to many, many, people who will in both small and big ways pass it on to many others.

Where Death makes inroads into the spiritual lives of human beings with pain and loss, Larry made inroads with life and spirit.

Unlike Death's legacy, Larry's will be living and exponential and eternal.

Death, where was your sting? Not in legacy.

I am very happy to have known Larry Thomas Blalock. I am very saddened that I didn't take the time to know and appreciate him more on this side of heaven.

Death, there is your sting! I can no longer make earthly memories with him, or serve together with him the Lord we both love. But even that sting is fleeting. Because of that sting, I am now more inclined to have a legacy more like Larry's. I will appreciate more, in the present, the people who are around me.

Rest In Peace Fellow Servant.

Larry Thomas Blalock

Oct 14, 1938 - July 26, 2011

Does Herman Cain Understand the Spirit of the First Amendment?

2011-07-22T21:10:00.000-04:00

Back in June of this year the New York Times reported on the rising political momentum of Herman Cain, one of the GOP's presidential hopefuls. At the time, the paper noted that according to Gallup, the obscure and lesser known Cain had the highest voter intensity scores of any Republican hopeful, including Sarah Palin.

Also at that time, his name recognition had improved 16 points over just a few months.

That he was able to woo potential voters so quickly is really no surprise.

Cain is, afterall, an accomplished man with excellent management skills.

He is a business man who made both a name for himself and a tidy little treasure after he returned an underperforming Godfather's Pizza to profitability as CEO.

But he has much more business and management experience than just his stint at Godfather's. He served as the vice president of Pillsbury. He has sat on the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. He serves as a minister at his local Baptist church. He is a recipient of the Horatio Alger Award. And he has many other management accomplishments which are too numerous to include in this column.

Nor are business and management his only games. He has a kind of intellectual prowess that doesn't always come across in his folksy, down-to-earth speeches.

He earned a Master of Science in computer science from Purdue in 1971 when computers were still very much a frontier territory. Because of his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, he served as a mathematician doing ballistics calculations for the U.S. Navy.

He is no dummy.

Despite what Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson might tell you, Cain is also black.

Of course being black isn't an accomplishment. Instead, it is a divine gift to the GOP which desperately wants people to see the acceptance of diversity that is inherent to its ideology of free individualism, rather than the negative mythology presented (via the aid of the media) by the left.

His blackness is also an inspiration to those racial minorities who have been persuaded by a hypocritical left that they cannot succeed in a capitalist society.

So it is highly ironic that in spite of all of Cain's brightness, he failed last week to understand the importance of the first amendment, and the radical devotion to it that is required of a nation if it wishes to remain truly free; he argued that local communities can ban the building of mosques. He also missed the benefits imparted to individual freedom by allowing (not forcing) natural diversity.

Last Thursday he spoke in Tennessee at Murfreesboro Public Square. After his speech he commented to reporters in regards to the proposed building of a mosque in Murfreesboro.

He told reporters, "I think it is an infringement and abuse of our freedom of religion, and I don’t agree with what’s happening here because this isn’t an innocent mosque.”

But I have yet to hear him provide an example of why the Murfreesboro mosque is less "innocent" than any other mosque.

To justify his claim that Islamic centers can be banned, he argued that Islam and Sharia law are synonymous, and that because of this, the building of this mosque was a way to secret Islamic law into American jurisprudence.

He held his ground on this issue during an interview on Fox News Sunday this past weekend.

But there really is no way to sneak in Islamic law. In a country where constitutionally restrained democracy is the engine that produces lawmakers, laws are a reflection of both the ethics and the morality of the people. They are also a reflection of either their collective moral apathy or their collective moral sensitivity.

Therefore, in order for Islamic law to be secreted in, it must first be approved by a majority of the voting people in the community. After this, it must be in harmony with the constitution. So how can all that be kept secret?

A community doesn't need to ban a mosque to keep Sharia out of the legal code. That's ludicrous. The trick is to keep state law and its machinations, along with the constitution supreme. This requires much greater involvement by the people in their own governance than lazily banning mosques.

Except for very specific and narrow reasons, to ban the mosque would create a much greater danger to the country than the dubious potential of some clandestine Islamic legal revolution.

Banning the mosque would violate the first amendment, and set precedence for banning other religious institutions, like strains of evangelical Christianity, for instance.

Such restriction on worship and thought sounds more liberal and Orwellian than American, and is a clear danger to individual freedom.

And for those Christian brothers who fear a loss of cultural ground to Islam, you will find much greater power by actually loving your neighbors, while being salt and light in your communities, than you will by forcing a cultural solidarity with a potentially unconstitutional law.

The Obama Administration Admits That Enhanced Interrogation Was Useful

2011-05-18T12:36:00.007-04:00

This column first appears in the May 19th, 2011 edition of the North Florida Herald.

In April of 2009, one of President Obama's super spooks, Admiral Dennis C. Blair claimed that enhanced interrogation techniques like water boarding produced "high value" information necessary for our understanding of al-Qaida.

His statement directly contradicted the Obama administration's apparent public values.

At the time, Admiral Blair was President Obama's Director of National Intelligence. He made those statements in a private memo to his staff. According to the New York Times, this is what he said in that forgotten and under reported memo regarding enhanced interrogation:

"High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country."

Interestingly, when the memo was first released to the media, that little tidbit of information was deleted.

So much for transparency in the era of hope and change.

About a month later, in a rather shocking speech, Dick Cheney claimed that President Obama reserved for himself the right to use enhanced interrogation techniques if such techniques were deemed necessary.

If Cheney's words are ever proven true, then they make both a robust defense of his own position regarding those techniques, as well as a very pointed and legitimate charge against President Obama of hypocrisy at best, or duplicity at worst.

When the tingly Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked David Axelrod, President Obama's then senior advisor, about Cheney's accusations, Axelrod would only answer that the president had banned "torture."

When Matthews pressed him harder about whether or not the president had reserved the right to use "enhanced interrogation" in emergency situations, Axelrod responded that, "The president's going to do everything he needs to do to keep this country safe."

Even David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo noted that Axelrod had "danced" around the question. Kurtz also reported that when TPM asked the administration about Cheney's accusation, they got no response.

Was the administration's public values different from its private values? Was it making a hushed distinction between torture and enhanced interrogation? Was it hypocrisy? Was it Duplicity?

Sadly, just as they had done with other critical issues during the 2008 election, the national media pressed the Obama administration about Cheney's amazing claim no more, and slid the issue of enhanced interrogation to the back burner where it quietly simmered.

But on May 2nd of this year Osama Bin Laden, high potentate of the al-Qaida network, was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs working with CIA operatives.

The debate about enhanced interrogation reignited. The flashover occurred when former Attorney General Michael Mukasey argued in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that information obtained during the water boarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed led to the successful mission against Bin Laden. That information is said to have been the name of Bin Laden's personal courier.

Senator John McCain fired back in a Washington Post piece that Mukasey's claims were false.

And while it is reasonable to argue that Mukasey used some clever rhetorical magic to imply that the gains of enhanced interrogation might have been greater than they were, McCain is at loss to explain the 2009 claims of Admiral Blair.

Nor is McCain in sync with Obama's chief super spook, Leon Panetta, current director of the CIA. On May 3rd, he told Brian Williams of NBC news that information leading to the successful raid that killed Bin Laden had, in part, been garnered from enhanced interrogation.

Seething opponents of enhanced interrogation thought they caught a break on May 16th, when Greg Sargent of the Washington Post published in his column a private letter from Panetta to McCain in which Panetta states that enhanced interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammed was not the first time that the al-Qaida courier's name had been spilled.

But his letter did little to help McCain's position. It specifically acknowledged that "useful"" information regarding the role of the courier had been gained from enhanced interrogation of detainees. And while the letter, in fact, states that Khalid Sheik Mohammed did not produce the courier's name, it does state that his attempt to "falsify" that name during enhanced interrogation was "alerting."

Perhaps this means that his attempted falsification "alerted" the interrogators enough to give them confirmation about the name they already had.

The letter also states unequivocally that information collected over the past 10 years led to the successful mission. Some of those years, obviously, were at the direction of President Bush's CIA.

Opponents then tried to seize on Panetta's admission that some detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation provided false or misleading information. Of course, conventional methods of interrogation never produce misleading information.

Since 2009, various sources, including two high level Obama appointees have acknowledged that enhanced interrogation has produced valuable and useful information.

So the question to ask, then, isn't one of efficacy, but one of ethics. And those ethics will be best shaped when it is determined whether or not enhanced interrogation is the same thing as torture.

Perhaps the Obama administration can help clarify that.

The AFA versus Good Christian Bitches

2011-04-06T09:22:00.009-04:00

This column first appears in the April 7th, 2011 print edition of the North Florida Herald and in the April 8th online edition.

Too often, Christians as groups, grow to be gullible huddles prone to overreaction and missed opportunity. Unfortunately this isn't all that different from most other groups of human beings.

Those are rather strong statements, I know, but over the past couple of decades, I've seen clusters of my brethren miss the mark in public discourse so many times that whenever the next big controversy

comes along, my reaction is to view their conniptions with skepticism.

I've seen smart Christians do the craziest things. Once, back in the 80s, I was stunned to see way too much mental energy spent on opposing the evils of Barney the Dinosaur.

I've seen other Christians focus a lot of energy on opposing and banning Harry Potter while ignoring the dwindling theological education of Christians.

I watched as Christians everywhere fought Dan Brown's, "The Da Vinci Code," while horribly missing that the reason his book was such a success (apart from it being an engaging book) is because the church had failed to educate the western world on church history. To those privy to that history, the book was completely implausible. And that's pretty ironic, given that Christian culture has dominated the history of the western world for some time.

The latest controversy is a television pilot that ABC hasn't even released yet. The pilot was titled, "Good Christian Bitches," but was quickly changed to GCB as a working title after the advent of a predictable uproar.

The American Family Association, along with the Parents Television Council are leading the charge against the show. And they might have success considering that the PTC in the past year responsibly helped curtail MTV's very sexualized "Skins" by using a host of reasonable arguments.

But "Good Christian Bitches" is a dog of a whole different color.

Unlike with "Skins", the reasons being employed against GBC aren't very good.

By March, the AFA had raised 120,000 signatures on a petition to scuttle GBC by frightening potential advertisers.

Of course, they have every right to do that.

I support that right.

What I don't support is their lack of introspection. They hadn't even considered that the title might have a deeper meaning.

And if their aim is to impact society for good by removing the show from the market, then they have strategic problems, too. For instance, even if I assume that their criticism is appropriate, and that the show is spit from the bowels of hell, I'm not real fond of how much the curiosity factor will be ratcheted up by all their puddin' stirrin'. Afterall, if ABC drops it, someone, somewhere, will broadcast the show that got a bunch of free publicity from the AFA.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not defending the show. It may, in fact, be ghastly. But I am choosing to wait until its release before I make such a judgment.

That's especially true given the little we know about the show's basic plot line. Essentially, the show is about a woman who returns to her hometown where she had been a teenage tyrant. Having suffered a divorce, she has cleaned up her life and attitude, but upon her homecoming, she finds that she is the target of hate filled gossip among the women of her town's Christian community.

For those Christians willing to be nakedly honest, that plotline is embarrassingly conceivable. And the satire and deeper meaning intrinsic to the title are inescapable. And let's not forget the meaning in the title's tagline, "For Heaven’s sake, don’t let God get in the way of a good story!”

I have witnessed far too many gossips among my Christian brothers and sisters who sadly were unwilling to let God get in the way of a good story.

I can't help but to ponder how the comedic dramatization of such nastiness might assist in the marginalization of an undesirable and thoroughly unchristian behavior.

So what are the reasons given to oppose the show? The PTC says the title is an affront to women.

And the AFA says it's insulting to all women.

Really?

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that it's a description of certain kinds of women?

The PTC also asserts the title denigrates Christianity. But given the plot, is it an insult to Christianity, or a jab at hypocrisy? Or is it a picture of how some outside the church may view some of us inside it?

So I say to some of my Christian friends, let's not overreact to a largely amoral, unchristian secular media that produces a product designed to obtain ratings and dollars. Instead, lets embrace the opportunity the show offers to search our scriptures and have them examine the condition of our churches.

How Fred Phelps and Jeremiah Wright are the Same

2011-03-09T10:52:00.007-05:00

This column first appears in the March 17, 2011 Print Edition of the North Florida Herald, and in the March 18th, Online Edition.

Fred Phelps is an evil man who leads an evil cult called the Westboro Baptist Church.

It is not Baptist in any associational sense, nor is it a church in any Christian sense.

Mr. Phelps and his cult like to stand outside of funerals and protest the families of fallen soldiers with vile taunts. They do this because the fallen soldiers are known to have been gay.

The cult won a victory last week when the Supreme Court of the United States voted eight to one that it was within its constitutional rights to continue their protests.

The only dissenting vote came from the conservative, Sam Alito.

I agree with the court's decision.

Even evil people have a right to express their opinions. This right is at its strongest when those expressions are distasteful, bitter, stupid, and public.

Because they have won this victory it is almost certain that they will continue vomiting their antichristian bile all over whatever media amplifier they can find. It is because of this likelihood that I feel compelled to make a contrast & comparison and then give a very short Bible lesson.

First the comparison.

Westboro's vomit comes in the form picket signs that proclaim things like: "Thank God for 9/11," and "Thank God for IEDs." An IED is an Improvised Explosive Device. IEDs are those road side bombs that have killed so many of the men and woman who willingly risk shedding their blood to protect you and me. In response to the Arizona shootings of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Fred Phelps has said that his church prays for " more shooters, more violent veterans and more dead."

It is in these picket signs and sentiments that Fred Phelps is very much akin to one of President Obama's most known spiritual advisors, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who called for God to Damn America.

And here's the contrast via a Bible lesson.

Men of God in the Bible do not pray such things. They certainly do not pray them upon their own people, and they generally do not pray them even on evil people from other cultures or lands.

When God told Abraham that he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18) for their sin, Abraham immediately interceded, asking God if he would really sweep away the righteous with the wicked. He pleads with God, "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" Abraham intercedes a total of four times for a people not his own. Ultimately God says he will spare Sodom and Gomorrah if there are as few as 10 righteous people there. Unfortunately there were not, and the few who were righteous, Lot's family, were removed by angels.

Because of its complacency, pride and sin, God told the prophet Amos (Amos 7) that He was going to physically punish Israel with locusts and fire and biblical wrath. Amos did not respond with glee. Or ask God to damn his fellow men. Instead, like Abraham, and unlike Jeremiah Wright, he interceded multiple times.

In Daniel 9:1-9 Jerusalem is being punished for 70 years for rebellion and sin against God. The prophet Daniel does not jump up and down with Joy. He does not thank God for Israel's pain, He does not pray for more death, and more sorrow. Instead he prays for God to forgive Israel and to restore her.

The Old Testament is full of this kind of intercession.

This tendency for prophets to intercede for their own people is so great that in Jeremiah 7:16, God orders Jeremiah not to pray for his people for the punishment they are about to receive. But Jeremiah did not revel in this command. In fact, he became known as the weeping prophet for the sadness he felt about the punishment of his nation (Jeremiah 8:18 and 9:1).

Finally, the Bible's greatest man of God, Jesus, is executed on a cross. While he is experiencing this pain of execution personally, Jesus asks God to forgive his executioners, and by extension, all of humanity "for they know not what they do."

People like Fred Phelps, and Jeremiah Wright cast themselves as men of God, but they do not fit the pattern of the men of God in the Bible they say they proclaim.

And men like Phelps and Wright will always litter our landscape. Therefore those of us who are Christian should gently hold them accountable to the patterns they say they profess.

But far more difficult is the next thing we should do, which is pray for them to have a change of heart, so that they can become a blessing to humanity and not a curse

What's Really Being Vilified?

2011-03-03T08:16:00.003-05:00

This past Monday, President Obama told the nation's governors that public workers shouldn't be "vilified" as part of the ongoing debates over state budgets.

His call to restraint was in response to a huge teacher's protest in Wisconsin. The governor there has called for ending the collective bargaining rights of government workers.

If he succeeds, then those workers will not be able to unionize in any meaningful way.

The problem with Obama's statement is that no one of consequence has vilified public workers. What has been vilified is the political nature of government, and it's appetite for taxes. Vilification of persons, or even classes of workers, has been largely reserved for those legislators whose job it is to keep government on a short leash and who have failed in that duty, or for those unions who cannot see the dire economic consequences of their tactics.

In Wisconsin, when public workers have been in the crosshairs . . . um excuse me, inappropriate choice of potentially violent words. Since I'm a conservative, I've been warned that government workers might feel threatened by such rhetorical language and go postal. According to Massachusetts Democrat Representative, Michael Cupuano, they might even have to get a little "bloody" if they want to stave off changes to their bargaining rights. Therefore, I must be more responsible. So let's try once more. When government workers have been the target of vitriol . . . darnit, sorry again. When opponents of collective bargaining have taken aim at government workers. . . . oh good grief! This. . . is. . . IMPOSSIBLE!

O.k., here we go. When opponents of collective bargaining have scrutinized protesters in Wisconsin, such scrutiny has been focused on "workers" who lied to get out of work so that they could attend a protest rally without actually assuming the risks associated with such a controversial cause. When present, vilification (or scrutiny) also has been focused on those who obtained false doctor's notes (and the doctors or imposters who wrote them), or for those "workers" at the rally who were behaving in ways with less than adult maturity.

But let's get away from the rallies and explore the real issue. Should public workers be allowed to collectively bargain?

Well, if one listens to the greatest political defender of labor unions in American History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the answer would be a resounding no! In 1937, in a letter to the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, he argued that, "All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service." He contended a strike by government workers would halt the services of government and improperly deprive the people of those services. He called this, "intolerable."

What FDR understood was that the bosses that rule over those public employees are not the principals of schools, or the supervisors of bus routes, or the foreman of sanitation crews, or some greedy capitalist running a sweatshop, but instead they are the whole of the people within the state.

Their beef, then, is not with some corporate goon, but with the society those workers have chosen to serve.

Furthermore, he understood that the grip collective bargaining would have on the government was far different than the grip it would have on service providers in the private sector. The Wall Street Journal calls this grip a "natural monopoly." It argues that in the private sector Unions may bargain for greater share of the profits, but they know that the company they work for must make a profit or they have nothing to bargain for.

Not so in the public sector.

The government doesn't make a profit, but rather confiscates its funds from its citizens. If a union in the private sector bankrupts a company that produces a needed product, there is another company somewhere that can provide that product in the failed company's absence.

But unions for teachers, fireman, police, sanitation workers etc., know that they are the only service providers, and can simply bully the politicians for more taxes. In the politicians mind, the ramifications of a services shutdown, or slowdown, is unthinkable. Then there's the temptation inherent to a sizable voting block from which votes can be purchased -- patently and legally -- with other people's money.

So in states like Wisconsin where government unions collectively bargain, and that have been steadily edging toward economic calamity, Democrat politicians have felt it necessary to side with unions rather than pay heed to the fiscal writing on the wall.

Perhaps Obama and his liberal friends shouldn't vilify the Governor's attempt, but instead should consider that collective bargaining by public workers is a place where Democrats ought to have heeded the wisdom of one of their greatest gods, FDR.

Conservatives are Belligerent in Words, Liberals in Deed

2011-01-20T06:19:00.006-05:00

This column first appears in the January, 20, 2011 edition of the North Florida Herald. 

It is always a huge disappointment to see smart people in the media so blinded by ideology that they can't see the blistering white hot facts of history before them. 

And it doesn't matter whether it's some big wig elite "journalist" with a viewership in the hundreds of thousands relishing the tingle running up his leg, or an award winning liberal pundit in a small town Florida paper with a readership of just a few thousand.

These people are, regardless of their politics,  the folks that are supposed to either report the news accurately, or bring a thoughtful analysis to the facts.  They are not stupid people. In fact, they all belong to various levels of the intelligentsia, and are primary writers of history. 

The morality plainly inherent in that fact should make even the most amoral atheist, or the most relativistic humanist treat the words he or she publicly expresses with at least the facade of intellectual honesty. 

Unfortunately, these folks are sometimes ruled so strongly by the stereotypes in their own ideologies that they fail in reporting news, or in analyzing facts, or even in constructing a decent facade.

The American media is so blinded with liberal bias that from the moment  severely mentally ill Jared Loughner entered the national spotlight by shooting up a crowd at a political event in Arizona, the media saw him only as a right winger, then went on to describe him as such.

It didn't matter that no facts were in to determine if that was so. And once the facts came in, it didn't matter that he seemed to have more in common with the left than the right.  He had, after all, stated that his favorite works were the Communist Manifesto, and Mein Kampf. 

They argued that it must be right wing talk radio and the Tea Party that led him to such. They continued to argue this even after Jared's friends described him as apolitical, and being neither interested in the news or talk radio, 

The only thing that could be argued, from as high as the national media, all the way down to this local paper's liberal pundit was that conservatives have used martial language in their political metaphors. 

Never mind that all mainstream groups, from all political persuasions, and throughout all history have used martial language to convince the masses of their ideas. All sane people recognize such language for what it is: metaphorical.

But if conservatives are guilty of using belligerent  language, then liberals are guilty of actually behaving belligerently. 

Here are some facts: 

November 22, 1963 - John F. Kennedy shot by left winger, Lee Harvey Oswald

June 5, 1968 - Robert F. Kennedy shot by socialist sympathizer and anti-Semite, Sirhan Sirhan.

October 7, 1969 - Weather Underground, a liberal group, plants a bomb at the Haymarket Police Memorial in Chicago, destroying a statue and breaking 100 windows.

October 8-11, 1969 - the Weather Underground helped fuel the "Days of Rage" in which liberals rioted through Chicago breaking windows, destroying property, and physically engaging police.

February 16, 1970 - the Park Police Station in San Francisco is bombed. Two officers are killed and 8 others wounded. Though not yet solved, the bombing is believed by authorities to be the work of the Weather Underground.

1974 - Bill Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground, and friend of President Obama, dedicates his book, Prairie Fire, to Sirhan Sirhan.

1970-1981 - The Black Liberation Army, a leftist group, becomes known for its "armed struggle" to bring about "socialistic change." They are believed to be responsible for scores of violent acts, and the deaths of many police officers.

1975-1984 - The United Freedom Front, a Marxist Organization, was responsible for bank robberies, bombings, and the death of a New Jersey State Trooper.

1980s-2000s - Eco-terrorism flourishes. A host of liberal radical environmental groups and animal rights activists threaten violence, burn buildings, plant bombs, destroy private homes, and generally run amok. In 2008, the FBI considered it the #1 domestic terrorism threat in the country. At that time, it had already been the #1 threat for 7 years. The FBI estimated that such terrorism had caused at least $100 million in damages.

Sept. 2008 - Violence breaks out at the Republican National Convention as anti-war protesters accost police, threaten violence, break shop windows, and throw rocks. Two protesters were carrying 8 Molotov cocktails and had plans to use them against police.

Summer 2009 - Kenneth Gladney is assaulted at a "healthcare" town hall meeting.

November 2009 - The anti-war group, ANSWER, calls for "militant confrontation" with Tea Partiers and then is filmed beating Tea Party participants on the streets of Ft. Lauderdale.

October 2010 - President Obama calls on liberal "Latinos" to punish their conservative "enemies." Given the history of liberal activism, one wonders how some of those Latinos might react.

Finally, one must be sure to remember the violence meted out by the most famous left wingers: Stalin, Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, Jim Jones, etc...  Their victims number in the millions.

FDR's "The Four Freedoms": A Contradictory Ideology

2011-01-06T07:02:00.011-05:00

This column first appears in the Print Edition of the January 6, 2011 North Florida Herald.

On this day in 1941, the left's most adored American political executive, President Franklin Roosevelt, in one of his most famous State of the Union speeches, argued elegantly, persuasively, and enthusiastically for an acceleration in the creation of America's military industrial complex.

Listen to the speech here.

He gave his speech almost one year before America officially entered the second world war.

It's hard to miss the irony dancing around in those facts; the Modern American Left understandably adores one of the 20th century's most economically liberal American presidents, yet seems to hate the modern military apparatus he helped create for the purpose of defeating the murderer Adolf Hitler, himself a national socialist.

