Former Fundies, Evangelicals, and Death of a Salesman

I have mused over the last week about an exchange on Facebook with a friend who, like me, is an Evangelical and Reformed believer. She was sincerely adamant about certain conservative thinkers using terms like "objective legal standard" or "food stamp president" as code words for white racism.

So, I asked some other friends who are conservative, and are black. The scratched their heads figuratively.

I later listened to Congressman Allen West, who himself has been black for some time, and is a conservative by birth - - or is it the other way around?

I also heard J.C. Watts, former QB of the Oklahoma Sooners, former Oklahoma Secretary of State, Former Congressman, and I would say a potential Veep candidate.

He supports Newt, one of the code-speak offenders.

So, why do white liberals, who are former fundamentalist Christians and/or current Evangelical Christians (there is a BIG difference) buy into the code-speak thing?

Well, I worked it in reverse. I WAS a liberal, so much so that I could have made Nancy Pelosi look like Jesse Helms.

I protested outside the South African mission to the UN protesting apartheid. I still think the policy was wrong, by the way.

I was the typical Southern white liberal student who wanted to change things. I was angry.

And I did not want to be looked down upon by people from up North.

Then it hit me!

The unseen actor on the thinking of liberal former Fundamentalists and liberal Evangelicals was and is -

WILLY LOMAN!!!!!

You know. The protagonist in the Tennesee Williams play, Death of a Salesman

He wanted everyone to like him. He was obsessed with the idea. He guided his sons with exhortations that the way to succeed in life was to get everyone to like you.

So, liberals and progressives in general are hypersensitive to anything that remotely looks like it could offend.

As such, discourse is chilled, otherwise acceptable words are relegated to a trash heap of language, and

Grace is sacrificed on the altar of a legalistic moral code.

The bad news, the ex-Fundamentalists are still Fundamentalists, but in a better part of town.

The good news - the right people like them!

By the way, Willy's obsession eventually led to self-destruction.

The "Quotes from Self-Loathing Colored People" Department

Those of you who have followed me on Facebook may remember that up until the Fall of 1975 I was - and this is a technical term - LEFT-WING-FLAMING-WACKO-LIBERAL.

I know. It is hard for me to believe it, but it is true.

And, like most LWFWLs, I had prejudices about black people. You see, when I was an angry young white kid from the South, I assumed that all liberals and progressives like me were beyond prejudice, especially about black people.

My experience and observation was that we LWFWLs had these biases towards our tellow-travelers-of-color:

Black people were always:

1. Democrat
2. Liberal
3. 1 and 2 were governed by fixed and immutable laws of physics.

My biases there began to crumble when, over the course of a few years I met in Oklahoma, Black Republicans, who were Conservative Black Republicans, who were Conservative Black Republicans.

It was, to put it mildly, world-view changing. When Bill Clinton had his encounter with Herman Cain in 1994, I sympathized.

This election cycle, I have observed a surprising number of CBRs (Conservative Black Republicans) who are running, commenting, and winning.

I have also observed a significant increase of insidious white racists, who want to turn back the clock and keep the black person on the plantation, surpressing any independently arrived at thought.

Who are these "Kloset Klansmen?"

Tea Party members?

Chamber of Commerce types?

Bob Jones University students?

NO! They are Liberals. Not the Daniel Patrick Moynihan "anti-totalitarian/pro-social progress" liberals.

These are the "JFK was wrong about American exceptionalism" liberals.

You know them. They

1. Dismiss Herman Cain as being paid to run by Conservative White People
2. Dismiss Black Tea Party members as a statistically insignificant group,
3. Completely redact elected Black Conservatives, e.g. Tim Scott of SC and Allen West of FL as aberrations, and
4. Dismiss economists e.g. Thomas Sowell as a intellectually light-weight.

Looking at what these more fully evolved White People are saying about Black Conservatives, I have concluded that, alas, they are right.

(Not really, but saying so makes the end of this post easier to reach.)

I for one, want to help the More Fully Evolved White People get the word out - that Black Conservatives are SELF LOATHING COLORED PEOPLE.

So today, Juggling Wolverines launches a new department - the QUOTES FROM SELF-LOATHING COLORED PEOPLE DEPARTMENT.

"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long."

-Thomas Sowell

Electric and Gas Deregulation

Okay.

I am actually saying something nice about Obama, and no it is not a sign of the apocalypse.

The Obama administration has apparently gotten it right on pushing, or at least not getting in the way of, deregulation of electricity and gas delivery.

I for one, see opportunity here, and am so grateful to the President, that I may just show up at the groundbreaking for the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library in 2013.

All We are Saaayyyinng is Give Wealth a Chance

‎"I would rather have 10,000 rich men handing out jobs than one (guy) at the top talking about "shovel ready" projects." ~ James Patrick Riley

Someone passed the quote above to me earlier. I posted it on Facebook and a liberal friend of mine - What? I used to be a liberal, so why can't I have liberal friends.

Anyway - this friend pointed out that a term for which I made a parenthetical replacement may have been disrespectful.

Without the term, Riley's statement remains valid. Even the President had to admit - much as Roosevelt's Treasury chief in 1938 - that the shovel ready projects were not so shovel ready.

So, what's the alternative? The billionaires, millionaires, and mass affluents that the President wants to pay their fair share?

Well, maybe he would have a point if those guys kept their money hoarded. 


