The Militant Moderate

On the Saturday past, my wife and I went for a morning excursion to two inside-type home sales. We don’t do that very often these days, but in so doing, we came upon a veritable treasure trove.

At the first house, we found some exquisite Italian glassware. These had a golden label, shaped like a coat of arms, with the phrase “spes ultima deo” across the bottom. At the second house we found a living demonstration of that motto.

The three-word Latin phrase is literally translated to mean: “hope last god.” “Spes” was the Roman goddess of Hope. So, the phrase means, Hope, the last goddess; or, something to the general effect: “Hold onto hope, after all else fails.”

Visiting the small white frame house on the east side of Enid, the older working class area of the city, we found something of an embodiment of that motto. It was a rejuvenating experience, a moment of epiphany. There we found not only a trove of out-of-stock glassware matching a collection of our friends, but we also encountered an interesting assemblage of nice people.

The mother of the household, a mature lady whose pleasant appearance bore signs of both work and worry, greeted us and took us quickly inside to see the advertised items, and eagerly explained everything. When our eyes drifted toward some homemade craft work, she explained, “I made those when I was sick and couldn’t hold my job.” That incomplete set was gifted to us as we bought several boxes of the coveted glassware. Two fresh-faced, wholesome teen-agers helped pack them and carried everything out for us.

While exchanging names concerning a possibility of more business, a younger woman spoke up, “Your son must be Dr. Vineyard at NOC. He was my teacher in macro-economics.” She went on to characterize him as a “great teacher” who made her, a recent divorcee with children and a bit frightened, feel comfortable and gain self-confidence. “He made us all believe in ourselves, that we could learn and succeed even though it was a difficult subject.”

Then came the coupe-de-grace, “I went on to graduate at NOC and then graduate from Northwestern. I am teaching in the elementary school here in Enid.”

Of course, we were proud of our son, who heads NOC-Enid. But I was also proud of this young woman, who by her own efforts, the help of others, and probably federal financial aid, managed to pull and push her way upward. I offered her commendations, but she was also proving the college a success.

I was also proud to have headed for 25 years a fine two-year college serving all comers from all socio-economic classes and of all levels of academic background. The two-year college has earned a reputation as “the Opportunity College, and well-deserved attention as making a great contribution to democratization in America.

For some years I served as a member, officer, and report writer for the National Commission on the Rural Two-Year College, publishing a monograph and journal articles on its work. We did our best to bring a national awareness to the role of these non-urban institutions, some 800 of them, scattered across these United States.

We extolled the virtues of these colleges as actualizing the American principle of equal opportunity for all. We pointed out that equal opportunity is possible only if equal access to higher education is provided. We pointed to the two-year college as the open doorway to the universities of this land.

Sadly, as time has passed, it has become more difficult for two-year colleges to play this opportunity role. With decreased public financial support, two year colleges have had to rely too much on tuition and fees. Private donations and philanthropy go mostly to the big universities, along with an increasing share of public money.

These institutions of democracy are no longer quite the open door they once were. Only with the availability of financial aids, mostly federal, have these colleges been able to keep serving those students who cannot go elsewhere. They have a demonstrably significant role to play in American education.

The local public two-year college might well be given the motto: “Spes ultima deo.” For they are indeed the last hope for many.

We have had a number of hot media “flaps” lately. Some come and go, and others stay longer. These would best be classified as tempests in teapots were it not for the relationship they have with an issue or principle of significance to us.

Let us take first the building of the mosque and the burning of the Quran in the pyrrhic news of the recent past. These were made out to be related, although not properly so. However, they are similar in that each involves an insensitive action contemplated which is within a constitutional freedom.

While it is their right to build a mosque near “ground zero,” it is callously insensitive for Muslims to pursue this in view of the natural reactions of many Americans. The Florida reverend might be within his rights of “free speech” in burning the Quran, regarded as holy by Muslims, but this was a hate-based action, both unwise and repugnant.

Both involve the trivialization of basic freedoms of speech and religion.

In Oklahoma, there has been a brooha over the substitution of “sooners” for “brave” in the national anthem at football games. This might ordinarily be regarded as a manifestation of arrogant redneck adolescence not atypical of O.U. sports fans, and acceptable because they are the sooners and they win football games. At the same time it is a continuation of our pattern of disrespecting the sacrosanct in America. With the Banner, it began with outrageous rendition by Jose Feliciano three or four decades ago, and it has progressed downward.

