Do you know the name Charles Chaput?  Archbishop Chaput is the leader of Colorado’s Roman Catholic Church.  Last month he spoke at a symposium in Toronto.  For those reading this in North Jersey, Toronto is a large city in a place called Canada.  Chaput caught more than a few ears when he spoke about Christian values.  “Tolerance is not a Christian virtue,” he stated.  The Canadian media flew into a rage.  Chaput, most of its members argue, is out of touch.  He’s a troglodyte and a hater.  If you’re a Christian reading this you know the drill as you’ve been hearing it locally with the discussions about Delaware HB 5 and a companion marriage bill in the state senate.  The goal of the left, and notice I didn’t write gay, is to cow Christians and force them to submit to the latest cultural fads. 

As a Christian you’re told you must be tolerant.  Chaput says otherwise.  The text of his remarks were mailed me by a friend and appears in the March 12 edition of The Wanderer, a Catholic paper based in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’m going to share of few of the man’s words:

“Frankly, I just got tired of hearing outsiders and insiders tell Catholics to keep quiet about our religious and moral views in the big public debates that involve all of us as a society.  That’s a kind of bullying.  I don’t think Catholics should accept it.”

Some of you reading this aren’t Roman Catholic and may not be much impressed by the hierarchy of the Church.  The other day I had a long running debate with a special friend about the leader of the Roman Church.  My girlfriend was a cradle Catholic and descended from strict Irish Catholics on both sides of her family.  Despite all of that I still love her!  She thought the Pope was off base about his remarks to reporters about condoms while recently flying to Africa.  As editorialists at The Washington Post lectured the Pope is ignoring modern reality.  First, for both my conservative girlfriend and the lefties at the Post, no Pope has had any serious legal authority for 150 years.  People aren’t fired at the stake for disobedience.  Secondly, from what I read in the papers or watch on TV or hear on radio most men in Africa eschew condoms.  For the last 30 years the men leading the Roman Church have been working to steer it much more closely to Biblical roots and this brings howls of protests.  The Pope can’t make you do anything.  He admitted as much at his installation when he told a worldwide audience if Catholics couldn’t follow he would lead a smaller church.  He simply reiterates his institution’s millennia old traditions.  The writer’s at the Post claim he ignores reality.  No, he reminds us of our call to holiness and the need to try and be closer to perfection.  You can’t become an editor at the Post by being a moron, I suppose.  So they must have alternative motives.

Getting back to Delaware HB 5, the sexual preference bill allowing extra-judicial protections for folks who practice alternatives to standard heterosexuality: The language of the bill opens business owners and institutions to lawsuits from workers claiming they’ve been discriminated against for what they practice not only in the bedroom but as well as in the barn. 

Might this be objectionable to not only Christians but to Jews, Muslims and many, many more of your neighbors? 

Again, what consenting adults do within the walls of their own residences that don’t violate current assault and homicide statutes is already protected by federal and state constitutions.  Tolerance is a hallmark of the current legal system, however.  Tolerance doesn’t mean I must spend 4 hours everyday on a radio show cheerleading for a lifestyle I care not with to involve myself. 

This is a message I received late Wednesday in my personal email from a libertarian friend:

“Bill:

The solution to the “gay” “marriage” issue is simple: a contract between the two parties.

No need for an amendment or law, modifications to any of our morals, etc.  All they have to do is formalize their relationship by a contract- the same as millions of other “marriages…aka businesses” take place every year.

All a contract would do is bind both parties in equity…the distribution of the marital estate and would allow insurance companies to provide insurance coverage- because of the contractual bond between the two.

This is so simple it begs one to realize that the “gay” agenda has another goal and it has nothing to do with marriage.”

His question is a warning.  Sounds rather Biblical, wouldn’t you say? 

I’m reading 2 newspapers this Sunday.  Many years ago I would wake early on Sunday and go to the store and buy 3 papers.  Starting with my local, The New York Times and a third paper for random editorial viewing.  When the cost reached ten dollars and the government no longer allowed me deductions for work related publications I scaled back.  The arrival of news via internet also kept my fingers free from ink marks.  Sunday is still a day for gripping old fashioned newspapers.  This morning I bought two on the way to breakfast.  A friend recommended a restaurant on the bay in Oak Orchard.  You can get a table by the water and read by brilliant sunshine.  The New York papers are among those I now read online.  That city’s leading paper will set you back 5 dollars on Sunday.  If you can ignore the editorial bias it’s a good read for much of the week but around the house it just gets scattered.

