Do I really wish I was three again knowing what I know now?

It’s a question I have asked myself often lately. The news today is rife with stories of teachers, well-meaning or not, encouraging children as young as five or six years old to express a gender identity different from their biological sex. To begin with, I don’t for a minute believe that any teacher should be making those decisions for any child. That is for the parents and the parents alone to address.

But just how do I feel when I consider what my life would have been like if the knowledge, I have today was available when I was five years old?

To begin with, that is virtually impossible for me to imagine, but I can be reasonably certain that I would have been totally confused and bewildered. I simply did not have the mental capacity to even begin to navigate the emotional minefield that one is confronted with, when the mere thought that one’s emotional configuration does not match the physical configuration of one’s body. I had trouble enough as a young adult trying to understand all the implications of what I was feeling. There was no way that I could have dealt with the confusion at the age of five.

So, what age is the right age to begin to deal with gender dysphoria? Short answer … there is no universal answer to that question. The simple fact is that for me, the right age was somewhere in my mid-fifties. Do I think that is the right age for everyone? Of course not. Are there periods of my life that I would like to re-live as Georgia; periods I would like to switch places with George? Absolutely!

But I need to ask this question: would I be better off today if Mrs. Baldwin, my first-grade teacher had taken it upon herself to decide that Georgie would be happier as Georgia and proceeded to implant that idea in my undeveloped brain without my parents’ knowledge? Oh, hell no!! She would have robbed me of experiences and memories that I have of George’s life that no amount of therapy could replace. She would have robbed me of experiences that could only have been available to George but that I can benefit from.

She would have made uneducated assumptions about me, about Georgie that she had no right to make. I don’t even think a lot of parents today have the background or the knowledge to make those decisions for their children. But that is exactly what way too many teachers, who are being goaded by the teachers’ unions (aka NEA and affiliates), are doing without parents’ knowledge much less their approval.

In my presentations to college classes, I preface everything with the statement that when I discuss gender identity there are very few and far between facts and that what I have to say in that regard is strictly my personal opinion. I have been saying that for twenty years and I say it still today. It’s for that reason that I find it terribly wrong for any teacher to take it on themselves to encourage any child to take on a persona that does not match their birth gender.

In a study done in the late 1990s it was discovered that the suicide rate among gender variant individuals was nearly eleven times that of normal individuals. There have been numerous studies done in recent years which points to possibly higher rates than previously thought. A quick review of the subject on Google lists a considerable number of studies on the subject but none address the actual number of actual completed suicides.

Obviously gender identity is becoming a more common topic of discussion, but it seems that it is being affected by a failure to address the need for extreme caution in guiding the young people in our education system toward irreversible actions. I have addressed the irreversible issue in my own life by referencing that decision to Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon. It cannot not be undone.

And if I have not made myself clear … No teacher has the right to encourage at the least or to facilitate at most, any gender variant behavior in any child with or without a parent’s approval. Teachers simply do not have the training nor the experience to involve themselves in such a critical issue in a child’s life. That is an irreversible procedure.

So, do I really wish I was three again, knowing what I know now? Nope! Not a bit! The joy I find in life now is the result of a life lived in two genders … two worlds, and guided by God’s impeccable timing.

What’s Fair is Not Always Fair

The issue of fairness, specifically as it applies to gender identity has been front and center for the last several months. Two individuals in particular, have been the focus of a heated debate. And it’s a debate that should be heated. Nothing ever comes to a boil without being heated, does it.

Lia Thomas of Penn and Iszac Henig of Yale are the two most notable individuals to date who are creating a storm of controversy regarding their participation in women’s college swimming competition. Their presence in the sport, or more specifically their dominance in the sport has raised some major ethical and moral issues of fairness because what is fair is not always fair.

One thing I have never tried to kid myself about is that I am a real woman … because I am not a real woman; and I never will be. Anyone who knows me or has read anything I have ever written about me and my gender identity, knows that I have a very basic understanding of not only who I am but most importantly what I am … and what I am not.

An incident that occurred early in my transition has stuck with me like the indelible ink of a tattoo artist. I was leaving for one of the first Tri-Ess meetings after my second wife Marilyn had accepted me into her life. She wanted to check me out to make sure my appearance met with her approval before heading out the door. After a quick visual she said, “You look really nice Honey but, you’re still just a man in a dress.”  And she was right. It was probably the most important thing she, or anyone could have said to me. It made me examine very carefully what being a woman really meant.