Oklahoma University sport fans are trivializing something significant to Americans.

Now, about the provocatively clad blonde pseudo-reporter in the men’s pro football locker room getting a few hoots and hollers. Most of us would still say that it makes no common sense to have women in men’s athletic locker rooms while they are undressing, showering, and re-dressing in various degrees of nudity. But because women reporters complained about being excluded while men were not, the equal rights rule prevailed. Of course, they should have just kept all reporters out, even if the press complained.

Nevertheless, this pretty, sensually clad woman is provocatively trivializing a significant principle of women’s rights.

Perhaps the most serious, but least recognized, example of trivializing the significant has been the disrespect shown for high governmental office by selecting grossly unqualified, vacuous persons as candidates. No office has been disrespected more often than that of vice-president, most recently by John McCain in selection of Sarah Palin. What was he thinking? What were those voters thinking?

Voters continue to make a mockery of the high office of senator, as shown by the characteristics of at least five party nominees for that office currently. What serious, well-informed, intelligent person can possibly imagine those vacuous tea party candidates from Nevada, Delaware, Kentucky, or Alaska as meriting election to this nation’s senate? If the republican party espouses and supports these, then they dishonor the office and this country.

This brings to mind the ill-conceived practice of higher education governing boards bringing in politicians, bankers, lawyers, or business people with little or no work experience in academia to run our colleges and universities. This disrespects the high office of college president, and it is disrespectful of all who work in academia and strive to advance in their collegiate careers.

Putting its leadership in the hands of amateurs trivializes academics and education as a distinctive professional endeavor.

New data shows that Oklahoma is one of the national leaders in the percentage of its 15 – 19 year old girls who are pregnant. This should be a big media and political issue, but it is not. Instead, our state politicians’ issues in this vital sector center on efforts to prevent young girls from receiving real sex education and counseling (not religiously-inspired abstinence), to restrict their access to contraceptives or “day after” medication, and to prevent their access to pregnancy termination.

In all instances, these involve the unwelcome interference of government into the private lives and freedoms of girls and women, thus trivializing their human rights and forcing them to bear unwanted babies. What kind of an enlightened nation is this?

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

It was just a matter of time. All free-thinking observers of Oklahoma politics knew that it was just a matter of time until the republican machine went dirty in this general election, as has been their custom.

Dirty campaigning has always been around on all sides. Lee Atwater, Nixon’s campaign architect and advisor to the first Bush, brought a science to “dirty tricks,” as it was then called. Karl Rove was an understudy of Atwater and brought practices into the modern era with “swift-boating” tactics. Not that they are the only party to do dirty campaigning, but their national organizations have brought it to a new low across the country.

Of all things, the Oklahoma democratic candidate is being accused of being a “liberal.” And, she is accused of being soft on immigration -- just like the president. Being liberal and being soft on anything is declared not to be the Oklahoma way. Now, who in the world would have thought that?

Jari Askins is capable of defending herself, but we might make a few clarifying observations. First, Jari is not a liberal. She has never been as liberal as Mr. Obama, although the president himself can no longer be classified a true liberal either. Real liberals think that the president has gone way too far toward the center, and they are unhappy about that.

Ms. Askins is a centrist. She is too conservative to be a liberal. But, of course, she is not conservative enough to be acceptable to the right wing-nuts. As a general thing, a relatively small proportion of the people either classify themselves as liberal, or could properly be classified as such. Mainstream democrats are now broad center, and not the extreme.

On the other hand, the republican party has been moving more and more to the right. However, they have not moved fast enough to suit the extremists in their midst who now give themselves a new name of tea party. Actually, these are just extreme republicans, and with the help of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh they are pulling that entire party to the extreme.

These ultra-conservatives have been aided in their progress by money from billionaires. The two Koch brothers, multi-billionaires in the energy industry, have been backing the group called “Americans for Prosperity,” led by Dick Armey, which in turn has been financing, staffing, and organizing the tea party movement.

They have successfully exploited the dissatisfaction of citizens with the economic and social conditions of the country, and of those who feel threatened by a new black president with a people’s agenda. But they are not a grassroots movement in a true sense, because the yeast behind their rising has been billionaire money. That money is trained on the corporate agenda, and they are being manipulated for that agenda.