Roosevelt's military apparatus also impeded the Asian Holocaust spawned by Japan's Emperor Hirohito in which the Japanese military killed 20 to 30 million people in China, the East Indies, India, Indochina, Korea, The Philippines, Burma, Thailand, and Malaya & Singapore.

In that speech, he called on Americans to be ready to fight those evils with full physical force.

Once America was engaged in the war, he had no intentions of apologizing to Hirohito or the Japanese people for America's role in restricting the multinational trade of petroleum to Japan in the months before their attack on Pearl Harbor. Nor did he intend to apologize to Hitler, or the German people, for a previous American administration's role in forging the crippling Treaty of Versailles that left Germany's economy and morale in a shambles after World War I.

And he had no intentions of allowing the dictators of World War II to control the process of peace negotiations. He argued that, "principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom."

He was a great war time president, and on January 6, 1941 he had enough prescience to know that both America and the larger world needed real fighting muscle, and a real fighting spirit.

But his greatness was tarnished by the remainder of his speech.

That speech is now known as "The Four Freedoms Speech."

In it he argued for a world founded on four essential freedoms.

First, he argued for freedom of speech everywhere in the world. Unless one is a politically correct liberal, there should be no problems with that American ideal.

Nor should there be problems with his second argument. His next foundational freedom was that every person, everywhere in the world, should be free to worship God as he or she sees fit.

But upon reaching his third point, his democrat heart began to bleed through. He began to argue for a freedom from the realities and consequences of individual human choices and conditions, rather than
for an individual's freedom to think or behave in particular ways.

His third point was that there should be freedom from want everywhere in the world.

Such a warm and appealing concept was mortally defective.

Freedom from want isn't something a government can provide everywhere in the world without stifling other basic individual freedoms. A government can only guarantee freedom for able bodied individuals to pursue for themselves a state of absence from want.

The President's idea was so attractive that in 1948 it became the direct inspiration for elements of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That declaration's Article 25 is generally viewed as an entitlement, and states, "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Therefore, governments who don't respect the first clause of the first paragraph in that article, and who consequently don't provide an adequate standard of living for those who refuse to better themselves, are violating human rights.

The economic drain of such a concept is the bane of socialism, and the hallmark of abysmal socialist economies. It creates an ebbing tide that mires many boats.

Roosevelt's fourth point was typical liberal pie-in-the-sky.

He argued that everywhere there should be a freedom from fear. He defined this freedom by describing a world in which all nations would be disarmed to the point that no nation would be able to aggress against another.

Never mind that any entity capable of enforcing such a state of affairs would, by definition, be able to aggress against a bevy of defenseless nations.

So on this ironic day in 1941, President Roosevelt strengthened the modern military industrial complex, while at the same time advancing the rhetoric of socialism and the self-contradictory fantasy of disarmament.

Just Where Were the Democrats Going?

2010-11-04T06:38:00.005-04:00

This column first appears in the November 4, 2010 edition of the North Florida Herald.

"If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going," was a joke by the left leaning "Professor" Irwin Corey. Some of you older folks may remember his vaudevillian comic schtick from the 60s and 70s (and before.)

Although he's considered "The world's foremost authority," his friends in the Democrat Party's leadership failed to don their Captain Obvious capes and pay heed to the barefaced truth in the learned professor's joke.

But their Republican opponents understood the truth in that joke. And their attention and action, galvanized by a solid understanding of "where we're going," steeled a nearly unstoppable resolve that resulted in an effervescent Tea Party movement, a much stronger post-election GOP, and a decidedly weakened Obama post-election legislative agenda.

For now, those opponents have modified the course that was taking us to where we were going.

Democrat elites did not recognize that their presidential victory in 2008 was not an American wholesale adoption of Marxist, or socialist, or even liberal values and policies. They were far too drunk with new power (something they seem to covet most perversely) to see that it was instead a rejection of President George Bush's image, which had been severely marred by 8 years of relentless and almost universal negative media coverage.

Juxtaposing that marred image with the media's beautifully produced images of Barack Obama, along with near orgasmic media gasps of praise for the same, and nary a question from the mainstream press regarding his ideological past and associations produced an understandable human yearning for frighteningly undefined hope and change in 2008.

Because of such analytical failures, those elites did not realize that where they were going was right into a liberal power vacuum.

Most of America, on the other hand, realized relatively quickly that the country was headed toward a Marx-like, European socialist or nationalist state. This realization was most true among conservatives and libertarians -- who statistically comprise a broad grouping where most Americans reside.

And much of America, having been sold an undefined bill of goods, was angry. But the drunken democrats preferred to pass this anger off as astro turf.

Americans knew something wasn't right when the government took over General Motors, a private corporation.

During the turbulence of the automotive takeovers, people began to wonder about the administration's motives, and the motives of those Democrat politicians who supported it. During that time, the Obama administration seemed to force an outcome between a financially sinking Chrysler, its creditors, and the unions.

In that outcome, Chrysler's secured creditors (those lenders who have a contractual first right to Chrysler's assets in the event of a bankruptcy or liquidation) were to be paid roughly 30 cents on the dollar, while its junior creditors (the unions who do not have a contractual first right to Chrysler's assets) were to get about 45 cents on the dollar, plus 55 percent of the company.

Americans who were awake knew this seemed very redistributive and socialist. It prompted one American thinker to quip that the Obama administration must believe contracts are written on water.

They knew something was wrong in the Land of the Free when they learned they would be forced to purchase healthcare insurance. They knew something was wrong when Democrats would not acknowledge their criticisms in the grass roots town hall uprisings of Summer and Fall 2009. They knew that the American course had to be changed when Democrats were voting enthusiastically for massive, life and culture changing legislation without actually reading the legislation.

They knew something was up when Nancy Pelosi remarked that we had to allow them to pass such legislation before we could know what was in it. Or when Florida's Democrat representative, Alcee Hastings said, "all this talk about rules. We make them up as we go along."

People who were paying attention got a little nervous when after the 2008 election, President Obama's spokesperson, Valerie Jarrett, advised Tom Brokaw that the administration would be prepared to "rule" in January 2009.

And more people got nervous when the "post racial" ruling president in late October 2010 encouraged Latinos in his radio audience to "punish" their "enemies." Not only did he label fellow Americans as enemies, he encouraged racial division and political retribution.

President Obama's credibility as a leader evaporated faster than any other president's in recent memory -- less than half way through his first term.

But Republicans should take note from these Democrat losses. These losses are not an adoption of trust in the Republican party. It is a rejection of Obama's policies.

So Republicans should listen to the left's Professor Irwin Corey, and decide where it is that they really want to go.

A Presumption of Innocence: Bishop Eddie Long

2010-09-30T09:53:00.003-04:00

This column first appears in the 9/30/2010 edition of the North Florida Herald.

In 1987 the modestly sized 300 member congregation of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia took on a new pastor.

Bishop Eddie Long.

He was handsome charismatic, energetic, and focused.

Under his leadership, membership exploded, and in the short two decades since, has grown to 25,000 congregants. Such meteoric growth earned for them the prized moniker of the modern American Christian -- the much too coveted status of "megachurch."

As a black man, and the leader of a pretty big church, his opinions and theological positions regarding homosexuality and same sex marriage placed him dead in the center of liberal angst.

To criticize a black church leader must have produced for liberals a big tangled ball of cognitive dissonance.

Because to criticize a black man's position on anything for any reason makes one either a racist or an Uncle Tom. Unless, of course, the black man is believed to be a homophobe, or worse, a Republican.

Then, all slings and arrows become acceptable.

So criticize they did. They had too. Long may not have been a Republican, but his sermons on sexuality sounded fearful or hateful to liberal ears.

He has openly opposed same sex marriage, and he runs programs through his church to straighten out gays, and in 2004 he led a march in Atlanta protesting homosexuality.

Consequently, in Spring of 2007, Brentin Mock, writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center called Bishop Eddie Long one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based anti-gay movement."

Ouch.

So it was no surprise last week when Bishop Long found his career approaching the Valley of the Shadow of Death after some young men brought civil lawsuits against him, charging that he coerced them into sexual activities, and showered them with benefits from the church's treasury as a compensation of sorts.

One might think this would have cleared up some of that cognitive dissonance, but it didn't.

Conservative theologians frequently group Long with "prosperity preachers." "Prosperity preacher," for those who may not know, is an epithet.

These preachers teach that God abundantly and certainly blesses those he favors with material gifts and physical health if they just have enough faith. It is a health and wealth gospel that is contrary to historic Christianity, which instead teaches that the gospel is good news because it reconciles sinful men to a holy God, not because He can give one a BMW and a McMansion. Those same theologians that categorize Long this way almost universally consider homosexual behavior (but not necessarily the root orientation) sinful.

Cynthia Tucker, an exceedingly liberal writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, in one of those moments of dissonance, sided with those theologians by calling Long's prosperity ministry (but not his stance on homosexuality) a crime against the gospel. She then added, " We don’t yet know whether Long is guilty of sexual abuse, but it’s clear that he’s guilty of perverting the Gospel."

And she gets even more direct. She claims that New Birth Missionary Baptist has become a cult of personality, "not Jesus Christ’s personality, but Eddie Long’s."

Her rhetoric is not that far from some fundamentalists who rightly or wrongly consider Long an apostate because of that very prosperity gospel.

Which brings the discussion to Sir William Garrow, the British 18th and 19th century barrister and judge who coined the phrase, "innocent until proven guilty."

Obviously, his phrase is a bit off. After all, if you're not innocent, then you're not innocent, regardless of whether guilt is proven.

What he was aiming for with that phrase was a "presumption" of innocence. That concept is among the most important in Western jurisprudence, because without it accusers can quickly outnumber the accused. Past grievances become motivation enough to see a man suffer at the hands a government or power he can't resist.

It would become nearly impossible for a single man to fend off an onslaught of people he has offended in the past -- not to mention the people that might gain power, wealth or advancement from his demise.

On multiple occasions, I've seen such an onslaught first hand.

Bishop Long has a long list of people from three competing worlds -- conservative fundamentalists, gay rights activists and media outlets that thrive on scandal -- who would relish his fall.

Which is why sticking to a presumption of innocence is a necessity for law, the media, the public and the individual observer, regardless of whether or not the accused is an agreeable person.

For some Muslims, Raza is dangerous

2010-08-19T01:01:00.004-04:00

This column first appears in the August 20th, 2010 edition of the North Florida Herald.

If you are an extremist Muslim who loves Islam, Raheel Raza is a dangerous Canadian woman. Wait a minute, can you put the words "dangerous" and "Canadian" in the same sentence?

Never mind.

She is dangerous because she is able to do something too many Muslim men (as well as too many Western journalists) seem unable to do. With skill, she can fearlessly criticize and question a dysfunctional and bloodthirsty culture built around the Islamic faiths.

And that can't be good for the ego of the Muslim who is more interested in blood, death, and hate than life, love and reason.

Although she describes herself as Muslim, she has a bunch of attributes contrary to the stereotypes some Muslims have foisted upon their brothers and sisters, and that have sometimes been reinforced by ideological sensationalism, or basic human fear.

She is a journalist who is clearly a progressive intellectual. She advocates for something she calls "unity in diversity." And she fights for civil rights, particularly those rights subjugated by a form of Islam hell bent on the oppression of women. She is also a film maker, public speaker, a "diversity consultant," and an author. One of her works, "Their Jihad . .. Not My Jihad!: A Muslim Canadian Woman Speaks Out," contrasts her view of Jihad --moral, intellectual and spiritual struggle -- with one of violence that has too easily flowed from some leaders within Islam.

Recently, she teamed up with Tarek Fatah, another progressive intellectual who sometimes finds himself in the heat of political activism. He also describes himself as Muslim. His book, "Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of a Muslim State," is said to be a must read. He has another book slated for release in October entitled, "The Jew is Not my Enemy."

But some Muslims categorize Raza as a fear monger, and Fatah as an apostate, or even infidel. Still, their critiques don't seem unreasonable when they are applied to extreme strains of Islamic culture.

In early August they wrote an opinion piece together for the Ottawa Citizen in which they questioned the motives of the Cordoba Initiative, the organization that is attempting to build a large mosque very near to the Ground Zero site in New York City.

In it they say, "We Muslims know the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation. It’s an act of 'fitna.'” They bolster that claim by reckoning that, " New York currently boasts at least 30 mosques so it’s not as if there is pressing need to find space for worshippers. The fact is we Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the “infidel.” The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as “Fitna,” meaning “mischief-making” that is clearly forbidden in the Koran."

Attempting to reason with their co-religionists, they argue that Muslims would be rightly outraged if a Serbian church were built on the killing fields of the 1995 Bosnian Genocide in Srebrenica where 8000-9000 Muslims died at the hands of "Christian" Serbian forces.

To deny that equivalence, they argue, doesn't promote healing between Westerners and Muslims, but instead fosters pain and discord.

They conclude their piece by chastising Western progressives. They state that "bleeding heart liberals," (their words) who have been supportive of the mosque, are good intentioned but blind to the radical Islamist agenda in North America. This is a tragedy, they argue, because the stance of those liberals is, "based on ignorance and guilt, and they will never in their lives have to face the tyranny of Islamism that targets, maims and kills Muslims worldwide, and is using liberalism itself to destroy liberal secular democratic societies from within." [emphasis mine].

The peril they describe is well demonstrated by last week's piece from The North Florida Herald's progressive columnist, Ray St. Louis. In that column, Ray, a liberal's liberal argues that private citizens should be stopped from making objectionable expressions because those expressions might inflame Muslims to violence.

Did he realize that enforcing such a stoppage would prevent an oppressive Islamic state from ever being criticized in the way a liberal democratic republic can be criticized when it's flag is burned by hippie protesters?

Did he realize that his liberal tolerance was tarnished when he argues that violence will singularly ensue from the burning of those books. Because in that argument he agrees with the unsavory Dove World Outreach that Islam is violent and evil.

Is he really comfortable with a government power deciding what points are "stupid, hateful and not worth making?"

Perhaps Ms. Raza is a dangerous Canadian -- to radical Islam, and to American liberal thought.

Soft Racism is Still Racism.

2010-06-02T14:49:00.001-04:00

We are always being told by white liberals that they are kind, considerate, fair, people who would never, ever, entertain a racist thought.

But for as long as I have followed culture and politics (a little more than twenty years) conservative intellectuals have made the case that liberals in elite circles are, in fact, quite racist.

They have argued that this racism is often masked by good intentions. That mask is best described by President George Bush's 2004 phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

The liberal thinking goes something like this: Black people are too stupid, lazy, uneducated, or have been oppressed for so long that they lack the ability to make anything on their own for themselves. Therefore society shouldn't expect too much from them, and instead it should make a way for them since they can't do it on their own.

It isn't the Hitleresque kind of racism that aims cruelly to wipe out a people -- the kind that Jews have had to suffer for countless generations -- but the softer snobby kind of racism that says a particular people are genetically inferior, or that a people group has certain undesirable and fixed traits that make them unsuitable for higher civilized life.

It is the antithesis to conservative and libertarian individualism that says anyone, regardless of race, has the ability to succeed, or to follow the rules of society. More importantly, it is the antithesis of judging a person by the content of his character and not the color of his skin.

So when I see a liberal showing true racist colors, I always expect (foolishly) for someone in the larger media to point this out with the same intensity that they would call it out for a conservative.

It almost never happens.

And it didn't happen with last week's racist nonsense from the grotesquely liberal political comedian, Bill Maher.

Speaking on the BP oil spill, Maher joked the following:
"I thought when we elected a black president, we were going to get a black president. You know, this is where I want a real black president. I want him in a meeting with the BP CEOs, you know, where he lifts up his shirt where you can see the gun in his pants. That's -- 'we've got a motherfu**ing problem here?' Shoot somebody in the foot."

In case you missed it, the ingredient that makes Maher's joke work is the expectation in his bit and among his audience that "real" blacks are foul mouthed, gun toting gangsters.

It is revolting.

And it shows that the most liberal of liberals are susceptible to ugly sins like prejudice and racism.

But why the larger media do not point this out may not be a mystery at all. Perhaps they don't point it out because they are liberal themselves and are blinded to their own racism.

And maybe this is why they never seem to analyze the motives of those who scream "racist!" at anyone who criticizes an idea from the left in general, or the Obama administration in particular.

Shelby Steele, an outstanding conservative thinker, who also happens to be black, summarized it well when in 2006 he told the San Francisco Chronicle how media and liberal racism had poisoned public discourse on such matters as how the black community can address problems that it faces culturally. He said, "Any white who says these things is going to be seen as racist, and any black who says them is going to be seen as an Uncle Tom. That's because the only politically correct way to see blacks is as victims of larger forces that are constantly determining them and beating them and miring them in difficulty."

If the politically correct template that Steele describes is true, it may be that those larger forces are colored more by shades of liberal intellectualism than they are anything else.

Is The GOP In A Struggle For Its Soul?

2010-05-19T14:41:00.005-04:00

This column first appears in the print edition of The North Florida Herald on 5/20/2010, and in the online edition on 5/21/2010.

Last week, Donna Brazile, the former campaign manager for failed presidential candidate and environmental alarmist (or opportunist), Al Gore, focused her winning acumen on the Florida gubernatorial race.

In her column last week, the CNN, ABC and NPR political commentator opined that the GOP is in a monumental struggle for its soul, and that Charlie Crist's recent switch from "republican" to "independent" is prima facie evidence of such a cosmic brawl.

She argued that there is a major feud between those who she characterizes as "republican lite," like Governor Crist, and those who are perceived as "real" republicans, like Marco Rubio.

Governor Crist's drop in popularity in the midst of this feud, and within his former party, she contended, is a sign that republicans can't tolerate political autonomy. She reasoned that such intolerance will core out the republican party leaving only extremists.

But she misses the point of the Governor's opponents, and she grossly overstates the magnitude of the cosmic brawl.

Cooperating with those across the aisle, or even holding broader political views is something that the GOP has always handled with more aplomb than democrats do.

Consider Ronald Reagan. He was a master at reaching across the aisle and bringing democrats and republicans together on issues that were rooted in conservative principle.

Even Candidate Obama recognized Reagan's deftness in January of 2008 when he praised the former president for just that. Consequently liberals pounced on candidate Obama -- with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards shooting the first real shots for such bland but autonomous praise.

Reagan was adored by republicans and democrats in his day, and he is adored even more now.

But consider John McCain. He is a man known for reaching across the aisle, and a man who is just as much at the center of the soul struggle as Governor Crist. He is loved by republicans for his service to country, but reviled by them on a political level.

This revulsion isn't because he reached across the aisle. It's because he reached across the aisle against conservative principle.

Among his most heinous assaults on principle are when he promoted cap and trade legislation, and when he sponsored an anti free speech law disguised as finance reform legislation that would have barred broadcast of issue advocacy ads which named an incumbent candidate within 60 days of a general election.

Consequently, he is loved by neither republicans nor democrats.

Governor Crist is in that same vein as McCain. But at least McCain usually seemed genuine about the positions he held. Those positions usually didn't seem calculated for political benefit. He seemed honestly interested in bringing republicans and democrats together, however flawed his thinking was.

But for Governor Crist, there is a perception of expediency.

One blogger captured last week how Crist's website highlighted under the heading of "Consistent Leadership" a link titled "the Charlie Crist Conservative Record," but after he dropped the republican label and went independent, his website dropped the word "conservative."

There's just something icky about stuff like that.

And rather inconsistent, as one commenter noted.

There is this feeling among the Governor's opponents that a thin but slimy layer of fakeness is well camouflaged by his perfect tan, teeth and white hair.

Governor Crist may be at the center of some cosmic skirmish, but it's just as much a fight about his credibility as it is anything ideological.

But ideological dissonance has a place for those who question the Governor's conservativism.

The governor was once pro-choice, and now he claims to be pro-life. He explains this as a maturation of his views, and there's no reason to doubt him on that.

Still, when he described in The Tampa Tribune as "mean spirited" recent proposed legislation that would require an ultrasound for a woman seeking an abortion, one can't help but wonder about his motives. He could have opposed such legislation with any number of other phrases. But making sure a woman is certain about what she is doing before she does it isn't mean spirited. The folks who wrote that legislation, whether right or wrong, had the best interest of both a woman and a child in mind when they wrote it.

Then there's his restoration of voting rights to convicted felons in 2007. Some of those felons will even have their rights restored automatically without any kind of application process.

And just last Thursday, he approved President Obama's recent Supreme Court pick, but a year ago he opposed the appointment of Sonya Sotomayor -- a woman whose record was better known.

No, there's no soul struggle in the GOP. It's just culling itself of inconsistencies, and building principle. Hard, but hardly a cosmic battle.

Hallelujah its Tax Day!

2010-04-14T23:35:00.004-04:00

This column first appears in the April 15th edition of the North Florida Herald.

Today is tax day!

Hallelujah!

Since there is no government sanctioned day (yet) to celebrate dissent against the military or traditional values, today is the most holy and patriotic of all days to liberals.

My heart is warmed as I think about how my liberal friends without any despondency, and with glee in their hearts will mail out their tax returns.

Because it is on this day that we can serve our nation by sacrificing a portion of our monies to the god that can meet all our needs. And I am heartened to know that the wealthiest of my liberal friends truly believe that those who have worked harder and gained more wealth should joyfully pay a higher percentage of their hard earned money to the god of all gods so that it can be distributed to others.

This is supreme fairness.

And liberals, as they keep reminding me, are all about fairness.

Praise be to Obama on this day!

And Obama willing, our sacrifice will be returned to us in many ways - perhaps by paying our mortgages or putting gas in our cars.

So as a service to my fellow citizens, I took it upon myself to research U.S. tax history.

In my many laborious readings I came across a text.

A sacred text.

Sacred, because it was published by a part of The Government called The United States Department of the Treasury, and written by a holy worker whose face cannot be seen, called a bureaucrat. The writing is called a Fact Sheet and it summarizes the history of U.S. taxes.

Below is what it said about the 16th Amendment which codified the income tax in the early 20th century; I have added emphases for those with less discerning eyes.

Prior to the enactment of the income tax, most citizens were able to pursue their private economic affairs without the direct knowledge of the government. Individuals earned their wages, businesses earned their profits, and wealth was accumulated and dispensed with little or no interaction with government entities. The income tax fundamentally changed this relationship, giving the government the right and the need to know about all manner of an individual or business' economic life.

I know it was sacrilege, but I worried that the recently passed health care legislation would also fundamentally change the relationship between the people and the god of all gods. After all, our Prophet, Barack, told us there would be “fundamental change.”

The holy writ went on to describe how taxes in the boom of the 1920s affected the economy:

The economy boomed during the 1920s and increasing revenues from the income tax followed. This allowed Congress to cut taxes five times, ultimately returning the bottom tax rate to 1 percent and the top rate down to 25 percent and reducing the Federal tax burden as a share of GDP to 13 percent. As tax rates and tax collections declined, the economy was strengthened further.

Then, I was amazed to read that the opposite was also true. I even began to question my faith in the wisdom of some liberals. And I began to question the motivations of others. These are the blessed words:

In the face of rising budget deficits which reached $2.7 billion in 1931, Congress followed the prevailing economic wisdom at the time and passed the Tax Act of 1932 which dramatically increased tax rates once again. This was followed by another tax increase in 1936 that further improved the government's finances while further weakening the economy.

I marveled when the scripture revealed a truth that my liberal friends have always denounced and rejected with hatred -- that truth being that those in power might have ulterior motives for witholding tax at the point of employment instead of having an individual write a check for his or her portion of tax. I began to suspect who might benefit from certain tax laws when I again read from the sacred text:

Another important feature of the income tax that changed was the return to income tax withholding as had been done during the Civil War. This greatly eased the collection of the tax for both the taxpayer and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. However, it also greatly reduced the taxpayer's awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e. it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future.

Woe to all! There is not enough room to describe how the scripture praises the marginal tax rate cuts of Ronald Reagan and how they returned prosperity to the people.

But I can leave for you to read what can only be viewed as an omen from the scripture:

Between 1986 and 1990 the Federal tax burden rose as a share of GDP from 17.5 to 18 percent. Despite this increase in the overall tax burden, persistent budget deficits due to even higher levels of government spending created near constant pressure to increase taxes.

LINKS
Fact Sheet - United States Department of the Treasury
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml

Tea Party Astro Turf?

