The New Order of Values

A society or social order which determines it will be devoid of values, traditions, or absolutes is one that has chosen to live by no rule or value system. In effect, they have created another value system that is devoid of any value. On the surface, the idea of having no values or making up values as a society develops might sound inviting. The ultimate outcome of such thinking, however, leads to anarchy or to terrorism as the value system by which the society is ordered.

While many in our world think they have come up with a new way to live, they really have just fallen into an old trap of academia and supposed progressive thinking by adopting a concept birthed in Russia in the 19^th century known as Nihilism. This “know-nothing” philosophy as a way to look at life and to establish order in culture, always leads to a dead end of nothingness. The main issue to the nihilistic thinker is to overthrow all old ideas and ways of looking at life, and embrace new thought. New thought that has no basis in making decisions is an empty pit out of which mankind cannot climb. While in the pit of nothingness the value system that develops, while pretending to be fair and to promise equal justice, really does away with fairness and any former of social order justice. The ultimate outcome of throwing away all values and traditions leads to the development of new values and traditions based on emotion, passion, and spur-of-the-moment concepts that do not stand the test of time to assure either fairness or social equality.

We can take the concept of personal choice as it is reflected in the pro abort mindset. The issue for this thinking is personal choice but on the face of the value system that is developed, there is no fairness or equal justice because the life taken has no way of defending or speaking up for self. The only self recognized in the debate is the personal choice of the one who will take the life of another person. This debate leads to a death. There must be at least two voices that speak on this issue, but with the post modern mindset there is only one voice that can ever be heard and that is the pro abort voice. There is no fairness or equal justice there.

This continues with those who are certain they have come up with a way to assure fairness in the area of marriage by insisting society must now acknowledge that the only real fair way to look at marriage is to allow for so-called same-sex-marriage. The post modern mindset embracing the concept of nihilism throws away tradition and rules of order that have served every civilized society from the beginning of time. Marriage as a union between one man and one woman is the founding block of society and human order. Once a society determines that they have the personal choice to take the life of the unborn person and then not just refine marriage but reconstruct society, we have reached a point to where we make up our values as we go, rather than depending upon the founding value system of our culture.

Once all old values, traditions, and rules of order have been successfully thrown away, the only rule (which is the new rule or value system) is that terrorism reigns supreme. The strong survive, but not for very long, because along will come someone stronger to do away with them and we see the ultimate end of civilized society.  A society no longer able to procreate because of the chosen lifestyle of same-sex-marriage will see the end of all humankind on the horizon. We also see that the progressive thinkers who embrace nihilism and the post modern mindset see no problem with the ultimate outcome because for them, they embrace the idea that there will never be an end about which to be concerned once we reach (for them) the ultimate goal of fairness and equal justice for all.  They have created in their minds a world that cannot be or will never be, and certainly it will not yield the utopian ideal society they envision.  We can conclude then that nihilism is fatal and leads to the end of all things, not to fairness or any hope for social justice.

This is no time to give up

The sound was mournful; “I am giving up.” The young man I overheard talking on an elevator caught my attention because he was talking loudly, wanting all within hearing distance to know of his decision to quit. I could not help but engage him in conversation about his decision to quit by throwing in the towel and giving up. As I spoke with him, I heard what has become familiar speech from other people with whom I have spoken. This young person was talking about the never ending cycle of disappointment regarding the political issues we are facing in our country now. “They are all lazy, stubborn, and wrong,” this young man went on expressing his opinion to me about what he observed on the national level in the political world. As I talked more with this young man, I asked him about his level of involvement. To which he answered, “I never vote.” “I don’t understand politics,” he said. To which I then asked, “Let me get this right, you are throwing in what towel?” I am amazed at the number of people with whom I speak who have bucket loads of opinions about the political process and what needs to be done (usually they are sharing what they have heard on their favorite talk radio show or other media source), yet with little or no knowledge of what is really taking place in the political world. There are people with one agenda; it could be immigration, the economy, entitlements, rich people needing to pay more tax, or a list of other issues that seem to ignite feelings of emotion of passion with little real evidence to support their stated position.

 I understand the frustration being expressed as we continue to hear about the cuts occurring as a result of sequestration. There is a sense of hopelessness that has invaded the lives of many people today. Unemployment or under employment has caused a funk to set in and is leading many people into a deep depression about our country and the future.

This is not the time, however, to give up. If anything, we need more people engaged and involved now than ever. We must not let the current trends continue and give up to those who continue to harp about the dismal future of our country. Our country is strong and our people are hard working folks equal to and greater than the task before us. Giving up is not an option.  If we give up now, we are certain to fail. Staying in the game, keeping up the fight, continuing to be truly informed about what is happening in the political world should not discourage us, but should ignite us to try harder and do even more to keep the freedoms that have been fought for and won in the our history. To give up the fight for liberty now would be to insult the past generations of Americans who were willing to risk everything they had to stay the course and come out with victory. Just because certain elections have not gone the way many would like is no reason to give up. Just because there seems to be a level of ineptness and incompetence stinking up the political landscape is not reason to quit. The opposite is true. As we begin to move close to the next election cycle, now is the time to begin to become informed about the positions of elected officials and determine we are going to get in the game trying to find others who will run for office that will carry the banner of freedom and liberty.

My plan is to double down on what I already know and be more involved than ever standing for freedom and a higher level of moral ethic in the political world. Do I believe we will win every race? No, but I will be in there working to find the people who hold to my positions on the issues and to see them go into office. The thought of giving up is foreign to anything I can imagine as we go forward. It is simply because I see the challenge before us that I refuse to quit. I will not give up. I will speed up and go forward, trumpeting the call for all to join us in the fight for change in the direction of our country.

Ray Newman

Cockroaches have more respect than some leaders

When convictions clash with culture, the changes taking place in the way people think becomes clear. I cannot remember a time when there has been more evidence of the change in the direction of our nation or the major change in the way people think as they go through their life. Often, I have bemoaned the reality of the loss of respect we have seen over the years. It is hard to pinpoint the exact date in time when our nation started down the road in losing respect for those who were in authority.

 Recent surveys indicate that cockroaches are more likeable and can be tolerated better than elected members of Congress. It is a sad day when people in positions of leadership have so disappointed the people they are supposed to be leading that their approval rating goes down and shows no signs of going back up. With the age of tolerance and diversity ruling the day, it is becoming evermore obvious when a person is driven by convictions or traditional views of what is right and what is wrong they will be held up as examples of bigotry. There have been times when I have compared the harsh nature of the rhetoric taking place between people with differing opinions as if it is a “wrestle mania” match. In sports, we have come to expect that the enemy is the other side and we must mash their faces in the dirt and leave them bloody on the field of battle. People are not satisfied just to win a sporting event; they want to see the other side crippled for life. That same attitude is showing up in every area of our culture. In the business world we hear the phrase, “Dog eat dog.” We have heard that when a person goes into the world to try and make a living for their families they find it is like jungle warfare out there. There is a worldview that quickly responds with invectives and insults toward any person who happens to express a different viewpoint. We have moved into a time when we are seeing the truth in the statement; “Only the strong survive.” Any sign of weakness is exploited to the point of rendering the other side useless and of no human value. We soon discover the people who cry the loudest for diversity and tolerance show no indication they are willing to exhibit either tolerance or diversity when they come up against someone who disagrees with their worldview.

What a person believes can be kept personal for a short time but when the belief systems begin to clash, the complete disagreement of how to manage conflict or differing views soon boils to the surface. There are various worldviews driving people today. We have those who believe in no rules or laws, except those they want to impose on others. There are people who advocate for relaxing of the moral code that has been in place in our country for generations. There are people who will take from others without fear of being caught. Once they are caught, however, they quickly seek to blame someone or something else for their behavior. There was a day in our history when rules of behavior were generally accepted but that day is gone. There was a time when mature adults could disagree without being disagreeable but that day is also gone. Human life has been devalued to the place where there is no value left.

Jokingly, my daddy would tell me many times, “Son, remember there are two sides to every issue, your side and then a bunch of ignorant prejudiced idiots.” I am afraid that what my father said in jest has now become the new normal in public exchange of ideas and morals in our culture. There are people who argue that there are no absolutes in moral issues and they are absolutely sure there are no absolutes. We seem to be at a place where everybody does what they believe is right in their own eyes rather than following a moral code generally believed to be the way we should all live our lives. One cannot help but wonder how much further down this slippery slope of clashing worldviews we will fall before we hit bottom.  There must be a return to personal and individual respect in the public square.

Life is precious; all should have a chance at life

Life begins at conception and is to continue until the Giver of Life determines its natural end. This never moving conviction is part of my list of beliefs I always express about the origin of life. 40 years ago this month, the United States Supreme Court ruled they had found what had not been seen in the United States Constitution previously. They found a guaranteed right of choice to take a life in the womb. Though the Declaration of Independence assures life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as part of the founding pillar of our nation, these justices determined they knew best and refused to allow for the pursuit of happiness for the most innocent of human life, a child in the womb. Since they ruled in favor of abortion, more than fifty-four and a half million people have been aborted at the choice of someone else. It seems very strange to me that we have been told by those advocating for the death choice that life does not begin at conception. In fact, depending on which advocate for death one reads, life is an ever moving goal post. Some advocates for death want us to think it could be as late as one month after a child is born. Other advocates for choice want us to think it could be that the child (a vital and vibrant human being) does not really possess life until they can know and be aware of their surroundings outside the womb.

I find it interesting that with the announcement of a celebrity being pregnant there is not a picture of a “Fetus bump,” but the picture always has a tag line to say a “baby bump.” I have yet to see someone go around showing pictures of their ultra sound calling the baby in the womb a blob of tissues. Yet, when the choice advocates refer to an aborted human being as a fetus or just a blob of tissue we are supposed to concede the point to them. The future King of England and his wife are expecting a baby, nowhere have I read they are having a fetus or blob of tissue. Each reference I have read about the heir to the throne of England’s child, says a “baby.”

Over these forty years since Roe v Wade, those who advocate for choice always set a predetermined point that they have the right to choose if the life in them lives or dies. Those of us who advocate for life are painted as extremists and even a danger to society because we argue on the side of life. In the way this issue has been presented to the public, we are told that the life issue is political. Not so, the issue of life is a moral one. Over many years, I have been asked to help counsel women following abortions when the reality sets in on what they chose to do. I have not sought them out; they have come to me seeking guidance as to how they can deal with the trauma following their decision and resulting death of their baby.

I am pleased to be able to stand with Georgia Right to Life as they advocate for life. We are still in the process of finding it necessary to explain to this current generation of child bearing women that carrying a child to full term and giving birth is the correct choice to make when dealing with the issue of being pregnant.

My heart goes out to the women who learn they cannot conceive or bring children into the world. With the number of children who for many reasons are in this life without parents, adoption is a wonderful path to take in becoming parents. I remember being on a fact finding mission in the former Soviet Union and visiting many orphanages where children were longing and looking for affection and care. In recent years, many have rejoiced in being able to adopt a child from Russia. That option has now, at least temporarily, been closed. There are many more children across our nation and in other countries that are available to adopt. As a person finds they are faced with the choice of abortion or carrying the baby to full term know, there are agencies that will assist in being sure the baby has a chance at life. I look forward to the day when Roe v Wade will be overturned.

We must learn lessons from history or fail

As a student of history, the rise and fall of governments intrigues me. We are moving toward a historic date that calls for closer examination. The date to which I refer is not the Presidential Election, November 6, but the date is December 25, 1991. That date stands in history as the time when the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, admitted he could no longer be the leader of the Communist nation of Russia.  It would be In January of 1992 that the nation would collapse. In these twenty-one years since the fall of that totalitarian centralized government, historians have sought answers as to why such a thing happened. There is not enough space in this column to address every issue that brought down the once thought-to-be mighty empire, but I will suggest one major issue we should always remember. The issue to which I refer is the need for public debate on how we are to be governed. I am a believer in a two party system of government with input from the largest number of citizens as is possible. This year, we are facing in our nation a public debate on how we are to be governed. We have before us a clear example of a choice to be made. The issue at hand is our determination to remain a free capitalist people. We are facing a major decision about how our government will be structured. Do we want a strong centralized government structure headquartered in Washington D.C or do we want to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people?

The most interesting assessment of the collapse of the Communist system in Russia was actually penned before the fall of the government. In January 1990, Joe Slovo, the head of the Communist Party in South Africa, wrote a major essay titled; “Has Socialism Failed?” The summary of what Slovo said was that Socialism/Communism did not and would not fail  He admitted that the ideology of Socialism had fallen on hard times and was facing a crisis in the decade of the 90’s due to allowing of the encroachment of capitalist principles in government.

To me, the most interesting aspect of the examination of the collapse of the Communist regime in Russia is that it took place twenty-one years ago and many of the young college graduates in the Western world today were never exposed to the evil of the totalitarian control by a centralized government. The young leftists of today do not know of the horrors of the old Soviet state. The liberal media has become unhinged following the Republican National Convention where Mitt Romney was nominated to carry the banner for the party into the Presidential Election in November. The horror that is evidenced by the radical leftists media types is seen in that they have bought into the false idea that government knows best and that government must be controlled in a centralized manner with only a few at the top making decisions for all people. That is the only fair way they can see for government to function. They could not be more wrong.

In April of 1992 following the fall of the government in the old Soviet Union, I was there. I had the chance to engage many different people in conversation about what had happened to their government structure. The most interesting fact that came to light was the reality that following the takeover by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the first thing that happened was the total loss of freedom of speech, the press, religion, and free expression of ideas. The media trumpeting the positives of total government control lost their freedoms first. The very people who want to defend against a populist movement of freedom of speech will be the first to loose their freedom to speak as they deem necessary in a takeover by a socialist’s regime.

History records for us that it was the reforms restoring freedom of speech and the move toward capitalism that is now pointed to as the biggest mistakes Mikhail Gorbachev made as he tried to save the empire, which then led to the collapse of the police state of Communism.  As we move toward the anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Presidential Election, we must learn the lessons from their history or we will be where they once were.

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.