Moving our attention back to the dirty ad directed at Jari Askins, one will notice that nowhere in that does the voice of Mary Fallin appear saying, “I am Mary Fallin, and I approve this ad.” On all advertisements sponsored by the Fallin campaign there must be this statement accepting responsibility. So then, that ad must NOT be sponsored by Fallin’s office.

One must look at the faint print in the dirty ad mentioned above to distinguish that the commercial is really sponsored by the Republican Governor’s Association. Now does anyone recall who has been giving money to that association to distribute into republican campaigns across the land? We could begin with Rupert Murdoch, the Australian transplant and owner of Fox channels, who recently gave $1 million to the republican governors to lead the pack of big money doing the same.

With the 5 to 4 decision by the republican Supreme Court to allow unlimited private and corporate donations to political support groups, billionaire money has been turned loose to buy elections. We can expect more of this now. And, we can expect not only more corruption of the election process of democracy, but also more corruption of government itself.

Anyone who does not see the connection between the republican party, and its tea party wing, with billionaire money would have to be daft. Anyone who still believes that the Fox channel is really a legitimate, ethical news organization has to be a bit daft. And, anyone who really believes these dirty commercials paid for by tainted, undercover money must be more than a wee bit daft.

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

There is a large political group among us who wear their religion quite visibly on their sleeves, i.e. these people loudly avow allegiance to the Almighty, claim to follow the teachings of the Bible, and declare to be followers of the Way. Although both inappropriate and unnecessary in political elections, there is nothing inherently wrong with individuals who do this in their private lives. They can be so zealous as to be obnoxious to others, but little harm is done and perhaps some good on occasion.

While making a show of personal religion may be inappropriate in politics, it should also be irrelevant in a nation that values freedom to worship as one chooses highly enough to put into its constitution a clause which prohibits government from making any laws establishing religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. But it becomes logically ludicrous when those very same religious/political zealots become a part of a political movement which is contradictory to their avowed religious values.

Although religion should be irrelevant in politics, when candidates interject it into their qualifications and agenda for their candidacy it becomes open to scrutiny. How their religious proffers square with their politics in issues of economic policy and societal good is of appropriate concern. What about all this caring for the poor, the widows, and the orphans stuff? What about ethics of social justice? How does that square with rugged individualism?

How do those who claim such teachings and endorse such values, then be supportive of an unbridled capitalism that would prey upon the weak and the poor? How can they oppose a definite role for government as a mediator or enforcer of fairness in the economic, social justice, and political systems?

How can government for the benefit of all the people, rather than the few, be considered an enemy? The answer would have to be: “Not by rational and ethical people.”

Republicans, the party favored by the “religious” crowd, are fighting tooth and nail to extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 rammed through by the “reconciliation” procedure, now so demeaned by that same party. These cuts produced $1.65 trillion in deficit. Without those cuts, the debt would now be $5.2 trillion, or 37% of GDP. Instead, it is $7.5 trillion, or 60% of GDP. The greatest increases in debt come from those tax cuts and the $1.3 trillion Iraq War, not the mere $780 billion stimulus spending effort to avert our sliding into a depression.

Nearly all of the money from continuing the cuts, beyond democrat proposals, goes to the richest 1/10 of 1% among us. That is the richest one in one thousand among us, who make an average of $7 million a year.

How does all this square with principles of fairness and equity? Campaign money comes heavily from the rich, so does this speak to political corruption? The republican court has opened the way for corporations and the wealthy to pour huge sums into campaigns. What does it say about the blindness of many of our citizens to the discrepancy between their religious principles and their politics?

But there is still another side of this selfishness manifest by the rich in preserving their advantage over all the rest of us.

Almost any financial news section will call attention to the enormous sums of cash that corporations are hoarding at this time when the nation is so in need of money being put into productive circulation. Our companies continue to be extremely profitable, made so primarily by cutting workers or moving jobs abroad in search of cheap labor. Right now the S & P 500 companies alone are sitting on roughly $1 trillion in cash, a huge and unnecessary amount above security levels.