2010-03-03T08:16:00.003-05:00

This column first appears in the March 4th, 2010 edition of the North Florida Herald.

When the Tea Partiers became a visible force during the April 15th tax day rallies of 2009, they were quickly categorized by congressional democrats and the Obama administration as “astro turf,” rather than a true flourishing of grass roots.

But this was wishful thinking on the part of those politicians.

A Rasmussen Poll taken just five days after the rallies found that 51% of Americans viewed the rallies favorably, and that 32% of those folks viewed them “very favorably.” Rasmussen also reported that a whopping one quarter of adults said they knew someone who had attended a tea party rally.

But this really isn’t surprising considering that until candidate Obama consummated a marriage with a fawning media, the country has always been statistically center-right.

By the fall of 2009, as the healthcare debate played out in town halls, it was becoming more and more clear that an increasing number of Americans (whether they were Tea Partiers or not) were warm to the same values of smaller, less intrusive government intrinsic to the Tea Party movement.

It was evident to almost everyone that these folks were frustrated, or angry, or both.

And their fury made for good T.V., even though their volatility didn’t seem to approach the rhetoric, or even the violence of those who opposed them.

South of here, in Ft. Lauderdale, in November of 2009, an anti-war/anti-capitalism group called ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) sent out an email prior to a scheduled Tea Party event.

The Huffington Post (a liberal outlet) published an excerpt from that email.

In it, ANSWER used oddly bellicose language for a group dedicated to ending war and violence.

In that email, they unambiguously called Tea Partiers racist, stating, “Racism is like anything else in this world: in order to make it fall, you must smash it! That is why we are calling on all people to come out tomorrow, to organize a militant confrontation with the so-called ‘tea baggers.’ Beating back these forces will require us to organize together, take the streets, fight the racists wherever they show their faces, and drive them out of every community.”

Well, at least it’s now known some anti-war folks will concede that militancy sometimes is the answer.

When two Tea Partiers moved into an area reserved for ANSWER, a physical fight ensued, and the two Tea Partiers were knocked to the ground and beaten.

It is unclear who started the fight, though the only existing video portrays the ANSWER demonstrators as the most aggressive.

To be fair, ANSWER has publically said that Tea Partier aggression occurring before the footage begins explains the violence.

Perhaps.

But it should be noted that their email rhetoric wasn’t aimed at conceptual constructs, like racism.

Instead, it was aimed at people who were friendly to tea party politics and thusly labeled racist.

A couple of months earlier, Kenneth Gladney -- a politically conservative black man -- was selling political trinkets at a healthcare related town hall meeting in St. Louis.

Naming his race is important, because people in liberal quarters have called Tea Partiers and town hall demonstrators white racists. Never mind that there are numerous non whites who have quietly functioned both within tea party ranks, and visibly within tea party promotions.

Gladney certainly got more than militant rhetoric.

Apparently, he was assaulted by what some have called union thugs.

It seems that there was no significant provocation on the part of Gladney.

Prior to Gladney’s assault, the Obama administration figuratively threatened to “punch back twice as hard” against those who publically opposed healthcare reform.

Did some folks miss that it was figurative language?

Almost a year has passed since those first Tea Party rallies.

But the sentiment toward Tea Party values remains steadfast, and may be growing.

A poll of 1,023 adult Americans was conducted by CNN/Opinion Research Corporation and published last Friday.

The poll reports that 56% of Americans believe that the federal government has become so large and powerful “that it imposes an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

Not surprisingly, almost 70% are Republicans. A substantial 63% are Independents. Democrats clocked in at a much lower 37%, but that still seems pretty striking for a party that has historically looked to Big Brother as the physician that cures all ills.

Astro turf, indeed.

In an era when government, and particularly one party in government, stands to gain an unprecedented amount of control over the lives of individuals through healthcare legislation, one can see how easily a real movement can take root.

What Newspapers Have Always Done.

2010-01-20T21:45:00.007-05:00

This column first appears in the January 21, 2010 edition of the North Florida Herald.

There has never been any significant American era in which newspapers were not at least partly polarizing.

The New England Courant was perhaps America's first real independent newspaper. Birthed in August of 1721 by Ben Franklin's older brother, James, it often featured stinging, biting, opinionated satire.

It both targeted and ridiculed clergy, magistrates, various kinds of government leaders and generally anyone who held a position of authority.

This sometimes made it uncomfortable to its readership.

It was fabulously entertaining, and depending on how one looks at it, it either unified one group of people against another, or it divided factions of the populace from its leaders.

It unquestionably set the tone for the American history of news publication.

In fact, if one takes the time to read the news publications and pamphlets that cropped up during that era, one might find those publications to be remarkably mean spirited and particularly biased in one way or another.

Today's newspapers draw their editors and writers from an industrialized pool of higher education that attempts to stress journalistic fairness, and a code of ethics.

This, in part, has made contemporary newspapers decidedly tame compared to those early days.

But because newspapers are human institutions, with human agents, they remain biased and imperfect.

And they can still be polarizing.

But sometimes this polarization isn't by design, but because the paper has either reported something, or opined about something, with which a particular segment of its readership disdains.

When this happens, polarity is the naturally inevitable outcome of a newspaper doing what a newspaper does.

Report and opine.

All newspapers, because they are businesses, tend to print what they think will sell. They must, after all, stay in business.

However, some newspapers gravitate toward the undeniably prurient or sensational.

Most with any sizable readership or credible reputation do not.

The good, reputable paper knows that what sells is what is interesting to most of its readers.

Unfortunately, good readers and good leaders sometimes mistakenly define what is interesting to most readers as "sensationalism," or that the reporting of what is controversial (but interesting to many readers) as an attempt to divide for profit.

Newly elected High Springs City Commissioner, Eric May, whose positions on limited government, fiscal responsibility, and his desire to "unify" High Springs are all commendable and refreshing, seems to have done the latter in a December 6th, 2009 editorial on his blog.

There he assigns ulterior motives to Ron Dupont, editor of this paper, for the following statement in regards to the City Logo controversy:

"As soon as the discussion began about doing away with the eco-tourism focus and changing it to a focus on a train, I knew that people would be interested — whether wildly in favor of it or wildly opposed to it."

Commissioner May seems to assign to Ron the motive of wanting to use the potentially intense polarity of that issue for sales as his sole consideration in printing the story. And he apparently charges that Ron uses this kind of reasoning as his primary calculus for all editorial decisions when he states:

He writes, edits and prints news based on what will be most controversial, thus selling more papers.

But Ron clearly stated that it was reader interest that motivated his decision.

In a string of very general examples he goes on to rightly bemoan how some opposing groups of people will not accept any deviation from their respective positions, and how those people vilify and demonize their opponents.

He fails to realize that this is more a failure of people, than it is a failure of the paper. After all, how can anyone know where the middle of anything is unless they know where its extremes lay? And how can a community know where the extremes lay unless a responsible journalistic outlet informs it?

The onus belongs to the people to demand what kinds of stories they're interested in. They can do this with advertising dollars, or with subscription renewals, or with intelligently and concisely argued critical letters to the editor, or with letters of praise for stories they like.

Or they can peacefully voice opposing opinions in personal blogs, as Commissioner May has done, or start rival publications as others have done.

But when grown men throw newspaper racks in parking lots, or make veiled but ominous threats, either in or out of the presence of children, the problem doesn't lie with the newspapers who are by nature and history polarizing, but in the hearts of men.

Today's Kids and Schools

2009-12-01T19:44:00.005-05:00

This column first appears in the 12/03/2009 edition of the North Florida Herald.

Children educated in the public schools are amoral brainwashed little snots with no hope of ever managing the country.

That is a terribly harsh statement, but every generation tends to view its children with that kind of snooty contempt.

“What are they teaching kids these days?”

“Today’s kids just have no respect.”

How often do we hear such complaints?

Sometimes, of course, the contempt is more deserved than snooty. Children are free moral agents, with free minds, who frequently make their own decisions regardless of their upbringing or the parameters placed on them.

I know. I was once a child. And I now have three children of my own.

Still, who really deserves the contempt most often?

To be honest, I’ve noticed a particular kind of disrespect in my own kids. It is a disrespect that I never showed to my own parents, but one that likely would be acceptable in a great deal of households today. As much as I don’t like to admit it, I have myself to blame for that more than my kids, or the society in which they are immersed.

After all, I am their parent, and an architect of the society in which I have immersed them.

Anatole Broyard, the late New York Times literary critic, once observed that, “there was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything from them but obedience.”

Even I must occasionally agree with someone from the New York Times.

Nevertheless, I must note that the usefulness of Broyard’s statement is found somewhere between the two poles he presents. I don’t want my kid, for instance, to obey me if I tell him to go play with matches in the hay barn.

Public schools, like children, also get a bit of bad rap. I can speak candidly here because I am a product of public school education. And my children have been enrolled in both private and public schools.

I’ve seen both worlds up close. Both kinds of education have angels as well as demons.

But if you listen to the chattering classes, public schools, like today’s children, are bereft of any good qualities.

To be sure, public schools have enough issues to fill up Mrs. Wrinklebrainer’s triple decker chalk board – issues that private schools generally do not have. But more than half of those issues come from the foibles of the architects of the society to which the public schools belong.

Before Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to go to Camp Crystal Lake with the fifth graders from High Springs Community School.

We spent three days there.

Camp Crystal Lake was once an Army Air Corps base that boasted 140 acres and three lakes. In 1947 the School Board of Alachua County purchased that property from the federal government for one dollar.

The camp has been owned by the school board since then, and today it serves as a summer camp and a year round educational facility.

It was, without question, an excellent investment.

While there I was impressed with students, teachers, and camp staff.

Today’s children are not amoral; at least I didn’t notice an amoral spirit in any of the fifth graders from High Springs with whom I spent that week.

I noticed that one young man had different challenges to overcome in his life than the students around him. When I was a boy, this student would have been the kind of kid who would have suffered at the hands and words of juvenile cruelty.

But what I saw was genuine concern and kindness for him from both his teachers and his fellow students. I was pleased to see other children helping him with his challenges, and caring about his well being.

Because of that, he is a young man who will meet and conquer many of those challenges.

I helped chaperone a group of 12 boys while I was there. I taught them to march while singing cadence. They learned quickly, obeyed my instructions, were attentive, and for the most part, easily manageable. In fact, they were a pleasure. So, at their request, we marched everywhere we could.

While there, the students received a fairly decent fifth grade survey of earth sciences and ecosystems. Each lecture took place outdoors, and in the ecosystem relevant to the discussion.

Some of the students checked out in those lectures, some were fantastically attentive, and as one would expect, most were somewhere in between. But I saw no real disrespect.

So the next time I hear a complaint about how today’s kids are brainwashed little snots, I think I’ll challenge the complainer to be a better architect. The raw materials do exist for a great building.

Conservativism, Libertarianism, and Weeds

2009-10-28T09:32:00.013-04:00

This column first appears in the 10/29/09 edition of the North Florida Herald.

Every once and a while a local story will come along that rankles my bipolar political psyche, and causes a difficult to reconcile dissonance.

The news of the recent drug arrest of 31-year-old High Springs Hardees general manager, Joshua Allen -- a man who was always smiling and courteous to me as he gave me my change, my icy cold soda, and my thickburger -- was just such a story.

Those of you who read my column carefully know that my political psyche has two distinct personalities.

Part of my political make-up is conservative, and the other part is libertarian.

The conservative part of me is ruled by a Judeo-Christian worldview, and an understanding that traditional social values are best for the individual, and as numbers of individuals who voluntarily share these values accrue, the overall benefit to society increases. This increased benefit to collective society, in turn, improves the safety, prosperity, and well being of almost any given individual – even those who don’t share in traditional values.

In contrast, the libertarian part of me is ruled by the morality of individual freedom. In sweepingly general terms, this means that I believe an individual should be free to behave in any manner he or she likes, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the safety or the rights of another individual, and so long as that individual is required individually to accept the consequences for his or her behavior, whether those consequences be social, political, economic, medical, or whatever.

As a libertarian, I believe the law of the land should reflect such a "morality of freedom" wherever possible. As a conservative, I believe people should respect all just laws, as well as abstain from activities that have a good potential to cause self-harm, or harm to others.

For me, these two personalities are rarely in conflict because they both understand that people who choose to do right or good because they want to do right or good, are the people who really are good. The people who do good, or avoid evil, because they are forced to do good, or because they fear legal consequences for doing evil, usually aren’t good people at all.

But sometimes these personalities are in conflict, and Joshua Allen’s recent trouble is a fine example of that.

Mr. Allen was arrested after police say they found a little more than a pound of marijuana in his car one morning while he sat in the Hardee’s parking lot. The North Florida Herald reported that he was selling his goods in restaurant cups.

Clearly, if Mr. Allen was actually doing these things, he was breaking marijuana laws.

The question isn’t whether or not he broke the law, or whether or not what he was doing was moral or good. If the police are correct, he was breaking the law, and he wasn’t doing good by dispensing substances whose primary purpose to his customer is to alter brain chemistry in a recreational sense.

Instead, the question is whether or not such laws should exist at all given the "morality of freedom," and whether or not marijuana imposes a higher risk to society than do other drugs, like alcohol, which enjoy a paucity of legal restrictions.

Having worked as a screener in a Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) for one of the region’s largest mental health centers, I have spent many nights conversing with, consoling, and tolerating many a drunk, stoner, and addict.

I’ve seen too many people whose lives have been almost completely destroyed with drugs and alcohol. But I have to be honest, in those late nights in the CSU (and I understand this is only anecdotal) I never came across a mean, nasty, wife beater who had just puffed a few too many tokes. I did, however, see a whole bunch of folks who were mean, nasty, hateful, violent, intolerable, and truly pathetic who had only consumed a few too many beers.

The occasional guy who only had a few too many puffs generally was just confused, pretty doggone mellow, and really, really hungry.

Still, the conservative side yells out that marijuana is a gateway drug and doesn’t do anything but lead people down a slippery slope. And on their way to the bottom of that slope they become a burden to their families, and to society, and therefore infringe on the individual productivity of good citizens. The Libertarian side yells, “Yeah, but its their feet, their life, and their slope to walk down! When they get to the bottom of the slope you should make them pay for their decisions!”

Mr. Conservative understands the utility of Mr. Libertarian's point, but he can never quite get to the place where most men are ignored at the bottom of the slope.

Lucifer, Obama, Alinsky and a Czar

2009-09-03T06:57:00.004-04:00

This column first appears in the Sept. 3rd, 2009 Edition of the North Florida Herald.

"From all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins – or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer."

That now famous quote intended to humorously glorify Satan for his "successful" rebellion against the establishment is what begins Saul Alinsky's most influential work, "Rules for Radicals."

Alinksy was a sinister figure, a barely veiled communist, and a completely uncloaked radical who died in 1972. He spent his years in Chicago organizing the have-nots against the haves.

He organized. He agitated. He tore down.

He is the father of community organizing.

Without apologies, he believed in the pursuit of power. And unfortunately, he inspired people like Barack Obama.

Considering his communism, he had a troubling but ironic contempt for the middle class. He wrote, "Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and the way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority."

So far, his greatest achievement is that he posthumously gave to a young Barack Obama not only the skills to win a presidential election, but a dream by which to morph a country.

A March 25, 2007 Washington Post story puts it this way: "Alinsky had died, but a group of his disciples hired Barack Obama, a 23-year-old Columbia University graduate, to organize black residents on the South Side, while learning and applying Alinsky's philosophy of street-level democracy."

But Alinksy's democracy wasn’t democracy at all. It was raw bullying with an unhealthy and impenitent emphasis on the ends justifying the means.

Obama learned well.

And he surrounded himself with an army of elites who, without remorse, could genuflect at Alinksy’s altar.

Of course, the media didn’t report this, even though he had hidden none of his relationships with those kinds of folks.

Not surprisingly, and with no media scrutiny, President Obama has drawn administrative lieutenants from that army.

His lieutenant of the day is Mark Lloyd, a new czar in the Federal Communications Commission. His job will be to regulate the airwaves.

He wrote a book in 2006 from which America, hopefully, will hear many quotes in coming months. In his book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America," Lloyd spells out his vision of just how and why those airwaves should be regulated solely by the government entity he controls.

In it he references, often, Saul Alinsky as inspiration.

But maybe more disturbing is that just twenty pages into his book, the newest czar, the man who controls the most fluid, powerful and far reaching conduits of speech in the world writes that he isn't all that concerned with free speech.

He writes, "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."

He argues that the ever expanding media, ranging from radio, to t.v., to newspapers, to the internet are dominated - even in their participatory discourse - with national issues and not local ones. He blames media corporations, commercialism, and profit.

This lack of local interest, he argues, keeps local people from participating in local issues, and renders media useless for democracy.

A look at the comments sections in recent weeks of the North Florida Herald's editorial pages is more than enough to dispel the notion that large corporations have squeezed out local interests expressed in local media.

The discourse there has been spirited, cowardly, relevant, pointed and diverse.

The largest talk radio outlet in North Central Florida is owned by a national media corporation, Entercom, but is effectively involved in the discussion of local politics, local issues, local elections, and local life.

And all of it controlled by what people want to hear, not by what a bureaucrat wants them to hear.

But Lloyd has been insistent that “only government” can determine how media is best used. He writes, “clear federal regulations over commercial broadcast and cable programs regarding political advertising and commentary, educational programming for children, the number of commercials, ratings information about programs before they are broadcast, and the accessibility of services to the disabled should be established and widely promoted.”

Perhaps Lloyd, Alinsky, and Obama all have something in common with that first radical, Lucifer. Like him, they want to put themselves above rightful powers and control what isn’t theirs.

President Obama Has Yet Another Freudian Moment

2009-07-29T12:10:00.009-04:00

This column first appears in the 7/30/09 edition of the North Florida Herald.

Prejudice is an ugly word we hear all of the time these days.

It is almost always used in a racial context. And it is almost always applied to white majorities, and almost never applied to racial minorities.

For at least two decades angry white men have been screaming that media elites, ranging from Hollywood producers, all the way down to local T.V. reporters, seem to think that prejudice is only possible from those who are members of a powerful majority.

This is a sad failure on the part of those who report the news, as well as the smart ones among us who comment on the significant events of the day.

So much so that some failed to see the irony in how the first black president let loose his subconscious prejudices in a genuine Freudian moment when he accused a police officer of acting “stupidly” for arresting the esteemed black scholar, Henry Gates, Jr., earlier this month.

That failure of the chattering classes partly flows from an inadequate understanding of the etymology and meaning of the word, “prejudice.”

The term comes from the Latin word, Praejudicium. Prae (before) + Judicium (judgement). Essentially, it means to make a judgment before the facts are known. It means to hold a bias, or an opinion, before a person, place, thing, or event has been objectively analyzed.

It doesn’t matter if a person is black, white, gay, straight or purple. Everyone has biases that have been formed without objective analysis of the facts.

No one is prejudice free.

This is because under the right circumstances, prejudice, stereotypes and generalizations help us to make good decisions and avoid harm.

For instance, if a man brushes up against poison ivy in the forest and develops a terrible rash, he is likely to form a prejudice against all three leafed plants.

He will avoid them like the plague. He may not even enter certain sections of the forest again. His brain is built to behave in this automatic way as a means of self preservation.

His prejudice protected him. But because he did not analyze the facts objectively, it also limited where he could go and what he could do in the forest.

Since he enjoys higher thinking capabilities than other animals, he does have the power to over ride the stereotype and open up new possibilities for his forest travels. If he uses this higher thinking, he may determine that only the three leafed plants that contain a particular oil will cause the rash.

But to do this requires objectivity, self will, intelligence, and most importantly, self awareness.

The president did not seem to display any of those qualities in that Freudian moment earlier this month.

Regarding the event on which the President commented, a person called the police advising that someone appeared to be breaking into Mr. Gates’ home. That person made the call because break-ins had been occurring in the area. The “burglar” was, in fact, Mr. Gates, who had returned from traveling, and did not have his key available. When the police arrived, they asked him for his I.D. in order to determine if he was the owner of the home. Mr. Gates supplied that I.D., but for some reason, according to police reports, Mr. Gates then became belligerent. The police officer subsequently arrested him for disorderly conduct. A black police officer was present, and has since said that he supported “100%” the arresting officer’s decision.

But this is what the president said in his press conference:

“I don’t know, not having been there, and not having seen all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say that number one, any of us would be pretty angry, that number two, the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting someone when they were already in their own home, and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately and that’s just a fact. " [Emphasis Mine]

He doesn’t know what role race played, but not having analyzed all the facts, he places great significance on the racial elements regarding the history of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.

Because racism against blacks has existed (and does exist) in this country, one might feel the need to cut the president some slack. But there may be something more significant at play here. Whatever it might be needs to be analyzed properly, of course. Still, it is interesting to note that liberal and democrat thought tends to treat people as members of groups, unlike conservative and libertarian thought which tends to treat them as individuals.

Which way of thinking might be more prone to prejudice?

What Did Justice Ginsburg Mean?

2009-07-15T19:57:00.009-04:00

This column first appears in the July 16th edition of the North Florida Herald.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a very disturbing statement for an interview in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday.

She described, apparently, what she thought the popular purpose of abortion was at the time Roe v. Wade was decided.

She said, “Frankly I thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

She went on to say that she held this opinion for seven years, until 1980, when the Supreme Court decided that government funds could not be used for abortion. She says that after 1980, she realized that her understanding of abortion was all wrong.

Perhaps she misspoke, and the use of the personal pronoun “we” was an unfortunate moment of linguistic carelessness for a highly trained lawyer.

Perhaps she really found the idea of limiting particular populations disgusting. But if she did, some have asked, then why didn’t she more strongly oppose Roe between the time it was decided in 1973 and 1980?

It has been noted that these were years when she was a strong and recognized feminist, and had considerable intellectual vigor to shape the movement to which she belonged.

In Sunday’s interview, she seems to advocate for Medicaid or government coverage of abortion for the poor when she bemoans that only a “woman of means” can have true “choice.”

But wouldn’t such access likely make it easier for someone to coerce a woman into abortion and thereby increase the probability of limiting the growth of certain populations?

She seems to acknowledge that a fear of such existed in 1973, but there is little evidence that she fought (or is fighting) to prevent the fruition of such a fear.

Will the mainstream media ask these kinds of questions of Justice Ginsburg? Would they ask them if Justice Ginsburg’s statements had been made by Justice Antonin Scalia?

Will her statements even ripple the news media at all?

Whatever her real view of the issue is, she has for those willing to notice, shined a spotlight on what abortion really is.

Modern society views abortion in a great variety of ways.

Typically, it is pictured as the desperate, unpleasant, but necessary choice of a free woman.

Occasionally, it is seen as evidence of Eve’s triumphal sexual independence from biology’s cruel subjugation -- an independence secured through the blood, sweat, tears and warfare of brave feminism.

At other times, it is pictured as a heartless murder, and an offense to God.

And still other times it is regarded as the profit generating mechanism of an amoral medical industry that exploits the insecurities of distraught women and girls.

Whether or not it is any of those things, or all of those things, rarely is it viewed by mainstream society for what it certainly is.

Abortion is eugenics.

Normally, the word eugenics conjures up images of Nazis rounding up Jews and throwing them in gas chambers. Or it may evoke memories of Klan-like white politicians calling for the sterilization of African-American women.

But those are extrapolations from its base.

In its rawest form, eugenics is when one or more human beings end a human genetic line for the purpose of bettering existing and future human populations, based on the “desirability” of the ended line.

And this seems to be exactly what Justice Ginsburg thought abortion was about when she answered her interviewer.

And she would be right.

Of course it isn’t the active eugenics of Nazi Germany, but rather the passive eugenics of individual choice.

Although Whites make up most of all abortions in the U.S., African Americans and Hispanics are affected far more significantly as a percentage of their individual populations. This means abortion effects the growth of their populations more than it does those of whites.

And the poor, as Justice Ginsburg has noted, are very disproportionately affected.

Who knows whether or not Justice Ginsburg was talking about blacks, hispanics, whites or poor people? Surely, she should clarify her remarks.

In any event, it has been strongly suggested that whatever she meant by “populations we don’t want to have too many of,” she probably didn’t mean rich, white, female Jewish lawyers.

Judge Sotomayor Helps PresBO Define Individual Rights

2009-06-17T08:56:00.015-04:00

An edited version of this column initially appears in the first edition of the North Florida Herald -- June 18, 2009.

Predictably, when president Obama tapped Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his candidate to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, groups from all political walks instantly wanted to know her views on a bunch of hot button issues.

Of course, everyone knows that no single issue can define the totality of her views. But these groups know full well that the way she approaches interpreting the constitution, and then arriving at her legal opinions, could tell them much about a host of potential political biases in her jurisprudence.

To those discerning enough to distinguish President Obama’s glaring ideological stripes, the White House left little doubt about that jurisprudence. Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, stated back in late May that President Obama was “very comfortable with her interpretation of the Constitution being similar to that of his."

One place where this might be problematic for the President’s nominee is in the arena of gun rights. If Judge Sotomayor has an ideological inclination toward constraining those rights, gun activists will be up in arms – metaphorically speaking.

Back in a 2008 debate, candidate Obama while affirming personal gun rights made an eerily broad statement regarding individual rights. He said, "Just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right."

Really?

Judge Sotomayor has already helped to assert candidate Obama’s implied power of constraint.

In a 2004 case, a man named Jose Sanchez-Villar was convicted for distributing cocaine base, as well as possession of a firearm by an illegal immigrant. Because the police officers could plainly see a gun in Sanchez-Villar’s possession they assumed probable cause that a violation of “possession of a firearm” under New York’s laws was being committed. He was arrested then convicted.

Sanchez-Villar appealed to a court occupied by Sotomayor and two other judges. While it is good that Sanchez-Villar has been separated from his firearm and from society, the panel of judges that included Sotomayor unanimously left for gun owners a disturbing opinion. They wrote, “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.”

Since it isn’t a fundamental right, the city of New York may impose whatever constraint it deems necessary on any citizen it deems unworthy. So individual citizens of New York, according to the opinion Sotomayor joined, don’t have a second amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Sotomayor further helped cement this constraint when in January of this year she joined a three judge panel which ruled that the second amendment "imposes a limitation on only federal, not state, legislative efforts.” Apparently, according to this panel, the federal government cannot restrain a citizens second amendment rights, but a state or local authority has unlimited power to impose restraint.

Those who favor Sotomayor argue that she and her panel of judges were only following precedent set by the Supremes in the 1886 case of Pressler vs. Illinois which stated the second amendment only restrains the federal government. But others have pointed out that the very same opinion unequivocally says, “the states cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms. . .”

One CBS News blogger points out that if Sotomayor and her panel of judges were simply following precedent, then they ignored a long line of opinions after 1886 which applied the Bill of Rights to state governments and prohibited those governments from restraining the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. If her understanding of precedent is correct, the critics argue, the second amendment would be the only amendment that doesn’t restrain both the federal government and all lower governments.

While candidate Obama’s platform said he believed that “the Second Amendment creates an individual right,” debater Obama said that “individual rights” could be constrained. He didn’t say that just gun rights can be restrained, but “individual rights.”

One can’t help but wonder if he also means individual speech rights, religious rights, or assembly rights.

Just last month a county employee in San Diego overstepped some bounds and deemed a small, home-based bible study a major religious assembly. The pastor of that bible study says the county sent them a letter demanding they “stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit.” Such a permit can run tens of thousands of dollars.

The county seems to have rectified that situation, but what if it had been a board that made the determination and not an errant employee? Just how much could they constrain the individual rights of those folks? And how would a court system dominated by Obama's acolytes rule on that board's constraints?

It just might depend on what they were preaching.

Weak Criticism from Thomas Weller

2009-06-11T10:34:00.016-04:00

Thomas Weller responded to my May 21^st High Springs Herald column (long version below this entry and The Herald version here) with a letter to the editor in the June 4^th edition of the paper.

Mr. Weller's first criticism seems to be in regards to my use of a quote from Ayn Rand. He writes, "This is in reference to Mike Hosey's recent column titled "The greatest minority is the individual." He seems to be saying that this concept is "baloney," "gibberish," and "illogical," but he never once explains how that concept is any of those things.

Next, he tries (weakly) to criticize my characterization that the Obama administration interfered with contract rights. Here he writes, "First, I would like to point out that President Obama has no right to change the right of contact. The only possible entity to be able to do that is the Federal bankruptcy courts. What Hosey is getting at is the fact that many legal issues are settled by the parties whereby the agreed outcome is different than what a strict following of established law would be.

Mr. Weller is right here. Only a bankruptcy court can modify the rights of contract. However, I didn't argue that the Obama administration was changing the right of contract. I argued that he was ignoring it, and forcing an outcome, and weakening those rights in the financial culture. The right still existed. Mr. Weller's reference to the fact that all the parties agreed to a particular outcome instead of going to bankruptcy court makes it more disturbing. Why would secured creditors agree to less of a share of assets than non secured creditors? The likeliest reason that they would do that is because they were forced in some way to do it.

For example: Mr. Hosey, you will agree to pay me what I ask despite our contractual agreement or I will expose every skeleton from your past every day for the next 90 days. Under those circumstances, I might be inclined to pay the bad guy what he wants even though I agreed to smaller payments earlier. The agreements by those secured creditors to take less than what they ordinarily would have might have been based on fear. And there is some evidence that exactly such a thing happened.

Thomas Lauria, a hedge fund attorney, has alleged (and as far as I know he has never retracted the allegation) that Steve Rattner, the head of Obama's Auto Industry Task force unequivocally threatened some of Chrysler's secured creditors if they didn't agree to the administration's plan. He has alleged that Rattner threatened that "the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its [the lenders] reputation." The White House, and other parties involved strongly deny this, of course. But if I were the lender, I wouldn't want to confirm such an allegation, even if true, for fear of the full force of the press corps. And the scenario painted by that allegation makes much more sense than a secured creditor settling for much less than what his contractual rights confer.

Mr. Weller then tries to argue that I stated banks would not have money to lend. He says, "As for the fears he tries to invoke in others as to the lack of lending capital, if you haven't noticed, many lending institutions are advertising that there is money to be lent. Just look to the billboards!"

This statement is either because Mr. Weller didn't read carefully, is blinded (to use his language) by his own ideology, or has some kind of agenda that ignores the facts. I didn't argue that lending capital wasn't available. It is clearly available to the average consumer with a good credit rating. What I very clearly stated was that lending institutions will be less likely to lend that capital to entrepreneurs or to UNIONIZED companies if they feel that an administration will strong arm them into taking less of the secured assets that they contractually deserve in the event of a bankruptcy. To avoid that prickly situation, they just won't enter into any contracts with those kinds of companies.

In his next very anemic volley he tries to imply that I favor anarchy. He writes, "he blathers on about the amount of government control: the more control, the less freedom. The absence of government control is anarchy. That is the ultimate level of freedom. If you don't like your neighbor, kill him." Now talk about illogical! I clearly state in my column that the force of government comes into play when one person's freedom infringes on another person's freedom." Killing someone would obviously be an infringement of freedom and rights. Without a Rule of Law that recognizes individual rights, there is no freedom.

He follows up that quote above with, "Where would this country be today if the government didn't enforce integration in our schools and the quest for equality for all Americans?" Forced integration is, frankly, about rights to public funds and facilities. Government confiscates money for public schools. People then have a right to use those schools regardless of their color, national origin, etc… However, today, there are those in government and politics who want to force equality of outcomes. That IS wrong and oppressive.

He then states that lack of government control caused us to be raped financially. He says, "The lack of government controls allowed some industries to run roughshod over the American people and rape us financially." This is far from the truth. It was democrats in government strong arming the financial sector with regulations that forced them to lend to people they wouldn't ordinarily lend to, as well as regulations (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranteeing loans) that set up environments that encouraged risks they wouldn't ordinarily have taken that caused us to be raped. The Bush administration predicted the current outcomes years in advance and tried on numerous occasions to remedy the situation. The democrats (Obama being one of them) blocked these attempts every single time.

Finally, he illustrates either ignorance, or a lack of careful reading with the following statement: "The real laugh (actually, it is frightening) I got was when he called something liberal and equated it with Republican conservative ideals. It seems to me that Hosey is doing just what he described as liberals doing in their support of the President: being so blind as to not see what is actually happening." What I stated was that CLASSICAL LIBERAL values are today seated in conservative and libertarian thought. For those of you who don't know what a classical liberal is, I'll let you look it up. Suffice it to say that a Classical Liberal looks nothing at all like a modern day American Liberal. The Classical Liberal played an amazing role in forging the greatness of America. The modern liberal is tearing that greatness down.

The Media, Barack Obama, and Individual Rights.

2009-05-20T10:53:00.006-04:00

This piece first appears in the May 21, 2009 edition of the High Springs Herald

"There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good." – Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, March 2008.

Colbert, the fictional conservative pundit whose character comically embellishes the foibles of real right-wing media personalities, inadvertently portrayed the grotesquely left-leaning modern media with that quip.

That modern media, either because they love President Obama in a way that approaches perversion, or because their hatred for the previous president also approached perversion, or because they're drunk senseless with the historical significance of the first black president, or perhaps because they're incompetent celebrity cultists, have like Colbert, forgotten what happens to those who forget history.

They have given neither proper historical or critical analysis to Obama's policies, nor served their consumers, or their nation with the information it needs to make informed decisions.

One example of this failure is their inability (or refusal) to report effectively on the Obama administration's disembowelment of contractual rights between Chrysler, its creditors, and the unions. The Obama administration has forced an outcome in which secured creditors (those lenders who have a contractual first right to Chrysler's assets in the event of a bankruptcy or liquidation) will be paid roughly 30 cents on the dollar, while its junior creditors (the unions who do not have a contractual first right to Chrysler's assets) will get about 45 cents on the dollar, plus 55 percent of the company.

Does this sound redistributive? Anyone?

It spurred one commentator to opine that President Obama must think that contracts are "written on water."

Others have asked how enthusiastic will lenders be now to offer loans to a unionized company if the union gets dibs on the assets regardless of the company's contractual agreements?

After all, the lenders are now no longer guaranteed anything tangible.

This is sad, because part of the Media's job, at least as they like to paint it, is to put contemporary events into historical perspective. Journalists, from the lowest stringer at the High Springs Herald, to the brave and seasoned gumshoe at the Metropolitan Daily, are the writers of history. And because those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, it is imperative that they do their job with dispassionate accuracy.

In the grander sense, an element of history that they have forgotten is that no nation has been free that did not secure the rights of individuals or adhere to a transcendent rule of law that treats everyone the same.

In the state's governance of people, there are two poles.

The first pole is one in which government is minimized and individual freedom is maximized. The force of government becomes active only when the individual freedom of one person interferes with the freedom of another. This pole is liberty.

The second pole is one in which government is maximized and individual freedom is minimized. Here government provides and controls almost everything. Generally known as tyranny, it is the opposite of freedom.

Any governance between these two poles only exists as varying degrees of oppression.

Just ask those folks in the teetering Central American country of Guatemala. The country is quickly becoming the murder capitol of the world. Mary Anastasia O'grady, a member of the Wall Street Journal Editorial board convincingly argues in a recent piece that Guatemala's government has abandoned the Rule of Law in areas like contractual agreements and individual rights. She hints that this may cause its collapse, and subsequently threaten the security of the United States.

But as frightening as that speculation may be, it is more interesting that she describes a fast gathering political movement there that recognizes the necessity of classical liberal values – values that in today's America are seated in conservative and libertarian thought, and opposed by left-wing thinkers (if you can call them that) like President Obama.

The movement, called ProReforma, seeks to restore equality before the law, so that interests and group status do not "enhance" that equality. The president of the movement, Manuel Ayau, puts it this way, "A system based on equal rights for every individual will bring about a state of affairs where people can pursue their own happiness in a peaceful environment."

Perhaps Obama could learn from a third world figure other than Hugo Chavez.

But his disposition doesn't seem inclined to that. He was speaking specifically in support of gun rights in a 2008 debate when he made an eerily broad statement about individual rights. He said, "Just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right."

One can't help but wonder if that applies to more than just gun rights. Does he also mean speech, religion, and assembly?

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand

Christmas Peace in The War To End All Wars

2008-12-22T13:00:00.009-05:00

This column first appears in the Dec 24, 2008 High Springs Herald.

In the days prior to Christmas Eve 1914, artillery thundered throughout the trenches of the Western Front.

With each boom, the freezing, muddy earth shook beneath the feet of cheerless and homesick British soldiers. At the same time, whistling bullets knifed through the air and whizzed passed the heads of shivering German troops.

Anger, aggression, hatred, and all the evil and darkness of war laid like a wet and miserable blanket over the spirits of weary men on both sides of a hopeless battleground.

A thin strip of territory called No Man’s Land, ruled by dread and death, sat unoccupied between their warring trenches. Though each side desperately wanted it, neither could traverse or claim it for fear of certain death at the hands of a ruthless enemy.

But on that Christmas Eve of 1914 a miracle occurred. Along some of the most infamous battle lines of the Western Front, in Ypres Belgium, the artillery slacked off, and the bullets stopped whistling. For a while, fear vanished. Hatred melted in the middle of a cold day, and aggression ceased in the midst of The War To End All Wars.

It began when the German troops started decorating the parapets along their trenches with trees and Christmas candles.

As night fell, the heavy and uneasy silence imposed by a ceased artillery was broken by softly floating German voices carrying the melody of “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.”

The British soldiers didn’t recognize those original German words, but they did recognize the original German melody to the Christmas carol, “Silent Night, Holy Night.”

Scottish troops on the British side returned fire with English carols.

Before the following day had ended, the enemies had become temporary friends, crossing No Man’s Land and exchanging gifts from the few pleasantries they had at hand.

The dead were buried, and in some cases, enemy aided enemy with that sad duty.

There were even soccer matches between teams from the opposing sides.

The event became known as the Christmas Truce.

These unsanctioned and spontaneous events were looked down upon by battle field authorities, and a resumption of hostilities had to be provoked with fear of punishment for treason by the higher brass.

Many arguments have been proposed to explain the day’s breakdown in military discipline.

Some have argued that the war was still fresh, and deep hostility had not yet rooted, and that because of this, sympathy and good will were easier among men experiencing the same horrid miseries of trench warfare.

But the French had just been invaded by the Germans and had an understandable and conspicuous dislike for them. Yet the French had the same truce experience a whole year later in 1915 when hostility would certainly have been deeper.

One history writer almost dismisses the event as “one of the absurdities of war.”

But the event was not an absurdity. And the cause of the truce was far more than men alleviating the common misery of war with a common sympathy for fellow men.

The brass knew the real reason, which is why they looked down upon the truce their leaders didn’t authorize.

In order to win the war, the brass had to quash the natural urge for fellowship between men familiar with Christianity, its affection for forgiveness, and the celebration of the birth of that religion’s central figure.

Those kinds of religious and cultural forces, if left unchecked, would have doomed any advancement against a foe painted as totally malevolent.

Of course, those kinds of forces can’t be checked forever. Because of this, peace between Germany and Europe was inevitable.

A common culture, a common humanity, and a common morality expressed in the basics of a common belief system were too much to overcome. This was true even for bullets, bombs, artillery and death in the cold slurry of blood and mud of the first world war.

Such common forces of peace eventually sooth the sting, and heal the wounds of those nations vanquished at the end of war.

The angels knew about that peace when a couple of thousand years earlier at another Christmas they declared, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

And Paul, the apostle, obviously knew about it when he spoke of a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Merry Christmas Crescent Communities, and God willing I'll see you next year.

Responding to a Letter

2008-11-08T12:53:00.025-05:00

The following is a letter that was emailed to me shortly after my last column in the High Springs Herald. My responses to the letter are in blue. I have withheld the name of the Fort White writer. I am just now responding as I have had a busy week with my three kids -- the wife is on a medical mission trip and out of the country. Ms. X from Fort White, sorry for the delayed response, but you took the time to write me, so below are my responses.

Mike Hosey (“Right Minded”, 10-30-08) is righteously indignant over Chris Matthews’ love for Obama. Righteous indignation is a good thing. In fact, it is the only kind of indignation one should ever entertain. A good definition of righteous is, "morally justified." But it isn't his love of Obama that I have a problem with, it is his media corporation's inability to balance that, or at the very least, make him formally advertise that bias.

He accuses the media of being lliberal. While I do believe the media is liberal, this column wasn't addressing it's liberality, per se. Rather it was addressing its bias, and its deliberate pretense of balance.

One has to wonder if the bias of Fox News, which has been called a shill for the Bush administration, bothers him in like fashion. This column wasn't speaking about media across the past 8 years, but only in its reaction during this presidential election. You might be interested to know that the Project for Excellence in Journalism (funded by Pew, and by The Center for Media and Public Affairs) found Fox to have the most balanced coverage in this election. Turns out all the news agencies have a bias. But Fox is biased to the right, which makes it stand out, which in turn makes it seem more biased than it is. Interestingly, the rest of the media is more biased left, than Fox is right -- at least in this particular election.

Did he mind when Fox news sold the Iraq war, and reported we were wildly successful (even before the surge) and neglected to disclose the disaster that Bush’s war was in reality? How and where did Fox "sell" the war? Please provide examples where Fox stands out over other media outlets regarding this accusation. I don't remember Fox portraying the war as "wildly successful." I can't think of a single instance of that. Not saying there wasn't one, I just don't recall it. I do recall that Fox reported on individual successes in the war as they occurred-- something I almost never saw on the other networks. In fact, the other networks highlighted every American death and every American failure, and sometimes -- as was the case with CNN and its coverage of video taped snipings -- they even highlighted enemy victories. This is something that particularly irritated my brother, who fought two tours over there. I can't say that I blame him. The media has a lot of culpability in prolonging that war, because it gave hope to our enemies. And until the surge, our enemies were intensely trying to erode public support -- their greatest weapon for doing that was mainstream media.

Or when those who were opposed to the war were called traitors or worse and attacked on a personal level (like Joe Wilson)? Besides being a camera hog, Joe Wilson was shown to be less than truthful on some of his most important claims. He wasn't attacked on a personal level, but in response to claims he was making. Claims that later were shown to be not true. Jeff Gannon, who certainly has a bias against Wilson, has an interesting analysis of that whole fiasco. You should read it.

Did it bother him when Sean Hannity
called Obama a Muslim, a terrorist and a racist? I never heard Sean Hannity say any of this. Perhaps, this is because I get my news from a variety of sources, and so don't listen to Hannity all day long. If I had heard it, I would have loudly critisized him for it. Besides, Hannity isn't a journalist.

Talk show host Phil Donahue was told he could not have a liberal commentator on his show unless he has TWO conservative commentators on at the same time for “balance.” I don't know anything about this. I don't consider Donahue, by any stretch, to be a journalist. And frankly, I don't care whether he has zero conservatives on his show or 150 -- its his show. Does anyone even watch Donahue anyway? Besides, Donahue is an unabashed liberal. So if he has a liberal commentator on, and only one conservative, that'd be unbalanced. It'd be 2 against 1. Maybe whoever is in charge of his show realized that. But I don't care anyway, if its really his show, he can do what he wants.

Hosay mentions that a public gaff by Joe Biden would have been all the major tv outlets if it had been uttered by Sarah Palin, but as it was, Biden’s blooper was all over the tv, I saw it at least five times myself. Actually, I didn't mention this. I pointed out how Dan Rather, who IS a friend of the media, and who is NO friend of republicans or conservatives, noticed it. Please read more carefully. Oh, BTW, Dan made that statement with other reporters on the liberal MSNBC who also noticed a paucity of coverage.

If it weren’t, how did Hosey know about it?

Does he want Palin to have a free pass when she can't even name any publication she reads and says that living near Russia qualifies her a competent in foreign policy? No, I don't. I thought that both the Gibson interview and the Couric interview were perfectly fair - as painful as it was to watch her unable to name any literature. In fact, I wanted them to ask her harder questions. I just wanted them to do the same for Biden, and especially Obama. Barring Rev. Wright, it wasn't until a local station in Orlando pressed Biden about Joe the Plumber that the Obama campaign was confronted with any journalistic resistance. And even in the case of Rev. Wright, it was Sean Hannity who did the original digging to bring that to light. And the media reported it, but they certainly didn't look into its implications with any kind of depth or focus. That was left to New Media.

Papers and news media outlets produce what sells.

It’s not Hosey’s kvetching about the mean old media siding with the other guys that is so annoying. I can relate to his frustration after years of the media giving Bush and Cheney a free pass on the most outrageous policies, after crucifying Clinton for having oral sex in the oval office and ‘travelgate’. Come on. This is not intellectually honest. The media has used Bush as a punching bag since day one, and it intensified perversly after the invasion of Iraq. Oh, and you might want to take another look at the Clinton years. The media sat on the Monica Lewinsky story for a long time. They only brought it out when they could no longer ignore it -- thanks to Matt Drudge. Then once it was out of the bag there was no way of stopping the media (as you say) selling a story full of sex, intrigue, and powerful figures. And even then, they were friendly to Clinton.

I think people in the media (like Hosey) should have the intelligence to avoid the ad hominem attack. Do you know what ad hominem means? Or how it would be applied given the true subject of my column?

Hosey calls Obama a Marxist, and says Obama’s answer that taxes redistribute wealth a Marxist answer. I did not call Obama a marxist. I said he had a marxist history, a marxist ideology, a marxist theology, and marxist friends. All of this is true. Many of his friends are self described marxists, Jeremiah Wright's church is heavily influenced by liberation theology which was birthed in the marxist turmoil of South America. At 34 he launched his political career in the house of Bill Ayers who is unapologetically marxist. Obama himself has written in his memoir that he gravitated to marxist thinkers, professors and social circles. In fact, he "carefully chose" those groups in order to not appear as a "sellout." A sellout from what? If he then makes a marxist statement about "spreading the wealth around," the media should then look at the whole picture with a greater degree of scrutiny -- something they did not do. By the way, spreading the wealth around is a marxist idea. You might want to go read a bit of Marx. In Obama's plan, which you should also read, a very sizable chunk of people get a "tax cut" even though they don't pay taxes. This means the govt will be taking wealth from one group of people who earned it and spreading it to another group who did not.

(Bush’s tax policies have been said to have caused the largest redistribution of wealth in U.S. history, to the rich). Perhaps you have a point if you consider the recent bailout -- something for which I've been mildly critical. But ultimately the cause of that bailout was democrat policies -- something else the media woefully overlooked. But other than that, when you can show me how the govt takes money earned by poor people or the middle class, and then gives it to the rich who did not earn it, I'll consider more seriously the idea that Bush's policies are a redistribution of wealth to the rich.

What does Hosey think a Marxist is? A marxist is some one who adheres to, or is strongly influenced toward socialist governance by the writings of Karl Marx -- or any of his proteges.

And why is Obama a Marxist? I didn't call him one. However, there is enough evidence available to legitimately entertain that possibility. The media should have explored that evidence.

Not that this epithet is original, and I suspect Hosey is merely dittoing what he heard on Fox News. So you consider "marxist" an epithet? Why?

Hosey mentioned Joe the Plumber, from whom Sarah Palin has gotten so much mileage.

Joe wouldn’t have been so focused on if McCain hadn’t used him to stand in for regular citizens.

Hopefully our “regular citizens” have more integrity than Joe. "Joe the Plumber" wasn't about Joe the Plumber's integrity. It was about Obama's answer to Joe the Plumber. Joe could have been bought and paid for. He could have been a liar. He could have been racist, homophobic, lipstick wearing pig who listens to Barry Manilow. None of it would matter. What matters is how a presidential candidate answered his question.

Attacking the other guy is what you do when you have nothing to say to sell yourself and your own ideas. I wasn't selling my ideas here. I was critisizing my fellow media. However, read my column more often, and you'll pick up on my ideas. They're not too shabby. And as far as history is concerned, they've been proven time and time again.

Look at McCain ads, the only message he has is “Be afraid, be very afraid.” I agree. The McCain campaign was inept in this regard. But in his defense, he had to get the biggest bang for his buck. You see, Obama promised not to accept private funding for his campaign. McCain made the same promise. The difference is that McCain kept his promise. This might be a clue to Obama's integrity. He amassed 600 million dollars because of that broken promise. McCain's limited funds did not allow him the more persuasive route given the gargantuan nature of his opponents war chest. Perhaps, McCain should have posited that it wasn't fair for Obama to have that much money. I wonder if Obama would have been o.k. with sharing that wealth and spreading it around a little?

Hosey too seems only to be able to attack Obama with scary generalizations. Are you certain that I am attacking Obama in the column you cite?

Are we incapable of discussing ideas? Some of us seem to be. The media certainly seemed incapable.

Have we conservatives come down to only false scary labels, telling lies about opponents because that’s only the way we believe we can prevail? Ms. X, I find it hard to believe that you are a conservative.

Hosey ends with what sounds vaguely threatening: "you media types, beware. This is not clear, unbiased discussion of ideas, and clear discussion of political ideas is what we need most of all. If you link this "beware" statement to the first statement in the column, you will find that it is no threat at all. Careful reading is an essential if you are really interested in "clear discussion of political ideas." Rather, the "beware" is a warning. Because the media stupidly (or perhaps deliberately) embarked on a route of advocacy, there may be more unpleasant realities for them in the future. That is, what will they do or say if Obama begins down a radical road, and they did nothing to warn anyone of that possibility? If that happens they will necessarily have many difficult choices to make. Their allegiance to the devil of advocacy will demand it.

Ms. X,
Thanks for reading my column. And thanks for the discussion.
Mike Hosey

American Journalism Sells Its Soul

2008-10-29T23:19:00.018-04:00

A shortened version of this column appears in the October 30, 2008 print edition of the High Springs Herald and the October 31, 2008 edition of the High Springs Herald Online. It will run side by side with the Herald's liberal columnist Ray St. Louis. His corresponding column can be found here.

2008 is the year American journalism sold its soul to the devil of political advocacy. Though it didn’t cross the line, it had flirted with selling out to such advocacy eight years earlier.

When John McCain ran for president in 2000, Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the RNC complained that the media were "slobbering" over The Maverick at the expense of covering other republican candidates.

Barbour wasn’t alone. Many noted that not only was The Maverick getting more coverage, but that the press hadn’t scrutinized him in the same way that they had pored over other candidates.

Evidently, McCain knew he was moist with the sloppy smooches of quite a few reporters. His campaign lost to W., but he started referring to the media jokingly as, "my base."

The media saw it, too.

In 2006, Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s "Hardball" and " The Chris Matthews Show," said in one of the most telling admissions by a media member that, "The press loves McCain. We’re his base."

Of course, this wasn’t exactly true. The media overwhelmingly favored Gore at the ballot box. McCain was just their man on the republican team during the primaries.

Anyway, by February of 2008, Matthews’ true orientation surfaced and his enthusiasm shifted to the most liberal member of congress, the suave and Marxian senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.

Some found his enthusiasm conspicuous for a member of the dispassionate media. Upon hearing a primary speech by Obama, Matthews hardly contained himself. Commenting on that speech he actually said, "I felt a thrill going up my leg," and on live T.V., no less.

His colleagues -- or cohorts -- followed suit.

But before Obama’s ascension, what was it about McCain that they loved?

In 2000, the apologetic was that McCain had provided such outstanding access to the media that that they were able to cover him more easily than his competition. And they argued that the relationships formed in that atmosphere of accessibility disposed them to favorable reporting.

Doubtless, that reasoning has its place. But its a tiny place.

Media access to McCain prior to July 2008 was almost unfettered. And yet during that time Obama basked in the media spotlight as a rock star and an American narrative, while McCain struggled for coverage in the long shadows.

Polls consistently have shown that members of the media personally favor leftward candidates. Most are democrats. And while they pretend to be unbiased in their coverage, they occasionally admit preferences.

Back in 2000, Tom Brokaw did. Denying coverage bias while admitting ideological bias, he said, "But if you take John McCain's policies on the environment or on abortion or on military policy, it probably doesn't square with a lot of the reporters who have become very infatuated with him."

Hmmm.

McCain offered a coven of ideological activists who possess the magic to bewitch public opinion with a way to divide and conquer a republican party whose roots are decidedly conservative.

Curse the roots and the plant dies.

It wasn’t McCain’s accessibility that infatuated reporters, it was his ability to sacrifice conservative principles on the alter of "reaching across the aisle."

They knew a McCain win in the 2000 primaries would have estranged the base, providing Gore with victory. Interestingly, this was the state of the 2008 republican base prior to McCain calling the openly conservative Sarah Palin as his veep.

Nevermind that McCain was (and is), for the most part, a conservative. In politics, its perception that counts.

And perception is something the media diligently engineered from the moment Obama sent tingles into their nether regions.

They may have been smooching on John McCain, but they are now frenching Barack Obama.

Their own have noticed.

Dan Rather is known for defending the media, and is not known for a love of republicans. Commenting on a national security gaffe made by Joe Biden, Obama's veep, Mr. Rather noted last week that if Sarah Palin had said something similar, "the newspapers would have jumped all over it, and so would the major television outlets."

But the biggest evidence of sell out wasn’t how the media nitpicked McCain without combing through Obama’s tangles. Or how they completely ignored the culpability of individual democrats at the heart of the current financial crisis.

It wasn't in how they fell on Alaska like a plague of locusts chewing up every morsel that might be associated with Palin, while avoiding Obama's clearly questionable alliances. It wasn't even how they lamented that Palin, as a governor, had no executive experience and was unqualified for the vice presidency, while complicitly allowing that Barack Obama, as a community organizer, somehow had enough executive experience to be the actual president.

No, the biggest evidence was Joe the Plumber.

Joe asked a question, and Obama, a man with a marxist history, a marxist ideology, a marxist theology, marxist friends, and who pals around with marxist terrorists, gives Joe a marxist answer, and they immediately focus on Joe’s past and credentials, and not on Obama’s answer.

So you media types who sold your soul, beware. The devil is a hard taskmaster.

Is Oprah Being Honest About Palin?

2008-09-11T09:25:00.005-04:00

This column first appears in the September 11, 2008 High Springs Herald.

Oprah Winfrey is the High Monarch of all celebrity and media.

She may not even be mortal. If not pure divinity, she certainly qualifies as some sort of a demigoddess.

Her empire spans television and print media. Its reach is the stuff of legends. Swimming in oceans of money, Oprah, the world’s only black billionaire, is an economy unto herself.

Her influence commands the minds of countless masses of western women.

And this near divinity partly explains why she has teamed up with the democrats’ new deity – the Messiah of our age -- Barack Obama.

Ironically, her power exceeds even his.

Unlike Obama, when she speaks, people don’t just swoon like pathetic teen groupies at a Beatles concert. Instead, book titles carried by her divine breath magically and instantly fly off store shelves and alight somewhere near the summit of the New York Times’ best seller list.

When she endorses the writings of quirky new age gurus like Eckhart Tolle, droves of people forsake a more established spirituality for one bowed to much lesser gods.

In fact, when Oprah pushed Tolle’s teachings by way of a 10 week Internet seminar earlier this year, more than 700,000 had registered before the course began. One blogger noted that when the seminar launched on March 28, a stunning 500,000 people participated, and halfway through the course the number doubled.

Those numbers are staggering, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the Oprah/Tolle event turns out to be the biggest single Internet event to date.

She cannot deny honestly the magic behind her influence.

Which makes one curious as to why she will not interview John McCain’s vice presidential pick, the lovely Sarah Palin.

The controversy started when Matt Drudge reported last Friday morning on The Drudge Report, that there was internal turmoil in Oprah’s courts over interviewing Palin on Oprah’s behemoth television show.

Oprah has always been painted as a champion of female success and potential. So, when Drudge reported that half of her staff wanted to interview Palin as the Republican Party’s first real national candidate who was also a woman, and that Oprah and her higher ups refused because Oprah had already publicly endorsed Obama, there was a moment of notable dissonance.
Before the day had ended, Oprah had issued a press release "categorically" denying any such turmoil in her courts.

She stated in her press release that there had been "absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show," and then continued, "At the beginning of this Presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates," and that she would love to interview Palin after the election.

That statement is so curious not because she had already interviewed Obama twice before on her show. Those interviews, coupled with her denial of Palin are in no way a reflection of unfairness.

Those interviews, really, are irrelevant. They occurred before Obama had announced his candidacy for president, and long before Oprah had announced her endorsement of that candidacy.

What is so curious – and unbelievable -- is that a woman of Oprah’s intellectual caliber is unable to discern that she is almost inseparable from her show.

Would it, for instance, make any significant difference in sales numbers if she opined favorably in an interview on Entertainment Tonight about the latest book that she had just read instead of on the Oprah Winfrey Show? When evaluating that significance, be sure to consider what the difference would be if she had said nothing on either show.

Would Eckhart Tolle get a bump in sales of his books if she gushed on about his wisdom in an interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America, instead of the Oprah Winfrey Show? Would his seminars get a bump in participation if it was known through other media outlets bedsides Oprah’s show or magazine that she would actively participate in those seminars?

When Oprah publicly announced that she would support Obama, her empire became a platform for his candidacy.

Her status as a demigoddess assured it.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Its her empire to do with as she pleases.

But there is something a bit disagreeable, maybe even offensive, about a person who feigns a lack of bias for the purpose of manipulation. Let’s hope that for the sake of Oprah’s royal legacy that she is not feigning anything, but is just having a really long momentary lapse of awareness.

Though this hope seems futile. In an interview with Larry King in May 2007, King asked her if she had contributed money to Obama's campaign.

She said "no," and stated that she thought the value of her support was far greater than any check she could write.

Psst! NOVA says the Bible aint true! Who would of thunk it?

2008-08-14T00:29:00.011-04:00

This column appears in the August 14th edition of the High Springs Herald and will appear online August 15th.

The Bible isn’t true.

In fact, it’s such a mishmash of fairy tales that it can’t be counted on objectively for anything but minor kernels of truth in a larger panorama of middle eastern history.

Their is no archeological evidence for the Exodus. It was probably made up to suit some political or sociological end.

Abraham and Sarah never existed.

The Old Testament was authored by thousands of people no earlier than the 6th century BCE.

Monotheism in Hebrew society was preceded by polytheism, and evolved long after the stories in Genesis are believed to have occurred.

These less than (yawn) novel statements mirror the claims made by Donald Wildmon, founder and chairman of the activist group, the American Family Association (AFA), regarding a NOVA documentary that will be aired November 18th on PBS. The documentary is entitled, "The Bible’s Buried Secrets."

Consequently, these claims are corroborated -- more or less -- by other news sources who were privy to the film’s publicity tour.

His email "ACTION ALERT" lighted in my inbox almost a full three months before the program’s airing. The email’s title screamed out, "New PBS program says Bible isn’t true, stories made up. Your tax dollars helped fund, "The Bible’s Buried Secrets." It then asked me to sign a petition to persuade congress to defund PBS.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE.

This seems to be a very closed minded request, since the film hasn’t been aired in its entirety, and can’t yet be judged on its merits – if any.

Of course, being a conservative I have a few reservations about public funding for broadcasting anyway, and don’t have to be alarmed into considering restricting it, though I’d probably never support completely doing away with it.

But if his motive was political with an intent to move me in that direction, he failed. I find alarmism considerably demotivating.

Besides, NOVA is an exceptionally well produced program that is also funded by a sizable number of private donations from both individuals and businesses. If this NOVA program doesn't appear on PBS it will certainly appear on the Discovery Channel, or the History Channel, or some other cable outlet that could give it more viewership than PBS. This, by the way, is a better argument than Wildmon’s sensationalism for ending or restricting public funds for broadcasting. Well produced programs will find an outlet, even without public funding, regardless of controversial substance.

If his intent was to keep me from watching the film, he failed miserably. My curiosity is very much piqued, and being the nerd that I am, I can’t wait to see it.

But where he failed the most was in his attempt to stir my Christian sensibilities. Mr. Wildmon’s attempt to procure my support for a political end was sorely misplaced. His organization’s failure is an example of something I abhor – intolerance to discussing opposing points of view.

Some in Christian circles seem scared to death that an open discussion is going to close off Christianity and the Bible to the masses.

Wildmon’s email seems to contain just such an instance of this paranoia. He quotes archeologist William Dever, who has commented to the press concerning the film, as saying, "...It's designed for intelligent people who are willing to change their mind. …it will give intelligent people who want to read the Bible in a modern way a chance. If we insist on reading the Bible literally, in 25 years, nobody will read it any longer."

Even though the AFA is using it to color Dever in a particular way, one might think that Wildmon believes the arrogance of that quote. People have been reading the scriptures for thousands of years. That’s not going to end in the next 25 regardless of whether or not this film is a success.

What Wildmon and other Christians should realize is that God has handed us a golden opportunity for evangelism, apologetics, and ministry. And He’s given that golden opportunity to us on a golden platter.

I can think of few better ways to get the truth of scripture out to those who are willing to hear it and accept it, than by doing it in the midst of controversy and the publicity generated by it.

But doing this requires that Christians be properly equipped. It requires that they go to church to be armed and not entertained.

And it requires that they do more than just read their bibles. Reading a bible instead of studying it is like hearing a wife and not listening to her.

It’s unfruitful and hazardous.

It also requires that Christians actually understand the issues at hand, and make counter arguments with precision and logic -- which means that they must actually personally evaluate the opposition's point of view.

Finally, getting that truth of scripture out in the midst of controversy means understanding the kind of scholarship that produces a film like, "Buried Secrets." And one good way to start understanding that scholarship is to experience a product produced by it.

Obama Counting on Felons and Racial Strife to Win Florida

2008-06-26T00:14:00.004-04:00

In 2004, President Bush won Florida by a sliver of 381,000 votes. In a state where over 7 million votes were cast, that’s winning by the skin of one’s teeth.

And the Democrat’s presidential candidate, Barack Obama, is counting on that thin margin as he attempts to seize Florida’s weighty 27 electors in his 2008 presidential bid.

His approach is to pursue non-traditional voters – meaning those voters who don’t normally vote, or who didn’t vote in 2004.

If he does this effectively he can handily scrape the skin from the GOP’s teeth. According to a strategy memo quoted in the LA Times, democrats believe that "encouraging just one-third of the non-2004 voters to cast a vote would alone [make up] more than half the margin."

For republicans, that threat is very real. And Florida’s Republican Governor, Charlie Crist hasn’t helped matters. Back in April of 2007 my column criticized the governor’s desire to restore voting rights to Florida’s felons. At the time, I reasoned that Crist's motives must be pure because such a move could only help his party's opponents.

Anyway, the Governor's plans succeeded.

Interestingly, that column in my blog’s archives receives far-and-away more hits than any other column. My blog collects anonymous data (such as Google search words) on how people get to my site. And those electronic trails that have led people to it do not suggest that they were fellow conservatives concerned about Crist’s reasoning, but instead, that they were felons looking for ways to regain their voting rights.

Perhaps this is a harbinger of things to come.

That same LA Times story points out that about 115,000 felons have become eligible to vote since Crist’s desire to empower felons came to fruition. There’s little doubt that democrat candidates will be favored more among felons than republican candidates. Ironically, that 115,000 number is about one third of the margin.

Of course not all of those felons will vote. But this will have little effect on those salivating democrat strategists. The LA Times cites two sociologists, Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, who claim that 1.1 million felons were ineligible to vote in 2004.

Not anymore. Thanks a lot Charlie, because we all know felons are the kind of people that have a history of making good, wise, reasonable life decisions.

Republicans have more to worry about than just felons.

They have to worry about their almost complete failure to convince black voters that democrat policies with their subtle racisms have harmed those voters in profound ways.

Even though Crist was dubbed by State Representative Terry Fields as Florida’s first black governor in February of 2007, it isn’t likely that his new moniker has offset the poisonous sway that big government liberals in the democrat party and their racemongers have over the black community.

And there is poll evidence to support that. A Quinnipiac University Poll has 95 percent of blacks in Florida supporting Obama. The same poll also has Obama leading McCain.

It is still too early to tell, but those black voters may be galvanized. The Ledger.com reports that in the unsanctioned democrat primaries of January, black voter turnout increased 115 percent in some predominately black Florida counties. Those voters mostly chose Obama.

Naturally, it doesn’t hurt that Obama is actually black and thus shares a common cultural element with those voters. But just a few months ago vocal leftwingers were complaining that he wasn't black enough. Whatever that means.

Nor does it hurt that Obama has an undeniable command of charm, charisma, youth, good looks, ability to communicate, (pause for breath), fashion style, media prostitutes, the Hollywood left, bunches and bunches of money, (pause for another breath), fainting women, Messianic appeal, an elite education, an attractive wife, a complete lack of any legislative record to criticize, mountains of hope for change, a "yes we can" attitude, a scantily clad Obama Girl on YouTube, (pause for one more breath) and fellow High Springs Herald columnist Ray St. Louis’ pledge to replace his Obama sign every day between now and November.

Still, November is a good piece away. Anything can happen between now and then, and it will be no surprise that as election day approaches we will learn more and more about Obama that we do not now know. All that undeniable command may dissipate into the ether.

Then again, Obama may grow a thick skin.

On his teeth.

Terri Schiavo's Brother Visits High Springs

2008-05-07T08:46:00.007-04:00

This column first appears in the May 8, 2008 edition of the High Springs Herald.

In the mid-afternoon hours of March 18, 2005, medical staff under the foreboding pall of court orders removed a feeding tube that provided nutrition and water to a severely brain damaged 41-year-old woman named Terri Schiavo.

From that point forward, spiritual, cultural, and legal conflict burned her name into the annals of American jurisprudence.

Bobby Schindler, her brother, was on the front lines of that conflict, and he spoke to a small gathering of about 35 people at Saint Madeleine’s Catholic Church in High Springs last Friday evening.

He wanted to provide a perspective to her story that he says was lost in most national media accounts. But to understand that perspective, one must understand the context of Terri's struggle.

Her feeding tube had been removed twice before, and each time reinserted in the relentless back-and-forth legal clashes of a national morality play. The final scenes of that play unfolded on national television, on talk radio, in newspapers and in all manner of mass media.

15 years earlier, in February of 1990, Terri suffered an unexplained collapse which resulted in a heart failure that starved her brain of oxygen.

So for 15 years her brain had limited control over her body, and as far as anyone knows, limited capacity for thought.

Many questioned her self-awareness.

Aside from her husband, her closest family members did not.

For large segments of that 15 year period, she remained confined to a bed – some say because of willful neglect on the part of her husband.

But whatever the case, the brain damage which restricted her ability to feed or hydrate herself was her only significant medical issue.

In terms of all other life-essential organs, she was healthy.

During most of that time a bitter, savage and public legal war raged between her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, who wished to preserve her life, and her husband, Michael Schiavo, who -- eight years after her initial collapse – suddenly claimed that Terri expressed a desire to die should such a situation ever arise.

This was a claim contradicted by close family and friends.

The third removal of the tube was the beginning of the final scene. There would be no more legal victories for those wishing to keep Terri alive.

She died 13 days later on March 31st at 9:05 in the morning.

According to medical examiner Jon Thogmartin, the cause of death was "marked dehydration."

Terri had thirsted to death under the intimidating shadows of court ordered police officers whose job it was to prevent even the comfort of ice chips from moistening her lips.

The denouement of the play in which Terri was the central character didn’t produce the singular legislative punch to a "culture of life" like Roe v. Wade did, but it probably will shape considerably American politics, and western bioethics for some time to come.

Even critics should consider how Terri's demise looks a lot like the next step in the much argued slippery slope of abortion.

Unfortunately, the play’s deeper moral lessons are likely lost in the superficial din of American media, and on the shallow attention spans of self-indulgent American citizens.

But some of those lessons weren’t lost on Bobby Schindler.

He now works full time for the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, which exists to develop a national network of advocacy resources for medically dependent people with disabilities.

It also actively opposes euthanasia.

Terri’s ordeal brought home an awareness of the potentially evil links between disability, money, and euthanasia.

This seemed evident as he explained how Terri’s first guardian ad litem had recommended that her feeding tube not be removed because of conflicts of interest regarding who would inherit 1.5 million dollars previously won on Terri’s behalf in a medical malpractice lawsuit.

Bobby was very quick to argue that his sister’s case was not what the media, nor her husband, presented to the world.

George Felos, the lawyer for Terri’s husband typified what Bobby says is a grievous fallacy.

After Terri’s death Felos said, "Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern was [that] Mrs. Schiavo has a right and had a right to die with dignity. And die in peace. She had a right to have her last and final moments on this earth be experienced by a spirit of love and not of acrimony."

And even Governor Jeb Bush, an ally of the Schindlers, fell prey to the same misrepresentation when he said, "Her [Terri’s] experience will heighten awareness of the importance of families dealing with end of life issues."

The "end-of-life" and "right-to-die" angles were refrains repeated endlessly throughout the real life drama of Terri’s artificially hastened last days.

And Bobby starkly rejects those refrains which were amplified by the national media.

He told the group at Saint Madeleines, "I’m not here to speak about an end of life issue. Terri was not dying. She was simply disabled."

And he toyed with the notion that the court’s refusal to distinguish between disability issues and end of life issues constitutes "judicial murder."

Not recognizing such a difference can easily lead to a Joseph Mengele world in which the infirm and disabled are not considered persons by sole virtue of their humanity, but rather by their self awareness, or by their tangible value to society. Such a world’s ethics are governed not by the sanctity of life, but the quality or utility of life.

And too many times the quality, as in Terri’s case, will be determined by someone outside of the individual's mind.

This ethical shift is one of several reasons that Bobby sees his sister’s ordeal as an omen of darker days.

He specifically criticized the thinking of University of Florida bioethicist Bill Allen as representative of a growing problem.

Allen said in a 2005 Court TV debate that Terri Schiavo was not a person because she had a complete lack of awareness. He then contended that it would be ethical to harvest her organs with consent if the law would allow it.

Whose consent?

And how is anyone really able to know whether or not Terri was self aware?

In fact, the Schindlers insist on their foundation’s website that "Terri’s behavior and ability to interact with her surroundings did not meet the medical or statutory definition of persistent vegetative state."

But Bobby also blames a media that seemed too lazy, too incompetent, or too biased to frame the story accurately, a clergy too uninvolved in issues of life, and a healthcare and legal system too flawed to deal with issues of this complexity.

Bobby’s speech ended on a positive note. During a public discussion of the damage caused by what Bobby recognizes as a spiritual battle, this writer asked if he could forgive Michael Schiavo. He hesitated, but clearly responded that he could.

Perhaps all is not lost with Terri.

CLICK HERE FOR A TIMELINE OF THE SCHIAVO CASE

Church, Community, Attendance and Fidelity

2008-04-16T09:57:00.007-04:00

This column first appears in the April 17, 2008 edition of the High Springs Herald.

"I know a guy who regularly skips church on Sunday morning to commune with God in the ‘great wonder and beauty of nature,’" a former High Springs pastor bemoaned in a revival service back in February.

"I hope a tree falls on him," he added with feigned contempt, and without skipping a beat.

What that pastor knew was that healthy, personal, individual Christianity really cannot ever be separated from healthy Christian community.

Of course, the good pastor would readily admit that God desires personal, individual time from his subjects. But he would also tell you in a flash that personal time with God on a Sunday morning apart from other Christians is likely a fish story for something more egocentric.

Which gets me thinking about what purposes a church serves in the lives of individuals.

All of my non-Christian friends have expressed to me a disdain for church, which they conflate with the nastier elements of organized religion. Church, they say, pigeonholes you into small ways of thinking, and forces oppressive standards on stupid, uncritical people by scaring them into salvation and morality with threats of hell and punishment.

Spirituality and morality based on those things, especially the hell and punishment stuff, they argue, isn’t a spirituality or a morality in which they want to participate.

I don’t blame them.

If you love your God because you’re afraid he’ll send you to hell if you don’t, then you probably don’t love your God. If you avoid sin because you’re afraid of punishment, then your avoidance of sin isn’t really morality, its self preservation.

Such spirituality isn’t spirituality at all.

And I agree with them that church when done wrongly, as it sometimes is, looks exactly like what they see.

I’ve seen it.

But church done rightly, as it often is, looks completely different.

When done rightly, people love God because the community provided by a healthy church continually reinforces the truth that a God who is perfect and holy cannot be united with the kind of sinful imperfection found in every man and woman.

That church reminds its members that God, through his son Jesus Christ, sacrificed Himself in a bloody, painful, humiliating death to show His commitment to people, and reconcile them to Himself, so that they can avoid eternal separation from Him. In that kind of church, people love God because he first loved them. And they avoid sin not for fear of punishment, but for the same reasons they avoid offending someone they love.

And that is the crux of what a healthy church does. It provides a social support system centered around loving and honoring the precepts of a holy and loving God.

That support system can shape true moral behavior. It is even measurable.

A study appearing in the May 2008 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, found that religious service attendance (Jewish, Christian, or Islamic) was a strong predictor of marital fidelity. Other possible predictors like prayer, religiousness, and self reported strength of faith turned out not to be predictors at all. Among various dimensions of religiousness, only attendance had statistical value for predicting fidelity.

The researchers argue that not only is infidelity prevented because church is a shared activity among spouses, but also because church services offer an avenue in which couples are exposed consistently to religious teachings regarding the value of marriage.

In essence, it is the community, the values of the community, the culture of the community, the strength of the community, and most importantly, the commitment of the couple to the community that provides a degree of security for their fidelity.

But in Christianity there is also something more supernatural.

Christianity holds that any time two or more Christians are present for the purpose of glorifying Christ, He is there in the midst of them.

Perhaps that is why the Bible in Hebrews implores Christians not to forsake gathering together, and to encourage and provoke one another toward good works. In this way He can be in the midst of them and change them, and shape the world through them in ways that He cannot if they’re loafing around in the woods.

So if you’re one of those folks regularly "communing with God" in the woods instead of meeting with your fellow Christians, I don’t hope a tree falls on you. But I do hope you realize what you’re missing.

Notes From a Father

2008-02-27T22:44:00.004-05:00

This column first appears in the February 28th edition of the High Springs Herald.

I’ve been a father for twelve years.

My oldest is a handsome, smart, athletic, young man, who taunts his siblings mercilessly, and is in constant nerve wrecking motion. My daughter, is a perpetually sweet 9-year-old – except when she’s displeased with either sibling and then you can axe the sweetness part and insert a variety of other adjectives. My youngest is a kind, loving, easy-going, beautiful 4-year-old – unless he’s with other boys his age. Then he’s a typical rambunctious ball of atomic energy.

Most of those twelve years have been brimming with parenting stress.

This may sound harsh, but the truth is that parenting is not fun most of the time. It’s difficult, tedious, thankless, frequently dull, and manifestly character building.

But it’s a noble job, and like most noble jobs, it’s over-romanticized.

Still, the parenting experience is sufficiently dotted with moments that are so beautiful that their memory erases all the difficult histories between them.

Thank God.

Among my favorites are those moments in which I re-learn vicariously through my children some forgotten wisdom.

A few years ago, when my daughter was just six, she began cutting her hair. In a period of a couple of months she committed the offense twice. The second time she removed a cereal bowl’s worth.

Re-growing it was a ridiculous ordeal.

My wife threatened her with tangible punishment should the offense reoccur.

Then one afternoon my wife went shopping, or doing whatever it is wives do when they go out and leave children at home with clueless husbands.

As I attended to chores, my daughter slipped away.
When I found her, she was cutting her bangs. The damage was far less significant than previously. Nevertheless, she’d been told not to do it.

"What are you doing?" I firmly asked.

"I’m cutting my hair," she replied, really quite sweetly.

"Didn’t your mother tell you not to do that?" I questioned.

She thought for a moment and a bit of fear crept across her face.

"Don’t tell her," she said in a nervous attempt to recruit my alliance.

"Honey, I don’t think I’m gonna have to tell her. I think she’ll figure it out on her own."

"O.K. daddy, but just don’t tell her," she implored.

"Don’t do it again," I decreed without making promises.

She played until her mother returned. Upon hearing the front door open, she scrammed to her room and closed the door with a muffled thump.

My wife chatted with me a few moments, and then went out to unload our van. Temporarily forgetting the day’s crime, I had said nothing.

Then I noticed my daughter hiding in a corner watching our activities.

"What’s up sweety?" I asked.

She whispered, "Come to my room with me."

I followed.

"I need to find something to put on my forehead. I need something that will make my hair look like eyebrows," she said with a flurry of hand motions and a distraught expression.

"Hmmm. Desperation," I thought to myself as I focused every ounce of energy in every atom of my body to keep from laughing. "Have you tried a hat," I asked.

"I don’t have any hats," she replied, her voice quivering.

"Well, I don’t think a hat will help anyway, honey," I said in all honesty.

"Should I just tell her," she asked.

"I think you should."

Later, my wife noticed the plainly gapped hair and questioned her. She told the truth, and my wife declared the punishment.

My daughter came to me crying.

"What’s wrong, honey?"

"I told the truth, and she’s going to punish me anyway."

We had a discussion about how if she had lied she’d be getting doubly punished. Thankfully, she understood.

The moral is that when you willfully mess up, it’s better to just fess up, take your licks and move on.

Then there’s my oldest.

Since he is a preteen, I’m told the constant battles over homework, cleaning his room, and helping out around the house are normal for the next six to eight years.

Recently, after a fight over homework (one I temporarily lost), I sent him to his room and told him to clean it. When I checked later, he was sitting on his bed listening to music, his room a complete wreck.

"What are you doing?" I angrily asked.

"I’m practicing civil disobedience."

"You’re what?"

"Practicing civil disobedience. I learned it in school. It’s an experiment."

The moral here is that applied education apparently sticks better than rote. And since my youngest is just 4, parenting is an endurance sport.

Ann Romney Plays It Safe In Alachua

2008-01-30T08:42:00.001-05:00

This column first appears in the January 31st edition of the High Springs Herald.

Last week while Mitt Romney’s hopes for the Florida GOP presidential nomination were waxing hot, Mike Huckabee’s were waning to a vaporous wisp. John McCain’s star was brightening, but at the same time, Fred Thompson’s, which never really put out that much light anyway, finally fell from the sky. And all the money that Rudy Guiliani was putting his faith in, and spending like mad in Florida to stoke his cooling embers, seemed to be disappearing down some inescapable black hole.

And all of this in one day.

On that day, Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann Romney, shined in her own way. With exactly one week to the primaries, she paid a surprise visit to the Crescent Communities where she met with the "public" at Conestogas Restaurant in "Downtown, beautiful Alah-choo-way." Her hubby, who had been crisscrossing the money flush metropolitan areas of south Florida, was campaigning among the upper crust down in Naples.

For an event that was supposed to be a meet-and-greet for the public, barely a handful of "regular" citizens showed. Their numbers were eclipsed by local movers and shakers. And those movers and shakers were then eclipsed by a hefty number of media folks.

Although not all those movers and shakers would fess up to supporting Romney, their presence was noted. Among them were Stafford Jones, who is the chair of Alachua County’s Republican Executive Committee, frequent Herald letter writer, Bud Calderwood, local republican politician David Pope, and Ardene Wiggins, one of the real estate investors behind the purchase of Progress Park in the Spring of 2000.

Sending out the wives to help cover the strategy states has been a conspicuous tactic for both parties in this campaign cycle.

And when I asked Mrs. Romney’s spokesperson, Gail Gitcho, why they came to little old Alachua, she said that they had been invited by supporters, and that the campaign felt that it was a "voter rich" environment.

That statement likely is true. It has been argued that many of Romney’s political donations come as a result of his business savvy. And the crescent communities are teeming with small business owners who might see the allure of that savvy.

And then there’s raw demographics. A little more than a quarter of voters reside in rural America. While the crescent communities aren’t rural, all of their surrounding spaces are.

Almost everyone to whom I spoke touted Romney’s business acumen as their reason for supporting him. Ricardo Castillo, who owns a rental business, gave a typical rationale. "The economy is about business," he said, and then went on to give me a detailed report of Romney’s past business accomplishments.

Mrs. Romney seems made for the task of campaigning for her husband.

She is as attractive in person as she is on T.V., and looks younger than her age. She’s well spoken, poised, and relatively comfortable with the media.

She easily conversed with me and a group of print reporters while she casually enjoyed a piece of key lime pie outside the tea room at Conestogas.

Unfortunately, policy questions were barred.

Though she danced around controversial questions, she was willing to entertain them.

When I asked her why a region heavy with conservative evangelical Christians should vote for her Mormon husband over Baptist Mike Huckabee, she responded with the clearly memorized response that they’d be voting for a president and not for a pastor. She then implied what seems increasingly true – Mitt’s religion may be heterodox, but his conservative principles approach orthodoxy far more closely than any of his fellow candidates.

Which may explain why Rudy supporters are hearing the big sucking sound of enormous amounts of cash rushing down a hole, and why McCain’s national brightness is only a glow at best when one considers that statistically there are more conservatives supporting Romney than moderates suckered by McCain, and why Huckabee isn’t as illuminating as he was less than a month ago.

When I asked her what her husband’s greatest weakness was, she weakly answered that she only talks about his strengths.

Pretty safe. And pretty unsatisfying.

But where she really danced was when a reporter from another paper asked her about a check she wrote to planned parenthood, a pro-choice organization, back in the 1990s. Mrs. Romney, who earlier in the exchange claimed that she had always been pro-life, seemed caught off guard and curtly retorted, "that was 14 years ago and it was $100. I mean, do you really think I’d remember?"

Awkward moments aside, Ms. Romney clearly has the raw materials to be a first lady. With her husband’s star getting hotter everyday, she may become just that.

If so, Alachua, Conestogas, and mainstreet will have been a part of it.

The Huckaboom

2008-01-02T09:39:00.000-05:00

This column first appears in the Jan. 4, 2007 High Springs Herald.

I don’t know how many times in December I was asked my opinion regarding republican presidential hopeful and ordained Southern Baptist preacher, Mike Huckabee.

Predictably, I was asked my opinion in sparring masculine discussions designed to save the world. Not so predictably, they popped up in polite social conversations in venues where politics seemed out of place.

And they came from a variety of people representing a diversity of class, economics and education.

But one thing these people shared was a conservative, evangelical outlook on the world, coupled with traditional views of what the dominant American culture should be.

This common trait seems quite telling, because Mike Huckabee has risen.

Even Florida experienced the Huckaboom. On November 18th, Huckabee commanded only 9% of likely Florida GOP primary voters in a Rasmussen poll. That put him in 5th place, just ahead of Ron Paul, a man believed too looney to be a threat to anyone. By December 13th, less than a month later, he commanded 27%, climbing an astonishing 18 percentage points, and handily taking out the previous front runner, Rudy Giuliani.

That December poll kept Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, in second, and suggests that Florida republicans favor men of faith who espouse traditional values over men whose values seem to publicly matter only during election cycles.

On December 19th, a national Reuters/Zogby Poll put Huckabee within one point of frontrunner Guiliani.

The national rise of Huckabee, even if short lived, is clear evidence that the GOP shouldn't forget the culture of its base.

Fortunately for Huckabee, he magically has been insulated from past problems, despite significant media coverage.

His misrepresentation of facts regarding his promotion of state tuition assistance for the children of illegal immigants didn’t touch his poll numbers, even though illegal immigration issues are critical to GOP voters. When he publically stated that he ordered his state troopers to arrest illegals for federal immigration violations, it was reported that he never signed the agreement with the Department of Homeland Security necessary to make such actions possible. Huck said he ran out of time.

The polls didn't flinch.

When he came out in favor of closing the Guantanamo detention facility, it didn’t hurt his numbers either, despite his distinctly unrepublican logic.

He doesn’t want to close Gitmo because it might be a bad place where innocent people might be mistreated, but on account of the rest of the world not liking the USA due to Gitmo being perverted into some kind of anti-American symbol.

When he came out as the only GOP candidate besides McCain to call waterboarding torture, and to denounce its use in these times of psycho-demon terrorists, everyone but the pundits yawned.

When it was revealed that he (a Baptist preacher) argued a decade or more ago that homosexuality is sinful, and that public spending shouldn’t be disproportionately geared toward research for a disease (AIDS) that is almost completely preventable, when equally ravaging diseases are decimating more people and aren’t nearly as preventable, no one could guess that such a politically correct bullet wasn’t as silver as some thought it would be.

But perhaps the insulation from these problems wasn’t really magic. Perhaps there is something more to those willing to vote for Huckabee than what meets the eye, or more than what self-righteous liberals choose to see.

Perhaps, conservative voters are more sophisticated than the stereotypes used to marginalize them.

Perhaps they weigh the whole against its parts, and then choose that whole if they perceive that its value is greater than the sum of those parts.

Perhaps they are able to see a real disparity (misrepresentation of proposed immigration policy vs. his Christian duty to be truthful)and discern it from something that only appears to be a disparity – his pragmatic view of homosexuality and AIDS as they apply to public policy vs. his Christian view that all human beings are fallible and should be treated with respect and dignity whenever possible despite their inherent fallibility.

Hopefully, they can weigh these distinctions.

So here is my opinion for those asking: Huckabee is an articulate, sort-of conservative candidate whose primary votes would send a clear message that evangelicals remain important. Unfortunately, the message regarding conservitavism will be mixed.

Finally, I have a question for all of you:

I am plagued by the notion that his first calling -- his calling to preach the Gospel and pastor the flocks of God -- is a much higher calling, and so presidential politics is a great step down. Is this something God would ask His man to do?

Killing God

2007-10-31T09:27:00.000-04:00

This column first appears in the November 1st, 2007 edition of the High Springs Herald. In addition to the column there, you will find comments from High Springs readers.

"I am trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief," Philip Pullman told the Washington Post for a piece published in February, 2001.

It was a brazen statement that went largely unnoticed by almost all of America. A handful of folks – a few theology wonks, a few culture warriors, and some activist atheists -- were the only people who really understood the profoundness of the statement.

Honestly, in today’s relativistic world, if anyone else had made the statement, it might have been completely ignored. But those theology wonks, culture warriors, and atheists knew that Mr. Pullman’s career choice, as well as his rising stature in that career, are what made it profound. His career field, and his rank within it, gave him plenty of clout to accomplish his stated goal.

That’s because Mr. Pullman is an award winning writer of children’s stories.

Mr. Pullman is also a contentious atheist who has expressed a great disdain for monotheistic religion in general, with an acrid hostility seemingly aimed at organized Christianity in particular.

His most famous work is a sophisticated, well received trilogy called, His Dark Materials. The first book of that trilogy, The Golden Compass, will be released this December 7th as a live action feature film starring Nicole Kidman.

He won the Carnegie Medal, Britain’s highest literary award for children’s books, for that work.

The stories are popular. At the writing of this column, all the bound trilogies in the Alachua County Library System were checked out, or on hold.

Mr. Pullman made his statement to the Washington Post in response to a question regarding the works of C.S. Lewis, whose Narnia books were beautifully mythologized, quasi-allegories of Christian narratives and themes. The Narnia stories of Lewis had been written to show how Jesus might look in another world. And it is said that Pullman despises them, calling them racist, misogynistic, and devoid of love.

Anyone who has enjoyed them knows better.

Where Lewis had been trying to make the Christian edifice more accessible with his books, Pullman’s expressed intent is to destroy its foundations.

And he skillfully attempts this using clever, but not so subtle techniques. In the last book of his trilogy, for instance, God turns out only to be an angelic being, like any of the other angelic beings in the story – except that he is manipulative and evil. The protagonist children kill him, and he dies a pathetic, whimpering death.

Some are saying that the alarm soon to go out in anticipation of the movie is likely to fall on mostly deaf ears. The breathlessness over the Harry Potter books, the gesticulations over the DaVinci Code (see Hosey May 2006 column and related blog discussion) due to Christian ignorance, and even some 1980s "fundamentalist" attacks on Barney the dinosaur, have assured many that Christians are alarmist.

Critics have noted that the Potter books, while containing many Judeo-Christian taboos, like the glorification of sorcery, and recently, the outing of a homosexual main character, were at least written by a woman who professes Christianity, and who at least shows a smidgen of respect for the religion – even if it may only be feigned.

Her masterfully written books also contain what others have labeled as Christian friendly themes, like love for one another, and the triumph of good over evil through self sacrifice. The concept of repentence is explored, and there's even a Biblical reference to the demise of the final enemy.

But if the Potter books are taboo, then the Pullman books are downright anathema.

Consider this oft quoted line from Ruta Skadi, an important character and witch in the trilogy. She says that the Church throughout all history has tried to control every natural impulse, then adds, "That’s what the church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling."

Another Character, Mary Malone, a scientist who used to be a nun, declares that Christianity is a "very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all."

Hardly Harry Potter.

So is now the time for another Christian battle cry? It depends on how prepared and willing the soldiers are for battle. It also depends on what kind of warfare they are disposed to fight.

Publicly banning the books, or publicly boycotting the movie would not only be childish, but also a strategic and tactical error.

Besides, our society is secular and free. Because of this freedom people behave rightly or wrongly because of choice, and not because of force or manipulation. This makes for true goodness, and true badness.

And it requires Christian parents and churches to train the children in their care well. It requires producing clear thinkers who are able to spot deception, and make clear, accurate discernments.

When this is done, the basis of Christian belief cannot be undermined.

Neologisms (Knee-ah-lo-jizms)

2007-10-17T11:26:00.000-04:00

This column first appears in the 10-18-07 edition of the High Springs Herald.

People with serious mental disorders, like schizophrenia, will sometimes use a neologism (knee-ah-lo-jizm) to express an idea. Neologisms are newly coined words – very often composed of pieces of other words – that are used to express complex concepts that would otherwise be very difficult to understand outside of the mentally ill person’s inner world.

Teenagers, not unlike the mentally ill, use neologisms in the same way. Now, whether or not this means that they, too, are schizophrenic is yet to be seen.

I vote that most teens are. That is to say that they are split from reality – which is what Schizophrenic really means.

Though I have no statistical proof, it’s my opinion that the complexity (or brevity) of a particular neologism is positively linked to the creativity and intelligence of the new word’s architect. Having worked with schizophrenics who can spawn neologisms at will, and having once been a teenager, I am convinced my opinion is correct.

Consider a host of neologisms that have cropped up lately, and that are found in a variety of slang dictionaries, as well as recognized by hip teens everywhere. These new words might even find their way into a legitimate dictionary given enough usage over time.

Readers can expand their vocabulary by using some of my favorites throughout the week.

Alarm Shock - this word refers to the state of complete trauma when one must wake up to the sound of an alarm clock much earlier than usual. For example, "Hugh says the Grapster is going to have alarm shock when he gets up at 8am instead of 11am for his court appearance."

Accountabilabuddy - One online dictionary defines this word thusly: "A friend, maybe a best friend, who you get into trouble with and who is somewhat responsible for your actions." It is a term of endearment. For example, "Billy said Canney wasn’t there with his camera when the Grapster got clobbered by those pigs. Dude, I thought they were accountabilabuddies."

Agnorant - this word means to be simultaneously arrogant and ignorant. It is a term of acute contempt. For example, "The Grapster called Hugh an agnorant backwater, small-town, redneck, right-wing nut."

Brainkiller- a popular slang dictionary defines this word as, "someone who makes others confused, especially by talking," and, "anything that is hard to understand." There is usually a numbing, narcotic-like effect resulting in a glazed stupor. For example, "The protester at last night’s town meeting was such a brainkiller." Or, "The City’s explanation for their alleged corruption is such a brainkiller."

Brodeo - (pronounced bro-dee-o). This is a party composed mostly of males or "bros." For example, "That guy that got tasered at UF was going to ask the Grapster to his brodeo, but decided against it when he learned that the Grapster had only been pepper sprayed."

Connectile Dysfunction - when you can’t keep an Internet or cell phone connection, this is what you have. However, connections lasting longer than four hours are problematic, so you need to see a doctor. For example, "Dude, I think I've got connectile dysfunction! I can’t check my email because the wireless router keeps resetting. How am I going to blog to Howard Empowered about the City of Alachua’s turncoat, republican, dictator city manager?"

Ignoranus - this word describes one that is both ignorant, and an unmentionable part of the anatomy. For example, "The official position of the local activists, is that the chief is an ignoranus."

Linner - This is the meal between lunch and dinner. For example, "Hugh told me that he was going to have linner with the Grapster at 4pm, right after he stops by the Kangaroo. But he said the Grapster would probably call the meal brunch."

Multi-slacker - this word is the antonym for multi-tasker. It is also a word of acute contempt. It means having the appearance of marketability, but without the actual ability to complete any significant task. For example, "Hugh said the Grapster is a total multi-slacker with no visible means of support, who never combs his hair, and who only gets up after lunch and lives off stale pizza and beer."

Nillionaire - A person who seems to have money for everything, but possesses no visible means of support. He or she has "nil" in the bank. For example, "The police chief alleged that the Grapster was a nillionaire after he investigated an insufficient funds claim at the Kangaroo.

Just because teenagers, the mentally ill, and geniuses are practically neologism engines, doesn’t mean that their products can’t be used by everyone. So use these throughout the week and give those guys (and gals) over at Webster’s something to work on.

Grapski and Alachua Disappointments

2007-09-05T23:43:00.000-04:00

This column first appears in the September 6, 2007 edition of the High Springs Herald.

If a year is, as Ambrose Bierce defined it, a period of 365 disappointments, then I’m well on my way to finishing 2007 early.

As a spectator, a citizen and marginal member of the media, I’ve been disappointed at the local levels lately.

Regarding spectatorship, let’s start with the latest spectacle that is Charlie Grapski.

That circus is becoming all too ho-hum.

Here’s a review of what’s been reported.

It’s alleged that Grapski wrote a check for gas that could not be ok’d through the station’s check verification machine. Through a typical Grapski-esque labyrinth of he-said-she-said-they-said events (and the police chief, Robert Jernigan, personally investigating the ostensibly bad check of a political enemy of the city) Charlie predictably ended up at the Alachua Police Department in order to obtain, you guessed it, public records about that initial gas station event. Those police reports, apparently, succeeded only in whetting his appetite.

It seems he paid a second visit to the police department in order to get a personal audience with Chief Jernigan, where it’s reported that he was warned and then arrested for trespassing. It’s at this juncture that police reports have him resisting arrest and striking officers. From here he goes to the Alachua County Jail, where it’s reported that he was pepper sprayed while resisting a strip search.

So here’s the disappointing part from a spectator’s perspective. Charlie got all heroic and went on a hunger strike because it was, he said, the only freedom he had left.

Oh, Please.

You’ve got to give him an A for perseverance.

But good grief Charlie! A hunger strike? It’s so 1930’s Mahatma Gandhi, and frankly you don’t have the same spiritual gravitas.

If you must make a statement, try something more entertaining and up-to-date, like maybe a 1967 San Francisco style Human Be-In with the rest of the jail population. Not only would you entertain the community, and draw attention to your cause, but you’d probably rally the democratic party’s modern base.

Charlie’s so-called friends are also disappointing. They could be heroic and tell Charlie what he looks like to mainstream eyes. The fallout from that might be spectacular.

Or they could help him re-strategize his assault on the city to something less flamboyant, more long range, and thus more effective.

Instead, they stroke his ego (just google his name), or continually bail him out of messes he should’ve never gotten into. They enable his ongoing self-transformation into the uninteresting cliches of some bad melodrama.

All of this is sad, because Charlie has intellectual potential – misplaced though it is.

As much as I am a disappointed spectator, I am more disappointed as a citizen.

Hugh Calderwood, who probably shares with me a number of political beliefs, provides with his recent letter to the Herald an example of why I am disappointed. His letter addresses a recent editorial by Herald editor Ron Dupont, and likely reflects the opinion of many officials of the City of Alachua.

That opinion misses Ron Dupont’s point. Dupont has stressed that for some people perception (even grossly skewed perception) is held as truth.

Most people, but especially the people loyal to Grapski, have distrust for government. It is therefore imperative for government to avoid any appearance of evil. Alachua hasn’t done this well.

Hugh tries to compare Chief Jernigan’s investigation to Dupont’s coverage of Grapski. They’re not the same thing. Grapski is a political activist engaged in contentious political disputes with the city. He’s not just another felon or inmate.

Either he’s been bullied by the City, or he’s successfully engineered among his followers (and others) the appearance of having been bullied.

That’s newsworthy. Heck, it’s investigation worthy.

Grapski’s bad check isn’t investigation worthy. Hugh implies that businesses would jump at the chance to have the police investigate every potential fraudulent check.

Perhaps.

But such a jump would be a short one. The tax on resources, and the money required to sustain enforcement would change minds quickly.

Chief Jernigan’s investigation was too convenient a departure from previous behavior, thus producing a perception of political retribution.

This plays to Grapski, and Alachua shouldn’t play his game.

Considering the results of the last election, it’s hardly necessary.

With the exception of the Internet photomontage of Grapski in jail, Dupont’s coverage has been fair. Unfortunately, that photomontage coupled with Dupont’s interview would leave any fair minded person without an axe to grind sympathetic to Grapski. One comes away with the impression that his bruises are the result of unnecessary roughness.

They could have easily come from unnecessary resistance.

So everyone be easy on the disappointments and try to stretch the year a bit longer.

Is Vitter being Chastised for Adultery???

2007-07-25T12:52:00.000-04:00

This column first appears in the 7-26-07 edition of the High Springs Herald.

David Vitter is a Louisiana republican politician who may become the latest in a recent string of conservatives felled because of moral failings. Among his contemporaries are Florida’s Congressman Mark Foley who had an attraction for young men under his supervision, and Colorado’s evangelical megastar, Ted Haggard, who had an apparent attraction for both men and drugs.

Vitter recently admitted to using the special comforts of a particular high end Washington DC escort service. His phone number was discovered in the records of that service and he was forced to publicly confess that he had wronged his God and his wife.

In the past week or so, Vitter has faced a barrage of slings and arrows. The most recent of note came from Sean Hannity, an influential radio personality and very conservative Fox News pundit who late last week called for his resignation.

But less like Foley, and more like Haggard, Vitter isn’t being excoriated because of his sexual immorality.

Its much worse.

Vitter is being chastised for his hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the terrible sin of holding others to a higher standard than one holds oneself. Hypocrisy is a sin of arrogance in which one says, I will apply the rules to everyone around me, but I won’t apply them to myself.

When this sin is finally brought into the light for everyone to see, it is never, ever pretty.

I have yet to meet a single person not guilty of this sin at some time or another. Most of us harbor it -- perhaps hidden deep inside -- at this very, exact moment.

Even the smallest hypocrisy is revolting and ugly. It is like seeing someone caught in the middle of a lie. It sometimes is as uncomfortable for those who witness the offense, as it is for the actual offender. This can be true even when the lie is small. Whenever I am an uninvolved witness to such an affair, I always feel a bit squeamish for the liar if I know him or her to have any scruples at all.

This similarity of discomfort regarding lies and hypocrisy exists because lies and hypocrisy are intertwined with each other, along with pride, in a fatally tangled mass of self deceit and contempt for others. And we all recognize the mess when we see it, because we’ve all been there.

So this is Vitter’s downfall: Several years ago, while he was preaching the messages of marital fidelity, the virtues of traditional marriage, family values, and pointing out Hollywood’s profiteering of depravities, he was living a life of infidelity, harming his traditional marriage, risking the credibility of family values advocates, and allowing an alleged prostitution ring to profit from his depravity.

Vitter, who once criticized Bill Clinton, became guilty of two trespasses, where Clinton had been guilty of only one. When Bob Livingston, the representative from Louisiana resigned because of adultery and was replaced by Vitter, it was Vitter who charged that Clinton should follow Livingston’s example and step down for his sexual affairs.

So Vitter was guilty of sexual sin and hypocrisy. No one ever described Clinton’s dalliance as hypocritical.

Both the difficulty and the irony of Vitter’s story is that he was preaching the truth. Marital fidelity is important, family values are virtuous, and Hollywood does profit from depravity – both by presenting it to the masses, as well as by exploiting the depravity inherent in human society.

How, then, does a person with a true moral message separate that message from his or her own humanity?

This is difficult to do. Jesus talks about it in Matthew 7. He tells us not to judge unless we’re ready to be judged in the same way. First, he says, get the fence post out of your own eye, before you try to remove the smallest speck of a wood chip out of your brothers eye.

Notice he doesn’t say, don’t judge. He doesn’t say don’t get the chip out of your brothers eye. He says right yourself first, then do what needs to be done.

Of course, no one is perfect, and it isn’t always possible to completely right oneself before speaking the truth. In those instances, it is best to temper one’s speech with a realization of one’s own shortcomings.

Hopefully, for republicans anyway, Vitter is now somewhere between Matthew 7 and tempering his own speech.

Otherwise, he certainly will become the next conservative felled by indiscretion. Everyone understands the intensities of fleshly or biological temptations, and they easily forgive them when repentance is true. Hypocrisy, though, is a much higher crime.

Is Trent Lott a Relic Who Missed the Shift?

2007-06-20T22:15:00.000-04:00

Click below this entry on the word "comments" to hammer me for the Trent Lott column that first appeared in the High Springs Herald on 6-21-07.

Should a Christian vote for a Mormon?

2007-05-16T07:58:00.000-04:00

This column first appears in the 5-17-edition of the High Springs Herald. Check out the comments at this blog and at the Herald's site.

In recent months, a number of Christians have approached me and asked my opinion on voting for Mitt Romney in the presidential primaries.

Romney is a Mormon. By most accounts, he is a devout Mormon.

Even though it is way too early in the race to be conflicted over such things, one friend was pained when he made the request of me. He was struggling because evangelical Christianity considers Mormonism to be a cult. But in my friend’s mind, cult member Romney might be a better manager or leader than other players in the conservative field. Plus, my friend realized that Romney seems to have a strong – and most importantly – genuine moral compass similar to his own. That compass is something other leading republicans, who call themselves "Christian," may lack.

On radio programs, and among friends, I have seen this dilemma resolved with a kind of self-inflicted intellectual violence. Rational thought was murdered before danger was assessed. It’s as if in a state of paranoia they shot dead a cousin who was trying to gain entry to the common house simply by knocking. Did they try to determine if their otherwise rightly ostracized cousin was trying to help them? Did they consider that by the rules they helped establish, that their cousin had every right to try and enter the house by knocking?

On one radio program a self-described conservative man retorted that he would not vote for Romney, even if Romney won the primaries and was running against Hillary Clinton. Another declared that he’d consider voting for an atheist over a Mormon. To my surprise, a close friend, whom I consider truly intelligent, and ordinarily fairminded to a fault said, "Mike, I just don’t know if I can do it." She was genuinely averse to the idea.

Honestly, this isn’t conservativism. In fact, it all sounds very much like democrat logic – the yellow dog variety.

Of course, all Christians are not so inflexible. Most probably aren’t. Still, there is fear among those who see Romney as presidential, that there are enough inflexible Christians to reject him from honest consideration solely on the basis of his faith.

One Christian who isn’t so inflexible is Mark DeMoss. He is openly evangelical, and the leader of a national public relations firm that caters to Christian organizations with global reach. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and Samaritan’s Purse, are among his clients.

He has personally taken on being an agent of political outreach to the conservative Christian community for Romney. His belief in Romney’s qualifications is so solid, that he is doing it for free.

DeMoss has a method for determining what he believes are good candidates. Normally, his method isn’t controversial. He strives to judge candidates on a variety of merits instead of rejecting them because of one shortcoming. Obviously, this isn’t always possible, but it’s the method he favors.

For instance, if there are two candidates and one is a devout Christian, but poorly qualified, and one is a devout Mormon, and exceptionally qualified, then DeMoss gravitates to the Mormon, even though theologically he rejects Mormonism. Mormonism and Christianity are close enough in their moral and social worldviews that to him their differences are minor relative to the qualifications of individual candidates.

Politically, these differences become less significant when one considers the raging culture war in which Mormons and Christians fight as allies.

Nationally, DeMoss’ support has met public criticism from only one established conservative Christian. Al Mohler, who is a Southern Baptist, and a brilliant, controversial, and well respected theologian, has expressed concerns that a Mormon president will grow the ranks of Mormons. This isn’t an issue to Mohler because he dislikes Mormons, but because he believes that Mormonism is a lie that leads to hell.

DeMoss countered that this isn’t a problem, arguing Romney has been a governor in Massachusetts for four years without a Mormon swell.

DeMoss is wrong. A Mormon president will lend credibility to Mormonism, and Massachusetts isn’t a microcosm of America.

Mohler is wrong because government doesn’t exist to control the growth of peaceful religious adherents. It exists to protect the rights of citizens, and Romney may be able to do that better than a less qualified, lackluster Christian.

If Mormonism advances under Romney, it will be because Christians have failed in personal evangelism, and not politics.

So here’s the answer to my friends who’ve asked. In the end, I may not vote for Romney. If I don’t, it won’t be due to his Mormonism.

Florida Felons Civil Rights Restored

2007-04-11T10:34:00.000-04:00

Column originally appeared in the High Springs Herald on 4-12-07.

Last Thursday (April 5,2007), Florida’s Board of Executive Clemency voted in a 3-1 majority to restore voting rights to the state’s felons. Attorney General Bill McCollum was the only member opposed.

The vote locked McCollum, a republican, into a minor battle with governor Charlie Crist – also a republican – whose plan it is to restore these rights.

Presumably the governor’s motives are pure. After all, the potentially hundreds of thousands of ex-con’s effected by this decision are not likely to vote republican if they vote at all, and this restoration surely won’t garner a lot of favor from established conservatives. Whatever it would gain from mainstream democrats can only be lukewarm at best.

In general, felonies are crimes of a more serious nature. Crimes like rape, murder, or sexual molestation are examples of felonies. Luckily, Crist’s rule barred the more serious felons from automatic civil rights restoration, but it does give them the right to a formal review for such before the clemency board.

In Florida, and in at least four other states, folks who have been found guilty of felonies have their voting rights stripped from them. Additionally, convicted Floridians are barred from serving on juries, applying for a variety of occupational licenses, and from holding public office.

Crist’s plan, and the clemency board’s decision, will restore all of those rights.

In cases of less severe felonies, rights will be restored automatically without any kind of hearing at all, so long as certain conditions are met. For instance, the felon must have served his sentence, met the conditions of supervision, paid victim restitution in full, and have no pending charges. The felon must not fit into a list of really serious crimes (like those listed above), and must not be a sexual offender, or a habitual violent criminal.

Before this new rule was birthed, there was a mandatory five year waiting period before felons could apply for the restoration of rights. Citing a rise in violent crime and the potential of recidivism, both the Florida Police Chief’s Association and the Fraternal Order of Police have opposed the elimination of the waiting period.

Siding with these organizations, McCollum has called Crist’s plan to do away with this waiting period a "grave mistake." He argued that this mistake is found in the state’s estimated recidivism rate. He has said that recidivism is about 50 percent within five years of release. If that is the case, he has argued, then some criminals will now have the ability to apply for jobs like exterminators or burglar alarm installers where they will have the unimpeded ability to case for potential targets. If past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, then McCollum has got a disturbingly realistic argument.

Not surprisingly, the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties union expressed disappointment. The ACLU has said the new rule isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. This isn’t because of McCollum’s dire concerns though, but because the new rule doesn’t go far enough.

The ACLU argues in their April 5th press release that, "what is needed is a paperless and immediate automatic restoration of rights for all ex-offenders who have completed the non-monetary terms of their sentence."

In other words, rights restoration comes before the payment of victim restitution, and waiting periods are evil.

Interestingly, the press release doesn’t define what is meant by "all" ex-offenders. Given the past radicalism of the ACLU, one might be inclined to think that "all" means all.

Whatever the case, the demagogues at the ACLU openly consider the issue surrounding the civil rights of felons a modern day form of institutionalized racism. Their website states, "today nearly 1 in 3 African Americans cannot vote because of this system."

Really?

Some might say that 1 in 3 African Americans cannot vote because they made stupid, unprincipled choices and didn’t obey the law. This ACLU propoganda is a slap in the face to the majority of African Americans who live good lives, make good decisions and sacrifice for good character.

Maybe rights restoration is appropriate in many cases. Still, I’ll have a lot to think about the next time I see a jury sitting in judgement of someone charged with felony crimes, or the next time I need an exterminator or a burglar alarm.

Petty Tyranny & Alachua's Failing Pest Control

2007-03-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

Edward Abbey (1927-1989) was one of the intellectual catalysts of the radical eco-left in the 1970s and 80s. An environmentalist with a flair for writing, he became a voice for fanatical environmental activism. He strongly believed that sentiment without action was dead sentiment.

That powerful (and true) belief made him an annoyance to many. It galvanized others, and made him their hero.

Click Here to read the full High Springs Herald column.

Click here to Comment on that column.

High Springs Herald (non-exhaustive) Coverage of the City of Alachua vs Grapski
Alachua may hold elections, but judge may have final say-so March 6, 2007
Election Shocker: Alachua disqualifies all challengers March 1, 2007
Grapski not a threat to people Opinion Letter - March 1, 2007
Aiming of Taser at political dissident on sidewalk in handcuffs questioned March 1, 2007
Grapski has been showing erratic behavior Opinion Letter - Feb. 22, 2007
Grapski arrested yet again, this time carried out of Alachua city meeting Feb. 15, 2007
Politically motivated charges against me have been dropped Opinion Letter Jan 25, 2007
Judge throws out Alachu elections lawsuit Jan. 25, 2007
Watson: Alachua will be a model city for public records Jan. 12, 2007
Alachua's controversial consent agenda now at heart of sunshine laws lawsuit Jan. 11, 2007
Watson not breaking law by also being police officer, mayor asserts Jan. 4, 2007
Other charges against Grapski dropped but trespass warning issued Jan. 4, 2007
State: Watson breaking law by also being police officer Nov. 30, 2006
Case against Grapski was an 'eye-opener' Opinion Letter - Nov. 22, 2006
Judge dismisses criminal wiretap charges against Grapski Nov. 22, 2006
Grapski to be his own attorney in 'recording' trial to start Monday Nov. 9, 2006
Witnesses fail to show for depositions Grapski claims State Attorneys Office hindering Nov. 2, 2006
Grapski, who sued over elections, still unhappy with being banned from the city Oct. 20, 2006
Alachua admits to not considering some elections ballots Oct. 19, 2006
State Attorney's office decides to officially charge Grapski . . . Oct. 14, 2006
Discuss consent agenda? Not if Alachua can help it. Editorial Sep. 28, 2006
Mayor: Alachua unfairly critisized about consent agenda Sep. 28, 2006
Alachua votes to keep consent agenda Sep. 14, 2006
Grapski no longer a candidate for state house Jul. 27, 2006
Want them to listen? Be polite, expect answers Editorial Jul. 13, 2006
Commisioners gave themselves pay raise . . . Jul. 6, 2006
Except for his home, Grapski now banned from Alachua Jul. 6, 2006
Why is tax money being used to go after Grapski Opinion Letter - June 29, 2006
Alachua needs to investigate its elections, drop charges against me . . . Opinion Letter, June 23, 2006
Action and Reaction: lawsuit alleges specific illegal actions by Alachua officials June 23, 2006
Action and Reaction: Alachua city staff unites, calling accusations lies June 23, 2006
Alachua accuses Grapski of again illegally taping a city employee June 15, 2006
With Grapski, is this really happening? Opinion Letter, June 15, 2006
Judge: Grapski can speak at city meetings. June 8, 2006
Grapski offers no proof of his allegations against us. Opinion Letter - June 8, 2006
Calderwood avoided issue, attacked me personally. Opinion Letter - June 1, 2006
As Mayor, I am outraged by Byerly's comments Opinion Letter - May 25, 2006
Grapskis arrest a wake-up call Opinion Letter - May 25, 2006
With county official now involved, situation heats up. . . May 18, 2006
'King Clovis' an embarrassment to Alachua Opinion Letter - May 18, 2006
Grapski has produced no evidence Opinion Letter - May 18, 2006
Stop the games; show Grapski the documents Editorial - May 18, 2006 IMPORTANT SUMMARY SOURCE
Grapski back at City Hall as allegations mount May 15, 2006
Grapski arrest needed to be handled with tact Editorial - May 11, 2006
State House candidate arrested in Alachua City Hall May 4, 2006 IMPORTANT SUMMARY SOURCE
Grapski arrested, accused of illegally taping conversation May 1, 2006

Joel Osteen Named Most Influential Christian

2007-01-24T11:56:00.000-05:00

This column first appeared in the High Springs Herald on Jan 25, 2007.

On January 7th, The Church Report, an influential Christian news magazine with a circulation that includes 40,000 U.S. senior pastors, named Joel Osteen as this year’s most "Influential Christian in America." He tops their list of 50. Osteen even got a double honor; his anointing came on the heels of Barbara Walters dubbing him "America’s Most Fascinating Pastor."

Joel Osteen is the leader of one of those huge mega-churches that pepper metropolitan areas. With upwards of 25,000 congregants a week, it might even be the largest mega-church in the country. In many ways his church is the grand daddy of all those trendy churches that are all the rage these days.

His is like those churches that rely heavily on cutting edge marketing techniques, celebrity pastors with a knack for self promotion, short sermons that are light on the Christianity, heavy on the feel-good, and designed specifically to keep the "faithful" entertained, comfortable and returning to the sanctuary. These churches tend to measure success by the numbers of warm pews on any given Sunday, and at times they seem scared to death of offending anyone by taking a strong stance on anything.

Not that Osteen’s church doesn’t do good things for the community. In fact, I suspect that much good comes from the loving, kind and well-meaning members of his congregation. I also suspect that some people who grace his aisles are spiritually changed in a positive way. I don’t doubt that the Spirit of Jesus graces real Christians who gather there. It is even likely that less trendy churches could learn something from a few of his methods.

He’s a difficult man to critique. His clean, smiling mug on all those self-help books he sells just cries out, "I’m a likable, Christian man!" And I have little reason to believe that he is not. Even his strongest critics agree he is honest. He isn’t a Robert Tilton, or Jim Bakker, or Swaggert.

But it is an increase in his kind of church that is evidence of the secular world influencing Christian evangelicalism, rather than the other way around. This increase doesn’t bode well for the longevity of the historic truths of Christianity – or for their potency. And it seems counter productive to one of the church’s missions; namely to spread biblical certainties.

Osteen himself is a fine example of that foreboding. A couple of summers ago he was a guest on Larry King Live. Larry pressed him several times about the exclusivity of the Christian faith. Osteen, a Christian pastor, could not bring himself to say that Jesus was the only way to Heaven. Whether or not you agree with such a statement of exclusivity, or whether or not you find such a statement offensive, isn’t the issue. The historic position held by the majority of evangelical Christian churches (including Osteen’s) is the issue. That position is the potentially offensive belief that there is only one way to Heaven.

Watch these two videos and compare and contrast how Osteen and John Macarthur handle the issue of exclusivity on Larry King. Macarthur is in the second video on the page and appears right after the priest speaks.

Osteen paid for his double-mindedness. But it was a very small, transient price. He suffered an onslaught of mail from his congregation, as well as other Christians within the circles for which he wields influence. He had to write a retraction of sorts. In an open letter he apologized for a lack of clarity, and explained that he was trying to avoid offending people of other faiths. He strongly asserted a belief in the exclusivity of Christian salvation. For his immediate, personal situation, things were mended.

Of course the letter didn’t have near the dissemination capacity or diversity of the Larry King show. From an evangelical perspective, the spiritual damage was done. It left some people wondering. If he really believed in a truth of exclusivity, then which was more offensive, hurting someone’s feelings by politely communicating his belief, or allowing them to go to hell if his belief actually turns out to be true?

Osteen also stated on the King show that his church rarely, if ever, discussed the concept of sin. Any credibility that Osteen had garnered in the past with traditional evangelicals was now becoming a bit ethereal. Just what was the difference between Osteen’s church and a social club, or a really big self-help group, or some bastardized, spiritualized form of pop psychology, or a milk and water campfire sing of Kumbaya?

The answer to some Christians: not much.

At any rate, The Church Report’s crowning of Osteen may have untold accuracy. It is compiled from a list of 200,000 nominations. So Osteen may be quite influential, indeed.

It's an Idelogical War Stupid!

2006-12-13T23:32:00.000-05:00

The following column appears in the 12/14/06 High Springs Herald.

President Bush has repeatedly argued that the war in Iraq is the central front in a larger ideological war. In fact, his use of the term "ideological war" seems to have increased considerably throughout 2006.

This stark "nuance" seems to be lost to most of the major American media. They seem to think the war was started over silencing a tyrant and dictator, or ridding said tyrant and dictator of WMD, or of sucking up another country’s oil for the benefit of white anglo-saxon cronies.

Some in the media who are less obtuse, think the war is for the purpose of a Neo-con orchestrated regime change. These less obtuse voices believe that the strategy of regime change flows from a twisted, high-horse logic that America, in her moral superiority, has a duty to foist democracy on barbaric and heathen peoples.

But they are all wrong.

The war was never about getting rid of Saddam. That was a benefit, but not the purpose. The war was not about containing WMD. That was an important tactic, but not a strategy. The war was not about sucking up another country’s oil. Frankly, that’s what crazy people in hemp sandals and a fresh case of the munchies believe.

The war wasn’t even about America flexing her moral muscles by spreading democracy. Yes, the imposition of democracy on Iraq was cloaked in moral language, but bringing democracy to oppressed people was secondary to the real purpose of securing the American homeland.

The inability of the larger American media (as well as the president himself) to communicate this message merged with liberal democratic discontent and political ambition to form a perfect storm that has divided this country when it needed to be united against a grave enemy.

We can debate the merits of the Bush strategy, but lets not get sidetracked from what the war is really about.

Bush’s ideological war is about protecting America from radical Islam and the fascist Islamic nations that use that radicalized religion to wage very deadly proxy terror campaigns against Western powers and interests.

The only way to really win such a war against such a foe is to change the political and social culture of the region that incubates and hatches demons in bomb vests. Changing the ideology is essential. Anything else is just a band-aid fix.

It is highly ironic, but America’s current lack of unity over the Iraq War is a testament to the brilliance of establishing a thriving democracy in the middle east.

Modern democracies are inherently non-hostile. They may have intimidating military forces, but those forces become quite impotent when employed in long, protracted, offensive campaigns. That is because those forces rely far more heavily on the political will of their nations than they do on their sophisticated weaponry, their training, or even their own fighting discipline. This is why democracies almost always wage clear defensive wars, and why wars that do not have clearly communicated national security implications always fail. The people of democracies get tired of seeing their children killed and their money spent in causes they don’t understand.

Raw politics are also instrumental. Political leaders can use half-hearted dissent to further their own ambitions. The nation becomes divided. Moral fortitude is lost. The military then loses the political backing necessary to defeat the enemy.

Finally, truly democratic nations are less likely to put up with leaders who harbor or assist terrorists.

Hostility simply is not a trait of modern democracies.

Totalitarian regimes, on the other hand, have little restraint on hostility. In fact, hostility is restrained only by the wisdom or whim of the dictator. The dictator, or the mullah, or the ayatollah, declares the war and he fuels the foot soldiers regardless of what his people think. His people do not have the power to alter his use of the nation’s military might. And they do not have the power to stop him from harboring or assisting terrorists.

So Iraq is indeed an ideological war. From a long range perspective, the security of the United States from radical Islamic terrorists, or fascist Islamic regimes is highly enhanced by a democratized middle east. This is something that Bush knew from the beginning. From the beginning he told the American people that it would be a long and hard war. In September, he referred to winning the battles we now face as, "the calling of our generation." A generation is a long time, and it will take a generation or more to win this ideological war that we cannot afford to lose.

Thanksgiving More Spiritual in Practice than Universal Christian Holidays

2006-11-22T22:06:00.000-05:00

The following is my Column for the Thanksgiving 2006 edition of the High Springs Herald. If you've got something to say about that column, click on "comments" at the bottom of this entry and let me know!

Facing the Giants

2006-10-05T00:09:00.000-04:00

Click picture to see movie trailer.

Now playing at Royal Park Stadium 16 on Newberry Road in Gainesville.

I wrote a movie review for the Oct 5, 2006 High Springs Herald. If you have seen the movie, or if you want to comment on the review click on "comments" at the bottom of this entry.

Fascist Iran Purging the Universities

2006-09-05T13:41:00.000-04:00

Ahmadinejad is beginning a purge of the universities. This is only going to strengthen the fascism under which Iran is already subject. For references of this sad development go to the UK's Telegraph or you can check another interesting report at Bloomberg.