I didn’t arrive at an answer right away but when I did it was a hard pill to swallow. There are still times, over twenty years later that I am forced to accept that real women are never going to accept me as a “real woman”. So, what am I if I’m not a “real woman”? I am a person who was born male, a boy who grew into a man, who never felt totally comfortable in that role. I am more comfortable in the role of a woman but not totally comfortable in that role either. Why not?

Short answer: The body I was born with and the set of emotions I was born with are mismatched. That is just a fact and if I am to be a happy productive member of society, I have to accept that. The fact that I was born male but am living my life as a female does not make me a female. That is something that Lia Thomas and Iszac Henig have yet to realize. And apparently something that the NCAA has refused to acknowledge.

I don’t know for a fact if either one of them has done anymore than decide to live as female without benefit of hormone therapy or surgery. Having experienced both myself, and lived with the subsequent changes in my body, specifically muscle mass and body strength, I seriously doubt that either one of them has done anymore that state that they are female and that in and of itself should make them ineligible to compete in women’s sports. They are not female. They are transgendered, not transexuals. There is a huge difference, and the NCAA should never have allowed them to compete with genetically born women.

There couldn’t be a more authoritative voice on the matter than Caitlyn Jenner. She shared the same opinion in an interview with FOX News on Wednesday, January 19th of this year. Jenner stated that while she applauded the athletes for having the courage to live their lives in accordance with their inner selves she was firmly opposed to them being able to compete against “real” (my wording) women.

Gender Identity is a sticky wicket regardless of how you approach it, but this particular issue has been approached without regard to fairness to the women who by virtue of their genetic make up will never be able to match the physical makeup of a person claiming to be a woman who is in fact not a woman in any respect other than in their own mind.

I work in a very public world. I am a kitchen designer at Home Depot. If I have learned anything in that capacity, it is that while I am accepted as “Georgia” and treated with the utmost respect by everyone I come in contact with I will never be seen as a “real” woman. Do I think that’s fair? Fair isn’t the point. Reality is the point. The reality is that I was born in a male body with a given set of emotions, some masculine, but most feminine. Is that fair?

As I said … What’s fair is not always fair.

How Do We Fit in?

In the last two years, our world has been turned upside down. On that, I’m sure most would agree. Attention has been turned toward the pandemic and all the ills that have befallen people from every imaginable walk of life. The number of people who have been unaffected by disease continues to shrink with each passing day. Issues that used to be important to us seem to have moved to the back burner … that is, until something occurs to vividly remind us of an issue that used to be important.

Case in point: The alphabet soup that has become the designation for every single sexual or gender self-identification imaginable. When I first became involved in the transgendered community the designation was fairly simple … L (for lesbian) G (for gay) B (for heterosexual and either lesbian or gay…in other words, have your cake and eat it too) T (for transgendered or transexual). Then someone added a Q (for questioning). A few days ago I saw an article that referred to the LFBTQ??? Community. LFBTQ???  I inserted the question marks because I don’t remember all the letters of the alphabet that followed, but there were at least 3 or 4 more.

Have people become so desperate for recognition as being different from everyone else that they will search until they find a designation that doesn’t fit anyone but themselves, and then create a persona to fit that newly defined category? It would seem to be the case. To make matters worse, those in superfluous positions of authority, i.e. the NEA and its state affiliates around the country have been actively promoting gender identity modifications in children as young as nine and ten years old without, I might add, the parents knowledge or permission.

Why? I cannot imagine why any person with even a modicum of integrity or respect for the self-image of a young person would want to influence their natural emotional development in a way that could adversely affect them for the rest of their lives. When I think of the kind of person that would do that I am drawn to and image of the wicked witch in the original version of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Yesterday, on the radio I heard a letter written by a high school student that related her experience with looking for a group to be a part of. Athletics were not an option for her, and neither were the more common groups such as chess or debate clubs. Her counselor steered her into the LFBTQ??? Club. There she was encouraged to “explore” her gender and sexual identity. Luckily for this young girl she was intelligent enough to eventually realize that what they were encouraging was not natural for her.

I grew up in a totally different world. It was a world where the worst that could happen to me was that, had I been self-aware enough to question why I didn’t feel “normal”, was to have been told to grow up. Had I approached my high school counselor with anything resembling sexual or gender identity I’m not sure she would have had a clue what to say to me or my parents. That was probably a good thing considering the guidance that I may have received under the circumstances.

The basic issue of what role does public education have in the development of adolescents has been brought front and center in recent events in North Carolina as a result of two issues … Mask mandates and Critical Race Theory. Although these two issues are seemingly unrelated to the gender identity influence in elementary and secondary schools, they are part and parcel indicators of what our educations system has become … a petri dish for state control of what our children are taught and how their life choices are being influenced without parental knowledge or input.

I don’t want to sound like an “I told you so” but the fact is that even as long ago as my sophomore year in high school I be came aware of the dangers of the state having six to eight hours a day five days a week to influence the way the way the youth of our country think and process information. I even went so far as to suggest in one of my debate topics that all teachers be required to pass a stringent psychiatric evaluation before being allowed in the classroom. This is most critical when it deals with influencing how young people perceive themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity. The majority of educators in this country, I believe, do not sign onto these absurd policies but enough of them do subscribe to them to be a danger to our society.

It’s bad enough for public education attempting to make skin color an issue in young people who don’t see their fellow classmates in terms of their skin color. But gender identity is such a complex issue that no elementary or high school teacher has any business attempting to advise or influence a student on actions that will have lifelong effects on their future happiness or ability to live a productive satisfying life.

Wanting to fit in is a normal thing, but not being “normal” makes “fitting in” difficult at best and impossible at worst. We don’t need people with a political agenda making it more difficult with absurd notions of their idea of what’s best for another person’s child.

How long do we have?

What you are about to read has absolutely nothing to do with gender identity other than to make clear that whatever a person’s gender identity, life takes on its own direction, irrespective of that identity. Suffering is no respecter of gender.

Years ago, when I suffered a stroke at an age that things like that weren’t supposed to happen to me, I came face to face with my own mortality. As it turned out it wasn’t an end-of-life experience, even though it felt like that, as I was losing control of the right half of my body. When I regained full consciousness and began reliving the experience, as I lay there in the University of Utah Medical Center, and wondering what, if anything, was going to change in my life. As a result of what had just happened, I found myself thinking about the times I had wasted watching television. Oddly enough it was one of those wasted moments, that brought everything into focus.

I don’t even remember the name of the show, but I do remember that episode vividly. Ronny Schnell played the role of a radio DJ and Goldie Hawn had figuratively cornered him into being faced with having to propose marriage. Schnell’s out was to say that he couldn’t do that because his doctor had told him he didn’t know how long he, Schnell had to live. However, that ploy backfired because it only stiffened Goldie’s resolve to get married. Finally, Schnell confessed that what the doctor had actually said was that he didn’t know how long Schnell had to live … he was so healthy he could live to over a hundred.

Three weeks ago, today I woke up with a nasty dry cough and feeling rather puny. By midafternoon, the next day the Blue Magnet insisted that I go to urgent care. My vitals were not what they should have been, and I just assumed that I had contracted a dose of flue since I hadn’t had my flu shot yet. However, as a precaution a COVID swab was done and the next day my doctor notified me that I had a breakthrough case of after vaccination COVID-19. The doctor suggested that I consider a monoclonal infusion. She sent me the official information on the procedure and after reading it thoroughly I decided that the potential side effects weren’t worth the risk. In retrospect that might have been the wrong decision.

In the meantime, the Blue Magnet was tested with the same results. Her symptoms were minor, and she continued to work at home. I, on the other hand, was not so fortunate.

By the end of the first week, I was in such bad shape that Blue loaded me up and drove me to ER. I was miserable, and in a room full of miserable people, although in my opinion they weren’t in as bad a shape as I was. I genuinely felt that dying would be easier than getting well.

After waiting 4 hours I approached the desk to find out how much longer I would have to wait and was told that they didn’t know since I wasn’t considered an urgent enough case. The Blue Magnet, who had been waiting in her car the entire time decided to take matters into her own hands and drove to Walgreens for fluids and electrolytes. When she returned, I went to the desk and told them to take me off the list because I could get better care at home.

The next morning, I was still dehydrated, and my oxygen count was hovering between 87 and 90. Blue insisted on taking me back to the ER. This time I was immediately ushered to an exam room. Lots of tests and an IV later I was sent home. Two days later the scenario repeated itself. That time, after more tests and isolation ina  totally separate room, I was given the option to check into the hospital for 24 hours for observation. I chose to return home again.

I was finally beginning to recover bit by bit, but after a conversation with Home Depot’s Covid response representativ Andrea, my leave was extended another week and a half and I will return to work on the 18th.  As of this writing the only residual effect is shortness of breath and thus I tire easily.

