God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy Page 6
“Pro-life” people like me are identified with the negative-sounding term “anti-abortion,” while those who support abortion get the positive label “pro-choice,” even though the only “choice” they really get behind is the choice to abort the baby. Know who doesn’t get a choice at all? The baby.
If employers and colleges are forced to accept candidates of certain races over better-qualified candidates, based solely on their race, that’s “affirmative action” against “racism.” So let’s make sure we understand: In order to keep an employer or college admissions office from preferring one person over another because of race, we order them to prefer one person over another because of race. Got it?
Consider the word “affordable.” Congress passed the “Affordable” Care Act, but many people who had been able to afford their health insurance discovered that Obamacare was quite un-affordable when their rates, deductibles, and co-pays dramatically increased. The Los Angeles Times reported on the story of Maria Berumen, who was advised to see a specialist for numbness in her arm. She tried four different specialists, all listed by her insurer and the state’s “Cover California” Web site as Obamacare participants, but all four turned her away. She started digging, and this led to the exposure of so-called “phantom networks,” lists given to the public of “participating” doctors and hospitals that actually weren’t participating at all. (Fake lists in a government health-care system? Who would have thought?) So, what happens when a private business takes money for promised services that it has no intention of providing? We call this fraud, and it’s supposed to result in prison and big fines. But under Obamacare, we call it the “Bronze Plan,” and we reelect the person who sold it to us.
The essence of science has historically been to question, to search, to challenge results by attempting to replicate them, and to be open to new discoveries—not to accept a prevailing view as final. In other words, the debate is never over, and to make such a claim is anti-science. But in today’s demand for uniformity, one who questions the politically driven agenda of global warming is labeled as “anti-science,” even though there are many legitimate scientists on that side. The very term “global warming” has had to be replaced by “climate change” (and yet again in some circles to “climate chaos” or “climate disruption”) because it was simply too much at odds with Americans’ perception that the planet isn’t consistently warming but rather going through temperature cycles, as it has done throughout its history. I recall that in the early seventies, my college classes and articles in Time (June 24, 1974) and Newsweek (April 28, 1975) magazines warned of the imminent threat of global cooling. We were told that “the science is settled” and that without drastic and urgent action, the planet would enter a deep freeze and we’d all become human popsicles. This was the cold hard truth—at the time.
The term “family” once meant people related by blood, marriage, or adoption. The notion of family was generally accepted to be a father, mother, and children. As divorce rates climbed to the 40–50 percent level and new forms of “family” emerged, the term has come to mean pretty much anything one wants it to mean.
Perhaps we are now truly living life “through the looking-glass,” as novelist Lewis Carroll wrote in this exchange between Humpty Dumpty and Alice:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
And so we now make words mean what we want them to mean. How very convenient!
Once upon a time, a person who came to America illegally was called an “illegal alien.” Admittedly, the term “alien” sounds a bit like the title role in the Sigourney Weaver movie blockbuster. Still, it was the term on all the government forms, and the dictionary defines “alien” as “an unnaturalized foreign resident of a country.” So the word was both clear and accurate. Even so, that term was changed to “illegal immigrant.” Then, because the use of the word “illegal” seemed harsh to some (even though it was true), the acceptable term became “undocumented immigrant.” But then “immigrant” made some people uncomfortable and seemed pejorative for some reason or another (it isn’t), and the term became “undocumented worker.” The Associated Press formally announced this change in a 2013 blog post by Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll. But, alas, the mention of “undocumented” implied that a person was lacking something (like a passport or visa maybe?), so the term was modified yet again by many writers and organizations, this time to “guest worker.” But some found even “guest worker” to be too impersonal (besides, the word “guest” implies an invitation, but calling them “uninvited guests” might hurt their feelings). So now we’re dealing with the problem of illegal immigration with warm and fuzzy euphemisms like … “dreamers.” This recently led to a bizarre Drudge Report headline about the Border Patrol being helplessly overrun by thousands of “dreamers.” I pictured them all as resembling Kermit the Frog. Maybe we should also rename the Border Patrol the “Dream Police” or just “Dream Catchers.”
Don’t misunderstand—I have no interest in making people feel bad or in being harsh toward people who came here for the very same reason my ancestors did. (Truthfully, some of my ancestors were dumped out of debtors’ prisons in England, put on ships, and dropped off on the shores of Georgia, so they did get freedom, but they didn’t exactly come here for altruistic purposes and to one day join hands and sing “We Are the World.”) But where does it all end? Can words mean anything when we’ve done everything we can to strip them of meaning?
The university campus was once the epicenter of free speech, free expression, and, sometimes, outrageous utterings. In the sixties, American campuses became the “hotbeds of hotheads” and pushed the limits of restraint. Remember the catchphrase, “Speak Truth to Power”? Today’s Ivy League motto is “Speak Only Power-Approved Truths.” One has to wonder what aging hippies think now when they see campuses becoming the headquarters of stifled speech and restricted language. Is this what they were fighting for?
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the traditional commencement speech on major college campuses. In May 2014, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice withdrew as the commencement speaker at Rutgers University because a group of really tolerant students (and faculty!) wanted her to be arrested for “war crimes” when she appeared on campus, over her acts as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during the Bush administration’s management of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the most accomplished and remarkable women of her time—a woman who rose from the ashes of her Birmingham, Alabama, church where friends of hers were killed in a church bombing to become the first black woman to serve as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State—was somehow not good enough for some of the little snots at Rutgers. Secretary Rice certainly didn’t miss anything by opting not to go, but the students surely did by not hearing her. When they refused to allow her to speak, they deprived themselves. They didn’t even give themselves the chance to find out whether they liked her or not. Maybe they were afraid that they would.
If the value of diversity is exposure to multiple points of view to enable the free examination of a full range of ideas, then we are going the wrong way by shutting down those whose beliefs aren’t in sync with the elites. The only beneficiaries: elites who want to stay in power. One wonders if George Orwell was an author or a prophet!
Despite the image some have of me, I think of myself as a pretty sensitive guy. I’m not callous or cold. I’ve been known to cry at movies, particularly when a dog dies or a kid gets hurt. That’s why I couldn’t even see Marley & Me and had to sit in the theater until everyone left before I exited after sitting through My Dog Skip. I mist up hearing stories of heroism from Medal of Honor recipients and even get verklempt watching the
rerun of The Andy Griffith Show where Opie shot a bird with his slingshot. So, yes, I have feelings that can be touched, but I don’t go around looking for ways to have them hurt.
These days, everyone seems to be nursing a deep emotional wound that can be torn open by even the slightest expression of honesty. In February 2014, Sally Mason, the president of the University of Iowa, had to apologize for a remark she made about sexual assaults on the campus. The offending comment was preceded by a laudable statement that “the goal would be to end that, to never have another sexual assault.” So far, so good. But then she had to go off and say, “That’s probably not a realistic goal just given human nature, and that’s unfortunate.”
The speech police sprayed the equivalent of electronic pepper spray in her face for including the term “human nature.” There were demands for her to apologize, and she did. I guess it’s unacceptable to suggest that since the days of Cain and Abel, there have been all sorts of deplorable and utterly indefensible acts of violence and selfishness, including sexual assault. The female university president wasn’t in any way suggesting that sexual assaults are acceptable or insignificant. She was saying something about the fact that human beings often act in their own selfish interest and that does include exploiting others, abusing others, even killing others. If it were acceptable to say it, we would call those actions a reflection of what the Bible calls “sin nature,” but that would really be taboo to say. After all, the modern narrative is that we are all wonderful, full of goodness and kindness, and that if we do act in a way that injures others, it’s just because we didn’t have enough counseling or had a bad Little League coach or maybe ate too much sugar in our cereal. God knows it couldn’t be because we never were subjected to discipline that would have addressed our disgusting behavior.
Being offended is a full-time job for many. It’s a tedious task, for it requires enormous amounts of imagination and creativity, relentless pursuit of an audience willing to swallow the notion of the offense, and then a never-let-go nursing of the manufactured hurt until the protagonist actually begins to believe his or her own grievance. (Recently, creative campus complainers have protested that all-you-can-eat taco bars are insensitive to Hispanic culture, that a “Hump Day” party with a live camel might harm the sensitivities of Middle Eastern students, and that a fraternity committed an outrageous “act of cultural appropriation” against Asian-Pacific Islanders by holding a charity luau where guests wore grass skirts and coconut bras [TheCollegeFix.com. “‘FIJI’ Frat Stands Firm After Its Longtime Nickname Attacked, Called Racist,” June 27, 2014]. Don’t eat Neapolitan ice cream, or you might offend three cultures at once!)
Sadder than the proliferation of the perpetually offended is the reaction from what should be a sane and rational public. Wouldn’t it be great if they could simply laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all and refuse to be cowered into a catalog of words that will placate the whining class? But it’s impossible to satisfy the whiners. People who live off their self-inflicted emotional wounds don’t want a resolution, or even a true conversation to help them understand the feelings of another. So the attempt to accommodate them creates a never-ending retreat on the part of common sense and a surrender to irrational demands.
In January 2014, I spoke to the mid-winter meeting of the Republican National Committee (RNC). I was in California the day before and took the red-eye from LA to D.C., arriving in time to get to the hotel, shower, change, and go and make the speech. The moment it was over, I rushed back to the airport, took another flight right back to California, and returned to the event I was part of there. Not an easy logistical endeavor, but one I felt was worth the effort because of the opportunity to address the members of the Republican National Committee. The meeting and the speech were covered by much of the insider D.C. political chattering class of reporters—the ones who chase each other around town listening to the same speeches and who make a living mostly by cozying up to the regular cast of characters who enjoy being chased by them as much as they enjoy being courted and called by name by the “who’s who” of our nation’s capital.