Instead of investing this $1 trillion in productive activity and hiring back their workers, these companies are sitting on hoards of cash. Instead of distributing these earnings to stockholders as they might, these companies are hoarding the cash. Other than paying executives exorbitant sums, all that cash taken out of our system in profits is doing absolutely nothing to stimulate revival of prosperity.

Corporate cash hording is a manifestly selfish act on the part of big business, a complete disregard of the common good in our country.

Why such selfish corporate behavior? Some might say it is worry and insecurity about the future. But others say there are political motives attached to delay of a jobs comeback until after another national election. Who knows? The motive is not certain, but it is suspect. It is unhealthy for our nation.

The manifest selfishness of those who have big money is prolonging the hardships of those who have no jobs. The unwillingness of the wealthy to pay their taxes is running the nation further into debt. How about all those patriotic folk with “Christian values” who claim to put country first? With whom will they stand?

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

Mr. Glen Beck, the right wing ego-maniac prophet from Fox News, has been up to something that might have been good if sponsored by somebody else. Of course our first questions should be, “When and where did we lose it?” Then we might move on to say, “A rally called ‘Restoring Honor’ could have been a fine thing if sponsored by somebody or some group that has some --if they answer sensibly the first questions posed above.”

Mr. Beck is definitely not the person to talk about honor. Some of the people appearing on his program are not the kind one would invite if he were really serious about such a theme.

Understanding why Mr. Beck is doing this defies even the most loquacious pundits to provide a logical answer to the query. Maybe a simple answer might be “because he can, and he just loves proving that.” He loves to be a showman. His programs are about showmanship. Also, he loves playing roles, and his latest is “Messiah.”

Mr. Beck may be a “flash in the pan” of politics, but he is a potentially dangerous one. He has moved from right wing politician, with all kinds of fringe political notions and conspiracy theories, to becoming a “flaming evangel” for right wing religious zealots with all kinds of bizarre depictions of a world of unreality.

Mr. Beck’s message, his personality, and his following seems to be more of a cultist phenomenon that either a valid political or a truly religious movement. His ideas are sufficiently radical to be rejected by both mainstream politicians on the moderate right and mainstream moderate religions. In other words, his stuff is weird, and he appeals to a weird bunch.

Normally such people as Beck, come on the stage, entertain and entice for a while, and pass away as they become more transparent to the public and to their following. They may have their effects, but temporarily. So it was in the case of the rabid evangels of the last century such as Huey P. Long, Joe McCarthy, Amy McPherson, Ron Hubbard, George Wallace, Ross Perot, and others who had hopes of leading this nation toward some Shangri La.

But one cannot forget the lessons of history. It was just such a person who rose to power in Germany in the 1930’s proclaiming himself the founder of the Third Reich which would endure forever. He, too, preached the restoration of the honor of Germany, tarnished by WWI and the Versailles Treaty. There must be a continuous vigil for such who come in the name of patriotism, honor, and God.

Now, let’s address the question: If we lost our honor, just when was that?

Is that something Mr. Obama has done? Is it something about Mr. Obama’s persona? Is being black a problem? He is not a Muslim, and he was born here, but do some still think not? Is it something Mr. Obama has done? Has he lied about intelligence and taken us into unnecessary wars? Has he authorized torture of prisoners in violation of treaties? Has he muffed the memos warning of attacks on America? Does he butcher the English language, causing embarrassment? Has he had peccadilloes with women?

Now further on matters of honor, has he taken money from the poor and given it to the rich through preferential tax cuts? Has he driven up the deficits quietly by putting all the costs of wars off-budget? Has he tried to privatize Social Security and Medicare? Has he lied to Congress, or protected staff who did?

If one concludes that Mr. Obama has not been found doing any of these things one might think dishonorable, while the past administration is thought to have done most, is there not something logically incongruent about radical republicans seeking to restore honor now?

Mr. Obama has done battle for those without medical coverage, and those unjustly denied insurance. He has led in saving thousands of jobs at American car companies, lest the nation’s whole supply be foreign. He has prevented the collapse of the banks and finance system. He has led in putting money into the revival of jobs, and prevented the loss of millions. He has sponsored middle class tax cuts. He has led moves to restrain banks and protect consumers’ rights.

The republicans have battled against all these honorable efforts for the American people. Should these tea party republicans be coming now talking to us about “restoring honor?” First, demonstrate honor, then talk!

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate