We must change the direction of our nation

 Last weekend, as I took a trip down memory lane, I was reminded time and tide waits for no one. The memories seemed more like an Interstate highway rather than an old country lane. The occasion bringing the flood of memories was the 50^th year since my high school graduation.  The year I graduated from high school was 1962. Looking back as I did with old friends, those seemed like simple days. Compared to the fast paced world of today, they were simple. It seemed we all knew everybody in our town, especially in our little neighborhood. We all knew each other; parents, grandparents, school teachers, preachers, and politicians were all known by name and the church where they held membership. One of my classmates reminded us when all the stores closed on Wednesday at lunchtime allowing the employees and customers to go to church for midweek prayer meeting. We could spend much time walking back into those days, known as the “good old days.” But those days are gone forever. As much as some would like to turn the clock back to regain those days, that is not possible. We must always be moving forward

As we move forward, we have an election taking place in several counties with run-off voting next Tuesday August 21, please vote.

Once this round of elections is finalized we move forward to November 6, and the General Election. While there are many interesting local and statewide races across the country, none will occupy more attention than the Presidential Election.  Our country will make a choice as to the direction we want to see our country going in the future. Being an observer and having strong opinions about the direction I would like to see our country take, I offer the following list of suggestions.

To change the trajectory of our nation we must find a way to cut spending. We cannot continue to spend with wild abandonment as if there is no time coming when we must pay the bills. We must seal our borders. We cannot continue to allow our borders to be open with anyone coming into our country without following the established process of entry. To allow the borders to remain open will not be a dream, but will continue to be the nightmare that it has become. In the cutting of spending that must take place, we must come to understand that entitlements are a bottomless pit and that we cannot pay for every want or wish that all the people in our country desire and have now come to demand. We must have leadership who will deal with the hard issues, rather than telling us what they think we want to hear. We have all heard of the American dream. (We talked about that in my class reunion.) The American dream has been hijacked and turned into an out of control train wreck that is headed over a cliff. We must have leadership willing to establish law and order by enforcing laws that are currently in the code books and doing away with the useless laws that suppress freedoms. We must establish a means by which businesses will be unshackled from over regulation. We must establish the means allowing for the drilling of the natural resources we have underneath us in our country’s soil and offshore in our waterways. We must find a way to have less government control and allow for more personal responsibility to assure success. Government must get out of the way and allow us to reclaim the American dream. Dignity of life must be restored.  The value of human life needs to be put into its proper place allowing for protection of human life from conception until natural death. We need to understand that government cannot redefine marriage because it never defined marriage in the beginning. Our first ten amendments to our constitution need to be reaffirmed and never tampered with again. We need to have courage enough to get out of the most useless international organization on earth, the United Nations.  The way forward in our nation will be challenging, but we must change directions in order to remain a free nation.

The new normal devalues life

With our heads still reeling from the awful events that took place in a crowded theater in Colorado last week, trying to find answers to how we have gotten to this place in our culture is not easy. Last week’s column dealt with the heinous crimes committed against the innocent minor children who were sexually abused by the now convicted coach at Penn State. There is a link between the two crimes. At the root of the issues we are facing in our culture is the value we place on human life. The aberrant behavior of some in our society causes us to look at what is now considered to be the new norm. One could argue we have always had people killing other people, since Cain killed Abel. It could also be posited that as long as there have been people, there has been sexual misbehavior. Even though we can find antidotal evidence to support various positions on the norms and mores of culture, we also know that certain behaviors have been seen as normal and certain behaviors have been admitted to be abnormal in every civilization.

In modern time, we can trace a change in the direction of our morals to the Woodstock era and the so-called sexual revolution occurring in the 50’s and 60’s and continues to this present day. The loose adhering to the moral codes of former generations has led us to the day when a book attempting to mainstream (deviant) sexual practices involving bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism (BDSM) has set a new record for the fastest selling paperback book of all time. In keeping with the reality that once a person dabbles in the darker side of personality and society there is always the pushing of the envelope to try more heinous ways of being satisfied. We see this being played out in the erotic novels by British author E.L. James in a planned trilogy. At first, one begins with Fifty Shades of Grey, then secondly, Fifty Shades Darker to the final Fifty Shades Freed. Many libraries across the country have refused to allow the book on their shelves. Uproar always follows the decision by library boards, as some people claim their freedom of speech is being harmed by not being able to read the titillating verbiage in the book.

