Fires Along the Tallgrass

THE PEOPLE'S PETITION

2012-01-31T11:23:00.000-06:00

As of this morning we have twenty-three Lyon Countians circulating the petition to put the “extension decision” on the ballot. We’ve been out and about¸ engaging in a labor of love. Over the past week or so we’ve met a lot of wonderful folks. Like us, they understand that the right to petition our leaders is precious. Our Founding Fathers weren’t given this right. They had to earn in. When they’d earned that right for themselves, they enshrined it for every future American generation. We intend to do our part to honor them and to honor our fellow citizens. We will meet the goal and the issue will then be decided at the ballot box.

We’ve told everyone, whether they are for or against the decision, that we would gladly accept their signatures on the petition. A few have declined. That’s also an American right. But, there’s something we’ve found mystifying. Some folks are being told they shouldn’t sign the petition. That’s unfortunate. All that we want, as petitioners, is to have the issue put to the vote. We want the people to decide. We believe that the collective wisdom of the people is always better than the wisdom of a few. That’s the American way.

There are moments when the notion that people shouldn’t sign this petition troubles us, but then we’re re-invigorated when we meet folks as they gladly sign the petition or seek us out to sign it. We will meet our goal and we will all decide the issue in the voting booths.

No one in Lyon County has anything to fear from us. We’re your fellow citizens. We don’t fear your ability to reason. We don’t fear information flow. We don’t fear the outcome of a vote. We embrace all these things and believe that every citizen of Lyon County should as well.

When the issue is brought before the people there will plenty of time for debate. We expect it will be vigorous.

Right now our focus is on getting the required number of signatures on the petition. That’s a very personal task. Each signature is of great value. It represents one person. As the process unfolds the ones build upon one another until, collectively, they become the voice that says, “We the people!”

Those who favor the extension vote tell us that the extension service is made up of people too. We agree, and the generosity of the people of Lyon County reflects that understanding. Over eighty percent of the allocated dollars from the County to the local extension goes to agent salaries. Over eighty percent! The outcome of any vote won’t change that generous spirit.

But there’s another personal side to this issue. It’s the people of Lyon County. In his January 25^th editorial Chris Walker expressed it beautifully. Tax increases, some large, some small, have placed a heavy burden on all of us. Collectively, they inhibit economic growth. They eat into fixed comes. They take money that could be spent buying or repairing homes. They take money that could be spent at local businesses. Proponents can say that the cost will be negligible, but, as they say in the backwoods, “That dog won’t hunt.” A penny or two here adds up to a significant amount to a small businessperson trying to keep the enterprise afloat. A portion of a mill here or there is often a backbreaker for someone living on minimum wage or a fixed income. What seems a small amount on one side of the equation adds up to a lot to the person on the other.

It’s very personal. I know. My property taxes have doubled in the thirteen years I’ve lived here. The same is most likely true for many of you.

For me and my wife it’s even more personal. We moved her mother to Emporia a few years back. Velma is 92. She’s a widow living on a fixed income. She’s not at all atypical in this county. She’s one of the many voices who want to be heard.

Before many of us were born, Velma spent the early forties working on a B-25 sub-assembly line, soldering the wiring for radio units. Her hand was steady. She took great pride in the quality of her work. She spent the post war years caring for her family, one of whom was developmentally disabled. She never complained. She was just doing what love required of a mother and a citizen.

Last week, as she was signing the petition, her hand trembled. It was no longer as strong and steady as it was in the forties. But Velma was determined to sign the petition.

Velma has earned the right to speak for herself. So have the people of Lyon County. This is what the people’s petition is all about!

SIGN THE PETITION...PLEASE!

2012-01-13T15:01:00.000-06:00

The following post is primarily for Lyon County, Kansas residents. Those outside the county may, however, find the poitical intrigue here in the Heartland fascinating.

On January 5^th, our County Commissioners¸ in a two to one vote, approved a resolution to allow the Lyon County extension service to merge with the Frontier District (Osage and Franklin counties).

In the wake of the vote many Lyon Countians expressed their displeasure. In informal polls conducted by the Gazette and KVOE, the displeasure could be clearly seen. Of the 1,209 citizens who expressed an opinion in either poll, 1,024 (85%) said they disapproved of the measure or believed the matter should be put to the voters. Some might say that informal polls carry no weight, but when one considers how difficult it is to get 85% of any community to agree on anything, I believe the polls carry considerable weight. About the only time a community expresses this much agreement would be about whether or not Mom’s apple pie is the best in the world or whether or not the world is actually round.

I’ve made no secret of what my opinion on this matter is, but this is not, in the strictest sense, an opinion piece. I think it is paramount that we get this issue to the voters. To that end, some of us have been preparing a petition to put it on the ballot. The drafts have been completed and approved by our County Attorney. All that remains in phase one is to circulate the petition to those registered to vote in the County. That process can begin on January 19^th. From that point we will have a sixty day window to get the 1,000 signatures necessary to the County Clerk. I believe we can easily achieve that goal and possibly double that number.

Once phase two begins, the debate and discussion will begin in earnest. Like others who share my view, I intend to give this my very best effort. A couple of days ago I told Steve Sauder when the time came I would be in the same frame of mind Joe Frasier was when he prepared to meet Muhammad Ali in Madison Square Garden. In a pre-fight press conference, Ali taunted Frasier. Frasier responded by telling Ali that in the ring, “I’m gonna’ be dead up in your nose hole.” I intend to fight hard on this issue. I hope and expect others will as well.

You’ll be seeing information coming out as things progress. As soon as we can make arrangements we’d like to have a brief meeting with those who would like to circulate petitions for signature. It’s going to be a labor intensive task, but, like any worthwhile endeavor, the rewards will be considerable.

I’d like to thank those who have already expressed interest in this petition. Thanks to Bob Agler, James Bordonaro, Steve Corbin, Tom Cotte, and Eldon Parkman. Thanks in advance to those who aren’t yet on the volunteer rolls, but will be. Thanks to Tammy Vopat, Marc Goodman, and their staffs for the timely review and input. Thanks to Steve Sauder and Chris Walker for seeing the importance of this issue and putting it before their respective audiences. Special thanks to Steve Corbin, who has been my mentor in this process. And, thanks to the Gazette’s “bloggers.” You guys often get a bad rap, but I believe that you’re an important part of this community. You’ve taken on the unenviable task of holding our leaders’ feet to the fire. You represent the voices of people in this community who have difficulty getting a hearing through more traditional platforms. Most importantly, you say what you say because you, too, care deeply about this community!

I’ve only lived here twelve years, but one of the things that has become clear to me is that many Lyon Countians have given up on our political process. That sense of futility is evident in the number of us who vote for candidates or issues that should be important to all of us. When 20% or less of us vote, it is not a sign of good community health.

Some may be frustrated in this case. But, we need you! Please don’t tune this out. Let’s not make this another one of those times when less than 10% of us finally decide for the entire community.

This issue has the potential to change things for the better. It’s given us a real opportunity to come together. I’ve gotten calls of support from people of both high and humble estate since the Commissioners cast their votes.

So, the hard work begins. Sign a petition. Gather signatures. Be on the lookout for press releases. Call me; I’m listed. Stop by the Town Royal and have a chat with Steve Corbin. Write letters to the editor.

Let’s dig in and give it our very best. Then, when the time for debate comes, let’s fight hard and let’s fight…fair!

THE EMPTY NEST

2012-01-12T16:59:00.002-06:00

The photo above is of Corina Nour, the Moldovan student who lived with us while she completed her Masters' work at Emporia State University.

Nancy and I are now full-time empty nesters. Corina Nour, the young Moldovan woman who came to live with us in 2003, has graduated and moved on to what we hope will be a wonderful life.

In the summer of 2003 Nancy and I were living a very quiet life. We’d just gotten back from a short vacation in Chicago. As soon as we got home, we began poring over the latest issues of the Gazette. We began with the crime blotter, catching up on the nefarious activities we’d missed while we were in Chicago. There was the usual dose of speeders and disobeyers of stop signs and traffic signals. There were more than a few “dogs at large” and note made of “worthless checks.” It felt good to be home.

After a while Nancy relayed some information she’d just read. Glen and Carol Strickland were looking for host families for a couple of international students who needed a home for the upcoming high school year. One of the students was a young girl from Moldova. “Do you think we might be able to host this girl?” she asked. After a bit of gentle persuasion I agreed to make the application.

I didn’t realize it then, but a wonderful story was about to unfold.

We were expecting her to arrive in Emporia in early August. She arrived in New York in fine shape. However, as soon as she got into the terminal the lights went out. That was at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon on August 13^th. They didn’t come back on until August 15^th. It was the great summer blackout of 2003. What a welcome to America! She finally arrived in Wichita a few days after power was restored. She was easy for Nancy and me to spot. She appeared to be the most dazed and confused person in the terminal. After a few introductions we went to get her luggage. About a half-hour later we realized that the airline had lost that. Nancy and I both wondered what she must be thinking. “So this is what America is all about.” I made arrangements with the airline to deliver the bags to Emporia when they were found and we headed home.

As soon as we got home we took her to Wal-Mart to get her toothpaste, toiletries, pajamas and a few other things to see her through till her luggage arrived. I’ll never forget how amazed she was when she surveyed all the toothpaste. I think she was on the verge of tears. She told us she’d never seen anything like that in her life. In Molvoda, getting toothpaste meant one brand.

We got through the tough patch alright. The luggage arrived and Corina started school. She settled right in. One of the things we saw right away was that she was determined to make the most of the opportunity she’d been given. She really understood that America is a meritocracy and that hard work pays off. I never had to bird dog her about homework. She just dug right in. Her grades reflected her intense commitment to excellence.

The year moved so fast. We knew we’d come to love Corina, but we didn’t know how much until it was time to take her back to the airport for her flight home. We cried and clung to her. And she cried and clung to us. She didn’t want to leave. But, unfortunately, sometimes the good things in life do have to end.

Corina got back to Moldova and settled back into her life. She completed her undergraduate work in Romania. We continued to correspond with her. Somewhere in the process I saw an opportunity for her to come back. We offered to underwrite her first year of Masters’ work. It wasn’t long till we were welcoming her back to Emporia.

She settled in once more. As it was with her high school work, she excelled in everything she did. She was awarded a graduate assistantship. She got a part time job at the Granada. We taught her to drive. She got a license and a car. We couldn’t see it clearly then, but these things were all part of the Americanization of Corina.

She graduated just before Christmas with a Master’s in Business. Her G.P.A. was 4.0.

She left for San Francisco a week or so ago. She starts a full-time job with Cisco Systems in mid-January.

So, Nancy and I are empty nesters once more. We miss Corina already, but we also feel very gratified. We’ve been a part of something special. A young woman, from the poorest country in Europe, has blossomed when the door of opportunity was opened. It’s the kind of story, I think, that could only take place in America.

THE RUBIK'S CUBE

2012-01-09T11:09:00.000-06:00

We all have them, those times when we sense a fog hanging over the whole earth. I don’t often have them, but today is one of those days. Not much that I see seems to make sense.

I watched the news this morning. They’ve apparently caught the guy who set all those fires in L.A. I can’t figure out how many loose screws a man must have to hate America or people so much he’d be willing to burn the whole city down.

I turned the channel and saw that the Iranian mullahs are telling us we’d better not send one of our aircraft carriers into the Straits of Hormuz. In North Korea a new boy genius has taken his place at the helm. He’s decided it’s not worth his time to talk to his brothers in sisters in Seoul. I sense that on some future slow news day he’s going to uncork the lunatic plan he’s been hatching while his “dad” was wasting away. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

The Iowa Republican caucuses are, mercifully, over. Are you like me? Did you get the sense we were watching a pack of overweight jockeys beating the devil out of lame horses up there? The Democrats can hardly contain their glee at the prospects for them just a few months from now. I think we’re gonna’ see “hope and change” updated and recycled, which means America will be faced with a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. “I don’t suppose there’ll be a tree left standing, for ever so far around, by the time we’re finished.”

It’s a new year, which means folks are making resolutions. Lady Gaga’s made hers. “Never be afraid to be kicked in the teeth. Let the blood and bruises define your legacy.” It just goes to show you how far a person can go in life after some time in a convent and New York University’s School of the Arts.

Matt Drudge rang in the New Year bragging. Apparently his site was visited over 10 billion times in 2011. No wonder. The uplifting headlines say it all. “Man disguised in bandages robs pharmacy.” “Armed clashes erupt in central Tripoli.” “Americans buy record number of guns going in to New Year.” “Bachmann top vote getter in Iowa coffee bean caucus.” I guess it’s all the news that’s fit, or unfit, to compile nowadays.

Right around Christmas ten year old Nicholas Taylor of Smyrna, Tennessee ran afoul of school officials. His crime? He was eating a piece of pizza in the school cafeteria. After taking a couple of bites another student suggested that the piece of pizza looked a bit like a gun. Nicholas then playfully “brandished” the pizza. School officials consigned Nicholas to a “silent table” like a hockey goon being banished to the penalty box. He was also required to meet with a school resource officer to learn about gun safety. One hates to consider what continued offenses might bring. The Ritalin room, perhaps? Somewhere in America a libertarian commented he’d be willing to bet if Nicholas had bitten the pizza into the shape of a hammer and sickle school officials would have given him a full scholarship to Harvard. As an aside, have you ever heard of a bank robber accosting a teller with? “Gimmee the money or I’ll drill you full of pepperoni and capers.” Me, neither.

Here at home the movers and shakers are trying to find ways to shake what little money we have left in our pockets out of us. Some of them are dreaming of bigger ball fields. Some are skulking around, trying to get unlimited taxing authority. Rumor has it that local rock salesmen are getting excited again. I hope when they’re done they leave us a buck or two for beer money.

I’m having a hard time trying to make things add up. I’m told the world is round. I’m not so sure. Today it looks a lot more like a Rubik’s cube with none of the colors matching up. Reds are colliding with yellows and blues are exploding against the greens. And, there are no nine year old prodigies or political messiahs waiting in the wings that can twist it all back together or legislate the problems away.

I wonder if all this false sense of hope has something to do with the nature and shape of competing illusions interacting on a cosmic scale. In my younger days it was Bobby McNamara’s jut-jaw on one hand and Fidel Castro’s beard on the other. These days we have Barrack Obama’s toothy smile on one side of the divide and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s icy stare on the other.

I survey the madness and it confirms to me the decision I made to walk toward heaven those many years ago.

THE COME TO JESUS MEETING

2012-01-08T07:23:00.001-06:00

Nancy and I had a brief conversation this morning. She likes the stream of thought I'm in right now. Hence, I've decided to post more frequently to my blog and Facebook. I'm not too worried about how much of an audience I get. It's more important for me to just get my thoughts out there. As we talked this morning we both agreed that we seem to do our best stuff when we labor in obscurity.

With that in mind, my latest follows. It's titled "THE COME TO JESUS MEETING." I hope it strikes a chord or two.

There’s a lot of talk nowadays about religion invading the public sphere, most of it negative. Some of it’s justified. Some of it isn’t. One thing you don’t hear a lot of is the spillover from the public square to the realm of religion. It’s interesting, really, and it’s rarely noticed. Modern businessmen, politicians, economists, environmentalists¸ and pundits sound eerily similar to the Calvinists of 16th century Europe. And, listening to 21^st century politicians gives one the sense he or she is sitting in a pew or a New England meadow while Jonathan Edwards preaches his “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.”

I first encountered this phenomenon in the corporate world. I’d been assigned to duties at FedEx’s corporate headquarters. Working in a corporate environment was interesting enough by itself. When religion got mixed in it became absolutely fascinating.

The centerpiece of corporate labor is the “meeting,” with e-mail reading coming in a close second. It was upon getting wind of one of those meetings that I got my baptism (note the religious language) into the ways of the corporate environment.

One of my peers came by my office at about 8:30. She peeked in and said, “Well, I’m off to a come to Jesus meeting. We’re gonna’ get that Gateway project hammered out if it’s the last thing we do.” My curiosity was immediately aroused. “Is logistics invited to this meeting?”

“I’m afraid not. It’s just sales and finance.”

“You don’t suppose I could crash it, do you? I’d really like to see what Jesus has to say about the Gateway project.”

I got a look of cool disdain in response and off she went.

I never did find out what Jesus said at that meeting, but I’ve occasionally given thought to what he might have said had he been there. Calvin Coolidge once said that the business of America is business. And, of course the heart of business is profits. I can almost see’ Jesus’ PowerPoint presentation as I write. I can see barns, followed by bigger barns, and bigger barns yet. The trend lines are quite impressive. They look like hockey sticks, starting on the low scale in year one and rocketing into the stratosphere as the years pass. Business couldn’t be better. It’s time to “eat, drink, and be merry.” Then Jesus abruptly shifts gears. “You fools!” His eyes are piercing, burning their way right into souls. “This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”

I think there are a lot of times when business folk try to use Jesus as some sort of clever business tool to gin up the profits or “evangelize” customers. It’s almost impossible for them to imagine a Jesus who might say, “Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.” If they only knew, I don’t think they’d be nearly as preoccupied with squeezing Jesus into their business model. They’d be pleading for mercy instead of poring over spreadsheets.

The business community is often shameless in the way it tries to co-opt Jesus to further corporate ends. Politicians, however, are beyond being shameless. They seem to be perpetually in campaign mode. Their stump speeches are full of religious language – “We’ve got to get the ‘word’ out.” “The oceans will recede.” “We’re on a great crusade to reclaim America.”

We’ve heard it all so often it’s become like white noise. We’d like to believe them, but we know we can’t. We know it’s hypocrisy. We see them going in poor and coming out rich. We see it and we know. They think we’re living under a veil of deception¸ but we’re not nearly as dumb as they think we are.

No, as much as politicians love to use the language of Holy Writ, they really wouldn’t want Jesus to get into the middle of their stump speeches, their sumptuous feasts with the lobbyists, or the scheming done in executive session. They’d be squirming from the moment the first word was uttered. “Woe to you, because you love the most important seats and greetings in the marketplaces.” “Woe be to you because load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.” “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known.” “What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear of the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.”

Do I think these 800 words will change much? I doubt it. Once religion gets co-opted and perverted it becomes a constant matter of trying to pull camels through the eyes of needles.

CHRISTMASTIME REFLECTIONS

2011-12-29T18:21:00.000-06:00

It’s 4:00 A.M., December 22^nd. My post-Christmas reflections have begun early this year.

The Christmas season holds a special place in my heart. It’s the time of the year when my long journey from atheism to Christianity began. The 1965 Christmas I experienced was anything but traditional. There were no snow covered Thomas Kinkade cottages dotting the landscape. I was in Vietnam, having been assigned as a cryptographer matrixed to 7^th Air Force.

It wasn’t a particularly dangerous assignment, as wars go. I did my job and dodged the occasional mortar rounds or 122 millimeter rockets the V.C. lobbed our way. Most of the men I knew were “believers.” I practiced my atheism vigorously. I would occasionally debate them. They usually asked me how I couldn’t believe in the face of the world’s natural beauty – “The blue sky, the fluffy clouds, and the obvious design of it all.” I would ask two questions in response. “Haven’t you noticed all these mangled babies and stinking corpses around here?” “How could you possibly believe in God in the face of that?” That was as far as the debates ever went.

My duty station wasn’t far from the base mortuary. I had to pass it every time I went to work. When I first arrived in Vietnam it wasn’t particularly busy, but after I’d been there a few months it was bristling with activity every time I passed by. As I did, I was filled with a mix of emotions – anger, curiosity, revulsion.

I wasn’t involved directly in the killing and dying. I should have been content with that. But, I began to feel that if everyone else was killing people, why shouldn’t I. After all, Dostoevsky had said “If there is no God, everything is permitted.”

One of the occasional duties I had was incinerating classified trash. It was on one of those trips to the incinerator that I put Dostoevsky to the test. I walked from the duty section, bags of classified trash and an M-16 in tow. I got to the burn area, locked the gate, and proceeded to burn the trash. As soon as I did I noticed something in a clearing about fifty or sixty yards from me. It was an old Vietnamese man relieving himself. He looked world-worn. I began to make assumptions for him. “Life really isn’t worth living.” “Living is too difficult.” “I wish someone would end this misery for me.” I picked up the M16. I disengaged the safety and took aim. My heart was racing. Then, before I could squeeze the trigger I heard a voice. “The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” I stopped and tried to re-compose myself and heard the words again. “The quality of mercy is not strained.” They were Portia’s beautiful words to Shylock from Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice.” I re-engaged the safety, dropped the weapon and began to sob uncontrollably.

In the days after I wondered whether the words I heard were the product of my imagination or if they came from somewhere or someone else. And, why those words? Was someone trying to tell me that there was truly a cosmic moral compass that must guide our actions? Was someone trying to tell me that he, or she, cared about that old man….and me?

I wrestled with those thoughts for months. My internal world was shaken to its core. I’d spent years building what I thought were walls of safety around myself. Now, slowly but surely, grace was breaking them down.

In due time I surrendered to the grace; I converted to Christianity. That was nearly 50 years ago. The experiences of those days shaped who I am today. Nothing can take that from me.

When Nancy got home from Tonganoxie last night we spent the evening talking about the current Christmas season. We came to the conclusion that, somehow, in the tangle of our culture, modern Christianity has lost its way. We spend an inordinate amount of our time trying to compel modern culture to bend to our wishes and wind up in the end being bent into the shape of the culture around us. We fight about nativity scenes or whether it should be the Christmas program or the seasonal celebration. We jockey for political control, mistakenly believing that if we control policy we can change the human heart.

As I think about it I find myself preferring the Christmastime of Vietnam to what I see today. The war that raged within me then is over. There’s no more need for fighting meaningless battles. Grace has won. As Shakespeare so ably said, “But mercy is above this sceptered sway. It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. It is an attribute to God himself.”

THE CHRISTMAS GIFT

2011-12-15T15:48:00.000-06:00

The day didn’t start with a sense of foreboding, but it got that way in a hurry. I’ve never ventured out on Black Friday, but I decided, against the prompting of my inner voice, to get out and about to see what all the fuss was about. I was holding my own, wandering aimlessly from store to store at the Legends Shopping Center. Then I made my big mistake. I walked into the Gap. The place was mobbed with young people. They appeared to be competing furiously for marked-down jeans and hoodies. It was serious business. I tried to stay out of the line of fire, but the crowd was just too much. As I stood, dazed and confused, in the aisle near the sweaters, I heard a young, gruff voice directly behind me. “Get out of the way, you old buzzard.” My first reaction was to pretend I wasn’t the roadblock. But, I knew better. The bald spot on the back of my head was a dead giveaway. I thought about protesting, but decided the best course of action was to comply with the young man’s request. I stepped aside. Discretion, they say, is the better part of valor.

The rest of the day was uneventful. I shared a quiet dinner with Nancy and Corina at the Al Dente Café and quiet conversation at our River Market loft. I went to bed about ten, with my ego a bit bloodied, but still somewhat intact. Then, at about 2:00 A.M., I felt a wrenching pain in the middle of my chest. I got up and wobbled my way to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror and felt a sense of panic grip me. Three years earlier I’d gone through double bypass surgery. I wondered to myself whether or not this was going to be the big one.

We got to the emergency room at K.U. Med Center at about 2:15. It didn’t take long at all to get me wired up to EKG’s, IV’s, and other monitoring devices. Nurses swirled around me, pumping me full of Nitro-glycerin, and aspirin. By the third tablet of nitro the pain was dissipating. I started to feel a bit giddy. I told one of the nurses if they didn’t stop poking me I was going to sneeze and blow the place up. Then the doctors started marching in, like Laurel and Hardy’s wooden soldiers. There was Doctor Singh, from India. He was followed by a young doctor who appeared to be six or seven years younger than Doogie Howser.

By 3:00 A.M. the medical staff decided to admit me for further tests. I didn’t like the idea, but knew that settling in to the routine was the best course of action.

I was taken to my room by a man named Chris. I found out that he had retired from the fire department and that he’d lost his wife a few years back. He said he still felt occasional pangs of loneliness when he thought about her. Serving others in his current capacity seemed to rub healing salve into those wounds.