But they don't.

They buy things. They invest. They start companies.

All of those things mean that women and men have to be hired to get the jobs done.

So, to paraphrase John Lennon.

Let's "give wealth a chance."

Dog Poop - The Real "Mother of Invention"

If you read one of my earlier posts, you know that my daughter's Rottweiler-Yorkshire Terrier mix, Medusa, ate a small screw Thursday night while I was changing a belt on our vacuum cleaner.

It had a blunt tip, so we weren't completely worried about damage from eating the screw.

Nonetheless, I was tasked with searching the backyard - a supply of dog-poop bags in hand. The objective was to palpate the bags of poop in search of a hard object.

Sounds like reading an Obama campaign position paper. But I digress.

As I have clinically dianosed ADD, I used the time searching for the Holy Grail of Dog Excrement to let my mind loose and see if anything creative occured.

It did.

I'd had a particularly irritating week. Between the challenges of making rain - which usually is great fun - and the process of delegating things that are not my Unique Ability(tm), I was feeling pretty stressed.

Then an idea came.

That idea was followed by another.

Then a goal came to mind, and from there a process.

After my sweep of the yard - several bags of poop - no screw - I texted my friend Erik.

Erik is another entrepreneur. If bad company is the ruin of good character, Erik is the kind of guy an entrepreneur wants to be sure to run with.

I gave him a date in mind for a rather grand goal.

That led to more texts with the goal fleshed-out.

Erik, as I knew he would, said he would guide me.

Invention had arrived.

And its mother is Dog Poop.

No - That is not how to join a metal band

Thursday night, I replaced a belt on our Obama January 2009 Vacuum.
Okay, it's a Eureka "The Boss."
Fully functional, both really suck, when you think about it. But I digress.
I laid the three screws you take off to get to the belt, and laid them on the hearth of our fireplace.
My daughter's dog, who I refer to as Medusa, noticed the screws, and ate one.
May start referring to her as Metallica.

Multiple Income Streams and Having Evil Plans

Evil Plans by Hugh MacLeod is becoming one of my favorite business books ever. One of my heroes in the world of entrepreneurs, Dan Sullivan, recommended this book, and I am glad he did.

An "evil plan" is that concept, idea, process by which you express a passion, particularly as an entrepreneur, that even if most of the world thinks you are a complete idiot to pursue, you are joyously oblivious to all else but The Plan.

Sort of like sex.

Or the ground-breaking of the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library in 2013.

Or leveraging a Unique Process(tm) or two.

Ich Bien Ein Canadien, Y'all

Recently, I friended a really great guy and his wife who were friends of My Reason for Living and myself while I was in law school.

Today, he asked me what was up with "the Canuck" thing.

Gosh. Where do I begin?

When I was in college, we had a number of Canadian students. They expressed to me a certain irritation, and surprise, that Americans know so little of Canada, when Canadians seem to make it a matter of importance to know about us.

So, I developed a fascination with our Great Neighbor to the North.

When the worst President ever took office in January 1977, a few of us in my econ class joked about moving to White Horse and getting as far away from the intrusive reach of the Carter Administration as we could.

In subsequent years, I followed Rene Levesque and Parti Quebecois.

When the shortest serving Prime Minister since Confederation took office, I knew who people were talking about when they mentioned "Joe Who?"

Shoot, I even represented a Canadian company who was one of Winn-Dixie's creditors when the grocery store chain went into bankruptcy.

Two things occured about the same time. A conservative wind blew in from the Plains of Alberta when Prime Minister Harper formed a minority government.

Almost concurrently, Chicago's answer to C.S. Lewis's White Queen blew into DC, and for a while it looked like it would be "always winter, and never Christmas." (Especially given the Administrations hostility to views of Founding Fathers like John Adams.)

Jimmy Carter quickly moved up from worst to penultimately worst. Things are looking up Jimmy! Eh?
I quickly came to admire Stephen Harper, a man of great Christian faith, whose witness has been borne out in his style of governing - strong yet humble.

And I have yet to hear him apologize for Canada. On the other hand . . . well POTUS is not exactly wired the same way.

Canadians seem to agree with Harper. They gave the Conservatives a decisive majority - one that means less campaigning and more effectiveness.

Harper and crew are doing a great job of getting the (Canadian) Federal government out of the way. Businesses are growing, Canadian exports are up. The Canadian dollar is doing nicely.

When our leader misses the lessons of a socialist history, I like to contrast him to Stephen Harper.

Harper seems to understand what is at stake when it comes to Israel.

I don't seem to recall the Prime Minister of Israel going to Ottawa, and delivering a rebuke to Mr. Harper.

But I do remember former British PM Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy rebuking Prime Minister Harper when Harper wanted to join hands with the Iranians and sing Kum Bah Yah.

No, wait, that was Barack Obama they rebuked after his wanting to "dialogue" with the Iranians bought them enough time to go nuke.

I feel like channeling Lloyd Bentsen -

Mr. President, I know Stephen Harper (at least I feel like I do), Stephen Harper (is like) a friend of mine. Mr. President, you are no Stephen Harper.

Whenever I get that feeling, I remind myself, that he is our President. I am looking forward to the ground breaking of the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library in Oak Grove, Ill - Spring 2013!

Prime Minister, let's meet up for the ground breaking, and then head to Harry Caray's for steaks and beers.