Growing Old Ain't For Sissies

SWING VOTER, originally uploaded by Jerry Sweers.

NUMBER 163
VOTING IN NOVEMBER

I have recently begun the effort to stir up my enthusiasm for the coming election. I need to do this because, as a long-time Conservative Republican, I am not pleased with what the Republican majority has done with 6 years of control of the White House and both houses of the Congress. All too often the Republican majority has spent my tax money like a drunken sailor, waffled and wobbled on things I really care about, and generally displayed far more interest in getting re-elected than in making the hard decisions that would benefit the common good of the citizens they represent.

On the upside, I give them credit for keeping the homicidal sons of Allah out of my backyard, standing up to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and dealing with the danger posed by Saddam Hussein. I will give them credit too for reducing taxes and getting the economy moving. I will also give them partial credit for moderate improvements in the Federal Courts and a couple of halfway decent new Supremes.

But all things considered, I will vote for these GOP representatives, spineless or otherwise, as the lesser of two evils. Here I must insert a caveat for my older readers who are Democrats from the days when liberal was not a dirty word and Democrats still believed in God.

The other day our local liberal rag, the Lexington Herald-Leader, had a column on labels by Paul Prather. For a number of years Paul was the religion writer for the paper and his work tracked very closely with their liberal left editorial policy. When his wife got so sick he needed to stay home and care for her, he became the Pastor of a small-town Pentecostal Church. Her eventual death seems to have mellowed him. He is now back as a contributing columnist and his work is difficult to label anymore.

The essence of his article is that no label fits all. He says that human beings are too complex to be grouped and identified by a single label. He does admit that labels are sometimes necessary, “In a speech or TV newscast you can’t identify by name or describe in detail every one of the earth’s 1.1 billion Catholics.” But he does make a good case that labels, “are, by their nature, inaccurate…And they’re terribly easy to abuse.”

Granting this, it seems that at election time, the necessity of labeling and the potential for abuse come together in an unusually potent way. What I am thinking as we approach the November elections requires labels, and will no doubt include what some will consider their abuse.

Looking at the “The Dems” today I see a party made up of three different groups. This is probably a gross oversimplification but it will have to serve.

First come the ideologues. These are the true believers on the far left. This is the Michael Moore--MoveOn.org wing of the party. They are represented by people like Ted Kennedy, Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton (on some days), Charlie Rangel, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Maxine Waters, Patrick Leahy, Nancy Pelosi, Cynthia McKinney and others who would go down with the ship rather than compromise with the other side. It is this group that ran Joe Lieberman off for his failure to toe their line on the war in Iraq.

Next come the Partisans. This probably includes a majority of the elected Dems. They may have some principles, but their main goal in life is to win back power, whatever the cost. They sincerely believe that any Republican administration is, by definition, illegitimate, and therefore has no right to be in charge.

The third group is very small—The True Democrats. Joe Lieberman is one. John Breaux was another. There are a few others but they keep their heads down as the first group has declared open season on them.

Actually there is probably a fourth group, also small but infuriating non-the-less: I guess I would call them the opportunists. These are the DINOs (Democrat in name only) and the RINO’s (Republican in name only). These creatures inhabit the wasteland between what passes for clearly stated convictions on either side of the aisle. They forage through the political process for opportunities to advance their own agendas, at the expense of their fellows, in either party.

Out in the country there are constituencies for each of these groups. My sense is that among voters, there are a few who really support the first group, many more who support the second group, and even more than that who support the third group. The opportunists’ support is hard to pin down but probably includes most of the swing voters, who dither and diddle right up to election day and only make up their mind as they are faced with the voting machine.

So if you are one of those Democrats I will see in heaven, please don’t take offense when I speak of the Dems, I am thinking more of someone like Senator Ted Kennedy, (D-Chappaquiddick) or Cynthia McKinney (D-LaLa Land) than of folks like you.

