Oh -- I'm very sorry, but just "one more thing . . . "

By Curtis Dahlgren

"I have somewhat to say unto thee." —Jesus

SOMETIMES THE "CHOIR" NEEDS SOME PREACHIN', TOO. One thing I'm sure the Almighty could say to most of us is: "What have you done for Me, lately?" [No offense intended for the non-Christian community.]

A minister's little boy was watching his father work on a sermon one day. The preacher finally said, "What's on your mind, son?" The little boy asked if God inspired his sermons, and the father said, "Yes!" So the boy said:

"Then why do you cross out so much of it?" Good question.

By the way, I think I outdid Columbo in my last column. After saying "Just one more question," I forgot what the question was. I started talking about the mountains and got carried away. I'd better bring this to its "grand finale" before my brain gets any older than it already is.

My book is going to contain a little something for everyone of course — especially for those who are looking for signs of conservative "rambling" — but in conclusion, I have three final questions: Who are we? How did we get here? And what is the purpose for which we were born? A "follow up" question would be, is the populace more apathetic than ignorant, or more ignorant than apathetic?

One typical answer might be, "What be the difference, and who be carin'?" [a little bit of Ebonics there] Hearing the language of college-graduated athletes being interviewed on TV is almost enough to make me glad that I don't have one of those sheepskins.

Oh, and "one other thing": I forgot to include in my last column's summary of problems the dumbing down of our language through "deconstruction," plus ludicrous, virtually worthless classes offered by many of our academies of Higher Learning — everything from "Racism and Sexism in American Business" to "Fascism in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" — or whatever the actual titles are. For details, see The Heterodoxy Handbook by David Horowitz. If effort (and money!) were being wasted on such subjects only at private colleges and universities, it would simply be a pathetic situation; when such subjects are offered by institutions supported by the taxpayers, it is more like grand larceny!

I don't apologize for emphasizing our problems, and right now one the biggest ones is inertia! Apathetic people tend to remain motionless, while those who are pushing the "envelope" of morality and good taste tend to remain in motion and pick up speed! His interview with Sports Illustrated brought John Rocker almost to "disgrace," but when that magazine subsequently published a swimsuit issue with a topless model on the cover, the editor was asked to "apologize" and sent to "sensitivity classes" — NOT! The theory is, in that case, that the "Neanderthals" had better NOT be "offended" OR ELSE!

Gen. Douglas MacArthur once said that "if the problem is of the spirit, the solution must be of the spirit." I may be paraphrasing, but no amount of rephrasing of that sentence will make a dent in the young "skulls-full-of-mush" at the local mall. The word spirit simply "does not compute." They are unequipped to understand such things, because of the novel, recent idea of separation of God from the public schools.

I may be getting "senile," but words matter, and history matters, so I still like to describe the interesting tidbits of history that somehow seem to escape the people we actually PAY to teach our kids. One of those tidbits is the fact that James Monroe was an actual combat soldier during the War of 1812, immediately prior to becoming the next President! So? So I submit that he is far, far more qualified than most of us to have said what he said:

"Had the people . . been less intelligent, less independent, less virtuous, can it be believed that we should have been blessed with the same success? While then [America] retains its sound and healthful state, everything will be safe . . . It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty." — First Inaugural Address

Does that not prove my point? How many kids at the mall today would be able to read that and make heads or tails out of it? I once saw a girl writing a nasty note to someone, and she asked me, "How do you spell dummy?"

Here's another historical tidbit: when John Kerry attended that demonstration in April of 1971 where he threw his "medals" away, the man who made it possible for him to attend that day was President Nixon, upon the advice of Pat Buchanan (just one of those paradoxes that make history such a fascinating subject). The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had granted authorities permission to remove the protestors from the Mall, but Nixon had allowed them to stay.

Nixon is a 4-letter word to some people, but I want to quote something he wrote back in 1962 when he was nothing but a former Vice-President, a failed Presidential candidate, and an unsuccessful candidate for governor:

"'[Are we] a deeply religious people[?]' To be sure, Americans are churchgoers . . They pledge allegiance to the flag of 'one nation under God' [except now in the Ninth Circuit] while the coin of the realm states . . that their trust is in God . . But what do we have here? Evidence of a basic faith that is widely shared and deeply felt, or simply outward signs of public piety, a verbal hangover from an era long since gone? . . They are the outward form rather than the inner substance of a people's faith.

"The strength of a nation's faith in God can be measured only in terms of the personal faith of each of its INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS. So for our own country, only to the extent that individuals have made personal commitment to that faith can America be truly characterized as a nation strong in its devotion to God . . .

"During the years that I spent in Washington, I had the privilege of hearing some of the greatest religious leaders of our generation . . But if I might dare to venture a comment, I think that some of our voices in the pulpit today tend to speak too much about religion in the abstract, rather than in the personal, simple terms which I heard in my earlier years. More preaching from the Bible, rather than just about the Bible, is what America needs.

" . . The American people will not fail if they are summoned to their ultimate commitments and duties, and are recalled to the faith of their fathers. Way down inside they know that the fads and fancies and false values of the passing scene count for nothing . . In the face of the challenge, I for one shall look with fresh interest in the days ahead to learning what the Bible has to say to our time." —Decision magazine, November 1962 (just following the Cuban Missle Crisis), my emphasis.

The later Nixon, of course, made "mistakes," and other Presidents since have made "mistakes" (often without resignation or an inkling of regret). New research says that man is "hard-wired" to seek God, but if one works at it hard enough, and long enough, this wiring can be overcome and by-passed. Sin can in some cases almost be savored and relished at the same time it is being called a "mistake."

That reminds me of a story ("ramble, ramble"). A public figure who was popular but often vice-prone goes see his clergyman for "counsel." "I wish to confess the sin of vanity," he said. "Every time I look in the mirror, I think how handsome I am."

The pastor looked at him for awhile and said, "That's not a sin; that's a MISTAKE!"

Would that I could be so blunt as a writer. The habit of calling a sin a "mistake" is to palliate the conscience, so that's one of the words for the day. Webster says that to "palliate" means, 1, to cloak, to lesson the pain or severity of without curing it; 2, to make a crime (etc.) appear less serious than it is, to excuse, to gloss over."

A palliative is related to the word pall as in pall bearer. The verb "pall" means "to make vapid or insipid, to render spiritless." If you stop and think about it for more than two seconds (no speed-reading allowed here for the moment), maybe this adds some meat to MacArthur's concise little gem, "If the problem is of the spirit, the solution must be of the spirit." The King James word "repent" means to "perform an about-face."

Pat Swindall, the former Congressman, raised a cogent point in his book "A House Divided." He cited Coca-Cola's decision to scrap its original formula and replace it with a "New Coke." That went over like a proverbial lead balloon, but unlike the public schools, the company didn't stubbornly cling to its "mistake." Those in charge were not so bull-headed as to "palliate" their decision, but quickly "turned back the clock" and restored "Classic Coke." That turned out to be a brilliant decision, because a lot of people such as myself had begun to crave the "Old Coke" during its absence — even if we hadn't usually been Coke drinkers.

There's a lesson in there. The absence of God in the public schools has caused many people to crave a return to times more typical of our first 200 years. However, it will take a lot more than election victories and reverse social engineering. We were warned back in the 1700s and 1800s that the road to democratic despotism is a one-way street. As President Kennedy said of the Soviets, "What's theirs is 'theirs,' and what's ours is 'negotiable.'" So it goes with modern liberalism, and here is what Alexis de Tocqueville had to say about "elective depotism":

"I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives . . Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute . . It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing . . [Such a government] chooses to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security . . regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances — what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living . . . till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which government is the shepherd . . Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of person, but the people at large that holds the end of his chain." —On Democracy, Revolution, and Society: Selected Writings, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980, ed. by John Stone and Stephen Mennel, quoted in Christianity and the Constitution by John Eidsmoe

Does this not sound familiar in our contemporary "democracy"? Our country as a whole is gradually morphing into a combination of the worst aspects of both 1984 and Brave New World, including the 2-way computer "eye" of Big Brother, combined with nearly mandatory participation in casual sexual encounters. And the "tutelary power" that Tocqueville mentioned would be Establishment Educators — those who inevitably call anyone who questions their "authority" as being "flat-earthers," "cultists," or other such names. The people are told to keep repeating "2 plus 2 equals 5."

The magic word for the day, boys and girls, is "conservative." Some of my best friends cringe when I use THAT word. They want to remain apolitically "above it all," even though, were they to understand the word in the sense that I use it, they'd probably have to admit that they're "conservative," too.

My trusty 38 Funk & Wagnalls defines conservatism as a principle, a "principle that is conservative, as in criticism, theology, etc." It defines "conservative" as "adhering to discipline against novelty or alteraton; not extreme; [even] moderate"! Due to modern semantics, "moderate" has come to mean something about 180 degrees off from that!

John Ayto says that "conserve" comes from the Latin servare ("preserve"), and Latin words derived from it include "praeservare" ("to guard in advance"). Given the instinct to "guard," or "watch for unintended consequences," it's no wonder that conservatives are perceived as a bit paranoid about as-yet-unforeseen events, but that's okay. Being called such names can be a badge of honor.

As for the word cult, I didn't know I was going there when I sat down to write, but far be it from me to "cross it out." Ayto's Dictionary of Word Origins says that originally the root of the word cult meant to "move around, turn" and it came to mean "be busy, inhabiting a place, or making a wild place suitable for crops" [i.e., "turning" the soil].

Those meanings were channeled into Latin "colere," which meant "to cultivate" and also, "to worship" and get this: another word in the same family of words is "colony."

TRANSLATION: Farmers are "cultists" and the 13 original Colonies were in essence 13 "cults"! Bottom line: it behooves us to "be busy" and be worshipful in cultivating both the soil and our minds, because America has reverted to being a "wild place" all over again. Remember, too, that the term "Christian" was first used as an epithet by those who hated His religion. The connotation was cult!

Just for the record, I wasn't in the military, but if I had to choose, I'd rather be in Baghdad than to be a policeman in our nation's Capital (maybe that's why we never draft policemen). I'd rather be in Baghdad than to be an unborn baby in the womb of a liberal woman. I'd rather be in Baghdad than be a fly on the wall in the Carville or Clinton households.

Disclaimer: I didn't say we should be worshipful of the soil itself, as in "lunar soil" or "Martian soil," or "Mother Earth." I've saved a lot of trees in my life, but only in private business. I invested a lot of "sweat equity" in those trees, but no lobbying.

Way back in the 70s I received a letter from the editor of the journal for such a lobby group, and he openly admitted to me that "most ecologists are socialists" (socialist and pagan, I might add). The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition says:

"GREAT MOTHER OF THE GODS, the ancient Oriental-Greek-Roman deity commonly known as Cybele . . She was also known under many other names, some of which were derived from famous places of worship . . . while others were reflections of her character as a great nature goddess: e.g. Mountain Mother . . Mother of all Gods and all Men . . In her less Asiatic aspect . . she was sometimes identified with Gaia and Demeter . . She was known as the All-begetter, the All-nourisher, the Mother of the Blest. She was the great, fruitful, kindly earth itself."

I could go on and on about this topic, because the priests and priestesses of these religions had a special affection for "wild nature" (as opposed to mankind). The Britannica cites research by Grant Showerman (Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 43, 1901) — but suffice it to say that much of what passes for Politically Correct "ecology" is in fact a New Age remnant of ancient pagan religions. It is not surprising, to me at least, that one of the "four horses of the Apocalypse" is a green one. The inspired Greek word in Revelation for "pale" horse comes from the root word for "chlorophyll" (i.e., green!).

One of the operative Biblical words to describe the latter-day zeitgeist is fierce. Politics is anything but a "game," but to many it is treated like a "game" (indeed, a vicious and a "fierce" game). I hope that our politicians do not start resorting to bench-clearing brawls such as were seen in last fall's baseball playoffs. I didn't have time to watch them, but I've seen "replays" of the one involving the shoving match between Don Zimmer and a young ballplayer. The old man ended up on the ground, and if I live a zillion years, I don't think I will ever forget that image. No matter who "started" what, our elders are supposed to get more respect than that, regardless of gender, I might add.

Divided as we are culturally, our society is almost like two people in a horse costume with two heads, one end striving for the feminization of our nation, with the other end heading off into extreme sports and unlimited "fierce" competition. If I could teach one of those "crazy college courses," it would be on "competition." Competition is a word like weather — it can be either good or bad — so I would include the inherent positive aspects of competition, without ignoring the potential negative aspects, and I would show the video clips of the Don Zimmer brawl, because that just about says it all! "Won't it be wonderful when Iraq is just like America?"

As for those people in high places who want to drive religion underground through extreme, unconstitutional separation of church and state, I could say, "Fine, then I'll just stop praying for you," but I won't do that. I will, however, remind you that sometimes God refuses to "hear" any longer (Isaiah 1:5). If that isn't the climax you were hoping for, you can always go back and reread some of my preceding "final chapters" — or write your OWN conclusion!

I sincerely wish I could be more optimistic about the future in the short run, but we've already covered all those bases. Now if we could only figure out how to make a HOME run! Perhaps we could consult Mary and James (Matilin and Carville).

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Oh, excuse me, but just one other thing! The eternally optimistic Rush Limbaugh, who believes that the stupidity in this fair land will come to a screeching halt one day, just now admitted that the stupidity just keeps on rolling. The University of Iowa cancelled a baseball game with Bradley, because the latter's nickname is the "Braves."

I almost brought up that topic when I was citing the Coca-Cola story, because I was reminded that Coke helped to steal my beloved Braves from Milwaukee. If I ever write another book, just to give you a taste of it, it might be entitled The Year the Braves Went Back to Boston. It would be an attempt to paint a picture of the kind of changes God wants to make on planet Earth, if it remains "alive and well."

Anyway, since pruninghooks and plows will be so plentiful, I want to give the pruninghooks to all the "starving artists" out there so they can go and "sculpt" some trees. The plows we'll give to the PhDs (post-hole diggers).

But the first thing I'm going to do when I get this book off my hands is to finally learn how to fish. Because there is no free lunch, you know. Neither is there any "free" breakfast or free supper or anything else for "starving writers." But as Christ said to His disciples, and I paraphrase, "The worst day with God is better than the best day fishing."

Oh, and one other thing bears repeating: en-thus-iasm means God-in-us, so I hope you have an "enthusiastic" year (what's left of it). Thanks for reading and, if you will, pass these words on to a friend.

The End (this time I'm serious)

© Curtis Dahlgren