Lost Identity! Blame the Liberal.

“I confess that I know who is a conservative less surely than I know who is a liberal,” William F. Buckley wrote in 1963.

When  a friend responded a few days ago to my recent blogs, I first questioned myself if I even wanted to reply. (It's close to election time and we're tired, are we not?) After thinking on it a few days I decided I should, because over the past four years, the grounds for his (and others) sentiments is something I've tried to learn more about. From his one paragraph response, I have divided it in five parts and highlighted certain phrases to focus clearly on his accusations. An excerpt from his last sentence, "and that is why I am a conservative in my ideology not republican --Conservative..," is symptomatic of the "conservative movement" which has evolved over the last four decades. (My reply, with Sam Tanenhaus' help, continues below my friend's response)

Sorry for no replies in awhile been really busy. I admit that I have not seen the movie but I have to let you know ---you have a large group of liberals that are advocating the decline of America/Capitalism and are anti-Semitic to the point of over reacting with so call tolerance of Islam- looking the other way and denying is not a course of action.

So I recommend either take sides for America or against America and right now the Democratic party is dangerously close to going over the edge. I know the left likes to charge us of being radical (Tea Party) but radical are among us on both sides. Romney is the not the answer either but we definitely cannot live another 4 more years of this divide, envy and slander instead of the hope and change he blowed up every one skirt.

If I thought we could recover after 4 more years and somehow recover from the failure it will become I would say let him do it so I can show you how wrong you and the Liberals are with this policy but this is not Academia and liberal idea of an experiment with changing America has and always will be a failure.

 Must have common ground and government must take step back in our lives and get back to basics and uphold freedom for the people from their government. Government is out of control on spending and foreign affair adventures and buying votes.

I ask who will the President blame for his failed policies if he is re-elected- I will tell you --he will blame America for his failure. Congress did not do this, business' didn't do that, China, Europe not recovering, natural disasters, another large scale terrorist attack and always liberal democratic line --everyone racists or bigots Blah Blah Blah. I can write the headline now-Liberals never take responsibility they always have to blame and why I am a conservative in my ideology not republican --Conservative..

JD

Traditionally, "Republican" was, at the least, synonymous with "conservative." But the conservative label grew a hodgepodge of non-traditional issues, and over the years it became merely an "embellished mantra" for the right, instead of truly representing conservatism by any reasonable definition. Hence, my friend and many others, to whom "true conservatism" is at the heart of their ideology, no longer, legitimately can claim Republicanism as their standard bearer. For many who try to remain loyal, the label is an ill-fit, non-identity, with the National Party ---- where "core beliefs" are not cohesive. (Of course that's true to some extent with Democrats.) Republican campaign rhetoric on various topics is contradictory from one year, month, or day to the next. It is the ill-fated tea-party reconciliation, wanting to be all things!

The conservative identity was lost, perhaps, beginning with a follower of the classical, intellectual conservative William F. Buckley: "As Garry Wills, who broke with the movement in the 1970s but continued to call himself a conservative, observed in his memoir Confessions of a Conservative (1979): “The right wing in America is stuck with the paradox of holding a philosophy of ‘conserving’ an actual order it does not want to conserve.” (The Death of Conservatism)

Continuing into the 80s  with a president enthroned, adored by the larger populace: "The tribune of this new polarity was Ronald Reagan, whose denunciations of “big government” and the underclass it coddled—through “entitlements” and “giveaways”—were softened by his soothing assurances to those “delighted and unsure about their new affluence,” as Richard Goodwin put it in 1967, no less dependent than the poor and unwilling to give up budget-draining “insurance” policies like Social Security and Medicare. In Dead Right, his withering deconstruction of the Reagan years, David Frum notes that “not one major spending program was abolished during the Reagan presidency. Only one spending program of any size was done away with, and even that—the worthless Comprehensive Employment and Training Act—was instantly replaced by another program, the Jobs Partnership Training Act, meant to achieve almost exactly the same end.” (The Death of Conservatism)

"During the Clinton years, right-wing intellectuals, reversing their long-standing contempt for the politics of “class warfare,” became the most adept practitioners of that same politics, now rechristened as the “culture wars.” Even notably secular writers became “image consultants for Protestant fundamentalists,” Michael Lind wrote in his essay “Why Intellectual Conservatism Died,” published in the quarterly Dissent in 1995. Lind, a onetime protégé of both Irving Kristol and William Buckley, offered a bleak tour d’horizon of the movement’s intellectual condition in the 1990s: “In 1984, the leading conservative spokesman in the media was George Will; by 1994, it was Rush Limbaugh. The basic concerns of intellectual conservatives in the eighties were foreign policy and economics; by the early nineties they had become dirty pictures and deviant sex.” They not only abandoned Burke. They had become inverse Marxists, placing loyalty to the movement above their civic responsibilities." (The Death of Conservatism)

"It was the alliance of neoconservatives and evangelicals that formed the movement’s core during the Bush years and responded most exuberantly to the administration’s policies—from its “faith-based” initiatives through the war on terror and the crusading mission to “democratize” Iraq.

And by their lights, they were fully justified in doing so. Bush, so often labeled a traitor to movement principles, was in fact more steadfastly devoted to them than any of his Republican predecessors—including Reagan. Few on the right acknowledge this today, for obvious reasons. But not so long ago many did. At his peak, following September 11, Bush commanded the loyalties of every major faction of the Republican Party. The central domestic proposal of his first term, the $1.3 trillion tax cut, extended Reagan’s massive “tax reform” from the 1980s. His massive Medicare prescription drug bill was in line with Reagan’s continuation of Social Security and Medicare. And the huge deficits Bush amassed, though they angered small-government conservatives, had a precedent, too. As David Frum points out in Dead Right, “federal spending rose explosively during the golden age of Reagan.” Shortly before the Iraq invasion, Martin Anderson, Reagan’s top domestic policy adviser, told Bill Keller (writing in The New York Times Magazine) that Bush was unmistakably Reagan’s heir. “On taxes, on education, it was the same. On Social Security, Bush’s position was exactly what Reagan always wanted and talked about in the ‘70s,” Anderson said. “I just can’t think of any major policy issue on which Bush was different.” The prime initiative of Bush’s second term, the attempt to privatize Social Security, drew directly on movement scripture: Milton Friedman denounced the “compulsory annuities” of Social Security in Capitalism and Freedom. Buckley noted the advantages of “voluntary” accounts in his early manifesto, Up from Liberalism. So did Barry Goldwater during his presidential campaign in 1964. Bush went further than Reagan, too, in the war he waged against the federal bureaucracy. And his attacks on the “liberal-left bias of the major media” were the most aggressive since Nixon’s.

Classical conservatives have all either deserted the Right or been evicted from it. A striking difference between conservatism past and present is the reverse flow of intellectuals away from the movement. The converts of yesteryear—Burnham and Chambers, Moynihan and Kristol—have been succeeded by writers and thinkers like Mark Lilla and Michael Lind, Francis Fukuyama and Fareed Zakaria, David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan, who have defected in the opposite direction, fleeing the cloistered precincts of the Right. Another serious conservative journalist, David Frum, though still a loyal Republican, has lamented that “a generation of young Americans has been lost to our party.

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, advised others in his party to do “what the people want you to do rather than getting stuck in your ideology.” Florida governor Charlie Crist agreed. Another moderate Republican governor, Jon Huntsman Jr., of Utah, found he had more in common with the Obama administration than with his own party." (The Death of Conservatism  2009-08-22)

Now, if you (my friend) have read this far and absorbed the history, you have a better understanding of your party disillusionment. When people desert or are evicted from the party, their "core values/beliefs" do not align with that of the muddled beliefs of party. On the other hand, people of either party leave, at times, even when core values do align; they are shamed out of their party. For Democrats it has been a denigration that they are supporting some socialistic, commie organization.  (Because of disparagement and disenchantment, large numbers, in both parties, turned to Unaffiliated of which 90% are "closet partisans," only 10% truly are non-partisan.) Such has been the case, beginning with the fall of classic conservatism, when people like Jesse Helms, succeeded by a host of inclined Libertarians or others, such as Shawn Hannity, Michelle Bachman, Joe Walsh, Jeff Kuner, Wayne Allyn Root, Allen  West, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. (Add any number of other revanchist Republican office holders who have joined in, in one way or another.) It is the great-host of conspiracy theorist to capitalize on the right-airwaves. All the things they are saying has got to be the truth, because you have heard it so many times and nobody bothers to check it out; it's all the hated-liberal's fault. (It's the Joe McCarthy era again, except the 1st amendment is more alive than it's ever been; no one will be punished except   eventually by their own humiliation.)

And no one is taking your guns (e.g. AmeriPAC) or giving up vigilance against terrorist attacks (e.g. Act For America) or jeopardizing religious freedoms (e.g. ConservativeActionAlert)  as these bracketed examples suggest. These are right-wing political fronts masquerading as real life threats, to strict fear in people for their personal safety and loss of rights. That's just a few examples of the right's internet-unsavory-propagandist ongoing campaign. They bombard unsuspecting citizens that the liberal is destroying the country.

Yet, as you say, we know there are fringe elements on each side, and each of us should work to mitigate the extremes. The truth is, however, instead of admonishing the conspiracy theorist/extremist, you justify them to project your failures on the liberal (Or the  party that you now refute does). This is to deny history of the struggling conservative movement, of the last forty years, and how it has decline to sordid, political tactics. (Which by the way has a long record that I wrote about in Selling the Soul, which is so evident in this campaign.)

It was one of the authors of the New Deal, a Mormon Republican, Marriner Eccles, who came to learn the importance of the social safety-net and upholding the middle class to undergird the capitalist, free-market foundation. Into the 70s, under Richard Nixon, the last New Deal president, the Right had become the guardian of all it had once pledged to undo. As Gary Wills wrote, “The right wing in America is stuck with the paradox of holding a philosophy of ‘conserving’ an actual order it does not want to conserve.” So, now, will the right completely undo the social order; will it voucherize and privatize in favor of crony capitalism, furthering a plutocracy?

That is certainly the aim of the plutocratic Libertarian Koch Brothers and their ilk who financially back the tea parties. Many partiers got caught in the emotional flow of revanchist politics -- for naught so-call conservative ideology. All that mattered was they take back the country, in the aftermath of a failed Bush administration in which they acquiesced.

There is much going on in the Republican party that attributes to identity uncertainty, at the front position is Rush Limbaugh --- and Grover Norquist, who, as he says, "Wants to drown government in a bath tub." Certainly not classical conservatives!

Could William F. Buckley find a real traditional/classical conservative, with just a little intellect, in the Republican party today, an authentic conservative who seeks not to destroy but to conserve? Yes, I believe he could, there are a few left. Our country needs them. Therefore, my advice to my friend, who is a smart family loving man, is that while you can't believe in your party's presidential candidate, you should not give up on your party. It needs you more than ever. When the party reclaims William F. Buckley's Classical Conservative, and again believe in government, believes that government can be better, our country will be the winner. We can have a civil debate about what in government is so vital and what's not.

I have an affinity for the classical conservative, for in my ideological heart is the fiscal-essential conservative. 

What Would a Mormon Republican Do? How Quick We Forget! Stimulus Anyone?

Call back four years. What do you remember; what have we forgotten? An obliterated economy, giant financial institutions and America's largest manufacturing sector, automotive, in freefall! It was a financial destabilization on the precipice of total collapse that called for extraordinary measures. Even so, there was an ongoing political, rhetorical opposition and obstructive intransigence against those more noble souls who would do what had to be done. An unrelenting, vociferous demagoguery would dampen the spirits of many Americans, a negative force in play to stall economic recovery.

Much has been written about how we got in the economic ditch. But at that particular moment knowing the cause was less significance than the urgency of keeping us out of another Great Depression. Many authors I have read make it clear the cause goes back 30 to 40 years, beginning with the Carter administration when some governmental controls were relaxed, continuing with a special emphasis on deregulation through the Reagan years. "To the applause of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike, the New Deal system of regulation was dismantled in one sector of the economy after another in the late 1970s and 1980s," writes Michael Lind. (Land of Promise)  Increasingly through the years, precipitously in the George W. Bush administration, it was in a cavalier, an unrestrained free-market, the regulators gave deference and fealty to business lords. Unfettered free-market ideology led government officials to resist new regulations and enforce existing regulations lightly or not at all in what became known as “the shadow banking system." Predatory mortgages, bundled overrated securities (e.g. Collateralized Debt Obligations), blind-derivative trading (e.g. Credit Default Swaps), and over-leveraged banking expedited sure economic disaster. Laissez-faire!

In the Bush years there had been a general disregard for governmental fiscal responsibility, when for the first time in American history we failed to oblige taxes to pay for our wars. Not paying for the wars was not enough of a tax-free-ride to economic doom, tax cutting in the name of trickle-down economics, in the face of unpaid Senior Drugs, left an even larger debt. It was a perfect setup to an untenable situation for economic recovery after the "big fall" came. It was as if we burned down the Federal House with no Fire Insurance, no cash reserve; thereby, necessitating a third mortgage to rebuild. But rebuild we must!

So how did we begin the rebuilding? We took advice from a past generation, per se, one Marriner Eccles, a Mormon Republican.

After the stock-market crash of 1929, in lingering, economic devastation, the Herbert Hoover administration and others believed nothing could be done except to balance the federal budget and pay down the debt. "Economists and the leaders of business and Wall Street—including financier Bernard Baruch; W. W. Atterbury, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad; and Myron Taylor, chairman of the United States Steel Corporation—sought to reassure the country that the market would correct itself automatically, and that the government’s only responsibility was to balance the federal budget." (Aftershock)  

Marriner Eccles' father, an immigrate from Scotland, married two women in Utah. Marriner was born 1890, and by age twenty-four he was a millionaire; by forty he was a tycoon—director of railroad, hotel, and insurance companies; head of a bank holding company controlling twenty-six banks; and president of lumber, milk, sugar, and construction companies spanning the Rockies to the Sierra Nevadas.

"When Eccles’s anxious bank depositors began demanding their money, he called in loans and reduced credit in order to shore up the banks’ reserves. But the reduced lending caused further economic harm. Small businesses couldn’t get the loans they needed to stay alive. In spite of his actions, Eccles had nagging concerns that by tightening credit instead of easing it, he and other bankers were saving their banks at the expense of community—in 'seeking individual salvation, we were contributing to collective ruin'.” (Aftershock) Marriner Eccles came to realize Hooverism's conventional wisdom was insanity.

The debilitating economic struggle continued into the Franklin D Roosevelt years, when even Roosevelt was not fully convinced we needed to go deeper into debt to stimulate recovery.

"Eccles made his national public debut before the Senate Finance Committee in February 1933, just weeks before Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as president. The committee was holding hearings on what, if anything, should be done to deal with the ongoing economic crisis. Others had advised reducing the national debt and balancing the federal budget, but Eccles had different advice. Anticipating what British economist John Maynard Keynes would counsel three years later in his famous General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Eccles told the senators that the government had to go deeper into debt in order to offset the lack of spending by consumers and businesses. Eccles went further. He advised the senators on ways to get more money into the hands of the beleaguered middle class." ..."His proposed program included relief for the unemployed, government spending on public works, government refinancing of mortgages, a federal minimum wage, federally supported old-age pensions, and higher income taxes and inheritance taxes on the wealthy in order to control capital accumulations and avoid excessive speculation. Not until these recommendations were implemented, Eccles warned, could the economy be fully restored." (Aftershock)

Much of what Eccles recommended was implemented for Roosevelt's New Deal, the stimulus recovery. Eccles went on to be Roosevelt's Feds Chairman, serving fourteen years, 1934 to 1948. The Eccles Building, named for him, which houses The Federal Reserve Board stands on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. (Read the full story of Marriner Eccles .)

Forward to January 2009 when the economy was losing 800,000 jobs monthly, and Keynesian Stimulus was being considered: "The official $478 billion Republican alternative consisted entirely of tax cuts and an extension of unemployment benefits. But the GOP also crafted a second $715 billion substitute that included far more traditional infrastructure than the supposedly lavish Democratic bill. That way, moderates like Cao and Castle who couldn’t back the right-wing alternative could vote yes on something other than the actual bill. Republicans never bothered to explain how $ 715 billion could be good public policy while $ 815 billion was freedom-crushing socialism. In the minority, they didn’t have to." .. "But the Republican argument was never about logic. It was about creating the impression of a mess. Republican leaders argued that the Recovery Act was too slow to be stimulus, but also that it needed more infrastructure projects, which would make it slower. They argued that it would expand the deficit, but also that it needed permanent tax cuts, which would expand the deficit even more." (The New New Deal)

In the end, the good-news package, $787B was the New New Deal, not a "cure all" by any means, but a stimulus that addresses a farsighted recovery, a groundwork for competition in a globalized economy, as we traverse the third industrial revolution, information/Internet/ computer technology.

While Marriner Eccles knew what had to be done in the Great Depression era, leaders at the helm of a thousand-times-over, larger economy knew that Keynesian Economics was absolutely essential, to save an economy from the abyss-pit. But unlike the 1930s, we were in a new era of mobility and transition, it had to be applied differently: e.g. building roads no longer required thousands of people; modern machinery only required a few people to pave many miles of roads or build other infrastructure.

The New New Deal was not about building new parks or digging holes and refilling them; it was essentially a multiple-track plan: Tax cuts: biggest middle-class tax cuts since the Reagan era (A limited stimulus, but has allowed savings and private debt to be reduced.); State governments financials shored up, aid to states to prevent layoffs, real-time; Real-time stimulus, roads, infrastructure, and YES, food stamps to prevent seven million people from falling behind the poverty line, money into people’s pockets; Research and Development: Health IT, digitized medical records, 90 billion for Clean Energy, ---- Race to the Top which is the biggest education program in decades.

Most people know so little about the Recovery Act. They have only heard the voluminous, pessimistic spin, i.e. Solyndra's failure. Michael Grunwald gives a brief critique of the Recovery Act in this video. His book, The New New Deal is an eye-opener for the critics.

To Marriner Eccles the most critical thing, about economic recovery, was to get money in the hands of the middleclass. It was the same principle of the Recovery Act, except that in this new transitional epoch it would require a longer time-span. When for many years a disproportionate flow of income has gone to the top 1%, the importance of getting money in hands of the middleclass and less privileged is brought to clear focus by Grunwald's analysis:  "The percentage of the increase in disposable income that went to the top 1 percent of US households fell from 22– 23 percent in 1929 to a low of 8– 9 percent in the 1970s, before rising to a remarkable 73 percent during the two terms of George W. Bush." (Land of Promise) Over the last many years, this imbalance effectively took from the middleclass, enhanced the very top capitalist, and increased personal debt.

As it turned out World War II was the "mother of all economic stimulus." Everybody had a job; everybody sacrificed; the U. S. National Debt went way beyond GDP. The postwar economy was the longest and fastest growth period in history, even while the wealthy and large corporations paid their share, the highest tax rates in U. S. history.

Since the late 70s, reduced taxes, tax credits, government subsidies and corporate welfare has resulted in brazen, untrustworthy tax-collections to build a mountainous national debt. Above the usual  hypocrisy and disingenuousness, there is a galling, egregious rhetoric from those who claim or imply the 16-trillion national debt as Obama's alone. It is a debt most assuredly compounded by the Reagan and Bush eras of negligent, fiscal management; it's debt-causation necessitating an even higher debt (stimulus and tax reliefs to prime the economy); it is the dismantling of government controls by Republicans and Democrats which were capitalist-protection policies put in place by the New Deal. Had the Mormon Republican, Marriner Eccles, lived through the afore mentioned period, could we safely say? "He would have been dumbfound by such government callousness."

Maybe, we are now winding our way around the fiscal irresponsibility and ineptitude to a brighter day for economic recovery. Fareed Zakaria writes, "And yet, when looking out over the next four years — the next presidential term — the IMF (International Monetary Fund) projects that the United States will be the strongest of the world’s rich economies. U.S. growth is forecast to average 3 percent, much stronger than that of Germany or France (1.2 percent) or even Canada (2.3 percent). Increasingly, the evidence suggests that the United States has come out of the financial crisis of 2008 in better shape than its peers — because of the actions of its government."

Marriner Eccles' heritage as a businessman and economist may be forgotten by most but his political-business acumen lives on. Our current-day Keynesian leaders took a page from his playbook, and we have both to thank.

From somewhere in the Heavens, a Mormon Republican may be saying to another Mormon Republican, "How 'bane' thou art!"

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Postscript: David Wessel, author of Red Ink, writes in The Wall Street Journal, CEOs Call for Deficit Action, Oct, 25th 2012: Chief executives of more than 80 big-name U.S. corporations, from Aetna Inc. to Weyerhaeuser Co., are banding together to pressure Congress to reduce the federal deficit with tax-revenue increases as well as spending cuts.

When The Holy Ghost Spoke!

"²Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them." (NIV Acts 2:2-4)

Imagined a similar spirited service 1,900 years later, I don't remember what the preacher said at that service, but Saint John Pentecostal Holiness Church was a rocking place. Hands were waving, feet were dancing, bodies trembling, and alien-voices were thunderously intensifying.

In the Bentonville community, NC, just east of my home church Ebenezer Methodist, about half a mile, adjacent to the Wayne County line, St. John Pentecostal stood. (In fact if the stories are accurate, St. John was an offshoot of Ebenezer Methodist around the late 19th Century or early 20th Century when Pentecostalism was born out of Methodism. Charismatic-other-tongue speakers left Ebenezer to form St. John. In Pentecostalism's history, Reverend Charles Fox Parham was a former Methodist who became an independent Holiness preacher.)

At St. John Mrs. George (Pearl) Lee, its matriarch, had invited my father Cornice to bring his family to this revival one evening in the late 40s. Of course, my dad knew that the services would be quite different from those of our staid Methodist worship, not to mention those of his mother's Disciples of Christ Church or his father's Quaker meetings where the congregants would sit quietly for hours waiting for the Spirit to move. At St. John, the Spirit didn't just move over long stretches of time: it sang, danced, and moaned all the time.

Several Methodist Churches into recent years have retained a very small remnant of other-tongue-speaking. And it was natural that Ebenezer retained a remnant into the 40s as Granny Flowers at times could not contain the Holy Spirit. So charismatic worship, even then, was not totally unfamiliar to me, but at St. John it was emotionally overwhelming for this young child.

That night, Mrs. Pearl and about five or six others tested the very foundation of that solidly constructed wood-frame-church building, and my memory was frozen in the Holy Ghost.

A few years later, 1957-58, the St. John congregation made a decision to build a new, more modern-brick-church structure. A local entrepreneur, William (Bill) G. Flowers, purchased their older, structurally sound church-building and had it moved 3/10 mile back west on his property facing Harper House Road. Bill's dream to turn the church into a commercial feed-mill was on its way to being fulfilled. He knew a local engineer who moved buildings and could make, or engineer, most anything that could be envisioned. William F. (Shorty) Harrell, of our community, lived across the Johnston County line in Wayne County. He was essentially a savant, although he never completed high school or had an official degree of any kind. He was the master of, engineered, a mill complete with all-new corn sheller, hammer mill, mixer, and a large open-top-corn-storage bin. Within a year, Bill's dream came to fruition in the holiness structure. It had a few add-ons, including shelter over the grates where corn or grain was dropped from truck or trailer, for elevation to the corn sheller or hammer mill. The structure of the old church was of impeccable strength, reinforced by Shorty's genius-integrity to make it mill worthy. Shorty's engineering of the wooden constructed open-top-grain bin, its strengthening with twin-steel rods connecting each side, intersecting midway the top, gave proof he knew the calculus: The pressure that would be imposed on the walls when filled to the top.

On completion of the commercial mill, Bill needed, as he would say, "a manager." He came to me knowing of my love for farm life; I was in my third year of diversified farming, livestock and crop productions. "Let me think about it," I said. At twenty-one years of age, I was young, energetic, enthusiastic, somewhat ambitious and physically capable. After significant consideration, I took his offer.

Being Bill's manager was a rewarding experience: working feed-formula ratios, operating the equipment, swiftly spinning a miller's-tie around a bag. Carley Dudley was my main helper and Tommy Rhodes, who trucked, from Norfolk VA, our brand of Wayne Feeds pre-bagged and feed-concentrate products. Bill usually was on standby to help.

Bill and his wife Dinkie's enterprises, which also included farming, did not detract from raising two fine children, Dixie Ruth and a son, Phillip. Phil was 10-years of age and loved to play around the mill when not in school.

One fall day when the corn we purchased had filled the open-top bin to the brim, some of it had to be augered out and loaded on a long transport trailer for market. All the electric motors were humming at full speed, a cacophony of sheller, hammer mill, and augurs churning, moving grains.

Deafeningly the mill made unclear any other sounds. But as I sat at my desk about 30-feet away from the grain bin, I vaguely heard a terrifyingly high-pitched sound coming from above the open-top bin. I raced up the ladder to see what it was. There in the middle of the bin, in a trail of corn kernels vastly cascading to the sinking center point was Phillip. Already halfway up his lanky body, he was stuck, wedged in corn; he had no hope of escape. At the top of my voice, I called to others, about five people in the building, to instantly shut down all switches, I rushed back to the center of the bin, treading the twin-steel rods, to grab Phil's outreached arms, as he was still sinking.

By this time the corn was already on his shoulders. Others raced up the ladder to see, and to surmise what we could do to get him out. Sadly, Shorty Harrell was not there to help us in some genius way. Standing on the steel rods, I dared not relieve my almost-full-strength pull on Phil's arms, he would sink even deeper; he cried, pitifully, "don't pull my arms off."

The only way out was to cut a good-size hole in the side of the wooden bin to relieve the pressure. There had to be as little vibration as possible, so as not to create motions that would sink Phil further. But we didn't have a chain saw at hand; there was only an ax available. As one of the men started slamming away against the bin wall, Phil would sink ever so slightly, kernels were under his chin, and ----- finally, a larger hole released a downpour of grain onto the mill floor that had to be spread across the floor to get even more out. We breathed an exhausting sigh of relief. Once the grain was down to around his knees, we were able to pull him out to safety. 

The Holy Ghost had certainly not left that building, for I knew within that thirty-minutes of frightening apprehension there was for certain an extraordinary Spirit moving within those men.

The masterful spirit lives in men like Harrell and Flowers, who inspired ethics and initiative in a younger generation. Those were men of uncommon skills, remarkable talent. Shorty Harrell, whose raw-engineering genius further endeared him to companies such as Hog Slats, died 5-years ago, and Bill Flowers, who died this past March, left proud legacies to their families. 

A dynamic spirit and initiative lives on in Phillip Flowers, who married my cousin Martha Westbrook. He continues to carry on the Bill Flowers tradition: a most notable entrepreneurship in Greenville NC. Phil's architectural design of buildings, commercial construction, and the Rock Springs Center facility are among his and Martha's enterprises, serving the broader community of Greenville, NC, home of a world-class medical complex and East Carolina University. Phil's community leadership, fostering civic responsibility, combined with his free-market achievements, are a testament to man's most noble undertaking to make a better world and better life for his family and others.

Thanks be to The Great Spirit who gives life! 

216 Responses Replies: Part II

In my "Will God Speak Again?" Reply to 2016, Part I,  I make amend to my friend VE: He corrected me in that he had written, in his opinion, the 2016 movie  was a political "argument, a theory," not a religious "argument, a theory." After re-reading his comments, clearly his basis was political and not religious, even as he described an apologist relationship D'Souza had with Hitchins. VE says, "I do not remember any religious arguments in either the book or the movie. If there were any, they were minor and not germane to the principal argument, at least as I remember." Others, by emails, commenting on 2016 movie expressed a strong religious component, but that may have come from their understanding of D'Souza's works being more in the religious vein. In any event I'll standby the "conspiracy theory," aptly classified as political, even as D'Souza is a Christian apologist. Conflation of politics and religion? Evidently, it's Dinesh D'Souza's stumbling block, put in place by fellow-conservatives, he has to cross before he gains credibility in politics.

Henceforth are questions/comments from my "Republican Card Carrying" friend, EB. I offer the most succinct answers possible, some of which I yield (link) to writers who more eloquently express my view. Some of these may be presidential debatable material:

·         Funny how when terrorist blow up a school bus, pizza parlor, or school, full of women and children, people come out of the woodwork to defend Islam as a religion of peace, or blame others for their acts. I'm not aware of any Christian international Terrorist groups, but I'm certain some in the media can find an excuse to justify the behavior of murderers and terrorists. Answer: Exploiting the Prophet

·         In reference to Zackaria, the so called "conservative". Why do liberals in the national media paint all "Tea Partiers" as rabid anti women, anti gay, anti poor, anti immigrant, racist, etc…? Does that wash? That's just ignorance being paraded as fact. As I understand the Tea Party movement, it's simply a decidedly "anti Federal Government waste" movement. Zacharia doesn't represent my views. Answer: How Fareed Zakaria Became the Most Conservative Liberal Of All Time. (Conservatives have lost their way; the traditional definition not longer applies.) Here Zakaria explains. Zakaria does not ascribe to your description of TP, and I don't think that's altogether how the liberal media portrays it either. It's much more than anti-FG waste. Zakaria's principle thesis: "Anger and nostalgia are at the heart of the Tea Party." I agree, I've seen it demonstrated not just on TV. I think the Tea Party, of which are many good people, have many different objectives, somewhat as Occupy does. I have several friends who are Tea Partiers, at least I hope they're my friends. I just think they are misguided by the crazies, Bachman, Cain, etc. demonstrated throughout the Republican primary tours and debates. (They're not really crazy but play to craziness that undermines the best in man.) Of course they probably think the same of me.

             "Grandma off the cliff" commercial was a response to the lie by Palin and others that grandma may not survive "the death panels." I agree all these are detestable, but even more concerning is the Citizens United decisions that allow 503(c)4 organizations' flood of money to make them possible. The films, and film makers, you refer to I haven't seen and have not plans to see any of them.

The caricatures of both parties are absurd. There are plenty of Republicans, Democrats, & Tea Party members that have reasonable positions. The shame is that our political leaders have to play to the far left or far right, because that's the only thing that gets the media's attention. Then we all have to live with this cartoonish election cycle, made by the huge media who are trying to out-do each other every minute of every day. Answer: To a great extent you're right here. However, you have to be careful not to perpetuate a "false equivalent" because the extremes do not match, the intransigence has no equal cause. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein (Two guys that have followed congress and administrations for thirty to forty years.) write: "Never before have cosponsors of a major bill conspired to kill their own idea, in an almost Alice-in-Wonderland fashion. Why did they do so? Because President Barack Obama was for it, and its passage might gain him political credit."......"Republicans greeted the new president with a unified strategy of opposing, obstructing, discrediting, and nullifying every one of his important initiatives." ......"The second is the fact that, however awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges." (It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism (2012-05-01)) (Of course we knew this already if we were observant; we didn't have to read it out of a book.)

                This is really the crux of the problem. There is a genesis to this problem and of the current-day Republican Party's discordance, explicitly intertwined with the Tea Party in control. It goes back to Lee Atwater of the 1980s and even further. Some of this history, I wrote about in Selling The Soul and Healing American - Part II. It has descended to what Sam Tanehaus in The Death of Conservatism, called a revanchist party. (These are painful realities that must be faced, not in any way to excuse Democrats of misdoings. I take no pleasure whatsoever in its revelation; an eye-opener that will never be understood by many.)

I'm actually in favor of smaller Federal government, less spending on every program, including Department of Defense and all Social Programs. Answer: Yes, we agree because, inevitably, slower growth as measured against GDP, cuts and revenue balance, must be implemented on a timely basis as the economy recovers.

• I'm for closing the borders, and a path to citizenship for currently illegal immigrants. Answer: Immigration reform! Yes, but the only way you can stop illegal immigration (at border) is to stop illegal hiring by having a foolproof social security ID card (other than the green card). That's something needed throughout the US system, including a universal ID for voter registration. Money will be required to overhaul, make fail-safe, this most important universally American system.
• I'm for clean air and water… (my family uses both) (But can you guarantee clean water and clean air without some government control, EPA, to look over safe-fracking, etc.?) but anti government involvement in government subsidies for alternative energies or alternative energy companies. Progress energy pays nearly 50% more per kilowatt hour for excess power generated by private companies/individuals, than they charge, due to Federal mandates for the % of renewable energy requirements. Can't address the extra cost per kh; that's now a Duke Energy question. I'm antigovernment for big oil subsidies, but nothing could be more critically important than stimulus, R&D, for renewable energy. Even John McCain had a sizeable amount in his platform.

·         I'm pro healthcare reform, but anti - "affordable care act", because of the unintended consequences, like the burden it will put on low income families, when their work hours are cut to 30 per week or less. And the hardship placed on the same low income families, and small businesses having to purchase insurance, or be fined every year. (The dream of the insurance industry is to have the government force people to buy insurance) The impact will be far more devastating that the 700,000 bankrupted families annually noted below. (where does that fact come from?) Answer: Reid, T.R. (2009-07-23). UC-The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care (Kindle Locations 425-432). The Penguin Press. Kindle Edition. Excerpt: When I was traveling the world on my quest, I asked the health ministry of each country how many citizens had declared bankruptcy in the past year because of medical bills. Generally, the officials responded to this question with a look of astonishment, as if I had asked how many flying saucers from Mars landed in the ministry’s parking lot last week. How many people go bankrupt because of medical bills? In Britain, zero. In France, zero. In Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland: zero. In the United States, according to a joint study by Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School, the annual figure is around 700,000.

• I'm pro death penalty and anti abortion on demand. (funny how liberals call pro-abortion "choice", so they don't have to think about what it really is.) But your religion says, "Thou shall not kill." Are you taking God's judgment into your own hands? However, you may have an out, for as Karen Armstrong says, "A single text could be interpreted to serve diametrically opposed interests." For example, "At the same time as African Americans drew on the Bible to develop their theology of liberation, the Ku Klux Klan used it to justify their lynching of blacks." (Karen Armstrong. The Bible: A Biography (Kindle Locations 1595-1599). Kindle Edition.)  For me the main thing is: Can you guarantee an innocent person will not be put to death? We know now that many have been released, proved not guilty by DNA.
•             I don't know anyone who's not Prolife. Prochoice is terminology to differentiate, in many situations just nuances.  Many republicans are prochoice, such as Barbara Bush and Mitt Romney. Oops, did he switch back or not?. A true pro-lifer is proven by his/her attention to life as an inalienable right throughout childhood and adult life regardless of where they live in this world.

I'm against gay marriage, not gay people. I'm commanded by my God to love everyone, however I don't have to support everyone's lifestyle to do that. Answer: read 15 Propositions (Hyperlink failed; email attachment herewith.)This might have been Karen Armstrong speaking but it's actually a Methodist Minister.

• I'm against the government paying for contraception, or viagra… I think healthcare, whether government or private insurance, paying for contraception (not Viagra) is a wonderful thing.  Young ladies, whether married or not, who can't afford, can't support the first child or additional children, especially those that are born into poverty need not perpetuate the cycle of degradation, repeating or increasing social ills whereby another child may be incarcerated at an annual cost to your tax dollars of $50,000.
• I'm for fair taxation, which doesn't punish success. A tax code where everyone is treated equally, and everyone contributes. (simple, simple, simple) The notion that you can make opportunity for the middle-class (favorite buzzword of the democrat party) and not create opportunity for higher income people is nonsense. At what economic level does a person graduate from the middle-class working person, to the wealthy totally selfish 1% person who doesn't pay their "fair share"? And do you trust any administration to make that judgement? Probably not! But if you don't understand where we've been in the last four years, that there was a cause, you have fallibly missed the economic history of the last 80 to 90 years. I could give you a lot on this, but suffice it just now to let one Duke History professor speak as in Saturday's N&O.
• I'm anti drug legalization, because I understand and have seen the effects in my own family of what happens to people who use marajuana/drugs during the length of your entire life. I'm really flummoxed on this one. I've heard debate from both side, but it would be really hard for me to go with your Libertarian brethren, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson.
• I'm anti-union, especially public sector unions. The purpose of every business, including the business of unions is the perpetuation of their own organization. Unions are not the advocate of the companies or industries they operate in. Unions are for Unions… see the current Chicago Teacher Strike. I've said that unions, that is of the original variety, have long out-lived their usefulness. On the other hand, workers need to have some say about work conditions, competitive wages for like work, etc. As the free-market moves forward, labor needs to have a voice, a representative by organization, if not unionization. It could be critical to income imbalance, equilibrium of market forces.
• I'm anti-bailout for any company including Banks, auto makers, Airlines, or government agencies like the post office, amtrak, dept. of education, etc… I'm anti on some of this too, but there may be something you don't fully understand here on first two items, that could have had serious consequences economically. (more later)
• I'm anti Federal subsidies for every business, farm, individual. Let's stop paying for continued inefficiency in any segment of the economy. I think I would go along with that for the most part.
• I'm for NASA. YES
• I'm for term limits for every member of congress. No member of Congress should be able to reside in Washington for years and years, building their wealth and influence, and perpetually running for the next election, by promising largesse to every advocacy group they can. Many thing are just not as simple as it may seem: Raising money for election or re-election is a big problem. It takes two years for a congressman to learn the ropes, while raising money for re-election. How about public financing; house-term limits to a single 5-years; senators to 10-year terms; no re-election; no filibusters; no lobbyist job afterwards before 8-years out. Any takers, you think we can get qualified candidates on these preconditions? Possibly!
• I will also add that I'm for senior citizens, as I would like to be one someday. However, I'm not for keeping every promise to the current seniors by Politicians decades ago, and breaking the promise for everyone else in the future. That's in reference to medicare and social security reform. Seniors are largely responsible for the government that we have, (as they are and have always been a huge voting block) and the protectionist position of AARP and other advocacy groups on Federal Programs. I'm for means testing for all federal programs, including social security and medicare. Just like the democrats insist on with taxation. Means testing is good! But under what conditions are you willing to state up front just what you'd be willing to give? As a starting point, I'd venture: Based on my last 5-years income agree to deduct 20% of SS payment, and progressively on higher-income increments, to a point where higher incomes receive no SS payment,  --- if that what's necessary for my children to continue in the system, years to come.         Medicare could work on same basis except that the income baseline would trigger at a higher level and be fully covered by purchase of catastrophic health insurance.

All these issues need more critical thinking by people smarter than me, but it must begin with "you and me" in our communications with our representatives.

Thank you for the opportunity to think about these issues.