The Washington Post isn’t, from ratings of papers I’ve seen, in quite the same league with The New York Times but the Post has good comics and Tiff likes the Post magazine, which isn’t cluttered with Rolex advertising like its New York counterpart.  The Sunday Post also carries a section called Outlook.  It’s worth the price of the paper.  My other usual Sunday read is The Washington Times.  It’s simply the only daily devoted to right-of-center thought in America.  The Op-Ed section is worth much more than the 1 dollar Sunday cost. 

The Baltimore, Wilmington and Salisbury papers were once decent reads, I guess, but none are now worth shelling out a buck or two.  As a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy I’ve spent much time gloating about the sinking liberal ships, however.  Now The Washington Times is asking me to spend a little more than 3 dollars per month on an internet subscription.  The word “paper” will become as archaic as the word “press”.  The printing and distribution of newspapers is expensive.  Few people any longer read them on a daily basis.  Online editions cut those costs but also cut staff and coverage. 

What’s the big deal you ask?  First let me offer that anything I write won’t save newspapers and nothing thousands of others are writing will save papers.  Some environmentalists will even argue the savings in paper and ink will be good for the planet.  They fail to ponder the costs of generating the electricity for televisions, radios, DVD players and computers.  These household devices can offer you a great deal of information but the power demands in this country have pretty much trebled since the advent of desktop computing.  We answer the demand by burning oil and coal.

I’m not a flaming environmentalist.  Even if I was it would just spew smoke from my remains into the air.  My concerns are of a different nature.  The Washington Times carries a story today about illegal gun sales to Mexican drug gangs.  The guns are being shipped south of the border from as far away as the state of Washington.  For those of you on the left it’s the Washington with Congressional representation.  The Washington Post carries a front page story detailing a United States government effort to beef up border security just north of Mexico.  Two things I’m gleaning from what I’m reading.  The massive sums of illegal drug money corrupting Central and South America is now corrupting some of my countrymen.  We may also be looking at a bloody war along our border with a narco-terrorist state.  No matter the differences in editorial slant of these papers I can connect the dots. 

A writer for the Nation has a guest piece today in the Outlook section of the Post.  He explains he voted for President Obama but now fears our country is becoming what he labels a “corporate state” with the worst attributes of socialism and capitalism combined.  Corporate states plan economies and favor some industries over others.  The closest historical parallel from my reading is called National Socialism. 

Who’ll provide the information for the citizens of this country about wars with neighbors and corporate favoritism?  For 22 of the last 23 years I’ve worked in radio and television.  For 17 years I worked in news.  I’m a proponent of the immediacy broadcasters can provide in a crisis but also remember a statistic.  Some 25 years ago a fellow measured all of the words spoken in the CBS Evening News and discovered they comprised just 22 column inches when turned into newsprint.  Not much depth and not much reporting about real news. 

There are from my perspective just two outcomes.  One would be very positive.  A new business model we old timers can’t fathom replaces the old one and brings both depth and immediacy.  The web may yet be the answer.  Option two is an even more ill-informed public.  No matter what your view of last week’s AIG story I predict one year from now there may be no one left to report any similar news.  God save us all. 

It’s a good thing my girlfriend isn’t the federal government.  If she was I would quietly surrender all my liberties.  She has barred me from eating at Mr. P’s pizza because pizza would be fattening.  So I go along with her decision despite a fondness for Mr. P’s.  I’ve been telling her they’ll make us a personalized pan pizza and I’ll eat just a slice.  No deal.  Last weekend we drove by Mr. P’s on or way to the movies.  No deal.  I got away with buying her a latte next door to the theatre.  Guess I shouldn’t complain about saving a few dollars. 

Tuesday morning I had an early committee meeting for Rotary and the redhead had a meeting as well not far away.  So I invited her to meet me for breakfast at the family restaurant in downtown Georgetown, our county seat.  Call it our St. Patrick’s Day celebration.  She arrived and ordered a breakfast of grits and fruit.  She didn’t react when I ordered toast, two eggs over easy and homefries but then she ate some of my homefries.  Yet she would rather have grits and I suppose it’s one of our cultural differences.  I’m from the north and she’s from Baltimore, which is pretty much a southern city.  The differences are few but sometimes I still can note them.  I say Baltimore to her Ballmore.  The papers back home don’t dwell on racial issues but the papers in Baltimore, Washington, Wilmington and Salisbury spill a lot of ink on the topic.  At the movies we saw a Clint Eastwood film about a retired auto-worker coping with a changing world.  Whenever the main character grumbled about his neighbors people in the theatre broke out in laughter.  Walt Kowalski, the main character in the picture, isn’t shy about the names he uses when describing various ethnicities.  As a product of the north I know I incur the wrath of the politically correct but we always used to joke with our neighbors about their last names, however.  My childhood friends were a mix of Irish, Scottish, German, Dutch, Slovenian, Hungarian and Polish names.  I loved those guys.  My college friends were Steinberg, Wojnovich, Dolan, Simmons, Wormley, Morales and Quinlan.  I’ve the same reaction as to my childhood friends. 

Over the years my work friends have been Heslin, Weidman, Guy, Siciliano, Katersky, Modell, Sheehe, LaPoint, Sadik, Wright, Craig, Creller, Johnson, Woodard, Sadar, Wood, Granozio, Ezzo, Tetta, Roche, Galley, White, Alexander and Puma. 

My current friends are Palmer, Karol, Morski, Shaw, Rasa, Fink, Brady, Hermann, Alvarez and Hoffman.  And I must confess I think the world of the people I work with.  When I come through the lobby door everyday I get a big smile and hello from Miss Dee, the woman who is the glue of our business. 

There are probably another one hundred I haven’t mentioned and who are just as important. 

A couple of weeks ago I did say some liberal slacker at the Wilmington paper made the claim I’m a racist.  Well, I was a big fan of Petty, Allison and Unser when growing up so maybe he’s got a point.  What the fellow really meant, I think, is that I don’t buy into his narrow education and view about our country.  You see, the names aren’t really important.  It’s about what you believe and what you stand for and these big city liberals are all about touchy feely and they’ve got no logic gene.  The one thing I got out of the Eastwood movie was that it isn’t about the fuzzy P.C. pap you spew to impress some fair weather liberal friends.  It’s about your actions.  No greater love has a man but to lay down his life for another. 

Oh, and another point.  Some of the folks at the newspaper can’t write.  I can.

I’ve been battling with folks on the left for almost a decade and can look back 25 years when I battled alongside them and reach some sober conclusions.  First, I usually wasn’t sober when I was involved with radical leftist groups.  As no one made me take the drink I can’t dismiss once playing for the other side.  All I can do is now work to make right the wrongs I committed against my God and my country.  The second thing I’ve noticed is the left can’t seem to make logical connections.  Which is why I guess the government schools are constructed in the current tense.  You create more liberals when Johnny can’t read and has only the dole as his only resort.  Last week a writer at The Christian Science Monitor bemoaned the lack of modern critical thinkers.  This infers critical thinking is something you can teach.  It may just be some folks are wired differently and can think on several levels at any given time while others don’t have the talent.  I believe I can make this statement because the left argues wiring is the root of all differences between people we used to consider just making lifestyle choices.  Notice I wrote I believe and not I feel.  The only thing I feel is the sometimes knot in my stomach when I’m asked to cheerlead for a cause that makes me uncomfortable.

A Roman Catholic Bishop I once heard saying a homily claimed the knot was part of God’s wiring and a reminder ethics aren’t situational. 

Over the weekend I had quite a bit of time for reading and came across the words of a columnist at The Washington Post.  Jim Hoagland writes the American people are getting angry.  Very, very angry and the anger he believes may get very, very ugly.  Hoagland, from what I know, has never been a paragon of the political right.  He’s just an observer witnessing what a great many others are seeing.  This morning I received an email from one of my friends serving in Iraq.  He was telling me 50 percent of working Americans are just two paychecks away from disaster.

Yesterday I attended a committee meeting of the Sussex County Community Organized Regiment.  A local man with a house just a few miles from where I live hosted it and he has a family, pets and a very good job.  These aren’t people frothing at the mouth and searching for a revolution.  There were ten people in attendance ranging from 19 years old to retired.  There had been an earlier committee meeting where something called “Victory Garden” was a discussion topic.  It appears these bitter clingers have ten acres of land available for tilling and planting.  Members of the group will grow vegetables and then, say it isn’t so, can them for what could be tougher months later this year and early next.  Any member who works on these plots is entitled to share in the bounty.  The barter economy is back. 

Before the session wrapped up there was light banter about the public reaction to creation of the organization.  Liberal bloggers in Wilmington are railing against the toothless right wing goons inhabiting the forests below the ditch.  You know the story.  The salons of the state’s biggest city can’t conceive of how folks can survive without big government.  Worse yet they can’t understand why you wouldn’t want the nanny state in your lives.  The beautiful crime and drug free streets upstate should be convincing, I guess.  Someone mentioned the follow up posts at the blogs contained liberal fears about the good people of Sussex County.  Some worry they’re at a disadvantage because we can handle guns and they can’t but if the figures are correct most of the “Wards of the State” locked up in prisons originally called New Castle County home.  The wards are often locked away because they committed gun crimes and often against liberals even more fearful of weapons they could use in self-defense against criminals. 

I don’t speak for the members of the Regiment but if things get interesting this summer some hungry lefties may be looking for a bite to eat.  God help them.  He just might if they could come to their senses.

A fellow was talking this morning about his expectations for the country after the “depression ends”.  Seriously, I heard it this morning on a financial show while I was working in my kitchen.  Immediately I called for Jim-Bob and Mary Ellen to come listen to the radio.  When did the media definition move from recession to depression?  Do the newspapers circling the drain hope they can salvage operations by hyping disaster?  I can see the folks at the editorial board asking the staff who can perform on TV or radio and then giving marching orders.

Today Larry Summers pronounced the recession/depression over.  He gave a speech and said the stimulus package has shoppers back in the stores.  To my knowledge they haven’t even printed the cash and checks and Obama’s economic team says the master plan did the job.  The Chairman of the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve makes the same claims and astute observers like Niall Ferguson call it spin.  It’s an effort to reverse the psychology the gangster regime created to win an election and then gain approval of the spending plan.  Desperation, wouldn’t you say?

I can always de-bone chickens if my end of the media universe implodes.  Even poor and socialized Americans need to eat and I live dead smack in the middle of America’s poultry industry.  So this is how and where modern western civilization ends?  I fully expected explosions and fire.  It’s really a great time for a man approaching 50 to be considering marriage and a long honeymoon in Savannah, Georgia.  You know, life has offered me few financial rewards and it seems whenever I write about politics and culture the expertise of the Wilmington newspaper’s music columnist is brought to bear judgment against me as a racist.  Here I am, nearly 50, a broken down old TV News Director, with an Irish last name and mixed ancestry from nearly every inhabitable continent and these assailants from the world of bongs and bar bands are firing away.  Next week we may all be in soup lines and their attempts at political correctness aren’t likely going to feed them.  From what I’ve read about the other depression and from what now dead men in my family told me, brawn was the currency of the time and even then it didn’t guarantee a steady income.  Makes me think the soft liberals at the nation’s papers will end up starving.

The weekend promises escape from the political and media circus.  The redhead picked last weekend’s movies.  I’m just about worn out on Meryl Streep and Judi Dench and now I can make a choice of something funny or with those explosions and fires I’ve been expecting.  She has even agreed in a few weeks go see racing with me at a dirt track and baseball is getting very, very close.  She knows the road to Camden Yards and just might enjoy a drive to her native “Ballmore”.  Last year I was there for The Star Spangled City’s St. Patrick’s parade.  It isn’t on the list this year.  The weather forecast is disappointing.  It’s like being home in upstate New York.  We were teased by some great weather last weekend and now a parade day arrives and it’s snowing as I compose this.  I consider the change in weather a slight recession.  Soon it will be summer and there isn’t any reason for depression but then, again, I don’t own one of the last rusting hulks called printing presses. 

I’m just a regular guy from the sticks and we don’t place our hopes in government, mainstream media and local bar bands.  Come to think about it, I’m only ashamed to say I’ve written an entire column without mentioning faith.  The liberal media folks throwing stones don’t have a clue about really important things but then we shouldn’t be surprised.  When the government they put in power is finished stones will be all you’ve got left for necessities like soup and self-defense.  God help them. 

Sussex County’s Republican committee gathered Monday in Georgetown and there weren’t any victims in the room.  I’m not talking about some newcomers to the political scene.  Eighteen members of the Sussex County Community Organized Regiment attended and got a firsthand look at a political party working to rebuild itself from the local level.  Despite some earlier concerns the two groups were civil. 
 
Tuesday morning I telephoned a lady friend to give her all the details from the GOP meeting.  Then it dawned on me.  Every last person I could see in the auditorium Monday night was Caucasian.  Similar note from Saturday’s Regiment
meeting, our frequent radio caller, Art from Long Neck, leaned over at one point.  “There aren’t any blacks here”, he said.  Two meetings and a few hundred
people combined and the voices of Sussex County’s people of color are nowhere
to be seen or heard.
 
The liberals like to maintain it’s because Republicans and conservatives aren’t welcoming.  Let me tell you something, folks, everyone walking through the door Saturday didn’t have any serious idea of what they would see.  It was new.  Much the same could be said of Monday’s Republican gathering.  As you know there was trepidation before that meeting from many in attendance, whether they be party regulars or first time viewers as were many from the Regiment.  I went to Monday night’s meeting and I can assure you there were people there who would rather endure root canal than deal with my presence.  It’s my job.  I make noise and I raise public interest but sharing roses doesn’t always do it.  Let me also wager the local Democrat committee has few people of color in attendance.  Last summer I called a rally in hopes of lowering fuel prices.  Didn’t see many minorities that day.  Do you have a minority gasoline discount?
 
Yet I walked through an open door Monday, chatted with a few people and took a seat.  The Republicans conducted very much a freewheeling and open meeting.  The County Chair even opened the floor before closing and allowed input from the room.  The meeting ended only after the last interested speaker had his or her say. 
 
Where were the blacks?  Some, like Betty from Millsboro, often call my show and express anger.  She and a few other people like her insist the deck in the American card game is stacked against them.  Oh, Betty, where were you Saturday morning and Monday night? 
 
Interesting there are residents of Sussex County who philosophically believe
government must do more, much more, in involving itself in our daily lives and
yet these very same people don’t get involved.  An example would be the Sussex County Council.  The meetings are streamed live on the web.  I can take a seat at work and watch the action.  Yet I can’t recall the last time I looked at the pictures and saw anyone of color in attendance.   
 
A man attending the County Republican meeting stepped down as party Vice Chairman after 8 years in that role.  He has nearly a dozen kids at home and a job and his children have been home-schooled and over the years he got them to church once or twice a three times a week.  Tell me, those from the minority community, why don’t you have the time?
 
If you want a seat at the table then show up.  Complaints to a radio show change no laws.  I’m not the government.  I make no laws and I enforce no laws and I sure as heck make no decisions about government resources.  Complaints to talk radio echo briefly into the ether and then vanish into some vague memory.  Success and self-reliance require your participation.

My post about Exodus brought me this reply from a Christian friend once employed in a high level job by the federal government:

An interesting set of thoughts from an unknown source…..

A rather nefarious and dishonest character I once had very unfortunate business dealings with in a rare careless moment disclosed his business method of operation to me. After ending a little business negotiation with slick serpentine skill he whispered to me as an aside with a braggart’s breath “create confusion and get what you want’. Those words should have made a more immediate impression on me than they did. They were a sort of prophetic warning of what would also happen in my own business dealings with him. It seems there is truth in the saying that leopards do not change their spots. This particular man had come highly recommended to me as a fine upstanding apparently Christian business man. In truth he was a snake on the make. For now, I want to focus on that man’s method of creating confusion to get what one wants.

Make no mistake, I do not subscribe to the method but I cannot help but recognize it in practice now when I listen to government officials who claim we are in such a serious crisis that we must fundamentally change our ways of doing business and banking in this country. They say all is lost in the capitalist free wheeling ways of the past and that only the state can save our economy from certain ruin. Some say past presidents are to blame for this great crisis of our time. Others blame Congress and business leaders on Wall Street. There is indeed a great deal of confusion. Now is a time for great caution and strengthening of character; a reformation of character.