Not long after I got to my room the day shift nurse introduced herself. Her name was Nina. She had an interesting accent. I asked where she was from. “Togo,” she responded proudly. She was followed by another woman whose accent was slightly different than Nina’s. “Where are you from?” I asked her as she read my vital signs. “Ethiopia,” she responded gently.

“What’s your name?”

“It’s Jerusalem.”

“That’s a beautiful name. Have you ever been there?”

She smiled. “I’ve never been, but I am going to the New Jerusalem someday.”

I smiled back. “Me too. I’m sure I’ll see you there.”

In the two days that followed I felt increasingly comforted. Everyone was so kind and so professional, from the doctors to the nurses to the technicians to the housekeeping and dietary staff. When all the tests were done I was told that my heart was fine and that the episode may have been esophageal reflux.

I’m back home in Emporia and I feel good, better than an old buzzard like me should. I feel frisky enough that I’m tempted to back to the Legends and find that young guy to let him know that a year from now his gut will be so big he won’t be able to wear that sweater he coveted.

But why bother? I came home with something far more important. My prognosis for this life and the next is really good. My faith and experience tell me this is so. I feel a renewed sense of connection to the long ago events that took place in a stable. It’s a great gift to have, particularly at this special time of the year.

A PANDER FREE ZONE

2011-12-01T17:01:00.001-06:00

I walked downtown on Veteran’s Day to watch the annual parade. As I did I gave fleeting thought to a personal anniversary. Fifty years earlier I had enlisted in the Air Force. Four years later I was on a Continental Airlines 707 making its approach into Saigon. One of the enduring memories of that day was listening to Bing Crosby on the P.A. system – “I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces.” I thought of home and family. I reminisced about playing stickball on Chatham Street. I thought about why I’d volunteered to go to Vietnam. About the only reason that came to mind was curiosity. I’d seen a photograph of a Montagnard tribesman several months earlier and thought it would be interesting to meet one of them. I knew next to nothing about geopolitics or the Domino Theory. Actually, things back home seemed quite safe and secure. Massachusetts wasn’t at war with New York, unless you count the Red Sox versus the Yankees. And, if that were true it seemed to me a very sane way to conduct a war. Two teams, representing their communities. Fans by the thousands paying to see the war unfold. A scoreboard. A final score. A winner, a loser, and bragging rights to be claimed. There would be very few injuries other than the occasional sprained ankle or torn ACL. There would be no body counts.

By the time I got to Fourth and Commercial, the parade was starting, with the color guard leading the way. As it has been since I’ve lived here it appeared to be the same five men as always marching five abreast. I’ve never met them, but I feel I know them. They were a year older and it showed. The limps were a bit more pronounced than they were last year. The spit and polish of short order drill seemed a distant memory. Their eyes revealed a mixture of the pain of sacrifice and loss along with the pride of having served and done their duty. Their faces were a bit more wrinkled and worn. They’re proud men and Emporia is proud to honor them every year.

That would have been enough for me. The marching bands, the cub scouts, boy scouts, girl scouts, the civic organizations, the motorcycles were fine. But for the life of me I don’t understand why politicians had to get into the middle of the festivities and muck things up. Can’t they just leave us alone to honor those who served? Can’t they just stand on the sidewalks with the rest of us and wave the flag? I’m thinking it might just be time for a city ordinance proclaiming all Veterans’ Day festivities to be pander free zones. If it were up to me I’d make it unlawful for politicians to sit in the back seat of cars and wave to the crowds on Veterans’ Day. I’d make it illegal for them to speechify. The service and sacrifice of our veterans speaks far more eloquently than the often empty words of politicians. The penalty for breaking the law would be a six month replacement tour of duty in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Congo, or wherever else our troops will be sent next. The law-breaking politicians would go. Worthy veterans would get to come home for some much needed rest and recuperation.

If there are any politicians reading this essay they’re probably thinking to themselves “Do you really expect me to give up an opportunity to politick or make a speech?”

Here’s what I expect, and I don’t think alone in my thinking. Go back to Washington or Topeka and start shouting from the housetops, “We can no longer allow a system where our men and women serve tour after tour after endless tour in harm’s way.” How can you possibly think that such is system is fair or just? The only answer I can come up with is that you’re totally detached from reality. The numbers bear me out. Only about 20% of our current legislators have ever served in the military. Less than 6% of those in the executive branch have ever served. It’s no wonder we get the endless deployments.

I capped the day off at the U.S.O. concert. I was especially moved by the boy scouts and girl scouts. My eyes were drawn to a young scout who was fidgeting a bit. I saw that he really wanted to get his three finger salute right. There was no doubt that he had the makings of a good soldier. In my mind’s eye I flashed into the future, wondering how many deployments this kid might have to someday endure. A lot, I’m afraid, unless our politicians leave the parades and decide to really fix the problem.

BLACK MARKET CHEESEBURGERS

2011-11-17T15:00:00.002-06:00

Nancy and I really enjoyed Ken Burns’ most recent documentary, “Prohibition.” Like anything Burns does, the quality of the work was outstanding.

Thanks to the historical record we know that the 18^th amendment was an unmitigated disaster. From the time it was ratified in 1919, America was treated to the daily body counts, huge supplies of bathtub gin, the ever-changing speakeasy passwords (Knock three times…”Tell ‘em Louie sent you.”), and Warren Harding’s “whiskey cabinet.” The booze never stopped flowing, thanks to the birth of a huge criminal enterprise that supplied Americans with what they wanted. For every hatchet wielded by a Carry Nation acolyte there was a tommy gun placed in the hands of the underlings of Al Capone or Bugs Moran. While the Capone and Moran gangs were busy trying to kill one another off, thousands of Americans (some estimates are as high as 10,000) died from ingesting denatured alcohol or other concoctions supplied by eager bootleggers.

The ecclesiastical motivation, for the most part, was noble. By the turn of the twentieth century, alcoholism was becoming a major problem. America’s church leaders were increasingly put in the unenviable position of having to piece families back together who had been splintered by booze. A significant number of fathers who should have been providing food for their wives and children spent entire paychecks at saloons. It was a social problem that seemed to be begging for a sweeping solution.

One of the things that did surprise us was the extent to which Progressives and Feminists of the period got involved, particularly their partnership with what was basically a para-church movement. The Progressive interest centered in part around their goals for enacting a national income tax and in part to improve social conditions. The primary Feminist motivation was women’s suffrage.

It was a highly successful trinity, with each interest group getting what it wanted. The sixteenth amendment¸ which gave the federal government the power to tax incomes, was enacted in 1913. The eighteenth amendment, prohibiting the sale and distribution of alcohol, was enacted in 1919. And, the twentieth amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was enacted in 1920.

The three amendments were a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when strange bedfellows form alliances.

The least satisfactory of the three solutions was, clearly, the eighteenth amendment. Its supporters didn’t seem to understand they had outlawed something that people had been using since the dawn of recorded history. They didn’t understand that enacting laws to solve a problem that less than 10% of the people had was bad legislative policy. They didn’t give much thought to the idea of prohibition was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, that telling Americans they couldn’t do something was the surest way to get them to do it. While they were, no doubt, well intentioned, church leaders also failed to consider the possibility that their founder, Jesus, had he been born in America around 1880, might well have been arrested and incarcerated for having turned water into wine at a wedding feast. Worst of all, they never dreamed that all their do-gooding would give birth to one of the largest criminal enterprises in human history. About the only criminal enterprise larger, as Mark Twain’s literary creation, Pudd’nhead Wilson, observed in 1897, was the U.S. Congress. He put it quite eloquently – “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”

One of the enduring lessons of Prohibition is that the road to perdition is sometimes paved with the very best of intentions. Burns seemed to think that the willy-nilly use of constitutional amendments to solve social problems has passed. I’d like to think he’s right, but I think he’s a bit optimistic. Do-gooders, particularly today’s Progressives, find it almost impossible to resist the urge to fix the overwhelming majority of us who aren’t nearly as noble as them. These days, allied with state and local government, Progressives have even taken on Happy Meals, soda pop, pizza, chicken nuggets, and just about anything else that makes living around them tolerable. If they had their way we’d all be spending our days eating nothing but carrots. They just can’t leave well enough alone. If the average American is anything like me, being around a Progressive brings on an instant craving for greasy food.

Why, given the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if a generation or so from now one of Ken Burns’ grandchildren produces a documentary on black market cheeseburgers. I can almost see the footage as I write. “Pssst…Yeah, you buddy….Over here in the alley…I got ‘em loaded down with pickles, grilled onions, mustard, ketchup, and thousands of calories. Just give me ten bucks and this baby will be yours to devour.”

COMPASSION RUN AMOK

2011-11-03T13:00:00.000-05:00

The Gipper and the Iron Lady are safe for now. My sincere thanks to Bob Grover for his kindness and compassion. It must come naturally to Progressives.

The implications of the so-called science are impressive. Progressives are compassionate and Conservatives are heartless brutes.

It’s time to mount some so called science in my defense. It is true that Progressives are people of the left and it’s also true that the Latin word for left is sinistro, which in turn is the origin for the English word sinister. There you have it. The inference couldn’t be clearer.

I suppose I could also point out, ad infinitum, that for every Tom Delay there’s a William Jefferson with a freezer full of money or that for every Newt Gingrich there’s a Nancy Pelosi. But that would be pointless, a bit like saying “Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands.”

My wife recently heard something on NPR. It was an investigative piece about the systemic abuse of Native Americans by the Federal government and the South Dakota division of social and rehabilitation services. Hundreds of Native American children are being taken from their loved ones and placed in white foster homes. The state agency claims it’s about compassion. In reality it’s all about money. The overwhelming majority of the children come from loving families. They’re poor, but they are loved. But that doesn’t seem to matter. The agency gets $17,000 from the Feds for each child placed. In the past year the individual bounties have added up to millions.

I listened to the story this morning. By the time it was done I was blubbering like a child. Then the anger welled up. The South Dakota social welfare system, in the name of Progressive compassion, has uprooted children from loving homes for money. It’s compassion run amok.

It makes my blood boil to hear Progressives skillfully manipulate public opinion by telling America that anyone who has the temerity to question the root motives and the lavish spending is “hard, ruthless, and unfeeling toward others.”

A couple of weeks ago my brother’s wife sent us several photos of a recent family gathering. On the last page of the album there was a 1948 picture of my brother, sister and me that was taken while we were living at Prendergast Preventorium, a state funded facility in Mattapan. Friends who’ve seen it tell me I didn’t look very happy. I tell them I wasn’t, thanks to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Progressive politics.

My brother, sister, and I grew up inner city poor. Our father was a stereotypical Irish alcoholic. Our mother was an uneducated (she’d only completed third grade) immigrant from Newfoundland. When our father died from complications of tuberculosis and alcohol, our mother had a nervous breakdown. My brother, sister, and I were then defined as “wards of the state” and shipped to Prendergast by the Commonwealth. While they were tinkering with us, our mother was institutionalized, pumped full of drugs and given shock treatments for a couple of years. It was the very best Progressive care Massachusetts could buy. She somehow survived. When she left the hospital she weighed 80 pounds. She was neurotic for the rest of her life.

I have a photo taken the day our mother left the hospital. I keep it as a reminder of the damage compassion run amok can inflict.

My mother fought desperately to escape the clutches of the state sponsored compassion. In the end it was her love for us, and not institutional compassion that saved her, and us.

My mother and I lived in a government housing project for several years after that. She would occasionally take me down to the welfare office for case review or a handout. I remember once hearing a couple of welfare workers whispering to one another. “Who’s that kid?” “That’s the Dillon kid. His dad died an alcoholic and his mother’s an uneducated dolt…Poor kid… We’re gonna’ need to take care of him for the rest of his life.” When I got old enough to legally work I tried to get a summer job cleaning up the housing project. I was told I didn’t qualify. The jobs were earmarked for college interns who needed to learn the ins and outs of poverty so they could later become professional caretakers of the indigent.

It was compassion run amok.

Thankfully, the military became my escape route. In 1965 I learned all about guns and butter. Thousands of us, many who had migrated from housing projects, got the guns. Progressives in ivory towers and universities got the butter in the form of grants to study poverty. It’s a fairly standard Progressive career path.

So, here’s my bottom line. I think Progressives would be better served to examine the scars they leave in their wake instead of constantly reminding the rest of us how compassionate they are.

CONSERVAPHOBIA

2011-10-26T20:51:00.001-05:00

Until recently I didn’t think Conservaphobia was a real phenomenon. But, after reading a Friday Gazette op-ed, I’m flummoxed. Now I don’t know whether to repent or go into hiding.

I’m a conservative. For the sake of political correctness and personal safety I should be saying that in hushed tones, but I just can’t help myself. I’ve been a conservative since the days of Jimmy Carter and I intend to be planted in the ground someday as a conservative.

Far be it from me to critique the work of experts. They apparently know more about a guy like me than I know about myself. If some academic expert, with impeccable credentials, says that I’m a mass of “fear, intolerance of ambiguity, need for certainty or structure in life, or overreaction to threats” who am I to criticize?

Some experts think that being conservative is dangerous. In one paragraph we’re just garden variety conservatives. In the next we’ve become “right wing authoritarians,” or RWA’s. They’ve even developed RWA scales so they can pigeon hole us.

I can hardly wait for the op-ed about RWA leaders. I’m guessing they’re going to exhume Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The psycho-babble will be fascinating.

It might be time to make Emporia a model for more sweeping solutions to its conservative problem. We could start with pilot programs. We could allocate space in one of our empty storefronts for a twelve step program to help desperate conservatives shake the oppressive shackles of their political philosophy. I might attend, more than likely under compulsion. I can see myself sheepishly breaking the ice: “Hi, I’m Phil and I’m a conservative.” I can almost hear the gasps from the other miscreants assembled as they respond in unison, “Hi, Phil.”

Twelve step programs might be a bit too gentle to solve the problem. If they fail, as many will (we conservatives are a highly resistant lot), escalation would be in order. We could have latter day Robspierres roaming the streets to ferret out offenders. All of Emporia would be a conservative free zone¸ protected by Committees for Public Safety. Anyone caught skulking around with a copy of “God and Man at Yale” or C.S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man” would be dragged, kicking and screaming, to an interrogation room. There¸ skilled interrogators with names like Lakshmi, Sonari, or Kai, would ask the important questions in gentle, new age tones. “Have you had any conservative thoughts recently?” “What do you know about the work of Edmund Burke?” “Have you ever subscribed to the political philosophy of Ronald Reagan?” “Are there any other conservatives lurking around in your neighborhood?” The interrogations would always end with this reminder – “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.” (see “1984,” Book 1, Chapter 2)

The interrogations won’t be enough to cause the hard core conservatives to recant. In those cases, lobotomies would become the preferred option. The Committee for Public Safety could hire Nurse Ratched to oversee the operation.

When all is said and done I think that a lot of detractors possess some of the same personality traits they accuse conservatives of holding exclusively. I’ve met more than a few Progressives in my lifetime who “consider themselves more upstanding and moral than others.” I’ve even met some who “hold numerous hypocrisies and double standards.” But I’m not ready to declare that there’s a malady called Progressive Personality Disorder. If they want to be better than everyone else, I say let ém.

If the truth be known, most conservatives believe in a “transcendent order” and have an abiding “affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.” (“The Conservative Mind, From Burke to Eliot” – page 8).

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. I’ll close with a couple of gentle reminders, one from the poetry of Robert Burns and one paraphrasing Holy Writ.

In his “To a Louse,” Burns wrote about noticing a woman of high estate sitting in front of him in church. He saw that she had all the trappings of class and distinction. She was dressed to the nines. What she couldn’t see was what Burns could - a louse crawling across her hat. The poem ends with the following observation:

“And would some Power the small gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!”

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminded his listeners they would do well to remove the logs in their own eyes before they tried to remove the specks in their brothers.’ It was good advice 2,000 years ago. It’s good advice today.

SMOKIN' IN THE BOYS ROOM

2011-10-20T15:47:00.000-05:00

For the past couple of months city and county politics have reminded me of my high school days, especially getting caught smoking in the boys’ room.

I should’ve never started smoking, but I was young and I wanted to be one of the boys. I knew what the rules were. I knew there were bathroom monitors roaming around, but I was willing to take the chance. For me, the opportunity came between Latin II and Physical Education. As soon as Mr. Landrigan dismissed us with one last reminder we’d better bone up on our ablative absolutes I was gone, hoping I’d be able to find a stall to satisfy my nicotine fit in secrecy. I usually got away with my misdeeds¸ but the bathroom monitors occasionally caught me and about six or seven others in the act. The door would swing open and we’d hear, “Awright, who’s smokin’ in here?” I think they took great delight in what came next –lit cigarette butts hissing as they hit the water, followed by the sound of flushing.

I’m not sure how many bathroom monitors we have here in Emporia, but whatever the number is, I don’t think there are enough.

I don’t attend city, county, or school board meetings as often as I should, but when I do I get the nagging sense that our esteemed leaders have spent some of their time puffing away together somewhere back in the goodoleboy’s room. It’s not that I’ve ever been back in the goodoleboy’s room that makes me wonder; it’s just that there’s something in the air. There are times I want to whisper to folks around me, “Do you smell cigar smoke creeping out from under a back room door?”

Some of my friends think I’m a bit too eastern for these parts. This is especially true when I ask them whether or not they’re a bit curious about political doings here. They tell me that, unlike easterners, Midwesterners trust one another and that business in Emporia and Lyon County takes place on a handshake basis. Now there’s nothing wrong with handshakes. I like them. And, as far as trust goes, I’m actually a very trusting guy. I trust my wife, my kids, and my friends. I trust my neighbors and their kids. I trust Jack and Ranger, my dogs. They’ve never tried to bite me. But I do admit to feeling queasy being around politicians who try to pick my pocket when my attention is focused elsewhere.

At some of the recent meetings I got that feeling. When I hear politicians saying something like “We can move money from this fund to that fund,” my antenna goes up. When the gang at the county tells us we need a sales tax to give us property tax relief and we still wind up with higher property taxes I want to scream, “If you’re gonna’ mug me, please slap me only once.” When I get a copy of a budget and it’s just a page or two shorter than “War and Peace” I begin to wonder what genius adorned with a green eyeshade authored this minefield. My suspicions get aroused and I begin to hope the Gazette’s ace reporter or Jeff O’Dell has a bit of the muckraker in their blood.

But, maybe my friends are right. I just need to be more trusting. Our local politics is probably as honest as a barracks poker game. And, besides, if there is political double-talk and patronage here it’s as American as apple pie.

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of the “We’re going into executive session” and it’s got my wheels turning. What’s up with that? Are we dealing with bruised egos who are feeling compelled to let us know how important they are? Are they trying to tell us, “We’re dealing with stuff so sensitive we have to communicate with each other by way of Enigma machines” or that if any Emporian ever found out what was going on it would trigger Armageddon?

A couple of weeks ago the city commissioners went into executive session from 9:00 A.M. till 11:00. At 11:00 they sat down for a few minutes and promptly went into executive session again. Our commissioners spent about as much time in secret as Ike and his team did planning the Normandy invasion.

I’m a trusting soul. I really am. But I’m curious. What on earth are they hatching back there? Is someone smoking in the goodoleboys’ room? I’ve heard that where there’s smoke there’s usually a cigar.

Maybe it would be good if our leaders knew we’re watching them. Who knows? One of these days the door may open wide and they’ll hear, “Awright, who’s smokin’ in here?” If the next sounds we hear are hissing and flushing we’ll know our curiosity was justified.

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, BREAK IT!

2011-10-07T16:35:00.000-05:00

Some historians have credited Herbert Hoover with the following political beatitude – “Blessed are the young¸ because they will inherit the national debt.” Hoover may or may not have said it, but I guess that’s not particularly relevant. Hoover has also been credited with doing nothing once the stock market crashed in 1929, but that may not be entirely true either. When the stock market crashed he blamed it on the Coolidge administration’s laissez faire, pro- business policy. By the time he left office the Hoover administration had passed the highest income tax increase in American history, doubled the estate tax, and secured passage of the Smoot-Harley tariff of 1930, which precipitated a worldwide trade war. In the aftermath of the speculative bubble that had caused the market to crash unemployment had gotten as high as 9%. By 1930 unemployment had been reduced to a little bit over 6%. By 1931, thanks to Smoot-Harley, unemployment reached 11%. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 the unemployment rate had skyrocketed to 23.6%!

Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way, but I don’t think Herbert Hoover did “nothing.” He did a lot and not much of it was good. Coolidge, the “Old Stone Face,” may have gotten it right. He had on occasion referred to Hoover as “Wonder Boy.” He was also reluctant to support Hoover’s presidential bid in 1928 and had once remarked, “For six years that man has given me unsolicited advice—all of it bad.”

I started this essay writing about debt so I guess I’d better get back to it. It’s interesting. Just about everyone in the country seems to agree that we have a national debt problem. Economists are telling government officials we have a crisis on our hands. Strangely, though, the message of debt reduction doesn’t seem to have a lot of appeal in some circles.

In a recent essay published by Time Magazine, Brad Tuttle opined, “While it is prudent for the individual to save more and scale back on consumption, the consensus is that, collectively, we need to spend to get the economy humming along once more. If the masses were to exhibit boring, responsible, debt-averse consumer behavior for a sustained period of time, that would be a recipe for continued economic strife.”

I’m not sure who is responsible for this consensus. My guess it’s a brigade of Washington think tankers. The average American isn’t that dumb. You know eventually the politicians are going to get a hold of this and, when they do, they’re gonna’ have a field day.

It gets even worse. It’s one thing for the Obama administration to blame the Bush administration for our current predicament. That may or may not be true. But it’s another thing altogether to blame you and me, and that’s what’s happening. The argument, so it goes, is that, since consumer spending represents 70% of our economic activity, consumers who are scaling back on big ticket purchases and reducing debt load are “seriously hampering the economy’s recovery.”

Well, there you have it. It’s all our fault.

Why is it that bad ideas seem to get such traction? I find it mystifying. It seems, for example, that every time we have a national disaster, a tornado, a hurricane like Katrina or Irene, a flood, or a blizzard, the airwaves begin buzzing with the idea that maybe the tragedy wasn’t so bad after all because it will stimulate economic activity and bring on recovery. I understand that there is some economic activity that comes on the heels of a disaster, but does that mean that the solution to our economic problems is to mount tragedy upon tragedy to create the desired economic outcome. Really? I guess that means we’d do well to start burning our cities down, inventing machines to shake all of our houses like James Bond’s dry martinis, or opening the national spigots and flooding everyone out. Man, talk about stimulus! It’s too bad Herbert Hoover didn’t think of that. Had he been clever enough he could have adopted the mantra, “If it ain’t broke, break it” to market all the destructive energy. We just may have avoided the Great Depression. We might have had a lot of scorched and flooded earth, broken buildings, and stratospheric casualty reports, but the lucky ones left standing would have been employed rebuilding everything.

I wonder what our young people are thinking as they observe the madness disguised as compassionate genius in action. Are they dreading the future? Surely, they must be thinking that the ruling generation has taken leave of its senses. Lord, I hope they don’t start thinking like their elders and begin breaking things. Maybe, for the sake of self-perseveration, I’d better suggest they just eat, drink, and be merry now, for tomorrow they will probably be broke!

THE LAKE WOBEGONE STANDARD

2011-10-06T13:44:00.000-05:00

Nancy and I love listening to Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” on Saturday evening, especially the news of Lake Wobegon(e), a fictional Minnesota town where, “the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” If you haven’t heard Keillor weave his tales I recommend you do. Tune in to NPR at 5:00 PM on Saturdays.

This morning I caught the tail end of a CNBC interview with author Thomas Friedman. He was pitching his latest book, “That Used to Be Us – How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How It Can Come Back.” I haven’t read the book, but after hearing the interview I have it on order.

I’ve just finished reading a Christian Science Monitor review of the book, which has really whetted my appetite for more. The review describes the authors, Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins University, as “frustrated optimists.” What’s got them frustrated? “America is in denial, unwilling to accept that it’s been living beyond its means and getting, well, a little lazy.”

I wonder if Friedman and Mandelbaum paid a visit to Emporia when they were doing their research. It sure looks like it. If there were a gold standard award for denial in economic development and clever, meaningless jingles I think we’d win hands down.

I’m often taken to task by this town’s important people because I don’t tow the “everything’s fine” party line that dominates our leadership. That’s alright. I realize there’s a price to pay when you rub the powerful the wrong way. But, in their rush to criticize they’ve missed the really important point. I’m right and they’re wrong. We’ve got problems that demand serious reflection and answers. Denial won’t make the problems go away and, worse yet, it keeps us from answering the difficult questions and finding our way out of the mess we’re in.

Time is of the essence. With each passing day Emporia, and America, are falling further and further behind in a world that is increasingly competitive and skills driven.

I’ve seen the competitive international environment first hand. I’ve seen just how good our competitors are. I’ve seen them in Singapore, Israel, and South Korea. I’ve read about the emerging markets and the rise of trade partnerships like the “BRICS,” who are pooling resources to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant economic power. And, here at home, I’ve seen it in my living room and dining room as I sat with international students and discussed their aims and dreams in life.

My wife and I have hosted four international students since 2003, one from the Republic of Moldova, one from South Korea, one from Vietnam, and one from China. While each student came with ethnic and cultural distinctives, they held two important things in common. They understood how fiercely competitive the world economic environment is and they came to compete and win. They understood that “average” is no longer good enough and that the world is now demanding excellence. One of our international students, Corina Nour, was interviewed by the Gazette when she attended Emporia High several years ago. She was asked what she thought of homecoming. She said, “Not much. We don’t have homecoming in Moldova. Students there understand the global marketplace and they gear themselves toward success in that arena.” In a couple of months she’ll graduate with a Masters’ and launch out into the deep. She’ll succeed. As much as we’d like to keep her, we know that won’t happen. She hasn’t spent her time preparing to be mired in a low wage, high poverty environment.

One of the recommendations Friedman and Mandelbaum make is for America to adopt the Lake Wobegon(e) standard. What’s that? It’s the standard that says “average” is no longer acceptable. It’s not acceptable for our students or our teachers. More importantly, it’s no longer acceptable for our leaders. They need to see that the path of disaster is strewn with the casualties of “average is good enough.” We need to be about the business of excellence. The new world of economic opportunity demands it

I hear all the time that I’m too negative. I say that I’m like Friedman and Mandelbaum. I’m a “frustrated optimist.” I know we can do better. In fact, I think we should be. We should be gearing our young people in Emporia toward excellence in achievement. I think they’re capable of it. The same holds true for our workforce. They can rise to the challenge. Our leaders need to rethink the old, costly notion that low wage manufacturing is Emporia’s future in the same way it’s been our past. All it’s done is get us into a low wage, high poverty rut. It’s time to put some 21^st century wheels on the wagon.

INSPIRATION AND PERSPIRATION

2011-09-08T13:20:00.000-05:00

My Pastor, Mike Stubbs, has often said that he learned early in life that when one is seeking answers to life’s mysterious questions and the answers tried seem to fail, it would be a good idea to try the obvious answer you’ve been avoiding all along.

I think Mike’s formula is very true when it comes to inspiration.

A couple of times a month Nancy and I spend our weekend in Kansas City. As we approach the I-35/Broadway exit we always comment on the progress being made on the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. It’s almost completed and when it is it will be a Kansas City gem. As it is, it’s a sight to behold¸ with its not quite complete roof gleaming in the sun. It’s being built along the lines of the Sydney Opera House.

As I’ve looked on it lately I’ve begun to wonder how it all got started. Not long ago the building site was an empty lot on the edge of the Freight House District. Well, the answer is obvious. It was inspiration. Given that, how did inspiration become reality? The answer is every bit as obvious. It’s perspiration. It’s hard work.

The project was as ambitious as any I’ve ever seen in Kansas City. The total cost, when completed, will be over $400 million. That’s a big number and you’d think that it would derail things. But the cost wasn’t an inhibiting factor at all. In fact, as of October, 2010, $370 million of the needed funding had been secured. How much of that funding was taxpayer money? None. The Ewing Kauffman Foundation has contributed over $30 million. The Hall family chipped in $23 million; the Jean Brandmeyer Family Foundation gave $12 million, the Helzbergs contributed $10 million.

Putting this all together was hard work. It was a marriage of inspiration and perspiration. I’m sure the board of directors had to do a lot of legwork and negotiating to get the funding. The men and women who manned the scaffolds have done yeoman work. It shows.

It’s amazing what can be accomplished when people work together.

I’ve had some people tell me that there isn’t enough private energy or capital to undertake big projects here in Emporia. Well, they couldn’t be more wrong. My brother-in-law, James, has been telling me how proud he is about being part of the ground breaking for Hetlinger Development’s $2 million expansion. James is rightly proud of his small part in what is happening. So should everyone at Hetlinger Development, from the board of directors, to staff, to financial contributors, to the workers who will in the end seal the dream with brick and mortar. The completed project will allow Hetlinger to expand their client base by 25%!

What started this project in motion? It’s obvious. It was inspiration.

The question of how to convert inspiration was answered in the same way supporters of the Kauffman Center answered the questions inspiration raised for them. The hard work began. Grants were solicited and received. The Mabee Foundation gave $400,000. Smaller contributions came through the “Everyday Heroes Campaign.” The board of directors, to a person, contributed. Staff contributed as well. And, so it went. Well, now ground has been broken. The dream will become a reality.

As with the Kauffman Center, no taxpayer money will be needed for the Hetlinger expansion. Not a dime! Why? It’s obvious. Once the seeds of inspiration were sown things flowed in the right direction. The dream was so viable that people wanted to contribute to make it a reality.

There are some great lessons in this. First, when the dream has real value its supporters rarely take the path of least resistance. They don’t go to the city council or the city commission with their hats in their hands. They go out and find the dreamers and doers. They connect wallets, purses, hammers, saws, hands, feet, and hearts to the dream. That’s how it happens.

Secondly, people gravitate to hard work. They dislike things that flow along the path of least resistance.

Third, they reward hard work.

Fourth, they’ll get behind a good project.

One of the things that makes me weary about things in Emporia is that far too many projects here run along the path of least resistance. It makes me question their inspiration. It makes me wonder if the visions proponents have decided that a mill levy increase or the public trough is the way to get the maximum benefit from the minimum effort. It’s “Let the taxpayers fund it.”

If the proponents of these projects believe their dreams are so worthy I think it’s time for them start doing the hard work needed to turn inspiration into reality. If they don’t know how, I recommend they call Hetlinger or the Kauffman Foundation.

KILLING 'EM WITH KINDNESS

2011-08-31T20:49:00.000-05:00

To hear our city and county commissioners these days you’d get the impression that every mill levied against us is baked with love and that every public service provided is absolutely essential to our well-being.

Now I don’t spend a lot of time in the belly of the beast. I’m just a front line foot soldier sitting here in my third line trench, and from where I sit these acts of municipal kindness feel like upright pianos with cast iron innards being heaved at me. I’ve tried my best to get them to see what they’re doing, but it’s not working too well. I’ve occasionally thought I’m invisible, but the cashiers at Wal-Mart or Reebles, my neighbors, and my friends all say “Hello” when they see me out and about. Maybe our leaders can’t see me because I don’t genuflect in their presence or fawn all over them. It’s probably time for another approach. Let me try this. “I love you commissioners.” “You’re the absolute best.” “You’re the cat’s pajamas.” How’s that?

I’ve gone as far as I can go. I’m going back to making my case. Commissioners, please. Stop it! You’re killing me with your kindness.

I’m really not against the concept of government. I like it, particularly the idea of self-government, which I’ve been led to understand is supposed to be the American ideal. What I’m decidedly against is government, whether it’s Federal, State, or Municipal, that all too often does things it has no business doing and fails to do many of the things it should.

Sometimes it amazes me. Our leaders seem to have enough money to subsidize a public golf course to the tune of six figures annually, but couldn’t find enough to subsidize reduced cab fares for the city’s elderly and handicapped a couple of budget cycles ago. The commissioners said they were simply eliminating a duplicate service. The net effect of the decision was one transport service for the elderly and disabled and two golf courses, one getting a public subsidy and another having to compete with the subsidized links.

How is it our leaders have enough time to consider having taxpayers foot the bill for overpriced property on Highway 50, but can’t seem to find the time to deal with slumlords who prey on renters and cost their neighbors in higher property taxes and then add insult to injury by failing to pay their fair share and depressing property values?

There must be some sort of chemical mix in the water down at city hall and the county courthouse that causes our leaders to take leave of their senses just about the time they have to make a decision. I think they must be using them in every government office in the country.

Last night I read about a bill the California senate just passed. It’s titled Senate Bill 432. In their superior wisdom, a small band of public spirited politicians have mandated that all hotels, inns, bed and breakfasts, etc. in the state start using fitted sheets on their beds. According to the politicos, the reason for the mandate was worker safety. For any hotel, inn, or bed and breakfast that has the temerity to defy the legislators there will be criminal penalties. The California innkeepers say the decision will cost them close to $20 million and that the costs will be passed on to their guests. Will the mandate improve safety conditions for the state’s hotel workers? No, but that doesn’t matter.

The California House is going to consider the proposed legislation sometime this month. I’m sure the Senate will send the proposal, along with enough chemicals to ensure the bill’s passage.

A couple of months ago, the cities of San Francisco and Santa Monica considered legislation banning the practice of male circumcision. When religious groups, particularly Jews, objected, the lawyers stepped in and argued that “So long as a law has no discriminatory intent, states and the federal government may, therefore, regulate behavior in ways that contradict individuals' religious beliefs and practices.” In other words, Jews can object all they want. They can argue they’ve been circumcising their male children since Abraham instituted the practice 4,000 years ago, but it may not do them any good.

The measure is going to be on the cities’ respective ballots in November.

I see these things being played out in my home town, in California, and in Washington, D.C. and I feel like my head is spinning. The country is drowning in debt and deficits. So is California. So is Emporia. And what are our leaders doing? Drinking chemically laced water, mandating fitted sheets, banning circumcision, subsidizing golf, pandering to slumlords, and printing money. It makes me want to scream from my housetop, “Stop the insanity!” “Stop killing me with your kindness!”

BEATING DEAD HORSES

2011-08-30T08:50:00.000-05:00

I’m going to be accused of it so I might as well jump right in. I’m going to beat on a dead horse.

Actually, the reason I’m flailing away is that the horse isn’t really dead. I’ve been whacking him for years now, but in spite of my heroic effort he keeps coming back to life. My critics must be having a field day. They’re probably saying to themselves, “This fool thinks he’s smacking an old nag around. He doesn’t understand that our horse is actually more like Seabiscuit.”

The horse I’m talking about is the cultural and political divide in this town. On one side of the divide are those who say that everything in Emporia is fine. Their contention is that there’s not much we need to do to fix the things that ail us other than shop a little bit more here in town. They seem to hold the high ground and feel the defenses they’ve erected are impregnable.

They might be right, but I think I’ll keep it up, sort of like Ulysses S. Grant did at Cold Harbor. I’m thinking that if I can somehow remain ambulatory I may win out in the end.

Who’s the nag I’m beating on? It’s the divide between Emporia’s important citizens/decision makers and its rank and file.

I got back from a meeting last week and found a school district pamphlet called the “Clipboard,” dated June 22^nd. There’s was a news brief on the cover page circled that read, “The policy also shifts two of the 11 paid holidays from Veterans Day and Good Friday to additional days during Christmas.” That was it.

I called the school district this morning to figure out how the decision to shift the holiday had been made. The process went something like this. In the past, teachers and administrators used Veterans Day as an in service day. Those who worked on Veterans Day got paid for the holiday, which meant they had to work a half a day to earn their holiday pay. This year the “calendar committee” decided to eliminate the Veterans Day holiday and add that day to the Christmas break. They forwarded their recommendation to the school board, the recommendation was approved. It’s now district policy.

As far as the decision makers are concerned it’s a done deal. Then, why am I beating on a dead horse? Actually, I’m not. I’m beating on the old nag named Disconnect. He’s very much alive.

Some questions occurred to me as I listened to the explanation. Did anyone on the calendar committee consider how Emporia’s veterans might feel about the change? Could the committee have found another day on the calendar that would have kept the Veterans Day holiday intact and still meet the requirement for an in service day?

My critics might have a couple of questions for me. “Why are you getting so hot and bothered?” “Isn’t this much ado about nothing?” And therein lies the problem. The disconnect in Emporia is palpable. It’s as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon.

A couple of weeks ago city leaders were busily trying to convince USA Today that Emporia was America’s most patriotic city. I think there was a disconnect there. I think patriotism was misused to further narrow political and economic interests. Now we’ve got some of Emporia’s leaders all but saying that a day set aside to honor veterans means little or nothing. And, they wonder why Emporia’s average guy feels the deck is stacked against him. They wonder why the “little people” refuse to turn out in droves on Election Day.

I suppose veterans are not that big a constituent group. Besides, they’re too busy dodging RPG’s up in Tora Bora to complain.

The disconnect probably seems quite small. But, when you add all of the small disconnects in Emporia up the number becomes almost unmanageable.

How is it, for example, that someone can assume the city has pockets deep enough to treat $23,000 an acre like it was chump change? Maybe it’s easy when you hold 65 Emporians over the fires of economic hell as collateral. Do you think the average hourly sweating out the weekly paycheck might be feeling like he’s being held hostage in this game of economic chicken? I do!

I’ve spent years wondering how this city’s slumlords get away with what they do. They must be politically connected. I’ve wondered why city leaders keep saying, I’m fixin’ to work on the problem….tomorrow….or the day after tomorrow. It’s a lot easier when the slumlords’ victims have decided to bite the bullet or they’ve just given up.

The end result is that we’ve got a lot of people who’ve become invisible to leadership. And, until they become visible nothing else here will change for the better.

SILVER MEMORIES

2011-08-25T20:46:00.000-05:00

In a week or so Nancy and I will be celebrating our 25^th anniversary. For the past few years we’ve celebrated at our favorite Kansas City restaurant, Le Fou Frog (The Crazy Frenchman). I’ve already made our reservations for this year.

Twenty-five years is a significant chunk of time. A lot can happen in twenty-five years. We’ve witnessed the election of our first African-American president, 9-11, two wars in the Persian Gulf, one in Afghanistan, a national economic meltdown, and a presidential election decided by the Supreme Court. We’ve been through the death of her father and one of her brothers and my mother’s passing. We’ve been unemployed. We’ve been broke. We’ve been blessed with plenty.

Yet, when I consider our years together it’s not so much the big things that capture my attention. It’s the silver memories that taken together add up to powerful bonds of love and affection. So, I’m going to share a few of those moments with you. As I do, you might want to prop your feet up and think back to your silver moments with your significant other.

I remember the early days. Nancy and I had been chosen to be part of a teaching team. There came a time when we’d spend time outside the church, just talking. The first conversations lasted five minutes. Then, five minutes became a half hour, then an hour or more. One night as I was on my way back home I found myself in a mystical conversation with Nancy. I could see her face in the windshield. As I passed through the inner loop of downtown Kansas City a cop pulled me over. I was doing 62 in a 45 MPH zone. I apologized and admitted my guilt, but knew I couldn’t tell the cop that the reason I was speeding was because I had gotten caught up in the apparition of a beautiful woman. He kept pressing the point and I finally said, “If I plead insanity will you give me my ticket and let me go?” The result was an on-the-spot safety inspection of my beat up old Ford and close to $300 of mechanical repairs to go with it. The next time I saw Nancy I proposed. I told her, “I’m not a college sophomore any more. I know what I want. I’m head over heels in love with you. And, besides, if I don’t marry you I’ll be dead broke in less than a month.” That was in April of ’86. We got married in September.

The early years were tough. We had to work our way through differences. I liked noisy mornings, jumpstarted by Dire Straits. Nancy preferred Debussy. She was quiet and reflective, as opposed to my manic flailing around on the exercise machine in the basement. She liked quiche. I liked ham and cheese omelets.

We moved to New Jersey in the late eighties. We rented an old Victorian home near Montville. It was a wonderful place. Nancy loved it. I remember a morning when we were peering out a picture window in our breakfast nook while we sipped coffee. Suddenly, there was something that captured her full attention. It was a bird. She got so excited when she saw it that she grabbed my hand across the table, squeezed it, and exclaimed, “Oh, Phil, it’s the Flicker! He’s come back.” I don’t think she was fully aware of what was going on inside her. I’m not a weak man, but a part of me wanted to cry out in pain. I didn’t want to short circuit the moment, so I sat there, soaking in the effect, realizing that I was going to share many more of those wonderful moments with her as time went by.

I remember our first brush with mortality. It was early morning and we were sitting at an inn in Cape May. Nancy seemed to know that I was feeling uncomfortable about being around so many older people. I was beginning to sense time and mortality moving at light speed away from me. She asked what seemed to be a strange question. “Slick, what will you do if I die before you?” Like an idiot, I blurted out, “I don’t want you to ever die.” I felt so noble when I said it. It wasn’t till I got home and read C.S. Lewis’s “A Grief Observed” that I realized I’d been more worried about the things I wanted from Nancy than I had about Nancy herself. I had to learn that she wasn’t put on earth solely for my amusement.

There are so many of those silver moments, but I’ve run out of space. It’s time to go downstairs and reflect quietly. Maybe it would be a good time for you to reflect on your silver moments, too.

TWO OLD DOGS

2011-08-12T07:14:00.000-05:00

In my younger days I burned the candle at both ends, and sometimes even the middle. If I could find a wick, or the hint of one, I’d set it ablaze. Like almost any young man my preoccupation was wine, women, and song. At those rare moments of adult sanity when I entertained thoughts I’d eventually pay a price for my misadventures I’d dismiss them and move on to a new one.

These days many of the memories of my youth have faded and I’m left with the physical reminders that there is a price to be paid for burning the candle of youth. A little over two years ago I went through open heart surgery, thanks to my love of greasy food. Six weeks or so ago the pain in my back was so excruciating I could barely get my tennis shoes on when I got out of bed at 5:00 A.M. I went to a chiropractor for the first time in my life. It took several treatments to get the arthritis to respond to the chiropractor’s skilled hands. Two Sundays ago I had to go to the emergency room at Newman. Blood tests revealed that I’d had a flare-up of pancreatitis, which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I wouldn’t even with it on a politician. For a week after I left the hospital I had to maintain a liquid diet. If you’re anything like me living on chicken broth, popsicles, diet Jell-O, noodles, and one cup of morning coffee can get very old, very fast.

You can see that I’m struggling with the aging process. That’s why I’m glad I have my buddy, Jack, the ugliest dog in Emporia. He’s a great teacher.

Like me, Jack is getting long in the tooth. A few months ago he seemed to be on the verge of going to the old bone yard. But, thanks to Floyd Dorsey and daily enzyme treatments Jack seems to be doing alright. He’s no spring chicken, mind you, but he’s alive and has occasional visits from the sweet bird of youth.

Our days together start with a walk. By seven he’s back home and ready for breakfast. It takes me a few minutes to cut up the pills and sprinkle the enzymes on his food. As I do, Jack gets a case of the happy feet. He jumps up and down. The sound of his toenails hitting the wood floor reminds me of the sound of a flamenco dancer’s castanets. As soon as his bowl hits the floor Jack hurls himself into his work. It takes him less time to eat the food than it took me to prepare it for him. Then, it’s off to take a nap in his favorite spot under the piano.

For the next forty-five minutes I tune in to C-Span’s “Washington Journal getting my daily fix of what America is thinking. As soon as I’m satisfied that the Republic is safe for at least one more day I fix breakfast for myself, which amounts to Shredded Wheat, skim milk, orange juice, daily medications, and two tablets of pancreatic enzymes. Then, if the mood strikes me, I might sit down in front of my laptop and work on an essay, mow the lawn, or go to a commission meeting and stick a barb or two into Emporia’s high and mighty.

While I’m doing my thing Jack spends his day quietly. He’ll chew on a bone for a while, then hide it from Ranger, the Sheltie, and Brudder the cat. If he doesn’t have a bone to work on he’ll sit in front of me and emit strange guttural sounds and muffled “Ruff’s” to let me know he needs one. When he goes outside he moves slowly, showing his age. But, it all changes when a neighborhood squirrel occasionally does his high wire act between the utility poles running along the right of way in back of our house. Jack sees him and it’s like he’s been hit by an instant jolt of electric youth. He vibrates, then runs full tilt toward the interloper, barking as he does. He’s never caught the squirrel, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

Jack seems quite content. For him, life is quite simple – food mixed with enzymes, a daily bone, concessions to age and occasional bursts of youth. There’s a meter, a rhythm to it all and it’s quite mysterious to observe. I heard Bob Dylan describe it this way once:

“Oh, winds which rush my tale to thee
So it may flow and be
To each his own, it’s all unknown
If dogs run free”

As I take part in his these daily rituals I’m learning that Jack and I are in some ways very much alike. We’re just two old dogs living our sunset years on enzymes.

BEANBLOSSOM THE GREAT

2011-08-07T05:40:00.000-05:00

Most people know him as Jimmy or James. In lighter moments I know him as Beanblossom the Great. It’s a moniker I gave him when we first met twenty-five years ago. He liked it and it’s stuck like glue ever since.

James is my wife’s developmentally disabled brother.

James wasn’t born with a disability. He was quite normal at birth. He was the older of a set of twins. But, sometime in the fall of 1946 he got very sick. The doctors later told the family he’d developed spinal meningitis and double pneumonia simultaneously. By the time his parents got him to a hospital his fever had reached 109. He survived the ordeal, but his brain was all but fried. He’s been developmentally disabled ever since.

I don’t know much about the time between his early life and when I met him. I do know that he spent some of that time in institutional settings at Parsons and somewhere in western Kansas. By the time I met him he was living at home, spending his time listening to gospel music or working in a sheltered workshop in Johnson County.

We hit it off right away. Like Forrest and Jenny we were two peas in a pod. That has never changed over the years. I’ve done my best to be a constant friend to him and on occasion I’ve stepped in to be a fierce defender. One of the enduring lessons I’ve taken to heart from James over the years is that there is often much more to folks with developmental disabilities than meets the eye.

Some years ago, when he was living in Shawnee with his mother, the workshop started sending a series of notes home with him. If I recall correctly they were called incident reports. They were a curious mix of police report and institutionally based language. “Consumer refused to do assigned work.” “Consumer screamed.” “Consumer got into an argument with Charles.” A meeting was scheduled and his mother asked me if I would attend. When the meeting began I could see that James was quite worried. The supervisor began by reading back the litany. “Consumer did this.” “Consumer did that.” I Interrupted and asked, “Why do you keep calling James “consumer?” “What’s he consuming anyway?” “Too much oxygen?” “Too much of your precious time?” The supervisor explained and his explanation went right over my head. Institutional language has that effect on me. We then proceeded to the primary cause of the meeting. James had been told to assemble some notebooks. When the work was brought to him he saw that the notebook covers had pictures of scantily clad women. He told the supervisor he couldn’t do what he’d been told to do. The supervisor insisted. James said he wouldn’t. The supervisor said he had to. James ended the standoff by saying, “You can’t make me do this crap.” The result of the dustup was the incident report that had precipitated the meeting. I asked the supervisor if he had any understanding of James’s moral compass. He looked at me quizzically, which told me that he probably didn’t believe a developmentally disabled person could think moral thoughts. I assured him that James did indeed have a moral code that he would not violate under any circumstances and that a good supervisor would have found something else for James to do instead of setting up a battle of wills he would never win.

The meeting ended with not much resolved. James wasn’t going to shift his moral compass and the supervisor was going to continue to flex his administrative muscle.

James is, of course, developmentally disabled. It would be easy to think the best way out of the dilemma would have been to give in. I disagree. I think his response was quite normal. Isn’t it normal for us to draw lines we won’t cross? Didn’t Johnny Paycheck strike a chord with the public when he crooned, “Take this job and shove it?”

Thankfully, things have improved immeasurably since that meeting. James now lives here in Emporia. He lives independently, with the help of the wonderful staff at Auspicion. He spends his days working for Hetlinger. He loves his work and his supervisors, especially Vivian. Every time we get together he has me transcribe his daily production numbers on to small slips of paper which he files meticulously.

There’s a lot more I could say, but I’m running out of space. The bottom line is that James wants the things in life we all want – to be happy, to live independently, to be productive. All in all, I’d say that’s quite good, and quite normal.

Maybe you’ll have the pleasure of meeting him some day. If you do you may get to know him well enough to call him Beanblossom the Great.

THE LAST REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL

2011-08-04T06:47:00.001-05:00

By the time this essay is published the flags will have been taken down and the odor of the fireworks of Independence Day will have dissipated. Rand McNally will have moved on in their search for America’s most patriotic city. The official fanfare that accompanied the dedication of “the rocks” will be history.

When all the talk of patriotism and the push to impress Rand McNally was going around it seemed a bit out of place to me. I thought of being amused, but came to the conclusion there was nothing amusing about it. I actually found myself getting angry. It wasn’t because I’m less a patriot than the sponsors of the dog and pony show. I was upset because I believe that those who were pushing the show had a misplaced sense of what patriotism is, or should be, all about.

In April, 1775, British author Samuel Johnson, made a remarkable statement – “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Was Johnson saying that there was something inherently wrong with being a patriot? Far from it. A year earlier Johnson had published a pamphlet titled “The Patriot.” A small sample of what he wrote follows:

“It ought to be deeply impressed on the minds of all who have voices in this national deliberation, that no man can deserve a seat in parliament, who is not a patriot. No other man will protect our rights: no other man can merit our confidence.”

“A patriot is he whose publick conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers everything to the common interest.”

Johnson saw clearly that there was more to being a patriot than beating the drums. Patriotism, as he saw it, was a state of mind and heart that put self-interest on the shelf and elevated a higher motive. To the patriot, a person’s neighbors, his community, and his country were the paramount interests.

These are some of the ingredients that have been missing in the rush to impress Rand McNally or to serve a few narrow interests at the expense of the people who pay the bills and do the serving.

There’s something else that’s been missing. A lot of true patriots are being passed by, as if their service to this community and country mean nothing unless they serve the narrow interests of the few.

I moved to Emporia twelve years ago. Over the years I’ve had many opportunities to talk with a neighbor named Terry Bassler. Terry is a transplant to Emporia. He hails from Oklahoma. I have fond memories of our brief conversations as Terry walked his dog, Mattie, by our house in the cool of the evening. Terry is a plain spoken man. He has a wonderful drawl when he speaks. He’s honest to a fault. In fact, he’s downright unimpeachable. I remember talking to him about his orders to deploy to Iraq with his National Guard unit. It wasn’t much of a conversation. I thanked him and told him to be careful. I told him I’d be praying for him. About three months or so after he deployed we got word that he’d been wounded. Not long after that he came home with pins screwed into his leg, courtesy of an explosive device of some kind. Just seeing the pain he was going through made me wince. I see Terry from time to time these days. I’ve never heard him complain. He just keeps plugging away, in his own quiet way.

I don’t think I’ve ever met him, but I occasionally read something he’s posted to the Gazette’s forums. His name is Matt Slater. The last I heard he was serving a tour in Afghanistan. Before he deployed Matt, along with some of his fellow entrepreneurs, fought the proposed smoking ban. He lost that battle, then shipped out. He occasionally comments on things here at home. He’s never complained about serving his country. He’s one of those “fire eaters” the high and mighty around town love to marginalize.

I find it quite ironic.

One of the great characters in 20^th century literature was an old German soldier named Katcinsky, from Erich Remarque’s classic “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Kat, as he was affectionately known, was the grizzled old veteran the younger soldiers relied on in difficult times. When the younger soldiers wondered how to end the bloody war, Kat came up with an ingenious solution. The King and the Kaiser would meet, in their underwear, clubs in hand¸ in a field.

I think the solution is timeless. Maybe it’s time for our leaders to stop beating the drum. Maybe it’s time to ship them “over there” Maybe then they’ll learn what patriotism is all about.

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

2011-07-28T13:59:00.000-05:00

Just about every time I get caught up in the clutches of an expert, a scientist, an economist, or a politician I begin to wonder whether or not life has any meaning or purpose. You’d think it would be the other way around. After all, they’re the people whose resumes lionize them as deconstructers the mysteries and myths that have kept mankind in the dark for centuries. As Frederick Buechner once observed, they are the special ones among us who specialize in solving our problems for us. How have they done it? By eliminating “all the ancient myths and dreams and superstitions.” It’s a case of addition by subtraction. Take away the old wives’ tales and open up a spreadsheet and there you have it. Our problems are solved. All we need to do is put our lives in the hands of this modern age’s anointed ones.

Why is it, then, that I cling so stubbornly to the old ways of thinking? I doubt that my answer will satisfy many, but it’s the only answer that makes sense to me. Like Buechner, I’ve had a summons to a pilgrimage¸ where I sense “meanings no less overwhelming because they can only be hinted at in myth and ritual,” where I glimpse “a destination I can never fully know till I reach it.”

I like to think of myself as a reasonable man. I love the political process. I enjoy tweaking the noses of the high and mighty. Lord knows, they richly deserve what they get. I know that two plus two equals four. I take medication to regulate my heartbeat and blood pressure, which means, I think, that I have some measure of trust in modern science. I have some grasp of great concepts like supply and demand. I think I’ve learned to demand less when everyone else is demanding more, knowing that getting into the rat race will cost me more in resources I don’t have in order to get what a lot of other people seem to think is absolutely necessary to maintain the good life. I’m learning to resist the temptation to convince myself I can’t live without the things they have or want. This all seems quite reasonable to me.

I got a call a couple of weeks ago from someone who was upset about something I’d written. I never did find out what he was upset about. Once I acknowledged that I was indeed Phil Dillon, he screamed, “You’re stoooooopid!” I couldn’t think of anything to say in response other than, “Thank you.” That seemed to make him angrier. He screamed even louder, “Did you hear me? I said you’re stoooooopid!” I thanked him again and he closed with a crescendo. “Go to hell, stoooooopid!” I was tempted to remind him of Forrest Gump’s insight that stupid is as stupid does, but I thought that might bring on a real fit of rage. I reminded him that, while he had established to his satisfaction that I was stupid, I didn’t think I was stupid enough to go where he wanted me to go.

My critic may be half right. There are times I feel as dumb as a stump. I knew just about everything when I was thirty. Now, I’m pushing seventy. I’ve learned more , but I know less than I did forty years ago. This is a big world and a very big universe. There’s a lot about life and existence that’s mysterious and I’m not smart enough to figure it all out. I’ll leave that to those who have a firmer grasp on all the facts.

Sometimes I’m tempted to defend myself. But, I usually come to my senses and realize any defense I mount wouldn’t be acceptable to my detractors. When the temptation does come I read the Book of Job. When his comforters were done with him he found himself confronted by the Almighty himself. The questions from on high came rat a tat, like the Anvil Chorus. “Can you loose the chords of Orion?” “Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?” “Do they report to you?” “Do you give the horse his strength?” “Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom?” After the last question came Job put his hand over his mouth and answered, “I spoke once, but I have no answer- twice and I will say no more.”

Like Job, I’ve come to the place where I’ve learned, often through painful experience, there’s more to life than spreadsheets, political calculations, science or slickly marketed appeals to greed. If that marks me as a fool, there’s nothing I can do but embrace my foolishness. It’s better, I think, to be a fool at peace than to be a “wise” man caught up in a web of self-deceit.

CONFUSED

2011-07-15T13:03:00.002-05:00

I’m confused. I’ve been under the impression that things aren’t going well. But, after reading a recent story in the Gazette I’m wondering whether or not I’ve been in hibernation for the past three or four years. The source of my confusion? The article’s title says it all – “Housing market is strong.” I guess that means all the foreclosures I’ve been reading about are either figments of my overactive imagination or dreams.

I haven’t been this confused in years. When I started my graduate work I landed a perfect student friendly job, working in a funeral home. There wasn’t much to it, or at least there shouldn’t have been. On my first night on the job the student I was replacing took me through the paces. It seemed quite unremarkable until he began showing me how to turn the lights out at the end of the business day. He led me down the main hallway. When we got to the first ante-room he told me to pay special attention. “At this point you depress the switch on this wall with your left hand while simultaneously wrapping your right hand around the opposite wall to hit the switch for the room on your right.” I made a mental note and we proceeded down the hall. As we did he explained that it was approximately 25 steps to the next stop. When we stopped he also explained that we would need to reverse what we had done at our first stop. I asked him if I should be writing the instructions down. He ignored me, without even the hint of a smile, and we kept walking and depressing. “Left hand, right hand.… Twenty five steps...Right hand, left hand.” When the training exercise was complete I was utterly dazed. I became convinced I would never be able to turn the lights out and would probably be fired before I could ever learn how.

I think when it comes right down to it our leaders are every bit as confused as I am. Someone has turned off the lights they’re trying to turn them on again. Is it “Right hand, left hand?” Or is it “Left hand, right hand?” The truth is, no one seems to have the answer. The only thing they seem capable of doing is offering rosy scenarios, which is another way of saying, “I have no idea where the light switch is, so I’ll just keep whistling in the dark.”

I don’t think it would be fair to blame our local leaders for all the confusion. The snowball has rolled downhill and it looks like small towns like Emporia might be the final resting place for all the confusion.

Where, and when, did this all start? I dunno.’ I’m having a hard enough time figuring out where we are, let alone trying to get my arms around how this mess began.

I think I do know this. We’ve created a system that invites confusion and precipitates crises. I’m told we have a fractional reserve banking system. We’ve got folks who are responsible for maintaining our monetary base and we’ve got banks that can tap into reserves “created” and in turn lend the money stock out to lenders. Right now, for example, policy seems to dictate low interest rates, which the Federal Reserve has sprinkled their pixie dust on for some time now. That means that banks can go to the discount window and get money for next to nothing and lend it to consumers at a profit. The problem is, the public appetite for borrowed money has all but dried up. What, then, should the banks do with the money? The answer is simple and, I think, more than a bit suspicious. Our government is hungry for money to spend. So, banks, who have gotten the money at the discount window are lending some of it back to the government they got it from in the first place at about 3% interest. That doesn’t seem like much until you realize we’re talking about billions, maybe even trillions. That’s anything but chump change.

There seems to be a perverse kind of logic behind it. Government is creating a product, or the potential of a product. Then they basically give it away. The borrower then becomes the lender and sells the product back to the government for a profit. Such a deal! As Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits once said, “It’s money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.”

But, I remain confused. This looks a bit like money laundering to me. The loyal American in me is telling me that our leaders would never engage in such activity, but my suspicious nature is telling me that when times get tough the prevailing philosophy often becomes, “Any port in a storm.”

EXPERTS

2011-06-30T16:48:00.000-05:00

I spent about fifteen minutes of unproductive time this morning watching part of a segment on C-Span’s “Washington Journal.” The guest was a legislative analyst for Congressional Quarterly. The subject of the discussion was farm subsidies and the recent Congressional vote to eliminate $3 billion in ethanol subsidies. I know next to nothing about ethanol. I don’t use it and I don’t pay much attention to the politics surrounding the issue. About the only time it seems to matter to me is when the price of commodities like corn skyrocket. When that happens I mount a spirited defense. I eat less corn. I think it’s the only defense guys like me, who aren’t experts, can muster.

About ten minutes into the segment, the legislative analyst (expert) said the issue of subsidies was playing itself out along party lines. The Republicans, armed with whips and chains, support the status quo. They oppose “enhancing revenue streams,” support taxpayer dollars for fat cats, and endorse starvation of the masses. The Democrats, defenders of the people, are standing at the gates, armed with truth and justice.

It’s all quite confusing. That’s why I’m glad there are legislative analysts who get paid to sort it all out for me.

The morning was about half over and I got curious about the legislative analyst and her analysis. What was it that qualified her as an expert? I decided to check her credentials. They were quite impressive. She’d earned a master’s degree and a doctorate to boot. After a bit of closer examination, I concluded her education had absolutely nothing to do with farm subsidies. Her undergraduate degree is in English and her advanced degrees are in medieval English literature. But, she’d been invited to speak about farm subsidies, which meant the invitation itself must have been the qualifier. Who knows? If Chaucer, Milton, or Shakespeare were alive today they too might be gracing the airwaves with expert opinions on farming, interplanetary space travel, or technology.

There’s something curious about subject matter experts¸ even when they have no expertise in the subject they’re discussing. Their points of view almost always go uncontested. So, for example, when our expert said that Republicans are against increasing revenues, neither the moderator nor those calling in challenged her assumption.

Was her assumption correct? I have more than a few nagging doubts.

Why is it that so many experts and politicians (please forgive my being redundant) have made the leap in logic that concludes that the only way to increase government revenues is to increase taxes? Do they think we’re dumb enough to believe that replacing the word “taxes” with terms like “revenue enhancements” or “user fees” will mask what they’re doing? I guess so, because politicians and experts at all levels seem to be afflicted with the irritating habit of using clever catch phrases when honesty should do.

Last week the city of Emporia seemed mystified that the most recent increase in water rates hasn’t increased revenues. In fact, revenues have decreased…..significantly. How could that be? You don’t suppose a lot of folks got wise and decided to conserve, do you? It seems sensible to me, but I’m not an expert.

Some years ago the people of California went through the same thing. In response to a drought, local municipalities levied penalties against citizens who used more water than the bureaucrats determined was a fair level of usage. People got wise. The reservoirs filled to overflowing. Revenues shrank. In response to the revenue shortfall, municipalities instituted a non-water use penalty, assessing surcharges against customers who used less than the desired level of water. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Californians passed Proposition 13, which restricted government’s ability to tax the people.

Prior to our most recent election, welcome rocks became the talk of the town. Proponents of the expenditure were taken aback when a lot of Emporians objected. They couldn’t understand the outcry and reasoned that it wasn’t that big an expense and that the rocks would bring tourists by the boatload to our fair city. The money was allocated, then spent. Our new crop of commissioners was then greeted with a piece of unexpected news. Revenues from the visitor’s tax (or fee or whatever they call it) fell far below expectations. I think it might be fair to ask why our city’s experts didn’t see that coming, but they'd just get into a huff and call me an unpatriotic contrarian. If I were to try to remind them were tapped out they’d just call me an insensitive brute. Experts tend to do those sorts of things.

If you’re like me you’re probably wondering what’s next. I’m no expert, but I’d be willing to bet it has something to do with manipulating language and picking our pockets.

TRUE REVOLUTIONARY

2011-06-20T15:36:00.000-05:00

Nancy politely took me to task for a recent essay about commencement speeches. I understand. If it had been the only thing I’d ever written folks might understandably think I wear hair shirts and eat barbed wire soup.

The truth is, I’m partial to button down shirts made from 100% cotton. I love slapstick comedy and an occasional glass of wine for the stomach. I like being around young people. In fact, I like being around young people more than I like being around people my own age.

I guess what got me all riled up a couple of weeks ago was the incessant commencement talk about seizing the world. I think America’s youth would be better served to hear something like, “Get your feet on the ground” or “If you really want to do something revolutionary try doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly.”

I’m tired of revolutions and I’m sick to death of the recent history’s revolutionaries.

It’s said that Marx and Engels were idealists. They probably had the best of intentions when they wrote, “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” The communists won and the Kulaks, dissenters, and peasants starved while party bosses and their henchmen feasted. When the communist enterprise collapsed the Soviet Union had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world. Meanwhile, the proletariat could scarcely find a loaf of bread to eat.

Much of the 20th century’s revolutionary rhetoric revolved around shedding religion or developing new religious beliefs to supplant the old ones. In the 1930’s, Robert Ley, a nazi party politician made this startling statement – “It was all due to the faith of one man! Yes, you who called us godless, we found our faith in Adolf Hitler, and through him found God once again. That is the greatness of our day, that is our good fortune!”

The world was still in the throes of counting the corpses when Mao Zedong came on the scene in China. His political philosophy was simple – “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Mao and the Chinese communists killed millions to prove their point.

Revolutionaries are quite fond of painting themselves as men of the people. Nazi propaganda lionized young Adolf Hitler as a starving artist in Vienna. Mao loved being seen dressed in peasant clothing. Before Team Six found him, Usama bin Laden took great delight in presenting himself as a revolutionary whose sole purpose in life was to take down the Great Satan. From 9-11 on the media would be given occasional glimpses of him climbing some mountain, walking stick in one hand and automatic weapon in the other. In 2003 he mocked George Bush – “Bush, do you know where I am? I am among the Muslim masses – enjoying the grace Allah has bestowed upon me, by way of their support.” When all was said and done, bin Laden died in a million dollar compound. It’s reported that he always had to have plenty of Coke and Pepsi. There was also a considerable stash of pornography. I guess a revolutionary needs a few guilty pleasures when he’s hunkered down.

Donald Trump, who is no revolutionary, once famously said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” That’s what most revolutionaries really want. They’re jealous. They want what others have. They take their cues from a buffoon who thinks that life is nothing more than amassing, or stealing, toys.

I know I have to be careful, but I think it’s time for me to inject a bit of personal religious reflection. When I was re-considering my atheist belief system years ago, I studied Jesus and compared him to other revolutionaries. Marx and Engels said that man was economically determined. Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone.” Mao said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf.” Jesus preached the greatest sermon ever rendered. He called his listeners’ attention to the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. He taught about love, mercy, and forgiveness. To those fixated on material wealth Jesus spoke of camels and the eyes of needles or a widow and her penny.

Jesus was a true revolutionary. He not only rejected society’s goals, but the means men use to achieve them. He lived what he taught. He didn’t appeal to human ambition. He said the role of servant was the one to prize.

Some say this is a post-Christian age and the message he taught and embodied has become too quaint or too revolutionary to consider. I guess that’s why the appeal to ambition seems so easy to embrace.

THE PIG IS DEAD

2011-06-16T17:50:00.000-05:00

A week or so before Nancy and I left for Israel we sat one morning watching the news of a potential government shutdown. My first reaction was delight. “It’s about time,” I chortled. Nancy sat, bemused. She had obviously thought things through. “Do you realize?” she asked me. “Our social security direct deposits won’t hit our checking account if they shut the government down.” I was stunned. “That’s our money they’re messin’ with.” Nancy smiled. “You don’t really think they’re concerned with little ole us do you? When push comes to shove we’ll be thrown overboard with all the other flotsam and jetsam.” I went upstairs in a mild fit of panic, muttering to myself, “I’m gonna’ give Jerry Moran a piece of my mind.”

By the time we got back home we found that the crisis had been averted. Republicans and Democrats had agreed to spending cuts that would save billions and keep the federal government running. Unfortunately, like most things politicians tell us, it was a sham or a half-truth. The government is still running, but the debt wheel keeps on spinning. When we left for Israel in early April our total government debt was under fourteen trillion. Today, as I sit typing, it’s almost fourteen and a half trillion. I’m trying to calculate as I hunt and peck, but I don’t have the math skills to figure it out. It’s safe to say the debt is increasing by millions per consonant or vowel. It could be as much as a billion a sentence.

You’d think our political leaders would get it by now, but it seems that the closer we get to the precipice, the farther they drift from reality.

It’s not that they haven’t had authoritative voices telling them to abandon their insanity. President Obama gathered a non-partisan group named the “fiscal commission.” Two of the commission’s experts, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, were known for their honesty and straight/blunt talk. When the commission completed its work Simpson put our problem in stark terms. Noting that the days of bringing home the bacon should be over¸ he said, “The pig is dead. There is no more bacon.”

Unfortunately, Simpson’s eloquence has been met by government intransigence. Government has now exceeded the legal debt limit. Timothy Geithner is raiding piggy banks and mattresses to keep things afloat. We’ve now got four wars going on – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen. We’re rattling sabers at hackers and cyber-terrorists, threatening military retaliation against any violators. And, our government continues to diddle. Yesterday, Senator Olympia Snowe (Maine) made note of the fact that it takes a good four months to get hearings on important issues scheduled, let alone debated.

We are in deep trouble.

Knowing our government as I do I cringe at the thought of what creative solution they may be hatching. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about them calling Emporia’s payday loan shops to keep the bombs dropping and the gears mashing.

I spent a few early minutes this morning listening to Bob Dylan’s “Workingman’s Blues.” The melody was haunting, the lyrics even more so. There was talk of the “the buyin’ power of the proletariat gone down,” money “getting’ shallow and weak,” and the new reality of low wages. There were the laments and complaints of the workingman – “Well, they burned my barn, they stole my horse and I can’t save a dime.” “I’m down on my luck and I’m black and blue.” The current economic reality a lot of Americans face was laid bare – “I can live on rice and beans.”

I’d broadcast the music and lyrics to Pennsylvania Avenue if I thought it would do any good. But, they’re in no mood to listen to one of their own. What makes me think they’d listen to a poet?

Here at home things aren’t much better. The Arts Council is screaming about the $26 thousand they lost. The price of green beans and asparagus is going up. The rocks are paid for, but now the CVB has its hat in its hand because visitor’s taxes fell far below expectations. Meanwhile, the price of bread and milk are on the rise. Yesterday, the Extension office floated its bi-annual trial balloon about becoming an independent taxing authority. They must think that slapping a coat of paint on the pig will make it look like Vermeer’s “Astronomer” to a gullible public. I also looked at my water bill yesterday. I’m using less, but paying more.

A year ago I wrote that we were heading for implosion. A lot of smart folks around town took me to task when I did. I guess there wasn’t enough happy talk to suit them. A year ago we were just flirting with disaster. Today, we’re smooching it. I wonder what the smart folks are thinking now.

THE BLUE COLLAR CURMUDGEON

2011-06-13T12:29:00.001-05:00

We took our dogs, Ranger and Jack, to “Poochapalooza” on the 21st. Ranger, the Sheltie, was voted the second prettiest dog. Jack refused to be outdone. When the votes were tallied and verified Jack was certified as the ugliest dog in Emporia.

At first blush the title seems inappropriate, especially in these times of political correctness. But, Jack wanted me to reassure the good people of Emporia that he’s not in the least offended by the title. In fact, he wears it like a badge of honor. His ego isn’t bruised, nor has he developed the overblown sense of importance that contest winners often develop. Jack will continue to be just plain old Jack, begging for treats and keeping my leather chair warm for me. And, most important of all he wanted me to convey his thanks for the assorted treats he brought home. I haven’t tasted them, but he has, and they appear to be quite tasty.

As we left the fairgrounds we had quite a few people stop and congratulate Jack. They’d bend down to pat his head and say, “So this is the famous Jack” or “Atta’ boy, Jack.” In response, he’d wag his tail and snort a bit.

It’s been quite a journey. A short while ago Jack was on death’s doorstep. But, thanks to the loving care of Floyd Dorsey and his staff he made an amazing recovery. And, when an attempt was mounted to run him out of town, the good doc fired off a letter to the editor in his defense. With that and some vigorous support from the Gazette’s “notorious” bloggers he regained his dignity and his rightful place as just one of the boys here in town. Not bad for a guy who was inches away from the old bone yard.

For me, mornings have become a labor of love. Fixing breakfast for my buddy Jack takes a good fifteen or twenty minutes. There are pills to be cut and sprinkled and a couple of scoops of some kind of concoction to be mixed in with his food. Jack watches patiently while I go through the routine, knowing that at the end of the process he’ll be getting his second favorite thing in life – food. When everything is ready he follows me out to the back porch to wolf it down. He seems to delight in dining al fresco, which is about the only thing that gives a hint of refinement in his bones.

I say food is his second favorite because I’ve learned that Jack loves affection even more than he loves food. Food only comes a couple of times a day, but Jack thrives on endless love, affection, and kind words.

If Jack were a person he’d be a loveable blue collar curmudgeon. The exterior would be rough, but the interior would be pure gold. I think of him as a four-legged symbol for Emporia’s “everyman.” He’d work a forty hour week at minimum wage. On weekends you’d often find him occupying his favorite seat at the poker table, a cigar or a bone clenched in his teeth and his right paw wrapped around a stack of chips. He’d be the master of the bluff and the “All in.” For those trying to read his intentions, Jack would clench harder and growl, “You wanna’ see the hole card? Put your money in, Pal.”

When he wasn’t at the poker table, he’d be seen at the watering holes swapping tales of the old days at Fallujah, Khe Sanh, the high price of rocks, cost over-runs, exorbitant taxes, low paying jobs, and patriotic duty with the riff-raff. If he could, he’d be puffing on a cigar, but since decent folks have put the kibosh on that he’d have to find some way to content himself with not being able to enjoy one of a working man’s guilty pleasures. He’d grumble a bit and slap his pals on the back, snort “I love you guys,” and that would be it.

One thing’s certain. You’d never see Jack in the trendy places around town or glad handing politicians. Not only would he feel out of place weaving his way around the high and mighty, he’d find it down right depressing. If he ever got caught playing in that kind of traffic he’d sound more like John the Baptist than a social butterfly. He’d let folks know where he stood. When asked about what he thought he’d probably say, “You snakes…you vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

I don’t think that Jack is very worried about the call for tar and feathers that will almost certainly follow this essay. When you’ve won the brass ring at “Poochapalooza” you’ve reached the top. There’s nothing your detractors can say that will hurt you.

EDUCATION AND AMBITION

2011-06-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

I’m about halfway through Andrew Bacevich’s book “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.” It’s quite interesting.

Early on, in his introduction, he makes a startling confession – “Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable.”

It’s the time of year for the commencement addresses and I doubt there will be any advice given to the graduating classes about dialing back the ambition. Most will be about seizing the future or creating a new and glorious world. I listen to the speakers or read the transcripts and wonder if they believe what they’re saying or if their lips are just moving around aimlessly for ten or fifteen minutes, hoping to hit some pliable target with advice they don’t really believe, or heed, themselves.

I graduated from high school in 1960. I don’t remember much about the commencement exercise. I don’t remember anything the commencement speaker said. It might have been profound or it might have been quite clever. Whatever it was, I missed it. About a year after that I joined the Air Force. About four years later I shipped out to Vietnam and got a real education in the gears of the Robert McNamara/Lyndon Johnson sausage machine. By 1969 I’d had enough. I spent a few years trying to figure out what I wanted to do. In 1972 I immersed myself in college. That was back in the days when the air was bristling with revolution. The campuses were overflowing with talk of turning our colleges and universities into institutions of learning and life. I observed it all from a safe distance and in time I think I figured out that there was more to being a revolutionary than throwing bricks through windows or Molotov cocktails at the police.

I suppose a lot has changed since my days in high school. Citizen Gore invented the internet and we’re all wired now. We’ve got Facebook and Twitter. We can say everything that’s on our minds in 120 characters or less. The Johnny Mathis ballads and the rock ‘n roll rhythms of Danny and the Juniors are long gone. These days we’ve got Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. The rice paddies of Southeast Asia have been replaced by the mountains of Afghanistan. The steeple on the corner has given way to the mega-church and the religious media empire. The political gravitas of the sixties is out and the political campaign as comedy is in. Did any of the budding futurists of the sixties ever consider the notion that someone like Donald Trump could be a serious candidate for the Presidency or that California would have a “governator” at the helm? (As an aside, with “the Donald” gone, who’s now poised to garner the pompous ass vote in 2012?).

Has it really been fifty years? It’s hard for me to tell. So many things look just the same now as they did back then. There are times I feel that we’re all characters in a Vonnegut short story or a Jean Paul Sartre treatise. A lot of folks are scurrying around like rats bumping their heads against the walls of a man-made maze, trying to find the exit that may not be there. Some of us have been on chapter six for some time, trying to figure out what the point is. Maybe there’s no point at all. How did Vonnegut put it?

“Oh, a sleeping drunkard up in Central Park

And a lion hunter in the jungle dark

Or a Chinese dentist and a British queen,

They all fit together in the same machine.

Nice, nice, very nice, so many different people in the same device.”

Bacehvich, the author I cited in my first paragraph came to what I believe was a profound insight – “Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.”

I don’t think Bacehvich will be getting any invitations to be a commencement speaker this year, next year, or any year. His advice may be sound, but it goes against the grain of just about everything we Americans believe. As the President recently put it, “We can do anything!” We can stop the oceans from rising and we can rain fire down from the heavens. And, if you don’t believe us we’ll convince you. Just ask Muammar Gadaffi.

Twenty or thirty years from now the graduates of the class of 2011 will be in charge. By that time their ambition will be in full bloom. I suspect that will mean the next generation of cult heroes will be worshipped or the latest iteration of a smart bomb will be screaming its way toward some unsuspecting tyrant’s air conditioning duct.

As the older, and wiser, generation was fond of telling mine – The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

KINDRED SPIRITS

2011-05-25T21:20:00.000-05:00

I’ve had friends ask why Nancy didn’t take more photos of us in Israel. Israel wasn’t about being a tourist. We had no interest in scrawling “Kilroy was here” on the ruins of Caesarea Philippi. Israel is much more than the churches, mosques, ruins, or the archaeology. Israel is the people. Israel is a state of mind and heart.

Where to from here? We’d love to go back. But, travel gets more difficult with each passing year and the T.S.A. isn’t making things any easier.

And Israel? Whither to, Israel?

Archaeologists have found the remains of at least 26 civilizations in Israel. The Egyptians have been there. So have the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Muslims, the Mamluks, the Ottoman Turks, the British, and the Hashemites. Today there are about 14 million Jews in the world, which represents two tenths of one percent of the world’s population. About 6 million live in Israel.

The Jewish people have been through long periods of exile. In the 2nd century, the Roman emperor Hadrian expelled the Jewish population from Judea and renamed the nation Palestina (meaning land of the Philistines). It remained that way until 1948. Since then, Israel has been a bone of international contention. I suspect it will continue to remain that way for at least the remainder of my life.

Will the issues attendant with the Palestinian people and the Jews ever be resolved? I hope so, but I have serious doubts. The political and diplomatic obstacles are formidable enough, but the hatred at the root of the problem has made any solution almost impossible.

More than most Americans, I have some personal knowledge about both sides of the conflict. My sister’s second husband was Palestinian. He was handsome and hard working. He could be very charming. But there were times when all of that would give way to uncontrollable rage. He detested Jews. I learned never to say anything nice about Jewish people in his presence.

In the early nineties I was assigned duties as a mentor for a young Palestinian engineer. He was every bit as charming and handsome as my sister’s husband. He was absolutely brilliant. There were times I wondered why FedEx had me mentoring him. Our friendship grew. He became comfortable enough with me to call me, affectionately, “Bucko.” We often spent our lunchtime talking about our respective faiths. There were significant differences, but we could discuss them as friends. When the subject of Israel came up, though, everything changed. I told him of my hopes for a two state solution, with both sides living in peace within secure borders. He told me, “You Americans need to understand. We don’t want a two state solution. We want to drive the Zionists into the sea. We want them all dead.”

Do my sister’s husband and my young associate constitute the entirety of opinion on Israel? It’s a good question, and it’s not as easy to answer as some might think. Pew research just completed a post-Mubarak public opinion poll in Egypt. Fifty-four percent, an overwhelming plurality, favor rescinding Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. In Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah are arming themselves to the teeth with help from Syria and Iran. Their aim is the destruction of Israel. The Iranian mullahs are committed to the obliteration of the “Zionist entity,” as is Hamas in Gaza. Here at home, attitudes are shifting. Christian denominations, including the Presbyterians, some elements of the Methodists, the World Council of Churches have equated Zionism with racism and have mounted boycotts of Israel. A couple of years ago I received some correspondence about the “Palestinian problem.” The solution offered was uniquely American – “Palestine for the Palestinians and the Jews to Texas.” I cut the correspondence off. It sounded too much like a final solution to me.

The people of Israel have a real dilemma. As Bob Dylan once wryly noted, Israel is “surrounded by pacifists who all want peace.”

In 2006 I purchased an Israeli flag and flew it from my front porch flagstaff when Israel went into Lebanon to stop the constant rocket fire from Hezbollah. It was my small gesture of support. I haven’t flown it since, but I suspect I’ll have the opportunity to hoist it again. When I do I’ll see more than just a symbol. I’ll see Amos’s face. I’ll see Menachem Goldberg, an Israeli farmer who has dedicated his life to the just application of the Old Testament law. I’ll see men praying at the Western Wall. I’ll see the shopkeepers and the children. I’ll take a moment to silently utter the old age prayer for the peace of Jerusalem. My neighbors probably won’t even notice and that’s alright. That unfurled flag will be a reminder to me of where I stand and that’s what really matters.

MENDING THE WORLD

2011-05-24T10:14:00.000-05:00

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.”

Milton Mayer – “They Thought They Were Free”

Yesterday was Easter Sunday. Our church was packed to overflowing, due in in large part, I think, to the cultural habit of Americans to give the Almighty “his due” a couple of times a year.

It’s Monday and I’m staring out at the Mulberry tree outside my office window. I find myself contemplating the lessons of our recent trip. I’m still determined not to let mission creep rob me of what I’ve learned. It’s difficult. I’m as prone to cultural habits as any American.

It’s odd. I visited a lot of Christian churches while I was in Israel, from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to the Church of the Multiplication. But I didn’t find most of them that meaningful. Maybe I should have, and I’m sure a lot of my fellow Christians could fault me for my lack of insight or vision. I’m not going to mount much of a defense.

Of all the Christian sites I enjoyed the Church of the Multiplication most. It’s a very simple building, erected on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to commemorate Jesus’s miracle feeding of the 5,000. It didn’t take long to tour the interior. When we were done Amos gathered our group together and handed out plastic trash bags and told us that one of the really important outworkings of his Jewish faith was “mending the world.” For a half an hour he got us involved in that work. We walked along the shore, picking up trash that had more than likely been deposited there by other Christian tourists. Thinking back on it, it seems like such a small gesture. I’m sure other Christian tourists will come and carelessly dump more trash at the “holy site,” making our half hour seem to be a futile effort. But Amos’s message still resonates with me – “Mend the world!”

I’ve been home for ten days now. I’m no longer sleep-deprived and I’ve re-adjusted to an American diet. But I’ve come back sensing that I’m caught in an existential trap. America is going one way and I find myself muttering under my breath, “Dammit, let me off, I want no part of what’s going on here.” Peggy Noonan, in an April 21st op-ed expressed what I’m feeling. She describes an America that sends its young men and women around the world to bring the benefits of liberty to the uncivilized, yet finds itself falling apart at its cultural seams. We’re obsessed with Snooki and she and her friends are obsessed with sex. We’ve got five year olds toting guns to school. We’ve got people smacking each other around at McDonald’s, kiddie porn, and “Real Housewives” insulting one another. And, it’s all brought to you by Viagra.

Third world foreigners must look at this and think, “How empty and meaningless.”

As much as I feel I want to get off, I realize I can’t. It’s all spinning too fast.

Amos taught us that our task in life must be “mending the world.” It’s a lesson he’s learned well. His world is no less chaotic than ours. He has enemies surrounding him, bent on his death and the death of his wife and children. Yet, he works for peace in the midst of the chaos around him. How does he do it?

At Yad Vashem he spent a few minutes talking about how well engineered the Holocaust was. Once the ball got rolling, the extermination that followed was a masterpiece of efficiency. There was competitive bidding for the ovens and the best prices for Zyklon-B. There were numerical standards for how many Jews could or should be exterminated on a daily basis. As Amos described the meticulousness of the details I gave thought to Milton Mayer’s powerful words about self-deception. I found a quiet place and broke down, thinking back to my days as a process engineer and the formulas I used every day to increase operational productivity. The number of people required equals work divided by rate divided by span. Some German engineer used the same formula to advance the Final Solution.

Self-deception is a very powerful weapon. We Americans often labor under the burden of fixing everyone else in the world. I can’t help but wonder how much better things might be if we spent more time fixing ourselves before we attempt to civilize the rest of the world.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY

2011-05-14T10:59:00.000-05:00

One of the questions I’ve most often been asked about our trip to Israel was “Did you feel safe?” The answer is always, “Yes.” I can only recall one time during the 10 days that I felt a bit uncomfortable. We were in Nazareth and a couple of people from our group had gotten separated from the main body. It took a few minutes, but our guide found the wayward pilgrims and re-united them with the rest of us. And, that was that.

The people of Israel live in a very dangerous part of the world. They’re not naïve. They don’t have a collective death wish. They understand their position in the world’s geopolitical order. They know they have many enemies. But, they want to live meaningful lives. As I traveled around the country I saw that the people focused on living life. I think the centuries of being labeled “Christ killers,” “money grubbers,” “communists,” or being the objects of the Fuhrer’s “final solution” has contributed to the national sense that life is now for the living.

This national ideal of life is reflected in the land. As we made our way from place to place the olive trees seemed omnipresent. The vineyards stretched as far as our eyes could see. Our daily meals included tomatoes, leeks, garlic, dairy products, humus, fruits, fish, lamb, beef, and a myriad of other staples, all locally grown. Our daily treat consisted of the best ice cream we’ve ever had.

This abundance hasn’t come overnight. It’s been the product of hard work and a great love of the land. As I watched the bounty unfold before me I was amazed at how prescient the Old Testament prophet Isaiah was when he declared “Streams will flow in the wasteland.”

Seeing the plenty, it was very hard for me to understand why this land should be so scarred by hate and terror. There’s more than enough for everyone, Jew, Christian, Druze, Baha’i, or Palestinian. Almost everyone recognizes this…almost everyone. And therein lies the problem. Almost everyone is light years away from being everyone.

For a significant number of people, from Palestinians to “peacemakers,” Israel is occupied territory and the Jewish people are thieves who should be driven into the sea. Bob Dylan expressed this jaded notion of Israel as the “neighborhood bully” lyrically:

“Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man

His enemies say he’s on their land

They got him outnumbered about a million to one

He got no place to escape to, no place to run

He’s the neighborhood bully.”

Dylan’s words aren’t hyperbole. Hezbollah, one of the most virulent terrorist organizations in the world has expressed its hatred for the Jewish people in charter form: “Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.” In the Gaza Strip, Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel and any attempts to make peace between Palestinians and Jews are tantamount to blasphemy: “[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” The Iranian mullahs believe that the total destruction of Israel will bring the “twelfth imam” and world justice. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expressed the insane notion that the Holocaust is Jewish fiction created to garner world sympathy.

Philosophical expressions and charters are one thing. Action is another. And this is where the rhetoric becomes terror’s backbone. About a week before we left for Israel two young Palestinian men broke into the house of Ehud and Ruth Fogel, who lived in the Israeli settlement of Itamar. They first stabbed the Fogel’s two sons, 11 year old Yoav and 4 year old Elad, to death. They then murdered Ehud and Ruth. They thought they were done and left. As they did they heard the Fogel’s daughter, 3 month old Hadas, crying in her crib. They re-entered the home and stabbed her to death for good measure. They went home and, with the help of family, burned their bloody clothing and hid the weapons.

I didn’t find Israel to be dangerous, but I don’t live on a kibbutz or a settlement. I don’t have to find some way to live a meaningful life when a four month old child becomes the target of the terrorist’s blade. How can the road to peace be found in the face of such evil? This is the Jewish dilemma.

THE PLACE THAT DRIVES MEN MAD

2011-05-14T10:56:00.000-05:00

Nancy and I have been gone for a couple of weeks, on a pilgrimage of sorts. It appears that some things haven’t changed in America during our absence. We’re at a stalemate in Libya, the debt is mounting, and government is every bit as partisan as it was when we left. But, there are some hopeful signs. Lilacs are blooming by the southeast corner of our front porch and lettuce and broccoli are springing up in our raised beds out back. It’s comforting to know that some things are beyond the reach of government.

As our flight from Tel Aviv made its final approach into Newark this past Thursday I found myself daydreaming of the many times I’ve come back to America over the years. There was 1966, when I returned home from Vietnam. I kissed the ground. In 1969 it was thoughts of civilian life and an honorable discharge as the plane landed in Charleston, South Carolina. In the nineties it was usually business, flying the jumpseat on a FedEx cargo plane. During our sunset years we’ve found ourselves preoccupied with the customs declarations and whether or not anything we were carrying was animal, vegetable, or mineral.

I’m always glad to return home. I’m thoroughly American. My eyes get moist when I hear “I’m Proud to Be an American” on the Fourth of July. But, there was something different about this homecoming. I love my country, but I also came back with a deep bond of affection for Israel and its people.

This was my third trip to Israel. I came home from the first two trying to put the historical pieces together, rehearsing the words of the tour guides. “This is Beth Shean, where the Philistines nailed Saul’s body to the city wall.” “This is Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley, where many believe mankind’s final battle will take place.” “This is Masada, where 900 or so Jewish patriots chose death as free people to a life of slavery under the Romans.” “This is Jerusalem, the city of which the psalmist said, “If I ever forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” “This is Yad Vashem, where the memories of the Shoah are enshrined.”

If one is seeking just facts, Israel can be infuriating. As filmmaker Ridley Scott observed, “Jerusalem is the place that drives men mad.” One can ascend the temple mount and wonder what treasures lie beneath the Dome of the Rock. Is it the place where Abraham brought Isaac to sacrifice? Or was it Ishmael? And, what of the Christian sites? Was this church the place of the last supper? Or, was it here? Is this the real Golgatha? Or, is it here?

I came home this time sensing something quite different. It was a feeling that there’s much more to Israel than the “facts.” German theologians have two words to describe history. There is “history,” which is a litany of the facts. Then there is “high history,” the history that is being written by an “unseen hand.” It was the “high history” that captured my attention this time.

It’s said of Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation, that he was looking for a city whose builder and maker was God. That search called for an eye which valued the unseen more than the material. It’s an eye that’s quite foreign to us Americans. We value the material. As Madonna put it so aptly, “We live in a material world and I am a material girl.”

I see now that a change of focus changes both the questions and the answers. The material me asks whether or not the retirement and social security checks will get deposited. The material me thinks about tomorrow’s meals. The material me seems to be at the mercy of the powerful. “What will I do if the government takes this away from me…or that?” “Will I cease to be a free man?”

I think there’s a great lesson in focusing on the unseen. Abraham was a pilgrim and Israel is a nation on a great pilgrimage. In that sense I’m a pilgrim too. Hence, their task is my task - seeking that city being built by “unseen hands.”

It’s not an easy task. At one point along the way I shared with our group that, while we felt something very special happening to us in Israel, we would all go back home where mission creep could easily sink in. The really important things might surrender to the tyranny of the unimportant. I’m home now and the questions born of that experience are raised. How can I maintain my focus when I’m so bombarded by the material? How do I keep my feet on the ground and maintain the pilgrim’s sense of longing for that city I haven’t yet seen?

GRAFTED IN

2011-05-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

April 7th was a wonderful day for me, particularly the morning. We left the hotel in Tiberias at about 8:00 A.M. By 9:30 we were in a small tour boat navigating the Sea of Galilee. The waters were calm and the crew was very hospitable. They unfurled an American flag and played our national anthem for us. It was a kind gesture, the sort of thing that has a tendency to tickle the American ego. About twenty minutes into the ride the crew played Israeli folk music and led us in an Israeli folk dance. It was all very nice, but the highlight for me was sitting next to our tour guide, Amos Davidowitz.

I’ve never met a man quite like Amos. He’s part historian, part archaeologist, part soldier, and part philosopher. He’s 100% a family man and thoroughly Jewish. He’s committed to the life and ideals of his kibbutz.

Amos was actually born in Brooklyn, the son of a rabbi. He moved to Israel with his father when he was about twelve. Upon learning this much about his family history, I was curious to know more. Later on the trip, at Yad Vashem, he told us that he can’t trace his roots back very far at all. The Nazis had systematically destroyed all traces of his family tree, including people and documentation of their existence.

Amos the historian and Amos the archaeologist seem to be a unified whole. As we visited sites he would often pick up what appeared to be meaningless pieces of rock. He would hold them up and proclaim, “This is pottery from the time of the second temple.” He’d occasionally take a piece of rock to his mouth, taste it, and tell us that “This is a piece of a clay jar that’s about three thousand years old.” On the temple mount he told us that “Without doubt, Jesus ascended these steps.” “He almost certainly turned over the tables of the money changers here.”

The history and archaeology I’d learned in seminary seemed like dead letter in comparison.

“Chasing terrorists” is one the professional roles Amos claims. He’s a military man. Yet, there’s something very unique about his view of honor, duty, and ethics. He’s given great thought to what he does and why he does it. In 2005 he drafted an “ethical will.” A month or so before I left for Vietnam I had a will drafted. It was short and sweet. “Send the body here.” “Give what little I have to my mother.” Amos’s will is 12 chapters and 42 pages long. The title of the will is “A Path of Peace in the Field of Battle.” The chapter titles give witness to the depth of his thought – “Love is Like Checkers” “Being Jewish, or Anything Else.” “Between Peace and War.” There’s very little I can say that will add justice to what Amos has written. A small sample of his thought will suffice: “I have led men into battle, through battle and to the end of battle, but you can never lead men out of battle. It always stays with you. I fight because my country is at war, but I choose to labor for peace because I know war will solve nothing.”

As we made our way across the Sea of Galilee I sat quietly next to Amos and thought of what are common roots. I’ve seen Salvatore Dali’s depiction of the last supper. Jesus is at the center. He’s blonde and in appearance he’s Aryan. Jesus was a Jew. I suspect he looked a lot like Amos. His thinking was Jewish. His temperament was Jewish. I think he was a man’s man, in the same way Amos is. I don’t think a pasty-faced Aryan could get a small band of Jewish fishermen to follow him. No way!

Amos talked openly about the pain the world of Christianity has brought to the Jewish people over the centuries. One day he talked about the theological stream called “replacement theology,” the idea that the Christian Church has replaced the Jews and Israel as “God’s “chosen.” The idea started early in Christian history and gave a philosophical foothold for those who hated the Jews to formulate even more evil philosophies.

Thankfully, there are newer streams of theology that see Christians and Christianity as having been grafted in to the original vine of history. In Holy Writ we are called the wild olive that has been grafted in. We find our strength and sustenance in roots that are Jewish.

What Amos and the Jewish people have given us is a great gift. We are heirs to a promise of a Jewish consciousness that author Thomas Cahill said “Was animated and kept warm by the breath of God.”

This was Amos’s great gift to me. I’ll always be thankful.

LITTLE PLATOONS

2011-01-07T10:00:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago a friend commented on the op-ed I wrote on December 30th. He thought it might have been a tad pessimistic, but he also said it might have also been a tad true. About the only response I could muster was that he was a tad accurate on both counts. People who don’t really know me often assume that I’m a pessimist at heart, particularly when it comes to what has been my home town for over ten years. They also assume that I don’t like Emporia. They couldn’t be more wrong!

There’s a lot to like about this town – the wrap-around front porches, the blurbs in the Gazette’s crime blotter about “dogs at large” or “worthless checks,” watching schoolchildren on their way to school toting backpacks that weigh more than they do (a harbinger of the burdens to come, perhaps), the Flint Hills, hosting international students whose minds are pregnant with potential and dreams, the blue collar work ethic, the Stetsons, and the bib overalls.

But, the things I love about Emporia often collide with reality. I don’t like the slum lords, the chronic poverty, the payday loan shops, the revolving door of high dollar consultants, the decaying old homes, the empty storefronts, or economic development that relies far too heavily on low wage manufacturing to solve our problems. As I said on the 30th, I believe something’s gotta give.

Another friend recently told me that he was waiting for me to throw my hat in the ring again in the upcoming City Commission election. He seemed surprised when I told him I’d found more productive outlets to express myself and contribute to the welfare of Emporia.

It’s not that I find politics and government unproductive channels. I love the give and take, the debate, and the slings and arrows that are part of the public arena. I ran for office a few years ago, believing that we needed to change some things if Emporia was going to thrive in the future. First and foremost, I believed that we needed to shift our focus away from low wage manufacturing and to set our sights on the sweet spots of the new global economy - information technology and management, high wage manufacturing, small/lean companies ready and able to compete in the marketplace. I believed that we needed to confront our poverty and slum lord issues. I believed we needed to find ways to retrain our workforce and to stem the tide of graduates who inevitably leave Emporia as soon as the sheepskin is in their hands.

I’m no less passionate about these things today. The challenges are still there. In fact, the problems have become even more acute over time. I can’t say that our window of opportunity has closed, but I can say that time is of the essence. Something’s gotta give!

If I believe that strongly, then, why am I not running for office?

There are two answers to that question. The first answer is easy. I’m not the only guy in town who feels the way I do. There are, and will be, other candidates who want to be part of carving out a better future for Emporia. I’m going to listen and support those who have the vision and courage to meet the challenges head on.

But, politics isn’t the only area of meaningful service available. I saw this a year ago when I had the privilege to work on the Emporia Cleansweep campaign. I’m told that it was one of the most successful community campaigns in recent memory. Over a million pounds of trash were hauled away. Neighborhoods were cleaned up. Volunteers contributed thousands of man hours to the effort. There were businessmen, truck drivers, mechanics, bankers, realtors, students, and even a few politicians. But, for me, there was more. I saw that some problems won’t go away so easily or can’t be deposited into dumpsters. This is a great town, but there are a lot of lonely people who’ve become disconnected from the rest of us for one reason or another. There are widows without support systems and the poverty I saw went far deeper than cold statistics. These are the problems that cry out for solutions that can’t be solved by political decree.

For me, the most productive outlet going forward is to be a part of what Irish statesman Edmund Burke called “the little platoons” that serve society from the bottom up. In time, with the right political leadership, the economics of Emporia can change for the better. But some things won’t change with time. We’ll always have the lonely, the disconnected, the neglected, and the forgotten. That’s a task that only the little platoons are equipped to handle.

THE HAIR OF THE DOG

2010-12-28T09:55:00.000-06:00

In my younger days I used to spend New Year’s Eve engaged in merry making and loud music followed inevitably by a desperate search for the hair of the dog on New Year’s Day. These days I rarely get to see the ball drop at Times Square and the loud music has been supplanted by something more like Lawrence Welk and his bubble machines. The change is due in part to concessions to age and in part to the onset of wisdom

I like to think of this all as a quintessentially American tale, a metaphor for how America has lurched from merry making to bubbles for the past twenty years. In the nineties it was all about the sure bet of initial public offerings and Silicon Valley, followed by the dot com bubble that brought the partying to a screeching halt. Then one millennium ended and a new one began. The dot com lessons, if there were any, were forgotten. America plunged headlong into the world of easy credit and collateralized debt obligations. Americans bought houses they couldn’t afford or flipped them about as soon as the ink dried on the mortgage contracts. It was quite intoxicating and it seemed that the party would never end. But, like all wild parties, it did. The result was an economic hangover the likes of which Americans hadn’t seen since the Great Depression. And, we’re flailing around, desperately searching for the hair of the dog. In my youth pickle juice, a couple of raw eggs, or a bloody Mary would usually do the trick. Unfortunately, they’re no match for what ails America today.

The fact that we’re still hung over has little to do with lack of effort. Our government has poured billions of dollars of stimulus money into the mix. They’ve bailed out automakers and banks. They’ve borrowed trillions from the Chinese, the Saudis, and any other international payday loan shark or hustler they could find. But, the dog that bit us continues to bite. Unemployment is so bad that millions have given up looking for work. Retirement funds have been depleted and a lot of us are walking around with our hats in our hands, pleading “Brother can you spare a buck or two or ten?”

In a couple of days it will be 2011 and there is another bubble that may just be ready to burst. In a recent 60 Minutes report Steve Kroft noted that a financial crisis involving state and local governments is looming: “In the two years, since the “great recession” wrecked their economies and shriveled their income, the states have collectively spent nearly a half a trillion dollars more than they collected in taxes. There is also a trillion dollar hole in their public pension funds.” That would be bad enough, but as financial analyst Meredith Whitney, who was one of the few who predicted the 2008 bubble, warned in the same report, “The most alarming thing about the state and local issue is the level of complacency.”

I’m not sure what that means for Kansas and Emporia. Maybe we’re too small for a bubble. Maybe we’re far away and insulated. On December 22nd, the New York Times reported that Prichard, Alabama, population 27,000, had run out of money. As the Times put it, “So the declining, little-known city of Prichard is now attracting the attention of bankruptcy lawyers, labor leaders, municipal credit analysts and local officials from across the country.”

Prichard had been warned for years that there was a bubble on the horizon, but no one listened. Apparently, Prichard wasn’t insulated, nor was it too small.

Our legislators here in Kansas have billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities to KPERS and keep kicking the can down the road, hoping the problem will just go away. Our city commissioners are so strapped for cash they’re considering fees for putting out fires or extricating someone from a car with the Jaws of Life. Desperation, it seems, may be the mother of invention. As police Chief Gary Smith put it, “It’s not easy to budget some expensive events.”

You’d think that our leaders would get the message. But, it seems that their hearing has gone dim. The Emporia Recreation Commission is talking about building a new, improved center, to the tune of millions. The city and USD 253 are carrying enormous loads of debt. Mill levies continue to climb; Emporia’s population is in decline; household incomes are stagnant.

Something’s gotta’ give. Like the rest of America, Kansas and Emporia are in desperate need of the hair of the dog. The question looming for us and our leaders is whether or not we’ll be willing to take the cure.

THE UNSEEN POWER

2010-12-09T22:17:00.001-06:00

We’ve just come through the election season. The jockeying for power is over, at least for a while. Power seems to have shifted in the direction of the Republican Party. Time will tell whether or not that’s true.

If the money spent on the elections is any indicator there was a lot to fight for. Who would control the power of the national purse? Who would have the power and the votes to legislate? Who would have the final say on how the trillions of dollars we and future generations of Americans pour in to government coffers is to be spent?

No wonder the in-fighting was so vicious. As philosophers have observed over the centuries, power can be quite intoxicating. Sadly, it’s this intoxication that often leads people to grasp for power and then misunderstand or misapply it once they’re elected.

In the 1930’s, Mao Tse-Tung told his fellow revolutionaries they must “grasp the truth that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” To us, Mao’s ideas seem extreme. But, if we look at power along a societal continuum I think we’d be forced to admit that we’ve given government enormous power over our lives. Government can legally pick our pockets before the direct deposits hit our checking accounts. Government has tremendous power to coerce us to do things, even when we don’t want to do them. And, I think we’d also be forced to admit that government power is growing with each election cycle. And, therein lies the real danger. As Irish statesman Edmund Burke observed in a 1771 political speech: “The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”

But, is that all that can be said about power?

In a little over a week millions of Americans will be attending candlelight services celebrating the birth of Jesus. For a few hours the commercial aspects of the holiday will be put on hold. Hopefully, the dust-ups about whether the pre-Christmas festivities are called Christmas celebrations or seasonal celebrations, the arguments about nativity displays, or the pointless debates about whether or not Jesus was actually born on December 25th will be forgotten.

For those of us who believe, there should be a much richer understanding of what the Christmas season is about. Rather than arguing with our critics and feeling powerless, we should see that real power often moves through unseen or un-observed channels.

I’ve heard it said that the more things change the more they stay the same. As with many things, there’s a grain of truth in that adage. Centuries ago, the Roman senate was legislating in much the same way our political leaders legislate today. Taxes were levied then and people were moved like pawns, as they often are today. But, there are those rare moments when something special happens to break the cycle. The tectonic plates of history shift. This, I think, is one of the fundamental meanings of Christmas. It’s the story of something remarkable that happens in a small, backwater town. And, it all happens while the Roman Empire rules, moves, and shakes the world. The characters we see don’t fit the stereotypes we have of the powerful. The revelations come to outsiders rather than insiders. There are the shepherds. Why them and not the high and mighty? There’s Simeon, an old man with a keen eye and Anna, a widow/seer. Why them and not Herod’s pillow prophets? Why then and not now? Why word of mouth to announce the news rather than Facebook or Twitter?

The message flows outside the normally accepted channels of power. It seems, as 19th century poet Percy Shelley put it:

“The awful shadow of some unseen Power

Floats though unseen among us, - visiting

This various world with as inconstant wing

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.”

Unseen, perhaps, but not unfelt or beyond the possibility of experience.

The older I get, the more I’m coming to see that Christmas is, or should be, about the gentle application of power. It’s not about the power to name the festivities or who has the votes to pass the “desired” legislation. It’s not about who is to be the community icon or celebrity; it’s about those who are willing to live and serve quietly in society’s shadows and margins. It’s not about the power of the purse; it’s about the human heart and the power to gently tug it in the direction of grace.

The message of the season was summed up in three words by the angels making the announcement – “Peace!” “Good will!” Unfortunately, the message is as difficult to grasp today as it was two thousand years ago. It does seem that the more things change the more they stay the same.

CRUISIN' WITH THE FAT CATS

2010-12-04T09:34:00.000-06:00

My wife and I just returned home from a trans-Atlantic cruise. For over three weeks we strolled leisurely through the streets of Rome, Florence, Barcelona, Cartegena, and Cadiz. On board the ship my days would begin with a pre-dawn walk on the track circling the putting green and bocce courts. When my walk was complete I’d get my wife and we’d go to the Ocean View Café for the breakfast buffet. One morning it might be eggs benedict. On another it might be smoked salmon or an omelet. For those with hearty appetites there were meats, including roast beef, pastries, roasted peppers or tomatoes, and assorted cheeses. After breakfast I’d stroll along the lower decks and pass by the shops, the casino, the library, and the ever present entertainers. Each night, after seeing the sights, we were treated to sumptuous meals, served by third-world waiters. Then, we’d attend a show. After each show we’d return to our room. The bed would be turned town, with a wrapped piece of chocolate on each pillow, courtesy of our steward, a young man from Indonesia. By 10 o’clock we’d turn in, to be gently rocked to sleep by the waves.

Looking back on it now it sounds absolutely decadent, the stuff that only the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, or the richest of the rich dared dream of just a few generations ago. For my wife and me, middle class Americans, a cruise is now possible. For others like us, middle class might mean a recreational vehicle, a boat in the driveway, a 2,000 square foot home with a downstairs den, or a storage locker across town that’s full of never-to-be-used junk.

Things certainly have changed over the past few generations.

We shared our evening meals with two very nice couples, both from Florida. After an evening of breaking the ice, one of the Floridians mentioned the elections that were going to take place in America the following day. I confessed I had very little interest in the outcome. As the conversation progressed I heard a lot about the dismantling of the American middle class. I asked what that meant. “The fat cats are swallowing everything up. There’s nothing left for the rest of us.” I thought about what I’d heard as I finished my portion of mushroom crusted Colorado rack of lamb. “Really?” I asked. “We’re cruising our way along the Mediterranean, stopping at exotic ports of call. We’re eating steak tar tare, lobster, crème brulee, bananas foster, and washing it all down with the finest wine. We’re being doted on by people from Indonesia, Serbia, Belarus, Colombia, and the poorest corners of the earth. If we want we can go to the casino and drop our cash into machines that virtually scream ‘You’ve got way too much money; let us take it off your hands and redistribute it for you.’ If the truth be known, on some sliding cosmic scale we’re the fat cats and I think the people pampering us know that quite well.”

We couldn’t ever agree, but our conversations about the destruction of the middle class always ended cordially. He still believed that he was living a diminished life because of the fat cats. I was suffering from pangs of guilt and the pains of over eating.

I took a valuable lesson from the dialogue. Class envy, when elevated to an art form, will make one blind to his own wealth and jealous of everyone a rung or two above him.

The trans-Atlantic crossing was quite boring. There’s a lot of water between the United States and Europe. I found myself occasionally going to the 15th deck and looking out at the vast expanse of water all around me. I thought of others who’d made the crossing before Nancy and me. There was her grandmother, who emigrated from Switzerland in the late 19th century. She probably spent her days in steerage, sans the crème brulee. There were the ancestors of African-Americans, who were chained, against their will, in the holds of ships, facing the prospect of being sold to a plantation owner in the land of opportunity. I thought of my Irish ancestors, who made the crossing in what came to be known as the “famine ships.”

I have no idea how we Americans fit into the scales of cosmic justice. All I have on this side of eternity are tantalizing clues – camels trying to negotiate the eyes of needles, parables about the debilitating effects of envy, the deceitfulness of riches, and the proclamation of the first being last and the last becoming first.

Given that, I’m not in the market for another cruise, a boat, a storage locker full of junk, or heart full of envy. I think I’ll be content with what I have.

I Now Report Sightings of Shovel-Ready Projects

2010-10-14T11:41:00.001-05:00

An interesting read from economist Robert Higgs follows

I Now Report Sightings of Shovel-Ready Projects

MARCH OF THE BIRKENSTOCKS

2010-09-23T14:48:00.000-05:00

"Four legs good, two legs better"

On a recent edition of C-Span’s “Washington Journal,” a young Democratic strategist named Dylan Loewe spent about forty-five minutes pitching his book “Permanently Blue: How Democrats Can End the Republican Party and Rule the Next Generation.” A snippet from chapter one follows - “That’s the kind of permanent majority the Democrats are on the verge of building: a single party, democratically elected to control the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House without interruption for an entire generation.”

Loewe’s analysis is impressive. As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin noted, “Combining passion and eloquence with deep research and sharp analytic skill, Dylan Loewe has produced a spellbinding book that should stimulate debate and provide hope to progressives everywhere.” It seems to add up. A charismatic leader, shifting national demographics, strong political organization, millions, possibly billions, of dollars in the campaign coffers, and weak political opponents all point to the very real possibility of a permanent Democratic majority.

I considered calling in to the program to remind young Mr. Loewe that Karl Rove, George Bush’s evil genius, had predicted a permanent Republican majority a little less than ten years ago. But, I decided against it. There was no reason to rain on a young man’s parade. Current trends may not be favorable, but political trends shift quickly nowadays. We may be heading for one party, progressive/Democratic Party rule.

Given that, I’ve spent the past week considering what the implications of Loewe’s thesis might be.

The most important feature of such a system would be maximum efficiency. There’d be no more blue state, red state nonsense. The Party of No would be eliminated. There wouldn’t be any need for problematic things like elections. If we held them at all, there would just be one choice on the ballot, named “the progressive of your choice.” The winners could claim 95% or better mandates. Saddam would glow white hot with envy.

The gridlock would cease. We’d all be blue; we’d all be Keynesians. The legislation and edicts could pour down in torrents. Every societal problem could be solved. Agencies could be created. Czars could be appointed. The Party faithful could start hoisting ladders to heaven.

There would be some knotty problems to solve on the way to a one party utopia, the principal ones being our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. For over two hundred years we’ve held that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator…” But, with a bit of legal skullduggery it could easily be changed to read, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Government lawyers could dance around, a la Napoleon, cracking whips and proclaiming “Four legs good, two legs better.”

It might be better to do away with our founding documents all together. Have you ever read such negative stuff in all your life? All the talk about “Governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” or “absolute Despotism” and “usurpations.” And, worse yet, all those negatively tinted amendments in the Constitution – “Congress shall make NO law,” “the right of the people…shall NOT be infringed,” “NO solider shall be quartered…,”Excessive bail shall NOT be required,” “The right of United States citizens shall NOT be denied or abridged.”

The new ruling paradigm wouldn’t have the usual hallmarks of despotism. There’d be no goose stepping. We’d be treated to a new breed of despots, dancing around the halls of power in Birkenstocks.

I’m sure there would be dissent at first. But, given time and the judicious use of Conan the Barbarian’s principle to “crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women,” the complaint box would dry up. If that failed to squelch all dissent, the legislative branch could re-invigorate the World War I Espionage Act, upgrade the Patriot Act and thereby make any opinion contrary to the ruling opinion illegal. Violators could be shipped off to Death Valley gulags, to be re-educated or fed gruel and moldy bread for the rest of their lives.

Seeing all the potential for progress, it makes me wonder what on earth our founders were thinking about. I sometimes see myself as a bit of a contrarian, but I couldn’t hold a candle to those guys. You’d think they’d have just gone with the flow. But no! They complained, in writing, about the taxes, plundering, and suspending legislatures. Some of them even signed in quadruple font. When the time for fighting came they carried flags reading “Don’t Tread On Me” or “Live Free or Die.” What on earth were they thinking?

Well, there you have it. In a little more than a month we might know whether or not Loewe is right. If he is, Birkenstocks may be “in” and our founding documents may be on the way out.

BETTY GRABLE AND FRANKENSTEIN

2010-09-08T17:25:00.001-05:00

On August 26th I wondered what the next shoe to drop might be. I got my answer the next day. I was expecting a shoe. What I got was a hobnailed boot.

In a convoluted attempt to justify what appears to be a 3.5 mill increase on property taxes, Lyon County controller Dan Slater said it could have been worse, thanks to a county wide sales tax increase approved in 2008. Instead of a 12 or 13 mill increase, we’re ONLY getting about 3 and a half.

You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t break out in a string of “Hallelujah’s.”

The 2008 sales tax was cleverly marketed as property tax relief. So, a 3.5 mill increase in property tax and a one cent sales tax have somehow become a great act of municipal generosity. It was like hearing the executioner say the choice will be strychnine or hemlock, the guillotine or the electric chair.

I don’t think folks expected Betty Grable in ’08, but I don’t think they bargained on Frankenstein, which is exactly what they got.

County officials were quick to come to Dan Slater’s defense. As Tammy Vopat put it, “I don’t remember anybody actually coming out and saying keep the mill levy flat.” “I think that people are smart enough to know costs have gone up. There’s no way without cutting something you’re going to be able to keep the mill levy flat.”

If it was an attempt to invoke sensitivity it fell flat on me. Our officials don’t seem to understand that sensitivity is a two way street. To be honest, they appear to be willfully ignorant of the economic impact their decisions have on Emporians who are least able to afford them.

A few years ago we moved my wife’s mother to Emporia. Velma’s a proud woman. During WWII she worked on a B-25 assembly line putting pilot switch boxes together. She was conscientious, knowing how critical the quality of her work was to the men who flew the missions. She’s now a 91 year old widow living on a fixed income. She is the primary caregiver for a developmentally disabled son, who also lives on a fixed income. I don’t think her case is unusual. There are a lot of Emporians living in similar circumstances. They’re not stupid. They do know that “costs have gone up.” When I visit my mother-in-law and her son in the morning, for example, she’s very aware that her property tax bill is higher now than it ever was in Kansas City. She knows that she pays more for water here than she did in Shawnee. She knows that the price of staples like bread, milk, sugar, and flour are creeping up. She also know that sales taxes add another penny or two to every dollar she spends “shopping Emporia first.” When the temperatures soared above the century mark a few weeks ago she didn’t want to turn the air conditioning on, worrying that the increased utility cost would have to be leveraged against a “luxury” like okra, one of her son’s favorite vegetables.

I think a lot of us are getting tired of being flimflammed by officials who appear to be honor graduates of the Marie Antoinette school of sensitivity.

When I was twenty I took a job as a door to door salesman, selling encyclopedias. After two days of training, having the mantra “it will only cost a dime a day, less than the cost of a cup of coffee” drilled into my head, I was sent on the road with the company’s best salesman. He sold a set at the second house we went to. It was impressive. I think he could have charmed the apples off wallpaper if given the opportunity. A few houses later, when my turn came, I kept going back to the mantra – “Sir, this will only cost a dime a day, less than the price of a cup of coffee.” It seemed to be working; the man was on the verge of buying. But then I got hit by a pang of conscience. The man and his family were obviously living on a very limited income. I knew he couldn’t afford the encyclopedias, nor did he need them. I began folding up the marketing materials and explained, “Sir, you really don’t need these. There’s a library down the street and your son can use the encyclopedias there for free.” As soon as we left I got fired. I slept well that night, knowing my conscience was clear.

In the end we’ll get a property tax increase heaped on top of the sales tax increases. I’d like to hope for better, but I don’t have that much faith. Nothing will change here until our leaders truly understand that sensitivity is a two way street.

KRAKATOA BREWING

2010-08-26T14:07:00.001-05:00

In an early August op-ed, Peggy Noonan laid out how many feel about the growing disconnect between “average” Americans and their political, civic, and cultural leaders. As Noonan put it “But do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don't act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s, the growing gulf between the country's thought leaders, as they're called--the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.”

I don’t know what to make of it. At times I feel that events in Washington, D.C. are in a far away galaxy and there are times when I feel they’re like a huge asteroid poised to crash through the ozone layer. I find myself occasionally thinking back fondly to the days when Ike was the President and I was the stickball champion of Chatham Street. And, there are days when I feel that the serenity of the Flint Hills can protect me from the madness.

Unfortunately, the respite is only temporary. The disconnect is everywhere. There’s no escaping it.

On August 3rd the Gazette reported that “Even in tough economic times, 64 percent of Emporia voters agreed to continue a half-cent sales tax for economic development and property tax relief through 2024.” There are 13,808 registered voters in the city of Emporia. There were 2,156 votes in favor of the extension. The truth is, only 15.6% of those registered voted to approve the extension. Why did so few vote? Was R.D.A president Kent Heerman right when he claimed “it looks like voters were very interested in continuing industrial and economic development and property tax relief.”? Or, could it be that we’re seeing detachment and disenchantment played out locally?

In the wake of the vote, Steve Sauder thanked “the very astute voters in Emporia for extending the ½ cent sales tax through 2024.” Where does that leave those who voted no? Apparently, they’re not very astute. What about those who didn’t vote? Feeling disconnected? Were they were thinking “What’s the point? The deck is stacked.”

Last week, the city commission approved a budget with a gaping $750,000 hole. Among the line items that escaped the hatchet was a $250,000 subsidy to the municipal golf course. The prevailing argument in favor of the subsidy was that quality of life things like the golf course make Emporia appealing. A few budgets ago a $50,000 annual taxi subsidy for retirees on fixed incomes and folks with disabilities was scrapped. Apparently, seniors pushing walkers or wheezing through oxygen bottles must make Emporia less appealing. Oh well. I guess it’s all for the best, isn’t it?

I can’t figure out this mill levy thing. The school district approved a 2.55 mill increase in their budget, blaming it on decreased valuations. I’ve lived here since ’99. Property valuations have increased by 48% over that time. Following their rationale, the mill levy should have decreased over the same period. Yet, the school district levy has increased by about 30% since ’99. Overall, my property taxes have increased by 88%. If the formula weren’t so expensive, it would actually be funny.

A lot of Emporia’s ham and eggers have tried to tell their leaders they’re tapped out, but it doesn’t seem to be working. You don’t suppose the communications cables have been disconnected, do you?

The city is $35 million in debt. USD 253 is carrying another $27 million. That’s about $2,500 for every man, woman, and child in Emporia, or about $10,000 for the average Emporia family. On top of that, our federal government has us in hock to the tune of $44,000 per citizen. Our poverty rate is close to 20%. And, our leaders are wondering why folks aren’t “shopping Emporia first.” Could it be a sign of disconnect? You betcha.’

What’s the next shoe to drop? A few more mills, perhaps? $650,000 worth of Astroturf at Soden’s Grove? By the end of the year the city is going to have to figure out what to do with the old Arts Council building. I wonder if Mayor Jim Kessler, who has vowed to create revenue out of thin air, has a plan to set up the presses and print the money when the Arts Council vacates.

Peggy Noonan was right. There’s a massive primal scream building up in America. I fear that unless our leaders, at all levels, get connected, the sound of the explosion to come will make Krakatoa seem like a whisper.

SNEAKY PETE'S GUIDE TO KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS

2010-08-12T11:58:00.000-05:00

Harry Truman was reported to have once said “You can line up ten economists end to end on the floor and you’d never come up with a straight line.” He was almost certainly right.

Since I retired a few years ago I’ve done a bit of dabbling in economics, principally to amuse myself as I amble off into the sunset. I’ve read the classics from Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” to Marx’s “Das Kapital,” with a bit of Hayek, Friedman, Pipes, DeSoto, DeSouza, and Higgs sprinkled in. I’ll admit my bias. Adam Smith and the free market capitalists make sense to me. Marx? I got about half way through “Das Kapital” and decided to ship it off, free of charge, to some east coast Marxist who could make better use of it.

This past May I decided to tackle John Maynard Keynes’ “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.” It’s now August. I’ve made it as far as chapter 10, “The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier.”

Theoretically, I should like what I’m reading. Granted, I’m only an eavesdropper, but I think I’ve read enough to understand that (1) We’re all going to die (2) Thrift is bad (3) Consumption is good (4) Consumption is all the better if you can get government to pry the loot from the hands, bank accounts, and investment portfolios of the rich, their children, grand-children, and great grand-children and give it to guys like me right now so that we can consume like drunken sailors.

What’s not to like about that? It may not make sense, but it doesn’t have to. The notion of enshrining inter-class and inter-generational theft may not be an honest way to spend five shillings, as economist Paul Samuelson once put it. But, as he also said, it’s “pure genius.”

It’s no wonder politicians have become such skilled practitioners of the pickpocket’s art. They’re geniuses too. They can appropriate money they haven’t earned, from people who have. And what are they doing with the money? They’re creating a totally dependent class of citizens and an army of government bureaucrats that would be the envy of Genghis Khan’s pillaging hordes.

For the past 10 years this has been a very bi-partisan effort. George Bush, a closet Keynesian, gave us trillions in debt and deficits. Barrack Obama, a full bore Keynesian, has set the pedal to the metal. We now have fourteen trillion in debt and if the Congressional Budget Office is right we’ll add another eight trillion by the end of the decade. And you and me? We’re just along for the ride in the back seat, with the geniuses at the wheel. It may look to us like we’re careening down the edge of a cliff with no brakes and no clutch, but they know better. We may be scared out of our wits, but they’ve got the cure. “Just shut up and take a slug of the Sneaky Pete. Everything’s gonna’ be fine.”

The alternative to this is austerity and smaller government, which was just voted in by the British. As I write, British Prime Minister David Cameron is slashing and burning like a wild man. His task, as he sees it, is to drastically reduce the size and power of government that has “turned able, capable individuals into passive recipients of state help.” Now I ask you. How much fun is that? It seems downright uncivilized.

Is it really a good idea to have “experts” at the helm when you’re trying to navigate your way between disaster and catastrophe? I remember a young student from my days in grad school. He was absolutely brilliant, theology’s equivalent of Keynes. It was widely accepted that he could manipulate the Almighty like a child playing with Silly Putty. There was a word - eschatology - he became quite enamored of and he managed to squeeze it into every sentence he uttered. One day it might be the “consequent eschatology of Schweitzer.” On another it might be “eschatological developments and the social milieu.” I once asked him how he would explain what he was saying to a cab driver. He looked at me, nonplussed, and said “Cab drivers aren’t worthy of this.” I suspect many of his parishioners, if he ever had any, have long since been devoured by Scylla or sucked down the vortex by Charybdis.

Given the fun I’ve had to this point, I can hardly wait to get to Keynes’ chapter 24 – “Concluding Notes on the Social Philosophy Towards Which the General Theory Might Lead.” As I look out the windshield I think I know we’re it’s heading and I want to scream, “We’re going off the cliff; we’re gonna’ crash and burn!” But I’m no expert. Maybe I’d better take another slug of the Sneaky Pete to dull the oncoming pain.

THE MAIL CARRIER'S LAMENT

2010-07-29T09:13:00.000-05:00

One of my morning rituals is gathering our mail. For a couple of weeks now, as we lurch toward the dog days of August, I’ve noticed something. Our mailbox is fuller than it has been for some time. And, the load our mail carrier is toting is getting heavier and heavier as the days pass. What’s the reason for the increased workload? It’s obvious. Our political primary is less than a month away, with national elections coming in November.

There are some consistent themes in the literature. Taxes are too high. So are deficits and debt. Second amendment rights need to be protected. Our borders need to be sealed. Conservatism, as defined by the candidates, is in. The glossies say it all. “I’m pro family, pro life, pro education, pro gun, pro business, pro farmer, pro jobs, pro social security, pro apple pie, and pro America.” “I’m against illegal immigration, high taxes, big government, terrorism, bailouts, unscrupulous mortgage lenders, fat cats, and political chicanery of any kind.”

What they fail to tell us in the glossies is that this elected excellence never comes to us pro bono. We, the people, may have altruism in mind, but there are lobbyists skulking around, honey dripping from their canines and carpetbags full of perks in their hands. Nothing I hear from the current crop of political saints leads me to believe that things will magically change in one election cycle.

I’ve had a few friends tell me I’m too cynical about government and the political process. About the only defense I can mount is that I tend to think I’m not cynical enough. The older I get the more I appreciate H.L. Mencken’s words - “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety.

It also appears that I’m not the only cynic around. A July 22nd Gallup poll revealed that millions of Americans rate our Congress about on par with drug dealers or forgers.

Now, it’s not that I’m ungrateful. Politicians have rewarded my cynicism many times. I remember Watergate….Abscam….Duke Cunningham….and Jack Abramoff. I remember a politician who kept a bundle of lobbyist’s money in his freezer for safe keeping….Marion Barry snorting cocaine….Rod Blagojevich trying to sell a senate seat….Charlie Rangel being charged with multiple ethics violations as part of an on-going swamp draining project. And, it wasn’t too long ago that Eliot Spitzer, New York’s chief crime fighter, was caught cavorting with high dollar escorts.

Sometimes I think there must be something in the water that politicians and their appointees drink. For example, in 2007 Christina Romer, the Obama administration’s chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisors published an academic study about the macroeconomic effects of tax changes. The study laid out the debilitating effect of taxes on both consumption and employment: “A tax increase is followed by a large and highly significant rise in the unemployment rate.” “In response to a tax increase of one percent of GDP, the maximum fall in personal consumption expenditures is 2.6 percent.” Interestingly, as a political appointee she’s now touting the benefits of the stimulus package and mountains of debt and their “positive impact” on employment. It won’t be long before she’s touting the virtues of what Kansas politicians call revenue enhancements to create even more jobs.

Dana Priest of the Washington Post recently published a series on the size and scope of the security apparatus that has sprung up in the wake of 9-11. Her findings were eye popping. “1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, employing an estimated 854,000 people.” There are so many people and programs involved that not even the Secretary of Defense knows what’s going on in the belly of the beast. How, pray tell, can this insanity be unwound? The minute someone mentions redundancy, too much information, and billions of dollars in waste, the programs’ supporters will howl, “Do you want another 9-11?” The only “sensible” response will be to create thousands of additional organizations.

The I.R.S. recently reported that the homebuyer’s credit that was supposed to stimulate home sales didn’t stimulate much beyond fraud. Millions of dollars in credits made their way to convicted felons, including many serving life terms. Millions more made their way into the hands of folks claiming the credit multiple times for the same home. The I.R.S, in a fit of transparency, admitted to problems in auditing the program and promised to try to do better in the future.

Thankfully, this cycle will be over in a few months. In the end, though, not much will change, other than the distinct possibility that Emporia’s mail carriers will be candidates for the chiropractor’s table.

FALLING OFF THE WAGON

2010-07-17T17:56:00.000-05:00

It’s said that gossip and rumors are more entertaining than the truth. I’m not sure, but I think they’re almost always as interesting, especially trying to figure out where truth ends and fiction begins.

Every family has wonderful stories, shared during holiday get-togethers, funerals, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, birthdays, or baptisms. Sometimes they revolve around skeletons in a musty old closet. Most often they revolve around some ancestor. We all seem to be able to claim a famous person on our family tree – George Washington, Joan of Arc, Winston Churchill, the Wright brothers, or the King of Siam. A horse thief or two occasionally slips into the conversations. Interestingly, though, I’ve never met anyone willing to lay claim to Rasputin, Al Capone, Attila the Hun, Lizzie Borden, or Bernie Madoff. Some families even have members who claim they were King Tut, Queen Nefertiti, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Lily Langtree in a past life.

It’s been said there are only six degrees of separation between anyone alive today and anyone who has ever lived. When it comes down to it we’re all linked, for better or worse. If we were to look long enough and hard enough we’d find the rumors and quirky stories we carry around go all the way back to Adam and Eve.

My wife, Nancy, has become the Catron family archivist. Years ago, when we lived in New Jersey, she told me that one of her distant relatives was once a Supreme Court justice. I was skeptical, but politely kept my doubts to myself. I became a true believer upon visiting the Supreme Court and seeing his portrait on display in the basement gallery.

Of course, not everyone in her family tree was famous. One, in particular, had become infamous. A couple of months ago she was rummaging in a file folder looking for information about her great-grandfather, John Knierim. Over the years I’d occasionally heard stories about him. From the little I heard I was able to glean four bits of information. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was a Methodist preacher. He smoked a pipe. And, rumor had it; he frequented saloons, finding his way in through the back doors, thus preserving his ecclesiastical reputation. The rumor was rooted in a tidy piece of gossip that he had somewhere in the course of time “fallen off the wagon.” The sordid details shocked and entertained his fellow Methodists. As soon as the local skeptics and agnostics got wind of it, the story confirmed their suspicions that he was, like most religious folk, a hypocrite. Once their suspicions were confirmed, they spread the tale like a prairie fire. Their motives were, of course, entirely noble.

Nancy’s rummaging proved fruitful. She found an affidavit, dated July 30, 1897, which has shed some light on the rumor. The text of the affidavit, filed by John’s son, George Knierim, follows:

“On the 16th day of June, 1893, I went with my father John Knierim to Clinton, Henry County, Mo., where we bought a Deering Selfbinder Harvester. On our way home, with the Harvester and a can of oil on the wagon, near the town of Deepwater, Mo., about 4 ½ miles from our house, we met with the following described sad accident. Some dry hay in the bottom of our wagon caught fire, doubtless from father’s smoking. Before we could extinguish the fire it reached the oil can, causing quite a flame, which scared the horses so that they made quite a side jump, which caused father, who being stiffened considerable from rheumatism, to fall from the wagon, whereby his left hip was injured so that it has made him a cripple for his lifetime, being able to get around only with crutches or cane. I was the only person with father when this sad accident took place. I can also further state that said fall and injury was not the result of vicious habits.”

Well, there you have it. John Knierim really did “fall off the wagon.” The circumstances of the fall were, however, a bit different than those that persisted in the rumor mill. It appears the affidavit may have been filed in order to get a veteran’s pension for his service in the 31st Ohio regiment. It was either that or his way of proving to his critics that his fall was not the result of “vicious habits.”

His fellow Methodists must have been quite relieved; his critics sadly disappointed.

The affidavit was filed 113 years ago, but it could easily have been written today. We’ve gotten much more sophisticated over time, but, the human habits of gossip and rumor mongering still abound. It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.

MONETARY SEPARATION ANXIETY

2010-04-22T12:10:00.000-05:00

The following op ed will be published in today's Emporia Gazette. I'm hoping Professor Peterson reads it and agrees to pay our taxes next year.

Well, they’re done. Our taxes have been filed. My wife depressed the “enter” key and that was that. All that’s left now is to wait for tax independence day, which I think will come just in time for a bit of Christmas shopping.

Each April of my adult life I’ve been afflicted by a seasonal disorder. It’s become so familiar now that I’ve given it an acronym – M.S.A., which stands for Monetary Separation Anxiety. There’s no known cure for it.

I suppose an attitude change might help. A month or so ago John Peterson wrote a piece about how delightful the whole tax process is. I read it three times to be sure it wasn’t satire and I’ve concluded there was nothing tongue-in-cheek about it. He’s dead serious. He really enjoys paying taxes.

I learned some amazing things. I never realized that taxes are solely responsible for our culture. Does that mean we’ve got the tax man to thank for Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Louisa May Alcott, Gertrude Stein, the Metropolitan Opera, Van Gogh, Vermeer, El Greco, Michelangelo, Georgia O’Keefe, and Andy Warhol? Apparently so.

I never knew that if I gave more money to the government I could own that Swiss chalet I’ve coveted for years. But, if the Swedes can do it, so can I. And, if we all pony up another twenty or thirty percent to the government we may eventually own Europe, making us new age imperialists on a grand scale. Can you imagine?

Of course, none of it costs us a dime. The government just gives and gives and gives…and gives. It’s like the old Dire Straits tune – “Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.” What a country!

I can’t recall the last time we got any money back. In fact, that might be the mother of all non sequiturs. The government isn’t giving anybody anything. Generally speaking, people have just overpaid during the year, allowing the government to use their money as float, without interest. Even greedy bankers give better rates of return.

It doesn’t work much better at the city or county level. I’ve never gotten a tax return check from either of them. If they’ve sent the moolah it must have gone somewhere else, like Forrest Gump’s million dollar wound, because “I ain’t seen a dime of that money.”

I used to think that death was a way of escaping the government’s clutches, but age and experience have shown me otherwise. Someone (I think it was George Will) recently observed that death itself, under our current system, is a taxable offense.

But, maybe Professor Peterson is right. There’s got to be a silver lining or a pony buried in the manure that I’m missing. Maybe I should spend some time lobbying on behalf of the government. I could lobby for a new state motto, to be emblazoned on our license plates – “KANSAS – Our taxes are just a smidge lower than Sweden’s.” I might be able to talk the city commissioners into erecting a new sign near that Taliban vintage tank that guards exit 127. It would read – “EMPORIA – Even the Sheriff of Nottingham would be a piker here.” Maybe we could have a parade. We could all play kazoos, wear red, white and blue party hats, toss confetti, and watch marching bands and floats pass by for hours. The parade meisters could instruct the bands to play “The Tax Man” as they pass in review. It could start an annual tradition, rivaling December’s “seasonal parade.” In time our commissioners could levy some sort of celebration or parade tax against participants and spectators. Oh, joy!

This kind of joy could spill outward from Emporia, like ripples on the water. In time they’d get to Europe, particularly Sweden where things are so swell. Maybe we could get them to pay for our national defense, and while we’re at it, we could get the French, the Dutch, the Italians, the Spanish, the Taiwanese, the Japanese, and others to chip in their fair share. That way, I’d get to concentrate on paying for my grandchildren’s college educations while “old Europe” and “new Asia” protect me and my loved ones from Osama and other enemies who are lurkin’ about.

I see what Professor Peterson means. Taxes can be a real hoot. It’s a bit late this year, so I’ll have to bite the bullet. But I think next year I’ll send my tax bills to him, care of the Gazette. I want give him an additional opportunity for joy. In fact, I recommend that Gazette readers who are so inclined also forward theirs to him. It’ll make his April, 2011 a real barrel of monkeys.

MISBEHAVIN'

2010-04-08T12:16:00.000-05:00

The following op ed is being published in today's Emporia Gazette. The local school board and superintendent are not happy with me. They're dragging out the heavy ammo (statistics) to prove they are absolutely essential to the well being of every Emporia family.

I'm not buying the party line.

The op ed follows:

At a recent eggs and issues forum I was asked if I was going to behave. What else could I do? I behaved…. grudgingly. I did have question or two or ten, but I just sat there, rehearsing the lyrics from an old “Kiss Me Kate” tune:

“Oh, why can’t you behave?

Why can’t you be good?

And do just what you should?”

I understand the Board’s displeasure with someone like me. No one likes being around a guy with a pin in has hand, particularly when they’re carrying a string of balloons themselves. I get the message. Why afflict the comfortable when what they’re really looking for is comfort and assurance?

But, it’s about two weeks past Eggs and Issues, and I’m in a misbehavin’ mood again.

What have I learned? If I’m to believe the Excel spreadsheets, line charts, and bar graphs there is a direct correlation between money and quality of output in education. Test scores here have improved and, until recently, funding levels have also increased. About the only way to complete the syllogism would be to conclude that more money means a better education or that less money equals an inferior education.

I suppose I should blindly trust the data.

Mark Twain was fond of saying, “There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics.” I think he was right. Numbers can be used to prove almost anything. I suspect that, given time, I could offer convincing proof that Jell-O is one of the prime causes of death in this country. After all, most of us will die in hospitals and most of us will ingest an inordinate amount of Jell-O while we’re there. What other conclusion could one draw?

Every time I hear some expert tout the numbers I get a sick feeling in the pit of my gut. The Board of Education cites numbers. Well, two can play that game. For every number they present I see scores of others that lead down a different path. For example, the most recent (2006) assessment tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) seem to indicate we have a serious problem. Over 400,000 students from 57 countries were tested. In the area of science, students from Finland had the highest score, an average of 563. The Estonians weren’t far behind, at 531.Slovenia did pretty well (519), as did the Czech Republic (513). Where did the U.S. rank? Statistically tied with Latvia and a couple of points better than Lithuania. The results in mathematics were every bit as alarming. Finnish students averaged 548. Estonians averaged 515. Slovenians averaged 504. American students averaged 474, a bit better than the Croatians.

What do these results say? Do the Finns have more money to throw at education than we do? Are the Estonians and Slovenians cookin’ the books? Are their kids just naturally smarter than ours? The answer to all of the questions is a resounding “No!”

I realize that education is not a cost-neutral venture. But, I think it’s eminently fair for taxpayers to ask where their education dollars are going. In 1993 Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute asked where the money was going and found what most of us intuitively know. “A study of education expenditures in New York City found that less than $2,000 reached the classroom out of more than $6,000 spent per pupil.” Where was the money going? “Educational bureaucracies, both at boards of education and in the schools absorb much of the money spent to educate students.” This past Sunday the Kansas City Star revealed that while Missouri spends about 48% of its state budget on education, Kansas spends 65%. Further, Missouri spends far fewer dollars on its administrative costs of education than Kansas.

Of course, we all know that Emporia is a world away from New York or Missouri. There’s no rigid, top heavy bureaucracy here. Right?

I’ve been told that I have personal axes to grind. Not true! This is only personal to me because I care. I can only imagine how much more personal this is to the parents, students, and teachers of USD 253.

Is there a way out of the wilderness? Not without fundamental change. Things will never work as they should here until we scrap the top down, self-congratulatory management model we’re currently using.

Can we get there? I think so. It could begin by inverting the organizational pyramid, adopting a silo busting mentality, developing a lean staff structure, and finding ways to put that money directly into the classroom.

Granted, these seem to be small gestures. But, they would be steps in the right direction

SWALLOWING CAMELS

2010-03-26T09:44:00.001-05:00

The following piece was published in yesterday's Emporia Gazette. The reaction so far has been mixed, with the general public supportive and the local school district upset, claiming that I've played hard and loose with the truth. I expected. Things like that happen when someone's feet are held to the fire Well, I'm right and they're wrong. It's as simple as that.

The op-ed follows:

When recently asked to justify the “need” for three assistant superintendents at USD 253, John Heim answered, “Their leadership has been an essential component to the district's academic accomplishments, sound financial condition, and ability to attract and retain high-quality teachers.”

The gobbledygook came at a time when the axe was being laid to a school district wrestling with a severe financial crisis. About a month ago the school board met to consider cuts to make up the huge deficit. Based on potential cuts explored by the Performance Based Budgeting committees almost everything was on the chopping block. The reductions proposed amounted to 42 FTE’s. Based solely on the numbers, the proposal was quite impressive. But when one digs into the guts of the report there is something glaringly absent. Potential cuts included “close K-4, 5th and 6th grade centers, increase class sizes at all levels, HS athletics, fine arts, school tutorial and enrichment program, library services, building technology, activity bus routes, safe and drug free schools program, and implement more aggressive energy management program.” There was nothing about reductions in executive or upper management positions.

It was a tale repeated in the recommendations of all 293 Kansas school districts. Statewide, the various PBB committees recommended 5100 FTE’s in potential cuts, ranging from reductions in reading programs, tutorial programs, maintenance, scholars’ bowl, forensics, all day kindergarten, elementary music, art, English, science, foreign languages, reductions in instructional days, etc. I went through the report several times to be sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me. Each time the same thing glared right back at me. The strategy employed appears to be protecting the bureaucracy/aristocracy at all costs.

One could argue that some program cuts might be beneficial. But, is it reasonable to assume that the safest place to be in this tangled mess is in an executive, upper management, or staff position? Is it reasonable to assume the only ones in danger of having their professional heads lopped off are those closest to the students, who should be the paramount interest in this increasingly grisly equation?

How can this be? John Heim said it. He’s “essential,” and so is the rest of his management team.

At an earlier public meeting some constituents offered olive branches. One of the most notable was a recommendation for wage cuts to be implemented across the board, aimed at protecting the integrity of the current classroom structure. I suppose the proposal might work, but I suspect it would be frowned on by those in upper management who deem themselves “essential” to the education of our children.

In a subsequent meeting, Mr. Heim presented three or four alternatives, each outlining possible cuts. As with the PBB, management remained untouched. It was an interesting process to observe. Mr. Heim outlined the potential cuts, then sat back, smiling like the Cheshire cat. The board then went on, in turn, talking about eliminating a bus route here or a school there or an hour or two here or expressing joy that there may be the possibility of eliminating only half of the teaching positions outlined in the PBB report. I could see why Mr. Heim was smiling. He and his management team remained above the fray, safe from the dreaded axe. It was so sad that it was actually funny. The school board spent its time straining out gnats and swallowing camels; Mr. Heim’s smile broadened with each camel swallowed.

In defending his position, Mr. Heim cleverly drew comparisons to private industry, arguing that the school district is indeed running like a business. They have corporate structures. So does USD 253. What on earth could be wrong with that?

In his book “Barbarians to Bureaucrats – Corporate Life Cycle Strategies,” author Lawrence Miller described the life stages of corporate entities, from inception, with the prophet/barbarian who has an idea to explore or a customer to serve, to its demise, overseen by the bureaucrat/aristocrat who has a career and legacy to protect. In this final stage, the needs of the customer are supplanted by the needs of those in power. Mr. Miller also observed that the only way to break the vicious cycle is for customers and shareholders to revolt, demanding that the corporate silos be torn down and the needs of the customer once again met.

When good companies see the light, they inevitably return to the needs of the customer. This is what USD 253 needs. Unfortunately, with the help of a compliant school board and an aristocrat at the helm, we appear to be far from the desired target. Could it be that a shareholder/customer revolt is the only thing that can trigger meaningful change?

SNOWMAGEDDON

2010-03-12T10:45:00.000-06:00

The piece I'm now posting was published in last night's Emporia Gazette. The writing was mine, as was the mug shot. However, credit was inadvertently given to nationally syndicated columnist Jay Ambrose. I actually feel quite flattered. The content of the op-ed follows. I hope you enjoy it:

The President called it “Snowmageddon.” After two blizzards in two weeks our nation’s capitol was buried in white. The wheels of government ground to a halt. Nothing was happening, not even the bickering and gridlock we’ve grown accustomed to. For some it was a godsend. For others, however, the icy blanket was cause for weeping and gnashing of teeth. Somewhere in the bowels of government an up and coming analyst reported that “Snowmageddon” was responsible for 100 million dollars a day in lost government productivity.

I think using the words government and productivity together might be an oxymoron. But it’s not surprising. Government officials, at all levels, have come to believe they reside on Mount Olympus raining legislation down on us “average” souls like divine thunderbolts.

Back in the early sixties I was stationed at Harmon Air Force Base in Newfoundland. With winters that began very early and dragged on incessantly, “Snowmageddon” was just a way of life there. Most GI’s thought of Harmon as bad duty. It was different for me. My mother was born in Newfoundland, in a little fishing village named McIver’s Cove. So, what was considered a curse for most became a blessing and the opportunity of a lifetime for me.

I made my first visit to McIvers in the middle of a terrible winter, even by Newfoundland standards. I still remember the bitter chill in my bones as I stood desperately knocking at the door of my Uncle Billy and Aunt Mabel’s house. And I have fond memories of seeing them greet me with the warmth so typical of the people of the Maritimes.

In time I got to meet all my uncles (most of the women of McIvers had gone to Maine or Massachusetts). There was my uncle Philip, who was still a lumberjack at age 77. There was my uncle Billy, the youngest of the Park boys, who worked as a night watchman at the lumber mill in Corner Brook. There was my uncle Ned, a veteran of the Battle of the Somme, who still carried a trophy of the Great War in the form of a crippled right hand, courtesy of a German rifleman. And, there was my uncle Fiander (pronounced Fye-ander). He was a confirmed bachelor, considered to be the gadabout of McIvers.

While I loved all my uncles, Fye was very special to me. It took very little to make him happy. He lived in a small cabin, with no electricity. He had only one extravagant worldly possession, a battery operated radio, purchased to tune in to his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. We spent our time together talking about the simple life, family, values, lost traditions, war and peace, and so forth. Fye had little more than a third grade education, but he was one of the simplest, wisest men I’ve ever met.

I once asked him what folks in McIvers did during the long winters. There were three, he said. “We stay inside, make love, and boil water for the tea.”

Sometime during my tour the Canadian government decided it would be a good idea to pave the road going through McIvers. To that end, they met with the men of McIvers. “We’re going to pave the road,” they announced. The Park boys, ever obstinate and unprogressive, couldn’t understand why the paving was needed. “The road is perfectly good as it is. We’ve no need of paving.”The government tried government logic. “You don’t understand. This is what you pay your taxes for.”

“For paved roads?”

“Yes,” one of the government reps said.

The logic that followed was homespun and compelling. “Well, there’s no sense our paying the taxes, then, because we don’t want the road paved.”

The impasse was still in place when I left Newfoundland in 1964.

I’m sure by now the Canadian government has found some way to get that road paved. There’s probably an oversized highway sign as you enter McIvers today, proudly declaring “your tax dollars at work.” Such is the nature of progress, especially unwanted progress.

I’ve thought of praying for a blizzard of common sense to descend on our Capitol, but I don’t have that much faith. However, if Punxatawny Phil is right we have six more weeks of winter and reason to hope. I’m praying for more snow. Who knows, if it keeps on snowing our legislators just may have to take my Uncle Fye’s advice and “stay inside, make love, and boil water for the tea.”

GET OFF THE TRACKS

2010-03-03T10:47:00.002-06:00

I got word last week that I'll have a bi-weekly column published in our local newspaper, the Emporia Gazette. My by-line is "Right Turn." My first colum, titled "Get off the Tracks" was published on February 25th. I'm hoping my vanity doesn't get the best of me. So far I've taken a somewhat subdued attitude toward things, insisting that Nancy not only refer to me as "Slick," but also as "Mr. Columnist."

I've got the Gazette's permission to cross polianate the columns to this blog. So, here goes. "Get off the Tracks" now follows. Subsequent colums will follow on a bi-weekly basis.

There is a bit of bi-partisan agreement building in America these days. Government debt is bad and our current profligate ways may soon do us in.

The problem to this point is that the government overspending and borrowing continues, unabated, faster than the Times Square tote board can calculate it.

In an op-ed penned earlier this week, liberal columnist Al Hunt looked over the grim numbers and noted: “The numbers are stunning. Over the next 10 years, under President Barack Obama’s budget, the total deficit would be $8.5 trillion; by 2020, the interest payments on the debt would be almost as much as projected spending on all discretionary domestic programs and as much as Medicare outlays that year. The national debt would be approaching $20 trillion in 2020; nice symmetry, horrifying economics.”

About the same time, conservative publications like Business Week and Bloomberg began looking beyond the massive economic losses since the bursting of the “great asset bubble” and cheap money of the Bush years to the very real potential of “a debt hangover and reckoning” brought on by the trillions of dollars of borrowed money and deficit spending currently in vogue. It seems that one bubble bursts and another mysteriously pops out of the government pipe.

You’d think we’d learn from the pain. Unfortunately, we don’t. Last year, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” The title says it all. One century it might be tulip bulbs. In another it might be buying stock “on the cuff.” In this century it just might be a government takeover of everything but our home gardens.

One of the hair raising things Reinhart and Rogoff noted was that there seems to be a tipping point for disaster, expressed as a percent of government debt to G.D.P. Historically, that number has been ninety percent. At the point of handoff from George Bush to Barack Obama, our national percentage of debt to G.D.P was 84%! Is it credible, then, to assume we can avoid careening toward the magic 90% by borrowing and spending more?

While I try to think of myself and family as being safe from the ravages of government fiscal policy here in conservative Kansas, the reality of things slaps me like a Muhammad Ali left hook. The current budget deficit here is $400 million. Our local school district faces huge financial problems in the classroom. Yet, our leaders were recently able to find enough money for Astroturf and “absolutely necessary” road construction on 18th Street.

A recently published report, co-authored by Dr. Barry Paulson and Dr. Arthur P. Hall, revealed that at the end of 2008 KPERS, our state employee pension plan, had a funding deficit of $8 billion. The reasons cited (poor asset mix, unrealistic assumptions on rate of return, low employee contribution rates, early retirements) aren’t nearly as important as the deficit number. It’s in the billions, with a B! Solutions are being offered – decreased benefits, increased employee contributions, or increased employer (Kansas taxpayers) contributions. Does one really need to guess who’s going to bear the brunt of the solution?

As for answers, I don’t have a clue. Some experts tell me I should spend and consume more (Cash for Clunkers or “shop Emporia first”). Some say I should join the Tea Party movement. Really smart marketing guys tell me I should buy gold. The political parties tell me they have legislative saviors in the wings, just waiting for my vote. Others say I should just accept the fact that higher taxes and bigger government are my only salvation.

I think I hear the faint whistle of the oncoming freight train, boxcars loaded with fiscal disaster. Given that, about the only solution that seems to make sense to me is to get off the tracks.

The Pilgrim Way

2010-02-06T14:21:00.002-06:00

“Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.”

- I Peter 1:17 (New International Version)

Life in America these days seems so out of balance. Environmentalists tell us that nature is out of balance, on the verge exacting its long overdue revenge on its ravagers. The economy is out of balance. The stock market can’t seem to find a point of equilibrium. The debts, both national and individual, are fast becoming un-scalable mountains. The deficit of political trust is enormous, and it’s growing. On a personal level, the age-old American ideal of responsibility is being slowly subsumed by an ever growing sense of dependency and entitlement. And, religion, which should be the core balancing mechanism in society, has become a compliant follower of social trends. America’s civil religion has become what Richard John Neuhaus described in 2009 as “mass Gnosticism.”

A little more than a generation ago we Evangelicals were in the throes of making America the “Christian” society we all wanted it to be. Our tears flowed when we heard Ronald Reagan speak of the “city on the hill.” We came to believe that our birthright and responsibility was to build the New Jerusalem promised thousands of years ago.

It all seemed so right at the time.

Seeing America as she is today, floundering in a sea of competing ideologies, it begs the question – how did the wheels come off the wagon?

Before he died in January of last year, Richard John Neuhaus penned what I believe was his most important book, American Babylon. I read it right after Christmas and I’ve been pondering Father Neuhaus’s insights and implications ever since.

This morning, as I write, three things come to mind.

First, we are living as exiles in Babylon in much the same way the children of Israel did thousands of years ago. America is not our final destination. This should seem self-evident, but our track record since the eighties reveals otherwise. We have been too locked in time and space for too long and, as a result, we’ve failed to see the self-evident truth that should be propelling us home.

Our pilgrimage will one day end in the New Jerusalem. And, the New Jerusalem we seek will not be built by human hands. Abraham saw this when he left Ur of the Chaldes, seeking a city whose builder and maker was God. It’s the city Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego chose over the wealth of Babylon when confronted with the probability of death in a fiery furnace. The prophets, both great and small, chose the New Jerusalem over social respectability and acceptance. And Jesus, who we call the High Priest of our confession, said very clearly that, while he was a king, his kingdom was “not of this world.”

America is not our final destination! We are indeed, strangers and aliens, pilgrims seeking a city we haven’t yet seen.

This brings me to my second point. Does this mean that we Christians are jettison our societal responsibilities here in 21st century Babylon?

Absolutely not! We must embrace them. Our role, as citizens of two worlds, is to reflect the values of the city we seek. We live here in a society of competing interests. We should be seeking to be transmitters of a new community of common interest. The world we are passing through is a world dominated by self-interest. The one we should reflect is governed by love and grace. The exercise of power is the order of the day here in Babylon. In the kingdom to come, our king is, and will be, a servant-king and our role here and in the New Jerusalem should/will be that of servants as well.

My third point follows. We should be the most hopeful people in Babylon. This is not the time to hang our harps in the willows. It is as much a time to rejoice as it has been for the multitudes who’ve gone before us.

Father Neuhaus has completed his journey. He closed American Babylon, his last work, with these words:

“As Christians and as Americans, in this our awkward duality of citizenship, we seek to be faithful in time not of our choosing but of our testing. We resist the hubris of presuming that it is the definitive time and place of historical promise or tragedy, but it is our time and place. It is a time of many times: a time for dancing, even if to the songs of Zion in a foreign land; a time for walking together, unintimidated when we seem to be a small and beleaguered band; a time for rejoicing in momentary triumphs, and for defiance in momentary defeats; a time for persistence in reasoned argument, never tiring in proposing to the world a more excellent way; a time for generosity toward those who would make us their enemy.”

We who are pilgrims would do well to heed his words.

CURSED?

2010-01-14T14:33:00.002-06:00

The view of Haiti we in America have witnessed through the video, photos, and media narrative pale in comparison to the human misery being experienced by the people of Haiti. Their national pain can be heard in the screams and moans echoing almost constantly from the rubble. Bruised and battered people wander aimlessly in the streets. Doctors, medical supplies, and the volunteers needed to bring healing are in critically short supply. Given this grim scenario, some Haitians bravely dig through the fallen buildings with their bare hands in desperate attempts to rescue those on the cusp of death beneath the twisted and smashed concrete.

At such times even the necessary international response seems so inadequate. The reports coming in are grim – as many as a half a million may have died in the quake, with thousands more dying as the needed help makes its way ever so slowly to the disaster’s epicenter. People seem strewn across the scarred land like dead wood drifting on un-caring sea. Is any flotilla of aircraft carriers the world can muster enough? Even if we load cargo aircraft to the gunwales and fly them to Port au Prince in never ending waves, will it be enough to end the misery?

The questions are moot, really. The world must act and do whatever is necessary to alleviate the suffering and begin the rebuilding. In doing so, answers to those questions will come in the days and months ahead. It will be a difficult battle, tinged with despair, but it’s a battle that must be undertaken with the utmost of purpose.

Sometime yesterday, in the wake of the tragedy, evangelist Pat Robertson made the following observation:

“And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

The response was swift and predictable. Robertson was denounced as a fanatical bigot.

It would be easy to say, as a Christian, that Robertson’s words were nothing more than a matter of bad timing, but I can’t. They were un-Christian.

What is Haiti, then, if it’s not cursed? Are the people of Haiti just unlucky? Are they just unfortunate pawns in some crass evolutionary game? Why is it them these things seem to always happen to and not us? As the people of Haiti dig deeper into the earth for their loved ones and the rest of the world digs for answers, there’s an answer right there on the surface I think we may have missed in our desperation. Haiti is a nation of sorrows, acquainted with grief. It’s a nation in desperate need of healing, not off-the-cuff root cause analysis.

There’s a story recorded in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. It’s the story of Jesus’ and his disciples encounter with a blind man. The encounter is prefaced by the disciples’ questions about what had caused the man’s blindness. Was it his sin that was the root of his problem? Or, was it his father’s sin? Jesus said that it was neither. He made a startling claim – “This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.”

How can this be? How can human misery be a portal to “the work of God?” Can this principle, if I can call it that, apply to the enormous tragedy we see today in Haiti?

The message to me, as a Christian, seems clear. I (we) must be about our Father’s business, which is reconciliation and healing. It is when we engage humanity on that basis that the “works of God,” the miracles of healing, take place. The question posed to us, in the form of need, is clear, and so is the answer. We must be about the healing work of God in Haiti.

I tuned in to C-Span this morning and was taken aback at the question posed early on. Using Pat Robertson’s statement as a back drop, the audience was asked about the statement. It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I must admit I got a bit upset and called in. In due time I got on the air and expressed my belief that C-Span would have been better served to use the time to do some fund-raising rather than engaging in salacious journalism. I tried my best to express the theological implications of my reading of John 9. I went on, too far I’m sure, about Haiti and my view, that over the years I’ve lived I’ve seen this type of tragedy played out over and over and over again. I’ve seen the bloated, dead bodies in the streets for over forty years. I’ve read about the rampant political corruption. I’ve seen the international promises of aid wither and die on the vine as the world turned its attention away from Haiti’s misery to turn its attention to the heady promise and potential wealth of the new global economy. When, I asked, is the world going to really do what needs to be done in Haiti, whatever that might be?

In the face of my onslaught the host was very gracious. C-Span could have done better and so could I.

In the wake of the earthquake and its physical aftershocks, there are philosophical aftershocks also being felt in the wake of Pat Robertson’s words. The tragedy of Haiti will, I suspect, soon be overtaken by the societal war taking place between the religious and irreligious here at home. I fear that the end result will be that Haiti is placed back on the treadmill, waiting as the next tragedy crouches at the door. The NGO’s, religious groups, and missionaries, including CBN's Operation Blessing, will bravely move on, like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. They’ll plug away, day by day, uncomplaining. Their work will be little noticed here as Haiti’s current woes fade into the rear view mirror of history. Here in America, the compassion of many, particularly the anti-religious, will recede. There will be great crowing and thumping of chests about caring inner selves for a little while. But it will pass. People will congratulate themselves profusely for the kindnesses they’ve offered the “less fortunate.” People will get back to work. There will be the inevitable climbing of the corporate ladders and the cut throat office politics that comes with the climb. The fine wine will once again flow in the trendy restaurants dotting Soho and Foggy Bottom. People will make nice for a while. But, in time they will once again resume coveting their neighbor’s wives and possessions. Life will go on.

Jesus’ words haunt me right now. “The night is coming when no man can work.” I look outside my window. It’s a grey winter day. The mulberry tree has been stripped of its leaves. It’s a bit past mid-day. Night is coming; I can feel it coming on. And so it is with us and Haiti. In a world so programmed to forget misery, the pain so close to us now will be overtaken, as it always has, by self interest.

The creeping darkness of night is coming; I can feel it. There is little left of the day. We must use it! This all begs the final question – will we?

Seeking the Celestial City

2010-01-04T18:52:00.001-06:00

"Give me my scallop shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon,

My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.”
- Sir Walter Raleigh (“The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage”)

For some time now, Nancy and I have been discussing our growing sense of alienation with “the things of this world.” The abiding life theme coming from those discussions has been that our shared pilgrimages have a way to go. We see the “celestial city” less dimly than we did a quarter of a century ago, but we recognize that our vision is still dimmed by the temporal realities that so often dominate our lives. This begs the question for us. How can we truly learn to be “in, but not of, the world?”

As Christians, we have learned that a substantial part of our historical narrative is the shared story of aliens and strangers looking for a city they had neither built nor seen. As we gaze back through time we see the panoply of fellow travelers who preceded us. There was Noah. There was Abraham, who left one of the most vibrant cultures in the early world to seek the city Nancy and I now see dimly in the distance. There was Moses, who traded the wealth of Egypt for a pilgrimage in the wilderness with God’s liberated slaves. As we hear the names called we see human weakness in all its glory. We see a prostitute, a coward in hiding, a self-absorbed strong man, and a repentant adulterer. We see the prophets who set trumpets to their mouths only to be stoned for the words of warning they proclaimed.

These are the citizens of our homeland.

Through all the tribulations in life these men and women saw life through a common prism – faith! They chose alienation from the familiar and safe for a promise they never saw fulfilled on the earthly side of their journeys. And it is that prism through which we too must see our lives and our times.

As we proceed on our respective journeys we see what they saw long ago. The road we must travel is difficult, littered with the age-old temptations to stay earth-bound and proceed no further than our culture will allow. Moses experienced it when Pharaoh responded to God’s demand for liberation with the telling words, “You can go, but don’t go too far.” So do we.

One of the great lessons of history is that even the greatest of cultures are imbued with curses as well as blessings. Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome could boast of power, wealth, philosophy, art, law, and human progress. But theirs was also the story of barbarity, corruption, and unbridled evil. Empires rose, full of promise, only to descend into madness. Another would supplant it. In time the cycle would repeat itself. Our fathers in faith saw this and refused to give in to the temptation of becoming earth bound. They sought something better.

Ah, but we’re Americans. We’re different. We’re the people of the “New Frontier” and the “City on the Hill.” We’re “the last best hope of earth.”

This, I think, is the great American curse. It’s the temptation to which far too many Christians have fallen prey. We’ve all too often succumbed to the false notion that America is our final destination. Richard John Neuhaus recently wrote of this phenomenon and its accompanying tension and asked whether, for the Christian, America may be more Bablyon than it is the New Jerusalem we’ve falsely thought it was, or hoped it would be:

“The title American Babylon will likely puzzle, and even offend, some readers. There is in America a strong current of Christian patriotism in which “God and country’ falls trippingly from the tongue. Indeed, God and country are sometimes conflated in a single allegiance that permits no tension, never mind conflict, between the two.”

There’s a tension at play here. We live in one world. We seek, or should be seeking, another. In the third century Tertullian asked the question – “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” In our time should that question be – “What has Babylon to do with the New Jerusalem we seek?”

Is this all a matter of just splitting hairs? I think not. The tension is as real as my American citizenship and the sense of love, duty, and patriotism I feel for my country. I realize that I’ve been a partner to freedom, privilege, and wealth that few in history have had. I am an American. But, the sense of alienation I feel in my little corner of Babylon is also as real as the dynamics of the new city I seek. As I read the accounts of those who have preceded me in faith I also understand that my Babylon carries its curses as well. America is no different in that regard than any other empire in history. The children of Israel had their taskmasters. So do we! This new age is not immune. As C.S. Lewis once observed:

“What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny’. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?”

Can we escape the tension? I think not. About the best we can do is give moral voice to our concerns, live in peace with others as much as it is possible, realize that our narratives are linked historically to a different homeland and people, and to learn to sing the song of Zion in a foreign land. That seems like so little. Perhaps so. But if we give in to the temptation to make Babylon our permanent abode we fall prey to the false notion that we have the capacity to create heaven on earth. Once we give in to that delusion it may only be a matter of time before we stir the stagnant water, see ourselves mirrored there, and worship what we see.

A Conspiracy of Simplicity

2009-12-15T17:18:00.001-06:00

“The story of Christ's birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love. So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas? What if Christmas became a world-changing event again?”

- From “The Advent Conspiracy”

Mark Twain once observed, tongue-in-cheek, that an ethical man is “a Christian holding four aces.” I think I have some understanding of what Twain had in mind when he made that observation. I’ve sat at poker table or two in my lifetime and have some grasp of the machinations of the game. There were many times when bitter experience taught me that the master of the bluff, deception, deceit, and larceny was inevitably the one who went home with other peoples’ money. The emptiness of loss also taught me that, in order to succeed at the game, I had to out bluff the master, deal deception and deceit in spades, and become as ruthless as a cat burglar. Once I mastered those fundamentals I succeeded.

What does this have to do with faith and the Christmas season? A lot, I think.

Christianity was born in simplicity. Jesus was born in the humblest of places, in a stable. It’s true that wise men (the Magi) traveled a great distance to worship him as a king. It’s true that angels proclaimed his birth in song, for those who had ears to hear. It’s true that shepherds came to the stable to honor him. But, it’s also true that most people hardly noticed, or even cared. There were a few, beyond those who did honor him, who had more sinister motives. The powerful, fearing the possibility of their power over the people could be lost, sought to kill him. To that end, they ordered the murder of “Rachel’s children.” It’s recorded that her collective cries could be heard all over the land.

Not much is known about his early years. Some traditions hold that he performed miracles to amuse his pals. What can be gleaned from the New Testament was that he appeared to be a pretty serious minded youngster. Once, when his parents took him to Jerusalem, he stayed in the city when they went home. They found him three days later, sitting with teachers of the law, interpreting the law and answering questions to their utter amazement. When his parents expressed their displeasure at not being able to find him, he told them they should have known he’d be in his Father’s house. His parents didn’t understand what he meant. Few, if any parents, in any age, would.

He left the carpenter’s shop and became an itinerant preacher when he was about thirty years old. He never pastored a mega-church. He never was dependent on a political action committee for support. He didn’t have the luxury of mass media to spread his message. He never resorted to fund raising gimmicks. His hallmarks were compassion, wisdom, and a keen eye for the needy. His ministry and message bore the stamp of simplicity. He spoke of sight for the blind, freedom for the captive soul. He sought the hungry and thirsty. He took up the mantle of service and sacrifice while the wise and powerful of his day sought temporal power and privilege. When he displayed rare flashes of anger it was clear that it was a pure, righteous anger. Toward the end of his earthly life, in Jerusalem, he beat the fire out of the money changers and drove them out of the temple area. “How dare you make my Father’s house a den of thieves,” he roared as the whip came down on the backs of the merchants.

Jesus was clearly different, in a class by himself, and the kingdom he ushered in reflected his nature. The principles of his kingdom were simple, yet foreign to the paradigms of his day and ours as well. It was a topsy-turvy kingdom where up was (is) down and down was (is) up. It was a kingdom where the valley was (is) exalted and the mountain was (is) cut low. It was a kingdom with only one entrance, a gate. Jesus offered no alternate plan. There was a primary plan; there was no secondary or tertiary. In the vernacular of the poker table, Jesus was “all in.” His detractors and enemies thought he was bluffing and asked for a miraculous sign to prove his high sounding words were authoritative. Jesus’ response was to short, right to the point. “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.”

Was Jesus bluffing? Was he nothing more than another of those outrageous hucksters who pass through the portals of history from time to time? Was he just another Zeus or Osiris, a fable meant to amuse us? Or was he what he claimed to be?

I’ll stop there. You probably know the rest of the story anyway.

To be honest, this essay is less about him than it is about us, particularly those of us who claim his lordship in our lives.

I came to faith in Jesus back in the sixties. It was a time when a lot of us were looking for simplicity, peace, and power in our lives. The Christendom of those days reflected that longing. It was all simple. It was enough to love Jesus and to know that he had loved us long before we’d ever loved him. We seemed content to live our lives simply, waiting patiently for the time we’d see him face to face.

Then, something changed. The sixties became the seventies. Disco was in; inflation had gone through the roof. We were needy at first. Then, our wandering desires became needs. It didn’t take much after that to make Jesus the errand boy to satisfy those worldly desires. So, our prayer became, “Jesus, please give me this”…”Jesus, gi’mee this”…”Jesus, gi’mee dat.” To us, it sounded quite righteous. To our fellow players sitting around the table it sounded more like, “I need an ace to match the ones I have”…”Baby needs milk”…”Mama needs a new pair of shoes”…”Daddy needs a new bowling ball.” We’d blurred the line between bluffing and self deception.

Self deception morphed into a lust for power in the eighties. We were alarmed by the state of the world and decided we were going to fix things. We formed concerned citizens’ groups, moral majorities, and such. We’d had enough decadence. We were going to throw the reprobates out of office and start making the rules ourselves. We got ourselves galvanized around causes. We became king makers. The power we felt was intoxicating. Little did we realize that our grasping for the unclean things had made us every bit as corrupt as the lawbreakers we’d de-throned.

By the time the nineties rolled around we were absolutely drunk with power, so much so that we set about creating new visions of God and man. Mega-churches, preaching self realization, sprang from one side of the ecclesiastical wasteland. Para-church organizations were formed, with their roots entwined in lucre, using Jesus as if he were a marketing marionette, to be tugged and pulled at the whim of the organizational gurus. Not to be outdone by what they saw happening, others took to the airwaves, peddling Jesus like he was a shiny new car or Coca Cola. It was “Tell him what you want…he’s legally bound to do what you tell him” here and “Hundala kundala, send more money,” there. Still others sought to emasculate Jesus and enthrone themselves, weaving their spells with mantras like, “seek your inner god and goddess.” The masses bought it and the coffers filled to overflowing.

The page to a new millennium turned, ushering in more of the same. Powerful oratory, exalting self, continued to flow. The messages of a new age for a new man hissed across the airwaves. There were a few who sounded warnings, but their words most often went un-heeded. Dissenters were considered relics of the past whose trumpet calls were to be discarded like garbage at the end of the day. Words like service, sacrifice, and humility began to disappear from the Christian vocabulary. Then, self fulfillment gave way to full blown self worship. The cycle was complete. There was no where else to go. Man, in all his glory, sat on the throne.

This, I believe, is where Christendom in America stands today. It begs the questions. How far have we really come? Or, how deep into the pit of madness have we descended? Have we mastered the bluff so well that we can now discard God? Or, can we, given our fallen state, ever find our way back to the simplicity of the message proclaimed so long ago? – “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”