Devotional 8/17: The Song Remains The Same
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I have been following the coming election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump very closely. I have been checking the news every night and reading different political analysts. The reason I have been doing this is because though I am and always be a Mike Huckabee supporter, I really hope that Donald Trump is able to pull it off. This is mostly because I can NOT get over Hillary and her response to the Benghazi scandal. Regardless of politics, her response on this is morally reprehensible and completely unacceptable. MEN DIED and “WHAT DOES IT MATTER” to her? Very little.
I was telling this to a friend of mine and he said that if Hillary gets elected, then the nation will really go down the tubes! He has also said that most young people (these Social Justice Warriors and hippie wannabes) are, “stupid jackasses”. However, I was quick to remind him that most people at that age are stupid, even he was! Aren’t we all liberals when we are young and conservatives we are old? I have heard it said if you aren’t a liberal when you are young you have no heart and if you aren’t a conservative when you are old you have no head! I was always a liberal. I always supported gay rights and government programs that helped poor people. However, several years ago, when I was told that my beliefs of honoring the Lord and respecting other people’s beliefs was not in vogue, then I became a conservative, just because the definition changed!
But I kept rolling this around in my mind. Are the liberals of today so different than the Flower Children of the 1960s? Are the conservatives of today so much more different or out-of-touch (as the Left says) as before? Are we worried about the same things 40-50 years later?
I have heard two different sides of this from people that I have asked. One friend of mine who was around during the 60s said that today’s stupid left-wing kids are more dangerous than the kids in the 60s. He said that they are more dangerous because hippies did not protest because they wanted things and thought they were entitled to them. He said that they were much more concerned about peace, love, and drugs than about free college tuition and embracing Islamic terrorists. Another person that I spoke to said that the Flower Children were more organized and had leaders like Abbie Hoffman and John Lennon. I guess that one could argue that President Obama is their present-day leader.
Then I saw this movie on Netflix (but also available on YouTube) entitled The Best of Enemies. It is a documentary about the 1960s debates between Gore Vidal (screenwriter, actor, and author of Myra Breckenridge and Caligulia) and William F. Buckley (editor of the National Review). It culminates in a 1968 debate around the democratic election in Chicago. I wanted to see if the values they debated were so much different than the values that are debating today. So I listened to what Mr. Vidal was saying and to what Mr. Buckley was saying.
Generally, the arguments and values they made almost 50 years ago are the same as today. Now Mr. Buckley has been accused of being elitist. However, the National Review posted a long and detailed review about how the film is, “biased”, available here. Mr. Buckley was essentially saying that faith, hard-work, and the American dream are the answers. I agree with him! These are eternal values! However, Mr. Vidal was saying the same thing that the far Left has been saying forever: religion is all bad; Jesus is the cause of all wars!; the church as a whole is the enemy of homosexuality; the Jews oppress the Muslims; only the Left represents all African Americans, women, and anyone else who feels they have been disenfranchised and oh yes, only we believe in free-speech and if you disagree with us you are a crypto-Nazi.
I realize that this does not go very deep into the analysis of the Hippy movement or into the values of today’s Social Justice Warriors, the Occupy Movement, etc…. However, the point is to see that these angry young men and women are NOT that different from the past protesters/discontents/whatever you want to call them and Mr. Obama and Hillary have been voted into office using controversies that will probably remain with us and us older liberals will keep becoming conservatives.
Titus 3:9 But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
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