I submit that our systems are not broken except perhaps for our educational and social security systems which were the first truly socialized agencies of our government. Our systems of government and business were designed to be managed and manned by honest women and men of good conscience. In fact, I believe we are reaping the results of decades of neglect by a whole generation of Americans who seem to have been distracted from their duty to maintain our culture’s core values by educating young people both morally and intellectually in our schools. Please pay attention to the historical reality that our government “socialized” school, Social Security, and Medicaid systems are very unhealthy and are themselves in a longstanding state of crisis. Socialized banking, business, and health care will not likely fare better.

We the people can do far better for ourselves in solidarity of virtues and values than can any great government society provide addicting and costly services to us. Services that might otherwise be far less demanded by a thriving entrepreneurial and industriously creative critical mass of citizens.

Our systems of government and business were designed with the expectation that these state and commercial corporate enterprises would be dominated by such a critical mass of men and women of good conscience that they would not fail to consistently and freely achieve their good ends of service to our community by common goodness. The guarantor of success would be the individual consciences which engender a whole corporate conscience greater that the sum of its parts.

It was never imagined that good people would become uncommon. The problem is not our banks but rather bad bankers. The problem is not our business system but bad businessmen and women. It is not Wall street but rather the current residents there. The same can be said of our governments and churches for that matter. There is personal DNA all over the scenes of crimes of corporate and government corruption that we have all witnessed as so many members of a reality television series. There are individual persons responsible for the crimes and excesses.

The problem is that we have now for decades taught people to believe they are better than they are. Consider just a couple undisputed statistics.

American high school students perennially rank near the bottom among the industrialized nations of the world for educational performance while consistently coming in first in the category of self-esteem. These statistics reveal a detachment from reality that that has cut our culture adrift and has allowed for some very pernicious weeds to be sown in the American Field of Dreams.

We have engendered this situation in our schools which have been neutered of the ability to transmit the greatest life affirming values of Judeo-Christian culture to our children. A whole generation has stood by and watched while children have been indoctrinated with a code of behavior and mores that is more foreign to us than the farthest eastern cultures. We may as well have sent our children off to be trained as youth in Asia as our abortive efforts at education reform will soon cause one generation to turn on another; each one assaulting the other.

Who of us has not heard of the self-esteem programs in the elementary and high schools? Students are taught to believe that they are good without any traditional sense of what is good. Instead of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule students are told that they must respect everyone and almost any chosen behavior of another short of physical violence should be tolerated without the exercise of good judgment as to character. If the Ten Commandments and Love Your Neighbor once ruled the consciences of the masses because they were taught in government and religious schools, they have been replaced by an innocuous consciousness of others. Greed and corruption have come to dominate commerce and government as a result.

Young people are so ignorant of cultural norms of sexual morality and of civics that they erroneously believe that homosexual behavior is an appropriate basis for a civil right in some sense akin to race or religious freedom.

This cause celeb has come to represent the decay of our culture in this time of topsy turvy torsos.

We need to reform the way government funds support the education young people. I think this should first be the right of parents and faith-based organizations whose primary and historical responsibility it has been. The governmental schools should be of high quality but subsidiaries of faith-based organizations and families. A well thought out system of providing funds to the schools of parents’ choice, government, private, and religious, will create a renaissance in our existing systems of commerce, government, and society at large.

Common good is its own reward. In its absence our systems of commercial and governmental service fail. The government cannot save us. We must save ourselves and restore virtue and common goodness to culture. To the generation on watch I say stop watching and start working again to clear the confusion. Our systems are not as broken as much as our wills have been weakened. Wake up and seize this opportunity to do something uncommonly good for yourself and your children. Now is not a time for party but rather solidarity of common good.

We must not let some masters of exaggerated disaster steal our common heritage of common goodness.

Copyright 2009

First, there are people far more qualified than me to speak about matters of faith, economics and politics, however.  Friday morning I was doing some vocal exercises while reading aloud a copy of The Bible and some chapters from Exodus.  “Let my people go!” demands Moses and Pharaoh not only refuses but increases the workload by ordering Hebrews will gather their own straw and the quota of bricks will remain unchanged.  As you know from church or Cecil B. DeMille the result is anger among the slaves.  The Hebrew foremen approach Pharaoh and plead for mercy.  He replies by calling them lazy and shares his anger that any slave or subject would leave for the desert to praise a
deity of which he knows nothing beyond a statement made by Moses.  The foremen are none too pleased and take
their complaints to Moses and Aaron.  Moses aches for them and in turn pleads with God asking why he has been
sent on such a mission and wants to know why God would treat his people so poorly.
 
Now, as I’m not a Biblical scholar I would enjoy all sorts of arguments here.  The way I see it ancient Hebrews can’t get beyond thinking government is the answer.  A Biblical Stockholm Syndrome if you will.  Meanwhile God sees the pleas to Pharaoh but surely He knows it’s misdirected.  From the text there isn’t any indication the foremen asked God for intercession.  Oh, Moses accuses God of being insensitive.  The Lord isn’t “P.C.”.  Yet from the reading none of the Hebrews pray and praise God for suddenly arriving with his chief assistants.  Even as he performs one act of grace after another the complaints continue into the desert and result in a 40-year purgatory.  Added to the hundreds of years in Egypt this pales in comparison to our expected 4 years of lamentations. 
 
Reading the warnings of the modern day news prophets, Cal Thomas, Pat Buchanan and Thomas Sowell I’m of the impression we still aren’t getting the point.  Pharaoh didn’t offer the Hebrews a Bill of Rights and on paper President Obama doesn’t pose nearly as great a threat.  He’s just the latest in a string of leaders approached by the people begging for a lessening of their burdens.  While the President doesn’t call us lazy he refers to bitter people clinging to guns and God.  I’m paraphrasing to some degree but believe I got his point when it was made.  His ward
boss, Eric Holder, uses the word “cowards”.  Obama isn’t a “deliverer” as many in the electorate hoped.  Pharaoh doesn’t offer a break.  Kings are interested in gripping thrones and offerings of fealty.  Cults of personality
only offend God and result in prolonged wanderings in the wilderness.  The occasional caller to my show plays the
role of foreman by shouting at me and demanding I tamp down any criticism.  Do they fear we’ll anger government to the point where we’ll be denied straw?  My worry is we won’t even have the available straw at the current pace.
 
Government is a cold and unfeeling construct.  It’s an institution with no feelings.  It isn’t mom or dad and it certainly isn’t God.  Those believing otherwise are not only going to enslave themselves but for generations ahead their descendents will be yoked and bled for our shortsightedness.  Our “delivery”, if you will, is our own knowledge,
abilities, and liberty as a people.  For the faithful liberty is God’s grace.  Generations are going to pay and suffer as they search for grace from Washington and neglect the maintenance of liberty. 

A fellow emailed me after the show today and asked why the local GOP has such animosity toward local people organizing for their own political interests. Perhaps because the GOP isn’t looking out for your interests? A County GOP bigwig telephoned the show Monday and implied the folks joining the local “Regiment” were a bunch of knuckle dragging apes looking to shoot up the town. For the record, many of the “Regiment” members are retired police and military. If it makes the GOP feel any better I should mention some of them were “officers” and probably played some very good golf courses. Some of these folks are teachers and bankers and business owners. One is the stepchild, I believe, of a former Deputy Secretary of Defense. The local Republicans are crowing about last year’s successes. The Clerk of the Peace faced token opposition. Sussex County’s only statewide candidate has already voiced his issues. Greg Hastings, one of the finest people I’ve ever known in public life or outside of public life, got little serious support. Oh, some of his colleagues asked if I could help. Otherwise they couldn’t be bothered. Joan Deaver, a left-wing radical, is serving on County Council. Watch the demographics because more are coming. The Republican controlled Council has managed to curtail public dissent. Gosh, fellows, you’re men after President Obama’s heart! Then last week I learned Council members get taxpayer money to throw at causes “near and dear” or in other words to spread around like Philadelphia street cash. Ms. Deaver was the only one calling for an outright ban. The majority settled for being a little bit pregnant and cut the amount somewhat. I do not forget a member of the majority attempted silencing me last summer. For what I thought could be common cause I’ve stayed silent for months. Did you know two of my friends operate a Christian charity? When they approached Sam Wilson for assistance he said he would offer help only if the recipients would agree to be “Saved”. Forced conversion, if you will. Muslims just do it by the sword. It’s now noted he supports silencing dissent at Council sessions and on the radio. He’s a GOP gain. Proud, I know you are! Come, put your cares aside. Let the GOP be your life coach. If they’ll just flash a picture of President Reagan before our eyes we’ll all fall into line and praise Mike Castle. It’s a big tent. Only remember in 1980 the party regulars couldn’t stand Reagan and they don’t really like you.