The upshot of all this is a loss of faith in our government’s ability to be honest and forthright in the information they feed us via a media that has built a pedestal for Dr. Fauci to rest on. It’s obvious that the lockdowns don’t work anymore than the protocols that have been forced on us for the last 2 years. Yes, I’m aware that what I suffered, even after both initial vaccinations, might have been much worse without the vaccination., But that doesn’t keep me from being high suspicious of any pronouncement coming from CDC or any other government entity.

I am by now totally disgusted with the Biden administration and anything that comes out of it. We have been lied to, locked down, lost jobs and lost faith in the very institutions that are supposed to protect us from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The current resident of the White House is an incompetent human being whose sole interest is his perceived legacy. God help us and save us from people who think they are the only smart people in the room and therefore must direct every minute aspect of our lives, and the people who think that since every aspect of their lives needs to be controlled by government that the government should control every aspect of every life without regard to how long that life may have left.

A Vision Is Not Enough …

12:25 PM August 1, 2021

I would have normally been on way home from worship service at the home of one of New Foundation’s Pastor’s. But not today, and more than likely never again. I have had few things sadden me more. The natural and immediate reaction to the events of the last few months leading to the last 2 weeks is to point fingers and cast blame. While there is plenty of that to go around that is not my purpose here. My purpose is to look back over the last 12 plus years and record events and actions, of the people I have interacted with as a result of my participation in the decisions and actions of the leadership of New Foundation. If that is taken as finger pointing, so be it. But if we are not honest about how we got here then we learn nothing and we are left with nothing.

I wrote about my introduction to New Foundation in very last couple of pages of my memoir. I had been bitterly disappointed in the results of ego driven performances of the leadership of my previous church Healing Waters Ministries and had finally walked away. It shut down shortly thereafter. Two of the people I had known there had persisted in asking me to visit the new church they had found when they walked away. I finally agreed to attend one service.

As I said in my memoir, one look at the face of Jabowa Whitehead and I felt I knew why God had closed Healing Waters. I felt it was because He had been holding open the door of New Foundation Christian Fellowship all along.

It must have been several months before I was invited to the Society of Sipping Saints. Being a recovering Alcoholic who worked weekends in a bar I had no issue with going to a bar with a few of the congregation and the pastors. I enjoyed the social atmosphere with the people I had just worshiped with. It became a regular occurrence. I had never had a social experience like that at any church. It truly gave meaning to the term church “family”. Since Jabow had asked me to take over the communication I found that time a good time to text all the people who hadn’t been in service that morning.

I had some disagreements with Jabowa, most of which were political. For instance, it was about that time when the issue of gay marriage came to the fore in the news and commentary sections of the various media. In a phone conversation with him I voiced my politically conservative opinion on the issue. He quickly informed me that it was extremely important to so that he could marry the man he loved, Pastor Juan.

Over the next few years our congregation grew quickly, and we soon found that we needed a larger facility. I, along with a few others, put in many hours making the necessary modifications to the new facility and soon we had moved from the small second floor rooms across the street to new larger free-standing building with a large parking lot which we needed with a growing congregation. We had room for Children’s Sunday School, and it too was growing.

But a change began to take place in the spiritual environment. I was still happy with all the people, new and old. Pastor Jabowa began adding people to the dais behind him and soon the front of our church began to resemble a holy roller church. I have to admit that I didn’t think some of those he chose should be up there. But I also felt it wasn’t my place to say anything. In addition to that change Pastor Jabowa abandoned his nicely but casually dressed appearance and started wearing a black robe. But we continued to grow.

Then one morning Pastor Juan wasn’t there. At the end of service, Jabowa requested all the leadership to stay behind for a private meeting. He informed us that he and Juan were separating, and that it was the result of 8 months of counseling. Pastor Juan was visiting family in Alaska.

I was personally in tears and stayed behind to tell him how heartbroken I was. I asked him at the time there was someone else in either of their lives. He said, no. I took him at his word. This all occurred in either late February or early March.

It may have been a couple of weeks, but no more when Jabowa told me he was seeing someone else. When I look back on it, I see it as the moment before the fall from grace. I reminded him of what he had said about Juan being the love of his life. He denied having ever said it.

Pride weekend and Sunday morning, when he should have been at the church preparing for the service, he wasn’t there. No one knew where he was, and no one had heard from him. He didn’t respond to text messages or phone calls. Pastor Cherry grabbed her laptop and pulled up a sermon.