Although the Dem’s are notoriously vague on what they would actually do if they regained power (other than impeach President Bush and roll back the tax cuts), a general program seems to emerge from the volley of criticisms coming out of their camp. Here are some of the things they would apparently like to do:

1. Turn our foreign policy over to the United Nations.
2. Turn our Supreme Court decisions over to the European judges.
3. Turn Wal-mart over to the unions.
4. Turn our country over to illegal aliens and make Spanish the national language.
5. Turn our health-care over to unaccountable bureaucrats.
6. Turn the rest of our income over to the IRS.
7. Turn the war on Jihadistan over to the Keystone Cops.
8. Free us up to marry whoever or whatever we choose.
9. Free us up to treat embryos like things in the service of science in the pursuit of cures that are pure fantasy.
10. Free us up to commit suicide at government expense whenever we, or our heirs and assigns, feel it is time for us to move along.
11. Get rid of our guns.
12. Get rid of every vestige of religion in public life.
13. Get rid of the death penalty for murder.
14. Fully establish a religion in America where Nanny State is Goddess and the likes of Hillary Clinton is her prophetess.

I am sure there are more—but you get the idea. For me, the current administration is a long, long way from perfect, but the alternative the Democrats would offer is Orwellian, and unthinkable.

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“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins."—G. K. Chesterton

VANITY PLATE, originally uploaded by Jerry Sweers.

NUMBER 162
VANITY PLATE?

Strictly speaking, a “vanity plate” is a license plate bearing numbers or letters designated by the owner of the vehicle. I suppose that in a general sense, any license plate that I choose rather than just receive in the due course of my dealings with the motor vehicle bureaucracy might be called a vanity plate.

Some time ago several pro-life groups in Kentucky recruited the required number who were willing to prepay and wait to get the State to produce this plate. I am a little surprised that the ACLU didn’t object to this plate as it has two words right out of the Bible on it.

We are immersed every day in the culture of death. We are surrounded on every side by those whose main mission in life is to drive God out of every little corner of public life. And here, on the back of my car, is the Word of God —“Choose Life.”

In big red letters--Deuteronomy 30.19 in a nutshell:

“I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore CHOOSE LIFE, that both you and your descendants may live…”

These two words are part of The Word. God spoke through the prophet Isaiah about His Word:

“So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”
Isaiah 55.11

In writing to the Hebrews, the author says this about that Word:

“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Hebrews 4.12

Summing up this verse in his commentary on Hebrews, John Calvin said this:

“The sum of all this is that as soon as God opened His sacred mouth all our senses ought to be opened to receive His word, because it is not His will to scatter His words in vain either to fade away or fall neglected to the ground, but effectively to challenge the consciences of men, so as to bring them under His rule.


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If you are interested in getting a plate, go to the KY DMV website below:

http://mvl.ky.gov/MVLWeb/PIServlet
clik “Special Issue License Plates” to see the plate, who is eligible, and the costs.

These plates cost $28.00 extra for the first one and $15.00 extra for each annual renewal, and another $28.00 if/when a new plate needs to be issued. I think there are a lot worse things to be spending our money on these days.

OWL, originally uploaded by Jerry Sweers.

NUMBER 161
THE OWL

This is not the owl in the poem. We believe he got tired of just sitting around and flew off one night to greener pastures. This replacement showed up one day and has been keeping an eye on the doings in my den for quite a while now.

THE OWL

We once bought an owl;
Small, cast iron, and heavy-
To burn a candle in.

But the candle was too large
Or the owl was too small
So the heat of the burning
Was too much for the space
And the wax ran out
The bottom.

So now he sits
On the low white table
Solemnly regarding
Our comings and goings
Through sightless eyes.


"...stay in the city
until you are clothed
with power from on high."
Luke 24.49

5/83-9/06
030

Tomato Worm, originally uploaded by Jerry Sweers.

NUMBER 160
Serpent

Whenever we get too comfortable in our local Eden, we may expect a serpent to show up. This Tomato Worm is little like the one that finessed Eve, and upside down as well, but he still made me think of Milton’s attempt to describe the first serpent.

In Paradise Lost Milton faced a problem: his theology (and rightly so) required that since the serpent was condemned to crawl on his belly and eat dust for his crime of tempting Eve, it follows that he originally moved in some other way. Milton developed a fanciful rear wheel drive of sorts. He was not too specific, but it did the job for him.

“So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed
In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve
Addressed his way, not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Against his circling spires that on the grass
Floated redundant.” Milton, from Paradise Lost

Things have not changed since this first encounter with temptation. The serpent’s goal was to get Eve to choose her will over God’s will. He used the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life to accomplish his goal—and he succeeded.

It was the same when he came to tempt Christ in the wilderness—but he failed.

The tempter’s goal and methods are well summarized by the Apostle John:

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” 1 John 2.15-17