Public Ignorance: Strength of Liberalism
Put down that beer and step away from the electric dumb-dumb box (TV). I have something very deep to share with you. Are you ready? The truth is: WORDS HAVE MEANINGS. Yep. It’s true. When the meanings are made foggy, distorted, or diluted, then the message and motive of the writer is lost.
There… I said it. Are you doing okay? Good! Then I’ll keep going. I realize what I just said might not sound like such a big deal at first blush – but let me put it to you this way: a successful terrorist dirty-bomb or another hijacked passenger liner may not be the “final act” that ends our blessed America. Rather, playing political word-games in a culture that loves to toy with a cacophony of definitions in the name of “political correctness” may be what historians someday record as the “mentality that ended the American era.”
Now don’t brush me off too quickly! After all, the Constitution (a piece of paper with specific words which possessed precise, absolute, and deliberate definitions on the day it was written) is what has held our nation together for the last 235 years. I say it has held our nation together, of course, tongue in cheek, because, in all actuality, a piece of paper has no power. The accurate and contextual interpretation of that piece of paper, coupled with the willingness of our leaders to obey and enforce its meaning – THAT has really held us together as a nation.
Kathleen Parker recently published an article making the same argument Richard Cohen made last year. (Giving up on God, November 19, 2008; Washington Post.) She suggested (and I paraphrase) that issues of faith need to return to the privacy of your heart. In my last column, I wrote something that dovetails very nicely into the subject of this article. After reading Richard Cohen’s suggestion, that men in politics should “separate faith from their professional and personal lives,” ( You First, Governor Huckabee, by Richard Cohen, November 20, 2007; Washington Post.) I asked this very fair question: “Would Mr. Cohen like to provide his readers with any historical exhibits of how ‘separating one’s faith from one’s public life’ has helped America?”
I asked that, of course, because there aren’t any reasonable examples to support such a ridiculous notion. With a little bit of thought and perhaps a good dictionary and/or thesaurus, it isn’t difficult to comprehend the audacity of Cohen’s and Parker’s demands of modern political candidates. Separating your faith from your profession is not only difficult – it’s impossible! Yet, when you live in a culture that refuses to acknowledge the existence of absolutes (even when it comes to the definition of a simple English word) in preference to…preference…it’s not so shocking, I suppose, to see volumes of people regurgitating the same impractical mantra. Whatever happened to critical thinking skills? Why don’t more citizens believe that words actually have meanings? Perhaps it is the result of drinking too much beer and watching too much TV? Or maybe it’s just because, in the mind of the progressive, words don’t necessarily have meanings so much as the one they might choose to assign to them at a convenient moment.
Asking someone to separate their faith from their profession is like asking them to separate their “sense of duty from their duty.” Get it? It just isn’t possible! If you don’t believe me, then pull through a McDonald’s drive-thru sometime and ask, as confidently and articulately, and as “progressively” as you may wish, “I would like one regular cheeseburger…hold the cheese.” The poor teenager in the microphone will probably say, “So, uhhh, you mean, uhhh…you want a regular hamburger?” Then you may retort (ever so annoyed and with a dramatic roll of the eyes), “No, I clearly stated that I want a cheeeeeeseburger! Hold the cheeeeeese! Why is that so hard for you to understand?!” Now, if you can imagine this same enlightened individual heading back to the office with his cheese-less “cheeseburger” to write an article on economics, claiming that “narrow-minded drive-thru cashiers are RUINING the fast-food industry!” then you can begin to understand why I’m not impressed with either Parker’s or Cohen’s recent display of “intellectual prowess.” Words actually do have meanings. A cheese-less cheeseburger is reduced to nothing more than a hamburger, no matter how you bite into it. You see, this silly little example of mine, the “drive-thru experience,” is the equivalent of a “drive-by media pundit” writing a nationally syndicated column, purporting to the American people, “I want elected men to separate their faith from their profession…but I also expect them to refuse bribes, tell the truth, avoid the trappings of sexy interns, obey the law, and do what’s best for this country!” Secularists love verbal gymnastics! But words do have meanings, folks. I just have one thing to say to my “progressive” friends and neighbors who insist on believing the loopy lack-luster pseudo-logic of the left. (Dr. Seuss, eat your heart out!) Good luck with that whole “separation” thingy, because it doesn’t look like it’s going so well for you right now. I speak, of course, of our current economic crisis.
Could our current economic calamity serve as a proverbial class-room for the Cohens and Parkers of the world? I think it could. Let’s call it “Morality 101.” The result of separating our sense of duty from our duty is nothing more than “dirty.” But that’s not all! It doesn’t make sense to routinely complain about “dirty politics” if you are going to insist that everyone “separate their faith from their profession.” Class conclusion? When the liberals and progressives climb up on their high-horse and ACCURATELY announce that GREED is at the root of our problems, it’s time for that kid in the drive-thru window to roll his eyes and tell them to remove that stupid cheese on their own!
Use whatever WORDS you like – faith, morality, sense of duty, religious convictions – that connection, the indissoluble link between a man’s moral character and his job, his sense of duty and his duty, his religion and his profession, motivated many American founders to risk their lives by signing the Declaration of Independence. But why would anyone know that? After all, every 4th of July, the American public are given their yearly dose of mind-numbing ignorance by way of the public school system and news anchors that the primary reason American colonists separated from Great Britain was “taxation without representation.” And we swallow it hook, line, and sinker, marching along like lemmings, all because we don’t read the Declaration to see if it’s true. I mean, who knew that the Declaration gave twenty-seven reasons for our separation from England’s tyranny and that “taxation without representation” was number SEVENTEEN on that list?
Who knew that much of the first half of the reasons for separation given in the Declaration were issues driven by the convictions that spring from religion and morality? It wouldn’t be convenient for the Cohen/Parker-loving universities and public education text-book editors to put the first sixteen reasons in their proper context now, would it? Why? Because it would be difficult to claim the alleged “separation of religion and politics” was the intent of the founders, if the public understood that faith and moral conviction actually inspired the birth of our nation! No, public ignorance is a necessity of left-wing politics because it advances their agenda. It helps those columnists get away with blaming drive-thru cashiers as the source of fast-food industry woes.
So again, I ask, why is number SEVENTEEN the primary reason discussed today when the 4th of July rolls around? Number seventeen is the most famous in 21st Century American minds because the only view of history you have left, once you nationalize the “separation of faith and profession” is an exclusively ECONOMIC view of history. Number seventeen is an economic issue; therefore, it’s politically correct. The words and their meanings aren’t counterproductive to the liberal goal of secularization.
Isn’t that interesting? And what, pray tell, does a society with an exclusively economic view of the world do during an election riddled with talk of recession and depression? They choose a leader primarily based upon what they think he can do with the economy, of course. Never mind that pesky fact that any authentic economist would admit off the record… Presidents, in and of themselves, have very little affect on an international economy. I mean, come on! Who cares about “moral issues,” right? But there’s just one, big, glaring problem, painted bright red and sitting on the lap of America’s economic-driven voters. We all agree that the cause of our current economic plight was…GREED. That’s right! One of those aggravating social/moral issues that pops up when Americans “separate themselves” from faith, a sense of duty, and true religion! So maybe those traditional conservatives were right all along? Maybe we DO need to locate a man’s moral compass before we put him in charge?
Public ignorance is the exploited strength of liberalism. Thomas Jefferson said it so well: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