The next week half of the congregation was absent. And the week after that half of those were not there. I had the opportunity to ask one of the men, someone I admired for his faith, if he was going to leave too. He responded with, “Yes, God has withdrawn his blessing from New Foundation.” The downhill tumble had begun in earnest. It could have been avoided if Jabowa had only offered some kind of apology and committed himself to a renewed commitment. But he never did.

The church was moved from that building to a conference room at hotel. That lasted for a little over a year. Then we found ourselves meeting to a bar. One of the last times I saw Pastor Cherry she said flatly that “we’ve got to get out of this bar”.

Just before Covid hit Jabowa and his next husband Pastor Freddie announced that we “would be meeting at their home. And that’s where we have been until a week ago when none of the pastors, including the one who was supposed to give the sermon showed up.

I have put all this down because I want to emphasis the importance of a pastor’s devotion to his duty and while no person is perfect, using the excuse that “I’m only human, is merely a way of self-justification for failing in one’s duty. Sadly, I have to say that I heard Pastor Jabowa use that very excuse on a number of occasions.

The word pastor is from the Greek word “poimen” which translates as “shepherd”. I came from an agriculturally oriented family background. My dad had a favorite saying for situations like this: “You don’t go to town when the ox is in the ditch”.

Unfortunately, just as the shepherd who puts his own desires ahead of his responsibility to care for the sheep in his charge, New Foundation has suffered entirely too much from personal priorities been placed ahead of the Shepherd’s duty. Sadly, for all Jabowa’s good intentions and amazing concept for a church configured like the early church before Constantine took over, that original concept of welcoming “all people” and giving them a family that maybe many of them never had, was lost in personality flaws of leadership.

  1. C. “Jabowa” Whitehead was a very loving person and everyone who ever knew him was forever changed. I was blessed to know him and worship with him and share his vision, but a vision alone is not enough. A vision requires effort, dedication, planning, execution of the plan, leadership and unfailing commitment to purpose. If New Foundation is to survive, it needs to be re-born with a commitment by all involved to dedicate themselves to the execution of all these facets of purpose and remember how we got to this place.

Just to Clarify

A recent communication from a good friend pointed out that a description of some people, in my last blog as “stupid” was probably not the best choice of words and as a result somewhat detracted from the point I was trying to make. In retrospect he was probably correct. I undoubtedly could have been a bit more, well considerably more, diplomatic.

When I was in early sobriety and learning to assess my previous behavior in an honest and forthright manner, I was told in confessing my transgressions that when I followed up my confession with, “but” such and such or so and so did such and such to cause my behavior that I totally negated my personal responsibility in the interaction. So, no “buts” here.

I am angry. And I feel justifiably so. I will apologize for using the term “stupid” but not for the assessments that followed the term. I know that I am only a single voice in the choir and that I have, in that respect, a total inability to carry a tune. But I will not let that keep me from singing as loudly as I can.

All that being said, I need to express an opinion regarding gender identity politics and what I see as a major flaw the thinking of many in our community. That flaw is the idea that everything we express must be expressed from the platform of our gender identity.

When I first became involved the activities of the world of the transgendered, I of course was primarily concerned with being an accepted part of the community. Having always been outspoken about my political views, which by the way included my religious views, I saw no reason to suppress those views just because I was wearing a wig and a dress. I immediately found that, for many in the organization, I was a heretic. After all, conservative religion and politics were joined hand in hand in the denunciation of the transgendered community.

While that was true to a certain degree it was definitely an overgeneralization of the situation. If you have followed my blog over time, you know that I certainly have not let the opinions of those I disagree with stifle the expression of my views. If I had a bigger following, I would probably be banned from Facebook and Twitter, but so far, I have not.

Enter stage right, Caitlyn Jenner.

She is the embodiment of what I have felt and expressed in the past. She is what the transgendered community needs badly because what she is saying, to me at any rate, is that gender identity is not going to keep her from expressing her conservative political opinions. To date I have not heard anything from her that reflects her gender identity. She has been strictly focused on issues that have nothing to do with gender; issues that affect average people in her state. If her gender identity is brought up it’s the interviewer who brings it up and not her. So, what if her transgendered status draws attention. It has nothing to do with what she feels the people of California need from the point of view of a very successful businessperson.

She should be an example to the transgendered community to put gender identity aside and be a contributing member of society … like any “normal” person would do without making gender the issue.

My parents never expressed an opinion of anyone based on issues they had no control over, ie … skin color, sex, physical handicaps. As a result, I learned to look at the character of people in my life. Did Caitlyn have a choice to visibly express her gender identity? Absolutely! But she had no choice as to the set of emotions she was born with and that is what she is expressing in her appearance … and to my way of thinking, an expression of her character.

In closing this blog entry what I want to say is, to our transgender community, stop with the gender identity excuses for not living up to your potential. Stop with the gender identity excuses for thinking you are a victim. Stop parroting the opinions of those who are telling you that you are a victim. There are no victims here, only people who have been convinced they are victims by those who need victims to support their own self-centered aims of controlling other’s lives … since most of them, from what I see, have had trouble controlling their own.

A Lack of Morals?

When I was much younger than I am today, I lived with the sense that even though I didn’t agree what many people felt or believed about what our government should or should not do for us, I felt the best interest of our country and the freedoms it represented were their primary intent. If I hadn’t been disabused of that naïve belief before, I certainly am now.

What is happening in our country, in our capitol, in the hands of our elected leaders, (and I’m not referring to the ones that fall on the “red” side of either branch of our government) is nothing short of the worst possible scenario any screen writer or novelist could conceivably come up with. When I listen to the promises and the proposals that are being foisted upon us with regularity, I can come to only one conclusion. There is now a total lack of morals in the democrat party, with damn few exceptions.

Why on earth would anyone with a conscience want to burden future generations with the astronomical debt that congress has now saddled the country with? Why? It certainly isn’t because they sincerely want a better life for future generations. It is economically impossible for this country continue to add to our debt load without totally destroying an economy that has, up until now been the envy of the world.

It has long been said that people vote with their pocketbooks in mind. Well, how stupid can people get? Do they really think that all that money is going buy them more than what they can by today? Apparently, they do. You would think that if the average citizen had even a modicum of understanding of principle of supply and demand that they would soon figure out that what makes a dollar worth more is not having more of it. It’s the exact opposite. The supply of any commodity, including the dollar directly affects its value.

The democrats know that and that, to my mind, makes them criminals. They don’t care about anyone or anything that detracts from their power to control the lives of anyone they consider less than themselves or their ability to enrich themselves at the expense of the very people they claim to represent. So, how is it that supposedly educated people fall for the obviously wrong-headed ideas?

They are in fact, obviously very uneducated. Sure, they have college degrees of every sort, but the degrees are absolutely worthless when it comes to an understanding of real economics. The result is voters who buy into the notion that free college education, free childcare, free everything is actually free. That is what our education system has given us … a country filled with educated stupid people. And the democrats know it.

The democrats know that and that is why they are getting away with things like “woke” culture, whatever the hell that is. It’s supposed to mean that “woke” people have “woke” up to the injustices of our culture and history. In my opinion, it primarily means that they have “woke” up to one simple fact. With control of the media, career government employees and now congress and the white house they have “woke” up to the fact that they can lie about history and get away with it. If that isn’t a lack of morals, I don’t know what is. There is absolutely no moral basis for anything “woke” culture has produced. “Woke” culture is totally and completely void of any moral compass.

So, what is the solution for those of us who still have a moral compass? Maybe we need to follow Maxine Waters advice and “get up in their face”. The conservative moment has been too complacent and tried too hard to maintain a sense of decorum. Look at what that has gotten us.

We as a free people are at a precipice in history and if we don’t step back and take a few pages from the play book used by the democrats and their socialistic progressive allies we will be beyond redemption and our grandchildren will never know the promise of the United State of America.

A lack of morals? Without a doubt.

So How Did We Get Here?

So, how did we get here? How did we get from the nation that I grew up in, a nation full of promise, a nation capable of landing a man on the moon, a nation that looked at its faults with an eye toward actually correcting the faults and not perpetuating the faults? How did we get from a nation of hopeful high school and college graduates whose worst crime might have been hanging a disagreeable professor in effigy instead of reality, from a tree in the center of the campus? How did we get from there to a nation where students march in masse protesting something, they have no actual knowledge of, while cheering the burning of our flag and destruction of the dreams of small business owners in the name of racial justice?

On the flip side, how did we go from nation of law-abiding citizens who identify themselves as conservatives; from a nation of people who accepted the outcome of an election regardless of who won because we trusted the system that counted the votes to do it honestly and let the chips fall where they may. How did we get from no need for conservative voters to gather in-masse, to support a president who, in spite of all the good he did, was not re-elected under a cloud of suspected corruption of officials in 5 states?

