Rogue Ideologues Advocating Enmity

Rogue Ideologues Advocating Enmity
By Ralph Lynn, Professor of History Retired, Baylor University

[This article first appeared in the Waco Tribune-Herald, September 27, 2000]

Ours is a complicated world. 

Responsibility for this column must be divided between the editor, my wife and the late Alfred North Whitehead–a world-famous philosopher who left England for the United States where he taught for many years at Harvard.
The editor? He prints the "Thought for Today." My wife? She knows I do not read this item so she reads it to me. And, of course, Whitehead wrote it: "Ideas won`t keep; something must be done with them."

I can do nothing with the following pair of related ideas except to get them in print and invite readers to think about them.

First, on the anti-liberal beneficiaries of liberalism

Millions of basically sensible people, who live from month to month on incomes inadequate to support their admirable life-types, have been bamboozled by wealthy politicians (Ronald Reagan) and religious demagogues (Cal Thomas) into thinking that our government is our chief problem (if not our outright enemy) and that they are wise to blame anything they do not like on liberals. 

In my less civilized moments, I find myself wishing that these unhappy people could be deprived of Social Security, Medicare, guaranteed bank accounts and CDs, and the entire "safety net" which even the dinosaurs of both parties reluctantly support as the price of getting the votes of all these innocent anti-liberal beneficiaries of liberalism.

Even in my least civilized moments, I would want this deprivation to last just long enough to include one or more of the tragedies these liberal programs insure the anti-liberals against.

Second, on the National Rifle Association

It seems to be composed of decent people, robed in righteousness and patriotism, who yet appeal continuously to our primitive instincts by arousing fears of our fellows and of our government.

Even more illogically, these nice people engage in subversive mock heroics by pretending that the ridiculously extensive small arms programs they foster (instead of civilized hunting and target guns) could be effective in a civil war (to protect our "rights"!) against our government which controls a military-industrial complex and ground, air and naval forces that are the envy of every nation on earth.

Charlton Heston, the aging poster boy of their mock heroics, has had better opportunities than the rank and file of the NRA people. Heston should be ashamed of himself.

I wish I had some effective remedy for the problems these people present. As a professional student of history and religion, I always think of education and religion as remedies for human problems.

But these people can read and write and they are characteristically religious–they attend church more or less regularly and they take chicken soup to sick neighbors.

Perhaps what is missing is the habit of serious study, analytical examination of their world, and analytical self-criticism.

But this is only a way of describing most of us who have just enough education and religion to serve as guarantees that we will never develop a serious case of either