Universities require a variety of opinion, and should be a place where students can both dissent and hear dissent. This is how people learn and get a well rounded view of the world. Ahmadinejad's world, however, isn't one where well rounded people are made. It is one in which they are supressed.

No pizza for you in Iran -- just an elastic loaf

2006-08-23T22:55:00.001-04:00

For the August 2006 High Springs Herald column about Iran's new language laws, click here. Or, if you've already perused it then go ahead and post a comment.

The Irresponsible Gray Lady

2006-07-06T12:09:00.001-04:00

My latest column (July 6, 06) in the High Springs Herald is about how the New York Times, while incredibly irresponsible, and incredibly liberal, must be allowed to make editorial story choices with as little government restraint as possible. This is in response to some calls to muzzle newspapers. It is my opinion that restraining the press is a bad idea. The only way we can shut papers up is to put government censors in every newspaper office. Such is not a conservative principal (or a wise one) by any stretch. Therefore, the only other way to deal with true treason is to utilize the system that is already in place. There is no need to strengthen any laws. The Constitution (Article III, Section 3) outlaws treason very specifically, and the United States Code (Title 18, 2381) calls for stiff penalties for treason. Right now the government, if it believes that the New York Times has committed treason, can bring charges against the paper. If a court finds that the government is correct, and that the New York Times is treasonous than we can execute or imprison Bill Keller (there is no maximum incarceration requirement -- only a minimum requirement of five years) and fine the paper umpteen million dollars (there is no maximum fine -- only a minimum fine of $10,000). The government probably won't do this -- because it is very likely that it will lose such a case. This loss would embolden the Times. It would also embolden papers much more seedy than the times.

Anyway, please leave your comments and join this important dialogue.

Mike Hosey

Da Vinci Code Butchers History

2006-05-19T10:44:00.000-04:00

Da Vinci's The Last Supper ca. 1495-1498

Are you offended by the Da Vinci Code? Then Blame Christians. That is the theme of my May 25th column. That column can be found in the High Springs Herald.

If you are not knowledgeable about Christian history, then Dan Brown’s book will be a good and exciting read. I have not seen the movie, but I suspect it will be as good as the book. However, if you are knowledgeable about Christian history, then it will be a good and exciting comedy. Brown’s ability to write a compelling story obviously is quite good, but his research is quite bad. Below is a list of flaws you should consider when reading his book or seeing the movie. This is not at all an exhaustive list. It’s only a jumping off spot for you to begin some research.

The Feminine John or the Masculine Mary Magdalene?
The book argues that Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper depicts John as very feminine in appearance. In order to bolster its claim that Jesus wed Mary Magdalene and sired a child with her, the book charges that John’s feminine appearance is proof that Da Vinci wasn’t painting John at all, but rather Mary Magdalene. However, In Da Vinci’s day, many artists depicted John in a way that 21st century folk would consider feminine. People of the Renaissance would have perceived the depiction of John differently than we do today. Go to this link. Look at all the paintings provided, but pay particular attention at the bottom of the page to Da Vinci’s paintings of young men.

Related Logical Flaw: Josh Mcdowell has pointed out how Dan Brown treats Da Vinci’s painting as a photograph of the actual last supper. It’s important to note that Da Vinci painted his picture more than a thousand years after Christ.

Did the Council of Nicea Supress Important Gospels and Give us the Bible we now Have?
No. No way. Uh Uh. Negatory. The expert in the book, Leigh Teabing, claims that the current Bible is a church suppression of the truth of Jesus. He asserts that the Roman Emperor Constantine strong armed the creation of our current Bible in order to consolidate political power. The Council of Nicea did not in any way deal with the Canon of the Bible. What books were to be placed in the Bible were not discussed. The council was called by Constantine to effect doctrinal unity among Christians. At the time there was a growing movement led by a guy named Arius. He was spreading heretical teachings which were dividing the church. Among these teachings were that Jesus was less than the eternal God. Constantine called the council to halt the growing rifts.

Was The Council of Nicea Called to Vote on the Divinity of Jesus?
Again, no. The council was called to debate the controversy produced by the teachings of Arius (see above). Almost all Christians at the time believed Jesus to be divine. The book’s expert character, Leigh Teabing, claims that a vote on the divinity of Jesus was held, and that the council found him divine by a very close margin. It wasn’t close. 318 to 325 bishops attended the council. All but two rejected the view of Arius. All but two accepted the divinity of Christ reference here. A very respected scholar on the early church from the University of North Carolina, Bart Erhman, explains that the council actually discussed how Jesus could be both human and divine. This duality is something Christians had both universally accepted and with which they had universally struggled. Be sure to read Erhman's article here -- it is a must read.

Did the vast majority of Christians prior to the Council of Nicea reject that Jesus was divine?
Leah Teabing, the expert in Brown’s book claims that most Christians did not perceive Jesus as divine until after the Council of Nicea. The book relies heavily on the gnostic gospels to bolster this claim. The gnostic gospels, however, have been thoroughly discredited as authoritative by serious scholars. Those cited in the book were written 200 to 300 years after the death of Christ. The Biblical Gospels were all written by first hand witnesses to Jesus’ ministry, or by people who had first hand relationships with people who walked with Jesus. The Biblical Gospels were all written within 100 years of the death of Christ. (Mark was written between 50 and 70 years of Christ’s death). All four Gospels attest to the Divinity of Christ. All of the Biblical Gospels were written more than 200 years before the Council of Nicea. My favorite on the divinity of Christ is the Gospel of John. In the King James Version it begins like this.

(John Chp 1, vs 1-3) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. . . . .
(vs 14) And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

That passage is among my favorites. It was shown to me as a young man by my grandfather. The passage is full of power and meaning. It is very deep. By the way, it predates the Council of Nicea, and it predates the gnostic gospels.

Did Constantine Officially Instutionalize Christianity for political reasons?
Constantine did not make Christianity the official religion. He legalized it with the Edict of Milan. In other words, he removed the official cult status previously given to Christianity. It was Theodosius the Great who made Christianity the official religion half a century later.

Is The Priory of Sion a Real Organization?
The book claims it is a real organization founded in 1099 and that its mission is to keep secret the details of Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene and her status as the Holy Grail. In reality, The Priory of Sion was a hoax organization concocted by Pierre Plantard who planted contrived geneological records (what the book calls Les Dossiers Secrets) in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Plantard founded the organization in 1956. His personal views have been characterized as anti-semitic. And David Klinghoffer writes an interesting piece in the Jerusalem Post about why Jews should be wary of the success of the Da Vinci Code.

All of the above is gleaned from a variety of sources and can easily be attained with a simple internet search. A good start point to educate yourself on this controversy is the Da Vinci Code Information Page at answers.com At the bottom of that discussion page is an excellent list of external links. Now, don't rely on me or them. Instead, GO DO SOME RESEARCH!

Mike Hosey

Capitalism, Media and the Sexual Behavior of Teens

2006-04-19T13:45:00.000-04:00

This is the place to comment on my April column regarding capitalism, morality, and the media and how they effect the age at which teens engage in sex. The column appears in the High Springs Herald.

Did Harry Read My Column?

2006-03-26T13:33:00.000-05:00

Last week Harry Patterson's letter critiqued my March 9 column in the High Springs Herald. Because he apparently did not understand that column, I would like to address his more relevant points.

#1 - My position wasn't to rubberstamp the ports deal, but rather to encourage an open mind, and a legitimate kind of diplomacy. See the last two paragraphs of the March 9 column. See the opening paragraphs that address a need to look at many facets. And finally see the paragraph where I explicitly say that we should consider failures on the part of the UAE.

#2 - Harry says, "The idea to turn over six U.S. ports to a nation that blocked our investigation. . .borders on insanity." Harry is confused. Actually, no ports would have been turned over to anyone. The deal allowed a foreign country to have a company operating terminals in our ports. They wouldn't control the ports at all, only some terminals, and only for business purposes. Those terminals would be staffed mostly by Americans and would, for all intents and purposes, be indistinguishable from an American company.

#3 - Harry says, "Hidden from the public in this deal, which the President tried to sneak through Congress, is the fact that two other ports, which ship 40 percent of U.S. arms to our troops in Iraq, would also be under Arab control. This would give them total access to our military technology." I'm not sure which ports he's talking about because the UAE or DPW would not have control of any ports. But if he’s talking about terminals in American ports, they most certainly would be under the control of an American port authority. If he is talking about over seas ports, well, we've already been using UAE ports extensively for some time. The idea that they would have total access to our technology lacks intellectual acuity. Total access is a lot of access. I give our military and our authorities a little more credit. And the idea that it was "hidden from public" is wrong. Newspapers were writing about the deal as far back as Fall 2005.

#4 - Harry says, "The question is raised, what could be so important about this deal that the President would threaten to use his first veto ever, if Congress attempts to block the deal? The answer, as usual, is simple. Just follow the money." Actually, Harry, the President’s use of veto power would have been for reasons of diplomacy and for building good faith relationships with a changing culture that is way different from our own. But Harry is somewhat correct about money. There's a lot of it in this deal for both Arabs and Americans. This is generally a good thing.

#5 - Finally, Harry says, "The Bush Crime Family, and their globalist corporate cronies, have put America's infrastructure up for sale." Because some things just speak for themselves, I won’t address this one. Analyzing that statement would be sort of like if you see a guy walking down the street wearing nothing but a tin foil hat and one sock singing Mary Poppins tunes while talking about the transmitters planted in his teeth by space aliens. No analysis of his immediate state is really needed.

Mike Hosey

Dubai Ports World: Herald Column 03-09-06

2006-03-09T06:27:00.000-05:00

In my latest column regarding the now killed Dubai Ports Deal I argued for keeping an open mind. Many Republicans and Democrats could not do that. Although we granted DPW an additional 45 day review, a few days into that review we killed any hope of having a fair look at what was being offered by everyone involved.

Do not mistake my arguments for an open mind as an endorsement of how the administration handled the matter. I have questions and criticisms about that process. Still, it is my opinion that the potential for national security threats from this deal were very, very slight. It is also my opinion that we have slapped an ally in the face.

One good thing that has come out of all of this is that we will now have a greater amount of scrutiny on the ports. One issue in which I agree with Chuck Schumer (Dem - NJ)-- a man whose politics and methods I find deplorable -- is the need for greater port security infrastructure. Chuck is completely wrong to automatically discount DPW. However he is right to call for better security infrastructure. This is especially true given that the Port Authority in his home state of NJ was recently caught issueing port access IDs without background checks.

At any rate, I would love to see your comments. Click the "comments" link below and let me know what you think of the column.

Response to Mike Heuss' Feb 06 evolution Letter

2006-02-11T17:19:00.000-05:00

My goodness! Mike Heuss got a little cranky over the January 2006 evolution column. From the tone of his most recent letter in the High Springs Herald, it seems his usually reasonable demeanor has gotten a bit shrill. I must have hit a nerve – or perhaps he’s been reading Harry Patterson.

Original blog responses to the evolution column can be found here. It is a very interesting discussion and if you're reading this post you should go there and leave your two cents.

Mr. Heuss likes to go off on me about original source documents. That’s all fine and dandy, but what he presents from those original documents doesn’t usually address my arguments. For a fine example of that, see my response to his Eminent Domain critique. In that instance, if Mr. Heuss had read the opinions of the court’s dissenters (and not just those with whom he sides) he would have seen the egregious error made by the liberal majority of that court.

In his attempt to criticize my evolution column, he uses original court documents to bring up a bunch of instances where members of the Pennsylvania school board clearly had religious motives (or at least religious hopes) in introducing the concept of Intelligent Design.

My column doesn’t address that issue at all. Instead, it clearly addresses Judge Jones’ characterization of Intelligent Design. My column also critiques his statement that Evolution does not conflict with the concept of a creator. (I notice that Mr. Heuss doesn’t at all address this error in the Judge’s thinking.)

Mr. Heuss also directly states that I claim evolution and creationism are not mutually exclusive. He is totally wrong. I clearly and unequivocally state that Neo-Darwinian evolution and creationism (of any kind) are mutually exclusive. For proof, see paragraph 8 of my column where I say evolution and creationism are “mutually exclusive explanations.”

Now, let me address Mr. Heuss’ understanding of Intelligent Design, Creationism and Evolution. I must admit at this point that he is partly right about evolution. As he essentially says in his letter, Evolution consists of changes in life forms that occur through a process of natural selection after life gets started. That is correct. However, Neo-Darwinian evolution (which is the variety that is often taught in schools, and the variety that I am addressing in my column) does not allow for God, or any kind of intelligent agent. Neo-Darwinian Evolution is purposeless and unguided. Life getting started out of nothing is something called Abiogenesis. Neo-Darwinian Evolution is dependent on it. In the evolutionary sense, abiogenesis also is completely purposeless and unguided. Technically, Neo-Darwinian evolution cannot require any outside force, like a God. Therefore, Heuss is just playing word games and semantics here.

As I said in my column, life got here one of two ways -- through the abiogenesis of some kind of creator, or the abiogenesis of some kind of “evolutionary” or naturalistic process. There are no other possibilities beyond these two. By the way, it should be stated here that Intelligent Design is being debated by some big-time luminaries in the scientific community. It may not be accepted paradigm at the moment, but it is the subject of serious discussion, and there is a host of college level, very sophisticated literature on the subject.

He says creationism states that all life was created exactly as it is today. Wrong again Mr. Heuss. As I said in my column, if you believe God made life, but he used some kind of evolutionary process to do it, you're still a creationist. Many believe just that. Creationists come in a very wide variety. There are young earth creationists, there are old earth creationists, there are even theistic evolutionists. They all believe something a bit different. Michael Behe, a very gifted scientist, who is one of the primary proponents of Intelligent Design (as well as one of the expert witnesses in the Pennsylvania case) is not a creationist in the sense that Heuss employs. Behe subscribes to evolutionary common descent. Meaning he believes that man evolved from apes, and apes evolved from monkeys, and that monkeys (and all of us) ultimately evolved from one celled protoplasmic life forms floating around in the ocean. He also believes that all of that was created and guided by an intelligent designer.

Mr. Heuss then argues that I was trying to characterize the judge as a liberal activist. Wrong again. When I want to do that, I usually call the judge a liberal activist. I don’t tend to beat around the bush. I unmistakably characterized the judge as misguided. In fact, I used the word several times.

Finally, Mr. Heuss says that I cribbed from right wing blogs, and because of this I probably genuinly believe that the judge shut down the free flow of ideas in the class room. Mr. Heuss is only partly wrong here. I don’t generally read right wing blogs. I tend to stick to the stuffier right wing publications.(I do read the left wing blogs though, usually for a good laugh.) I do, however, believe that Judge Jones did, indeed, shut down the free flow of ideas. When you block students from hearing about the only other credible explanation for origins, you are squelching the free flow of ideas. Remember, the students were not to be assigned intelligent design materials. Intelligent Design wasn’t required to be taught, and they weren’t required to read about it. The only requirement was that they be made aware that Intelligent Design Theory exists and that the school had reference material in the library. As far as the motives of some of those on the Pennsylvania School board, they could have just as easily had ill conceived motives to use the study of the Declaration of Independence for religious ends. But we wouldn't bar the study of that document on those grounds. That would be a dam on the free flow of ideas.

One last thing. If life is created by some kind of supernatural force, we will never know this if we only consider methods that utilize naturalistic possibilities.

Mr. Heuss is a smart guy. I expect more from him. I hope he pays more attention, and does better with his next letter.

Ray St. Louis Feb. 01, 2006 Letter to Osama

2006-02-03T16:35:00.000-05:00

Ray has an excellent column this go round. It is a shameless but funny plug for an as yet unpublished literary work. It is also a subtle and intelligent critique of media forces, and our society's often unconscious submission to them. Finally, for good measure, a bit of his own politics bleeds through. Excellent column. If anyone's reading my blog, I'd love to see your comments.

Evolution Column 01-19-2006

2006-01-18T20:03:00.000-05:00

Post your responses to my January 2006 evolution column using this entry. Click on the word "comments" below and then follow the instructions.

Mike Hosey

Response to the Mike Heuss August Letter

2005-11-29T14:15:00.000-05:00

The August letter by Mike Heuss where he critiques my July column is much more reasoned, and much less of a diatribe than the amusing July letter of Harry Patterson. I commend Heuss on his skillful analysis.

However, he is quite wrong.

He seems to relish that “all but two” of the Supremes are life-long Republicans. Here’s something a businessman like Heuss should know: Republican doesn’t necessarily equate with conservative. A couple of RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) come to mind. Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chaffee, and Iowa’s Jim Leach both have liberal voting records that can rival those of prominent Democrats. Heuss paints the two democrats on the Court -- Stephen Breyer, and the ACLU’s Ruth Bader-Ginsburg – as moderates. I suppose that most liberals would consider these two as moderate. Heck, I have one liberal friend who would probably consider them right-wingers. But this is all a matter of perspective and semantics.

Heuss points out that Anthony Kennedy is Reagan’s appointment. Those of us in conservative circles refer to him as Reagan’s mistake. If one thing is clear from the analysis provided by Heuss, it’s that Republican presidents have been too political in their appointment process, and not nearly judicially ideological enough. The problem here isn’t one of Democrat vs. Republican at all. And it is only one of liberal vs. conservative when judicial philosophy is considered. More than anything else it is one of constitutional relativism vs. strict constructionism. Liberals tend toward constitutional relativism because it empowers a judicial activism.

As far as the constitutionality of the Kelo vs. New London decision, (Court's opinion found here)Heuss argues that a conservative perspective is one in which states’ rights and/or local authority supersedes federal authority. This is a straw man statement. Conservatives believe that constitutional authority trumps all three. All forms of government in the United States are subject to constitutional restraint. Kennedy’s argument addresses the “takings” clause of the 5th amendment. He does this in light of the concept of “public purpose” and not “public use.” The constitution uses the clause "public use." His interpretation is incomplete at best, and at worse (in Clarence Thomas’ words) it muddles together a line of cases wholly divorced from the text, history and structure of our founding document. Clarence Thomas makes a lot more sense than Kennedy when he analyzes both the “takings clause” and the “public use” clause. He analyzes the term “public use” within the context of the original intent of the Framers, as well as within the common and legal usage of the term at the time of the constitution. The court’s decision in the Kelo case is far removed from the original meaning of this term – which is very lightly touched upon in my original column. Thomas’ linguistic accuracy renders moot Kennedy’s position on the “takings clause”. Interestingly, Thomas also looks at the powers of state legislatures in the context of the term “public use.” This is where Heuss has it all wrong. Here are some of Thomas’ words from his actual dissent:

“There is no justification, however, for affording almost insurmountable deference to legislative conclusions that a use serves a “public use.” To begin with, a court owes no deference to a legislature’s judgment concerning the quintessentially legal question of whether the government owns, or the public has a legal right to use, the taken property. Even under the “public purpose” interpretation, moreover, it is most implausible that the Framers intended to defer to legislatures as to what satisfies the Public Use Clause, uniquely among all the express provisions of the Bill of Rights. We would not defer to legislatures determination of the various circumstances that establish, for example, when a search of a home would be reasonable, see, e.g., Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 589-590 (1980), or when a convicted double-murderer may be shackled during a sentencing proceeding without on-the-record findings, see Deck v. Missouri, 544 U.S. (2005), or when state law creates a property interest protected by the Due Process Clause. . . .

The Court has elsewhere recognized ‘the overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Republic,’ Payton, supra, at 601, when the issue is only whether the government may search a home. Yet today the Court tells us that we are not to ‘second guess the City’s considered judgments,’ when the issue is, instead, whether the government may take the infinitely more intrusive step of tearing down petitioners’ homes. Something has gone seriously awry with this Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not. Once one accepts, as the Court at least nominally does, that the Public Use Clause is a limit on the eminent domain power of the Federal Government and the States, there is no justification for the almost complete deference it grants to legislatures as to what satisfies it.”

I’m sorry Mr. Heuss, but Kennedy is the one who has detoured from the Constitution. Thomas remains a strict constructionist, and it is this strict constructionism that protects the poor far better than Kennedy’s activism. Liberals like to say that the Constitution is a living breathing document. I agree with that statement, but not in the same way that liberals do. The document lives, breathes and evolves when we the people amend it, not when unelected judges mold it with the whims of the day.

Response to Harry Patterson's July Letter

2005-11-28T15:50:00.000-05:00

Mr. Harry Patterson of High Springs criticisized my initial column (published 06/03/05) to the High Springs Herald. His letter can be found here. The following is my response to Mr. Patterson.

As a general rule, I don’t like to respond to letters to the editor that criticize my column. I prefer that my very capable readers do that. But sometimes, a letter comes along that so begs to be critiqued that I just can’t help but to put it under the microscope.

Mr. Harry Patterson in his (July 7) letter to the editor calls my column from (June 3) a religious diatribe. Really? I couldn’t help but notice a palpable acrimony in his column. He seems to be, like many liberals I know, angry, bitter, defeatist, closed-minded, mean-spirited and one-sided. (To be fair, I must say that I don’t know whether or not Patterson is a liberal. And, truly, he doesn’t know my specific positions on any particular policy issue – nor could he know them from my June column. So, is his letter a form of one-sidedness, or knee-jerkism? I’m not sure.)

But one thing is sure. Patterson’s letter is a true diatribe. I suppose a definition is in order here. So, let me provide the only one found in the Websters New World Dictionary, 2nd College Edition: Diatribe – a bitter, abusive criticism or denunciation. I urge the Herald’s readers to examine my column along with Mr. Patterson’s letter, and decide for themselves, which one seems more bitter and abusive.

My column has a brief transition where I address my religious beliefs and how they assume a role in my life, both personally and politically. And I specifically state that I do not wish to see anyone forced to assume my particular religious belief system. His one-sided nature -- at least that which seems present in his letter -- would keep my ideas off of the opinions page, which is supposed to be a paper’s forum of ideas, and confined to a religion page. Hmmm. Interesting.

Next, I must take Mr. Patterson to task on his definition of a theocrat. A theocrat is one who believes in a theocracy. A theocracy, using the same dictionary cited above, is “1. the rule of a state by God or a god, 2. a government ruled by priests claiming to rule with divine authority.” These definitions are the most common I could find. Definition 1 is not an issue, there are no earthly governments at present in which there is a direct rule by God or a god. If one did exist, it would be (a)undeniably noticeable, and (b)irresistible, and (c)criticism proof. I don’t believe in a government characterized by definition #2. I also don’t know a single person who would try to make such a government possible. Every single Christian I know, including those who are way further to the “right” than me understand the need for tolerance to religious pluralism.

Mr. Patterson claims that I am a theocrat because, he says, I want to make my religious values law. I never claimed in my column that I wanted to make my religious values law. What I claimed (very specifically, I might add) was that in a democratic republic my values ought to have a role in the law-making process. My civic values are undeniably shaped by my religious beliefs. And I believe the law ought to reflect, however dimly, my civic values. I don’t know whether or not Mr. Patterson is “religious”, but I suspect that he believes the law ought to reflect his civic values as well. Liberals don’t much like this pluralistic idea. This is why they rely on courts to make up law, instead of on the legislative process.
Mr. Patterson also claims that the “overwhelming success” of talk radio is due to a lack of critical thinking skills. So those of you who listen to talk radio are doing it not because you want a variety of ideas that you don’t get from the mainstream media, but because you are stupid and uncritical. This is typical liberal elitism.

I know quite a few conservatives, and most of us get our news from a wide variety of sources. Personally, I even read liberal publications just to see what liberals are thinking and to sharpen my own skills. But for entertainment I read the postings on http://www.democraticunderground.com/.

Finally, Mr. Patterson ends his letter with what appears to be a personal attack on me, and on my religious faith. He says that I don’t take responsibility for my sins because my God just forgives them all. He then charges me (apparently, because I am a political conservative) with the deaths of Iraqi babies. I won’t dignify the second part of his closing statement. However, to the first part I can say that each time God forgives me, he also sets me on the right path, causes me to make restitution where I can, and most importantly continually makes me into a better person, no matter how painful it is for me. Mr. Patterson, he’ll do the same for you if you let him.

Begin Posting

2005-11-26T23:51:00.000-05:00

Start posting. On the right hand side of the screen are links to my columns, letters in regards to those columns, and my responses to those letters that are unique to this blog. Be sure to cite those so that others will know what you are talking about.

Thanks,
Mike Hosey