In the 1970’s, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon revealed the results of studies on the relation between pornography and crime where they recommended fewer restrictions on porn. President Ronald Reagan issued an order for a comprehensive investigation into pornography bringing about the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography when the 75th Attorney General, Edwin Meese III followed through with the publishing of the findings of the commission in 1986. At that time the pornography peddlers cried that their freedoms of speech rights were being trampled. A person only needs to read the first hand testimony of the victims of child rape, prostitution, and other crimes against innocent boys and girls to realize the depth of the depravity of those who are victims of a culture that looks the other way when the issue of pornography is brought to light.

Moving forward in time, we have continued down that slippery slope into the quagmire of perversion to the place where the new norm is to the point of allowing any type of perversion as long as it is acted out in the entertainment or publishing segments of society. At the root of pornography is the act of fornication (Greek word porneia), and fornication is the devaluing of human life. We are now at the stage where people are arguing for after-birth-abortion up to three days following the birth of a child. As we have continued to mainstream filth and see others as objects for personal deviant pleasure, we are seeing the full cycle of this behavior. The killing of innocent human beings by a murdering thug, the degrading of a human being by violating and robbing them of their innocence, and the taking of a human life simply because having a baby does not fit into the career plans of a couple can all be seen as the ultimate devaluing of the worth of a person.

 Human life is precious. Human life has worth, value, and dignity, and should be treated with the utmost respect from conception to natural death. We must once again mainstream morality, respect for others, and life as the new normal.

How many more sports scandals are out there?

The day after the information began to be reported in the media about the full investigation into the horrific heinous abuse of the minor children at the hands of the perverted-deviant-convicted-felon-coach from Penn State, a friend sent the headlines from various newspapers in Pennsylvania to me. They told the story of what had happened as college leadership did everything possible to keep an alleged major crime out of the media. The long years of the cover up are now being made known to the public. The desire was to keep as much information as possible from the public eye. The motive was to protect the football program and the reputation of the coach with the longest stretch of wins in football history. This is so wrong on so many levels it is almost as if I am writing about a never ending nightmare. Have you ever tried to make sense after waking up from a nightmare and the small details will not come back to your mind? The nightmare scenes stay with you all day, and you try to figure out why you would have dreamed as you did. How far down this slippery slope of moral depravity has this nation gone when the concern is to protect the reputation of a coach, rather than concern for the innocent victims of what has to be the most awful violation that could ever be forced upon any one? With calls from many parts of the country to remove the statue of the successful football coach, the trustees of Penn State have concluded, according to media reports that the statue will stay up. They have said the decision allowing the statue to remain or be removed will be made once the emotion and passion of the moment passes. Oh really? Passion and emotion of the moment wins out over the harm that can never be reversed to the victims of sexual abuse, in the minds of the adult trustees of Penn State. How can this happen? How is it that our nation is so in love with football, or any other sport, that the reputation of the coach is more important than anything else? Awards, trophies, buildings named in honor, money granted to young players with a dream of playing for a legend, and winning games trumps the lifetime of horror that will linger in the memory of untold numbers of victims of sexual abuse. Once the first person saw or even thought he was witnessing sexual abuse, the alarm should have been sounded. At the first sign that one of the coaches in the football legend’s squad was suspected of over-attention to young children, immediate action should have been taken to assure that the coach would not be in any way in touch with minors. But the football program was the thing to be protected no matter what it took to do so. Are we to believe that protection of a sports program and fear that money would not be sent from the alumni (to keep the sports program at the highest level) caused the people making the decision to make insane decisions? It is possible that the decision was already made that no matter what crime was committed all must be done to protect the program and the winning coach from public harm. Are our children safe anywhere? As sports camps are being conducted across the country at large and small colleges this summer are there other deviants lurking near the showers to catch a glimpse of the young innocent children? Will we now look at every sports program with a careful eye to be sure that what happened at Penn State would never be repeated? Will the college presidents and coaches assure the parents of the young and innocent would-be future college sports stars that the only interest they have in them is to develop their athletic ability? Will the full disclosure of what happened at Penn State when the priorities got turned on their head be enough to demand that all colleges put forward assurances and programs protecting the innocent lives of the student athletes? Are there stories from other colleges and coaches that have not yet been exposed? We have more questions than answers at this time. Some people reading this column might suggest this is an overreaction, I do not think so. The time is now that we must rethink the entire craze in our nation with sports.

Not a path to freedom

On this celebration of our nation’s Declaration of Independent from the oppression of the King of England, we have reached another major watershed mark. Will our nation continue to enjoy a free market economy? Will we continue to enjoy the free market system that has allowed our nation to be the number one most sought after nation on earth? Will the blood, shed by military and civilian citizens to purchase our freedoms, be looked on in our future as a waste of time and life? What is the future for our nation? The path we are currently on is not a path to freedom but to enslavement. We are being led into a place where the government is larger and government control is paramount to everything else. Personal freedoms are fast being thrown away. Many people have tried to find a silver lining in the 5 to 4 ruling of the Supreme Court last week. I am of the opinion there are few, if any, positives to be found in their affirmation allowing big government to take over even the smallest decisions we have been making. Personal decisions and personal responsibility have been thrown away by that 5 to 4 ruling. Using trick words and government-political-vocabulary, we have been sold out by some who were reported to have been conservative in their thinking. By the leftists’ vocabulary use of the word penalty not being a tax is nothing more than shameful as if we have no more awareness than to know we have been tricked. One of the tricks of the left is to redefine words and have enough people say the words until finally the citizens give in to admit that a penalty is not a tax. Saying a government imposed penalty that is required to be paid to the IRS is not a tax is like the current bait-and-switch wording of those who are pushing so hard to expand gambling in our state and exchange the word gambling to the word gaming. The predatory practices of the big government crowd never change. Their intent is to control, through government, all that we do in life. We will no longer have personal accountability or personal responsibility because that big government bunch is sure they know better how to run our life than we do. At this point in our history, we have only a small window of opportunity left to us to change the trajectory of our country. The only resource we have, at this time, is to be registered to vote, and to vote in every election. We must never choose not to vote in any election and let the government control crowd continue to win at the ballot box. No matter how sincere or how super educated the left want to paint their intention, there is no doubt they are determined to take over this country throwing our hard fought freedoms in the trash bin of history. Each year at this time I read the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Communist Manifesto. Last weekend, I took time to read those three documents again. Each year upon reading the documents of our history and the document outlining the desire by communists to enslave all people everywhere, yet promising freedom, I have a greater fear we are closer to loosing all of our freedoms than ever. In this week when we celebrate our freedoms with family and friends, let us all engage others in the conversation where we will express our beliefs in that which has made and kept our country great. Let us determine to make sure those men and women who receive our vote in the next election will always vote our values that will continue to assure we will remain a free nation. Unless we rally the citizens of our country to stand up, speak up, and refuse to be silent until we turn back this nation to less government and more personal responsibility, we will continue on the path where we are headed and when we arrive we will discover it is not a path to freedom, but enslavement to the government. With too many of our citizens now depending on the government for support and their livelihood, it is possible we will continue down this road to enslavement. We must no longer remain silent, but be wiling to stand and be counted as those who stand for freedom from government tyranny.

The nanny state rides again

The big government crowd cannot stay quiet. They believe in the innermost part of their being they know better how to run our life than we do. The big government bunch is always finding ways to boss us around under the ruse of it being for our well being. The Mayor of New York City has shown his big government DNA by announcing he is going to sign a new regulation in that city which no longer allows for the selling of big soda drinks. He is certain, with his big government nanny state attitude, that he knows best how to make everyone in New York City fit and trim. He is carrying a great concern that too many people in New York City are overweight and he has decided it is because they can order a giant sized soda drink. So, therefore, to save the fatties from themselves, he is going to order that giant sized soda drinks cannot be purchased in New York City. Where does one start to expose how utterly ridiculous such thinking is? It is not the government’s business to be telling anyone they can’t have a big soda drink. This comes as a shock to the nanny state crowd, who are certain they know better how to make decisions for the poor saps that happen to live within their city limit. One would think that areas such as crime, infrastructure issues, taxes, and having enough money to operate the government in taking care of the safety of the citizens would be high on the list of government leaders, but not so with the nanny state crowd. The crowd that wants larger government has never seen a regulation they did not like unless it applies to them. The mayor of New York City has the welfare of the citizens as his top priority when he makes such invasive regulations upon the citizens; he assured in media interviews after the announcement of the new regulation. A full page ad in the New York Times showed the head of the mayor affixed to the body of a person dressed as a nanny. The big government crowd is always shocked that we do not understand they really are trying to take care of us because we do not have the brains to make right decisions. The announcement by the mayor had ironic timing because it was made on national donut day. It has been a long time since I purchased or drank a soda drink of any size. My drink of choice the majority of the time is water, but it is not because the government told me I had to drink water only. The decision to drink only water is dictated by my personal choice. Over the last several years, we have watched as more regulations are being sent down from the bigger government bunch out of Washington. Snack foods have been under attack from government regulators. Schools have been instructed to remove sugar products from the vending machines. School lunches are now being stripped of certain items the government decides is not good for children to eat. It is hard to understand why the bigger government crowd believes they are the only ones who can make decisions for the masses. There are some people who love writing regulations for other people to follow, but when it is time for them to obey the laws or regulations they refuse to toe the line like they are insisting others do. Bending or breaking of rules, regulations, and laws seems to be a way of life for certain people in the political world. They are good at handing out orders, but not good at following the rules by which they are elected to govern. It has been said power is addictive. We need fewer government regulations, a renewed emphasis on personal responsibility and freedom.

No moral anchor

“What is the big deal?” A friend called to kid me following the breaking news concerning the episode in Cartagena, Columbia. His first question was followed up with this one: “If those Secret Service guys were in a legal escort (prostitution) zone, then what is wrong with that?” While my friend was trying to make fun of morals and character, and being responsible to make right choices, he did raise a good point. Wait; don’t throw the paper away yet! Hear me out on this one. The questions begging to be answered are those related to the systemic culture of government service corruption. Following on the heels of the exposure of the General Services Administration’s lack of control or concern about how they were spending the taxpayer’s money, we had the revelation of the behavior of the “boy’s club,” inside the Secret Service. Some of the comments on blogs this week have been interesting as many have raised the question of the legalization of prostitution. It seems that in Columbia (a country I have never visited) there are certain parts of the country known as legal zones for prostitution. It is also true that in our country there is a county or two (not sure how many), allowing legal brothels to operate. Taking the very low moral route, then, we could posit that with legal prostitution this would not be a national embarrassment. There could then be no questions as to the aberrant behavior of these married men who were on the government payroll to plan security for the President’s trip to Columbia. If we take that position about legalizing prostitution, then we must ask if this happened in an escort free zone in Columbia which is a fancy way of saying prostitution is legal in those zones, why is the nation of Columbia upset about this event. There were some people appearing on the Sunday talk shows raising the issue of the number of men as opposed to the number of women who are employed by the Secret Service. The person who cleaned this mess up quickly in Columbia was a female. This theory would suggest that with more females on the payroll of the Secret Service this type of activity would not be occurring. Let us come back to reality and cold hard facts. From this incident and others, we are seeing more evidence that our nation has lost any moral anchor it ever had. The corruption that occurs in the highest places of service is being exposed more often than ever. While it is true there is a sense, according to some pundits, in which bad behavior can be heightened in groups. What has happened to our nation when the thinking of a group of people receiving their pay from the taxpaying citizens reveals they feel no accountability to the people who pay their salary? Wait, again, we are dealing with the same issue when we come to elected officials who use their position in office to feather their own nest, and to expand their control over others in order to exact more money from the innocent tax paying public. The big deal, at least for me, is that we seem to have lost any sense of accountability and responsibility. As government has grown larger, it is harder to manage and to determine the people responsible for any unacceptable actions. With no clear awareness of right or wrong and no way to hold others accountable for their actions, we are as close to anarchy as ever. When every person does what is right in their on eyes, we are near to the days of lawlessness. There are certain acceptable levels of behavior that have been generally agreed to in civilized societies. When those levels of behavior are lowered to the baser levels of human or even animal actions then we have slipped deeper into the quagmire of being out of control of our culture. It is no longer just a culture of corruption we are talking about, if we think we can legalize what has been seen as illegal for centuries. When we reach the place of compromise with morals to the point we feel comfortable breaking covenants and agreements between individuals, we are at a point of no return on the free fall from all that is determined as decent. We need to see these events as a need to rethink our relaxed moral code.

Anger out of control

The Apostle Paul, writing to the believers in Ephesus, reminded them of a great truth to guide our interpersonal relationships. Paul said; “Be angry, and do not sin;” as he quoted from Psalm 4:4 (NKJV). We can conclude from these references in both the Old and New Testaments in the Bible that we are warned about keeping our anger in control. Notice the admission; we will have anger. There is not one who has ever lived that did not at some time express anger about something. Even the most even tempered person can find something disturbing them to the point of invoking anger to arise from inside. Jesus became angry when He saw the way His Father’s house was being used as a place of material trading rather than the expressed purpose of prayer.

Much can be known about a person when it is revealed what makes them angry. Some people, it seems, are angry all the time about everything. These types of people are never in a good mood. These folks live in constant stress and create much stress for any person who has to interact with them. Homes today are filled with rage and violence, it seems. There is a deep seated rage showing itself in the place where one should feel the most secure, and that is the home environment. Often, within the membership of churches the issue of rage, anger, and disagreements become major issues with which the congregation and ministerial staff have to deal. When a person looses control of self-discipline and becomes angry, they will many times say and do things exhibiting a different behavior than is seen as normal for the person. The unfortunate outcome of much anger today is seen in the abuse of persons or the murder of an individual who is entirely innocent.

Since the Bible admits anger is real and we are seeing much anger demonstrated in our culture, how can we deal with this issue? As we seek to determine what makes us angry, it would be good to know if we feel it necessary to strike out against any or all people with whom we come in contact when we are angry. If we have feelings of striking out in violence against others while we are angry, it is a sign that we need to seek help from a professional who can guide us to a place of self-control and self-discipline. Is it a simple matter of disagreement sending us over the edge or causing us to go into a rage? If that is found to be true, then we are in serious need of seeking help with our self-control issues.

I would suggest an inventory of ones life and emotions to determine what makes anger boil to the surface. Next, I know that prayer helps to calm the emotions of a person and can point a person in their anger to God’s Word to help bring a sense of calm to any situation. Seeking help from friends, who one trusts can also help to bring about recovery from fits of rage or anger. When there is a process of accountability when dealing with the issue of anger, there can be a plan of recovery set in place. If anger is an outcome of the use of drugs or alcohol, my suggestion is to leave those mind altering elements out of your life in order to learn the maturing steps toward self-control and to relief stress. If these suggested steps do not bring about a change in the anger cycle, professional help should be sought and a plan of action put into place that will bring about success in learning to deal with anger.

We must admit that all of us become angry at times, but it is in the way we express that anger and what happens as we begin to act it out as a result of the anger that is important. Paul knew what he was talking about when he said, “Be angry and do not sin,” because he also had moments of expressing his anger when he saw behavior that was not an honor to God.

Ray Newman
Column first appeared in Pastor’s Pen in The Paper of Braselton, Chateau Élan and Hoschton, Georgia