We didn’t get here overnight. We didn’t get here in a year. We didn’t even get here in a decade. We got here after years of careful and deliberate efforts of groups who had a fear of individual accomplishment. People who achieve through individual effort are feared by others who only find comfort in group think and group function.

When I was on the high school debate team one of the questions was “Should the federal government aid in funding public education?” (I paraphrase that question). One of the primary arguments on the negative side of that question was that local education systems would become too dependent on that source of funding and the result would then be encroaching federal control of the school curriculum. In other words, if you’re going to accept our money then you must accept our directions on what to teach and what not to teach. What was never expected was how non-government entities would eventually have far more influence than state and national government edicts.

It wasn’t the fault of politicians in spite of what we have come to think of them. It was the realization by non-governmental entities that what they had in their possession was something far, far more powerful than any government. Think about it … Who were the majority of those marching in support of Black Lives Matter and the call to defund the police? They were students. Black, white, brown; the color didn’t really matter. They had been conditioned by 12 to 20 years of sitting in front of “educators”; a group that had under their influence, as Rush Limbaugh would say, “young skulls full of mush” for a minimum of four to six hours a day. How many hours a day does the average parent spend on the mental development of their children? One? Two, maybe?

So, what kind of ideas are being stressed during those four to six hours a day? Well, as I noted in my last blog, 96.1% of the political donations made by the NEA in the last fifteen years have gone to democrat candidates. What kind of world to democrats want for our children? The last ten days should be your answer. They want to squelch any form of dissent to their ideas and their ideas are based on their belief that the average person is not capable of making rational decisions about their own lives. In addition, to that arrogant opinion of the average person’s intelligence is the belief that anything, and I do mean anything, they have to do to gain and hold that control is justifiable as evidenced by the obvious irregularities in the election results in five states during the last election. They have no moral compass whatsoever.

If you want to know then, how we ended up with such corrupt victors in our last election, look not to the politicians, look to how the people who elected them and the people who got them elected arrived at their justifications for their behavior. Those were arrived at through years of being under the influence of educators who themselves spent years under the influence of those who went before them.

I ask myself how did two educated conservatives such as my parents raise two broad minded conservatives, my brother and me, and then a decade and a half later a relatively narrow minded extreme liberal like our sister? It was a matter of how we were educated, when and where. Our parents didn’t change, the education systems changed.

I said in my last blog that if we are to effect lasting change in our country it has to start in our schools by getting involved with the local school board and administration. Weed out anyone who believes that their job is to shape minds. It isn’t; it’s to teach the basics not the morals of the teachers. It’s the parents’ job to shape the minds of their children.

Some Things Bear Repeating

When I was 13, give or take a year or two, I asked my mother one day what the difference was between republicans and democrats. Her answer was simple. Republicans believe that people should be free to make their own decisions about how they spend their money and make the decisions affecting their own lives. Democrats believe that the government is better qualified to make those decisions and should therefore be the one to make them.

In the years that followed I fluctuated between adherence to first one and then the other of those two ideologies. I once heard the following: “Show me a young man with no heart and I’ll show you a republican. Show me an old man with no brain and I’ll show you a democrat.” … or something to that effect. You get the idea. Young people are guided by emotions and feelings. Old people are guided by experience and common sense..

As I aged, the myriad of facts that I had absorbed in my reasonably extensive reading of the biographies of the famous and not so famous persons who had peopled our nation’s history, and in a few cases the histories of other nations; those facts began to shape the way I viewed our society.

One of the benefits that came from my interest in history was the way I viewed contemporary events. I viewed them as history in the making, which of course they were. At the same time events in my personal “history in the making” began to move me further to the right. (As an aside, I find it rather significant that the word “right” happens to mean “correct” as well as the political meaning of the opposite of left.) The most dramatic and what proved to be the permanent; shift in my political alliance came when I woke up to the fact that the IRS was going to take nearly a third of the profits from an investment Dad had started for me and which I had luckily added to. That was followed by several similar instances of government interference with my business and personal life.

All of this took place in the late ’70s and early ‘80s. Being a business person, albeit a not terribly astute business person, I began to take stock of the dividends that accrued to my benefit as a result of the rather high taxes I was paying. The safety and security in my daily life as a result of the portion of my taxes which went to our national defense was the first thing on the list … and the last. (If I was to add one more it might be the US Postal Service except that it was in the process of being privatized … sort of. Like everything else the government has even a minor involvement in it soon became another bureaucratic albatross) At first I was intending to include our highway system, but then it occurred to me that most of that was funded by the tax on gasoline.

That was it. I received no benefit to speak of from the remainder of the taxes I was paying to the U.S. Treasury. However, a lot of other people were reaping generous benefits from my taxes. The personnel employed by the federal government were enjoying well paying jobs from which they could hardly ever be fired and they didn’t have to contribute a single dime to Social Security since they had their own retirement annuity system that paid rather nice dividends on retirement. The most outrageous aspect of this system is that in the beginning those people worked for slightly less than their counterparts in the private sector as a balance to having permanent employment. But in the last few years they have seen their pay and benefits rise to nearly double that of people performing identical tasks in the private sector. And that is an outrageous miscarriage of justice.

The social security payments which were deducted from my earnings every payday went straight to the general coffer to help fund all the social welfare and Great Society programs, which again I received no benefit from either directly or indirectly. Not one penny of those payments ever earned a dime of interest or dividend.

The primary irritant in of all this is that among the many supporters of this legal theft are many well meaning friends; people who genuinely feel that it’s justifiable for Big Brother to take from me and give to someone with less. What makes it even worse is that if they profess to be Christian, they rely on the scriptural justification to support their thesis.

There are four primary scriptural sources for this notion that we should support the government in taking from the fortunate winners of life’s lottery (that’s what they call those who have benefited from fruits of hard work and long hours). The first source of justification is the numerous calls of the prophets to help those less fortunate. The second source is Jesus’ repeated admonition to the wealthy to “sell all, distribute it to the poor and follow him.”

The third and most common defense for confiscation of wealth is Jesus instruction to “Pay unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and the rest belongs to God.” In the language of today’s liberal progressives, “Pay unto Uncle Sam whatever his elected and/or unelected representatives deem appropriate, and if there is any left over after bills, car and house payments etc. belongs to God” … or the “universe” or whatever entity people on the left deem to be in charge.

Last but certainly not the least frequently mentioned defense of government confiscation of wealth is found in the book of Acts. Luke describes how the new Christians shared “everything”; sold all their property and turned the proceeds over to the apostles to be distributed to those they deemed most in need. That is further enhanced by the narrative of what happened to Ananias and Sapphira when they withheld a portion of the sale of some property from the church. They were struck dead on the spot … not for withholding, but for lying about how much they got from the sale. Case closed. Pay taxes and don’t cheat or else … “’cause the Bible tells me so.”

The point that all these biblical defenses of taxation conveniently miss is this: They are all voluntary contributions. Where is the virtue in government enforced generosity? There is none is there?  And where is Christian virtue when citizen A, who has voted for people who exempt him from taxes, votes too for people who force citizen B who does pay taxes, to pay citizen C for whatever citizen C thinks he/she is entitled to. Paul exhorts the believers to pay their taxes to the Roman government, because the government is there to protect us. (refer back to second sentence of the fifth paragraph above) But then what else was he going to say … he himself was, after all, quite proud of his Roman citizenship, a fact which ultimately backfired on him.

 

It seems to me that when the government takes full responsibility for feeding the poor, housing the homeless, tending to the sick then I can, with a clear conscience, absolve myself of any personal responsibility to extend aid to anyone in need. I don’t even feel a need to ascertain the worthiness of who is aided and to what degree they should be aided. After all … I paid my taxes. Let the government figure it out. I’ve got more important things to worry about … Like which restaurant to dine at before I go to whatever computer animated action movie is the rage this week.

My closing salvo to this statement of mind, is about the disconnect between my devout Christian friends spiritual beliefs and their political defense of, in my mind, the indefensible attitude and actions of the very people they support when it comes to the attacks leveled daily in the press and liberal blogs on religious freedom of expression. Abba gave each of us a unique set of characteristics for purposes of communication and expression. If the above mentioned members of the left had their way there would be no churches and no freedom to express anything that they disagreed with.

Am I defending those on the right who disagree with things like the right to marry, and scream that our way of life is an abomination? Of course not! But I can tell you this: I’ve found it far easier to sway the minds of conservative Christians to acceptance of things like equality for ALL through sincere and open conversation than it is to even have a sincere and open civil discourse with most people who consider themselves liberal progressives.