The Democrats had invented a narrative and were really pushing that Republicans were waging a “WAR ON WOMEN!” It was beyond ludicrous, yet quite the clever masquerade, to equate the prevailing pro-life view of Republicans to a lack of respect for women. It was, in fact, a profound regard for women that was at the heart of the Republican view that women are truly equal in worth—that they deserve, in a true meritocracy, the same opportunity and rewards that a male would receive. The Democrats had tried to portray women as helpless victims of their gender, able to survive only if the government would step in and rescue them, subsidize them, and assist them economically and socially. Women I knew and talked to felt utterly exploited and were outraged to be painted as victims because they were female. The very idea directly contradicts liberal feminists, who believe they can do anything a man can do, as well as conservative women, who believe that their equal value is a gift from God and totally reject the idea that they’re helpless without Big Government saving them from their poor, delicate selves.
My wife is a strong woman and quite independent. So are my daughter and my daughter-in-law. They are all well-educated, savvy, tough, and capable of thinking for themselves and holding their own in any circumstance. They reeled at the Democrats’ phony message that portrayed them and women in general in the way they’d presented such characters as the fictional “Julia” in the web page, “Life of Julia,” which chronicled the entire life cycle of a helpless victim of womanhood named Julia whom government had to subsidize and prop up from cradle to grave with every imaginable assistance and promise of security. It was obviously supposed to laud the value of Big Government, but it came across as a condescending and even comedic depiction of women: helpless, dependent creatures attached to a leash by which various government programs would lead them through their diminished little lives.
In my remarks to the RNC, I referenced the insulting idiocy of the Democrats’ strategy, and—for the sake of color and clarity— I asserted that Democrats must think that women don’t care as much about jobs, education, and safe neighborhoods as they do about being able to get free birth control, and also that it was sad that the Democrats must think women are incapable of “controlling their libido unless Uncle Sugar” comes forward to save them. Within seconds, Dana Bash of CNN and Kasie Hunt of NBC News tweeted that I had said “women couldn’t control their libido without Uncle Sugar helping them.”
Of course, what they furiously rushed to tweet was the exact opposite of what I had said! They were 100 percent incorrect. An hour later, when someone who’d actually been listening to my speech (and understood English) pointed out to them their blatant misrepresentation, the left-wing blogosphere was already on fire—not reporting or quoting my comments, but repeating a totally false tweet from a couple of inattentive reporters who were clueless as to what I had said. The two things that went viral were my use of the word “libido,” which for reasons I still don’t understand seemed to titillate the press, and my employment of a term that I’ve used for twenty-five years and heard all my life as a Southerner, “Uncle Sugar.” Uncle Sugar is a term used commonly to describe Uncle Sam morphing into our “sugar daddy” and buying us off with his gifts and material things. The combination of “Uncle Sugar” has never been gender specific nor pejorative to the sugar industry—just a classic and colorful rhetorical expression from my beloved Southland. There was a firestorm, but not so much from what I had said as from what the inaccurate reporters tweeted that I had said. Even when they later corrected their original mistake, the ever-offended left wouldn’t hear the truth. The inaccurate report served their purposes far better than the truth, so why correct a story with facts when that would fail to fit the already decided-upon attack?
There were calls for me to apologize. Some even came from Republican officials, who unfortunately became “nervous Nellies” (another expression from my beloved Southla
nd) and feared the Dems would score points off a story that was full of the warm pile left behind by an adult bull. I was reminded why the Republicans often lose the rhetorical battles of our culture. Instead of demanding accountability for truth and pushing back against distortions, deceptions, and outright deceit, we peddle backward and allow the looniest and loudest lungs on the left to create the lexicon of words we can and cannot use. No wonder we come off looking bad! The one thing I learned from my competitive debating days in high school and college was that the debate can’t begin until a definition of terms has been agreed to by both sides. Allowing one side to dictate the definition of the terms means a default victory for the side that sets the terms. Control the definition of terms, and you win the debate before it begins. When Republicans allow the other side to define the terms and determine which words we can and can’t use, we may as well not show up.
In a climate of free speech, we must assume that people will sometimes say things that hurt others’ feelings. It should never be acceptable to intentionally injure someone with slurs, stereotypes, or slander, but I find it hard to believe that our culture has created such a sensitive society that every utterance has to be sanitized so as to be sterile, which is to say “boring.” The essence of “diversity” is, after all, celebrating differences. Not only celebrating them, but accepting them and understanding them. There is no celebrating, accepting, or understanding when opinions at variance with the word police are pulverized and punished.
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Salt, Sugar, Soda, Smokes, and So Much More
PART OF MY GROWING UP Southern, as compared to kids who grew up in other parts of America, was the very different way of cooking and eating we had. I didn’t really think about our Southern-fried culinary customs until I became an adult and had to deal with personal health challenges due to weight gain and subsequent weight loss and then gaining back and then losing again and then putting some back on and then … you get the picture. I even wrote a best-selling book about my experiences, Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork.