I was standing in front of the ground floor elevator at work yesterday and it came to me that I started working there thirty-four years ago to the day. I had walked through the door next to me for the job interview, showing up in a three piece suit, and the personnel manager asked me politely "You do know that this is an entry level job?" I was young and strong and shoveled a lot of coal for a lot of years. I thank God every day for the employment he provided for me.
Until about a week ago I didn't know very much about Duck Dynasty. I hear the guys at work talk about the show but since I don't get extended cable, and therefore not A&E, I never saw it. Well, I was given an early Christmas present, the CD Duck The Halls, A Robertson Family Christmas. I have probably played it twenty times since receiving it, it's that good! I did then get to see a sample of their show and I like these folks and see what all the fuss was about. And then came the GQ article. Other than the mention of specific body parts I thought Phil Robertson's answers were eloquent, tolerant and even loving but you would never know that from the mainstream news coverage.
Camille Paglia is a professor and prominent social critic whose views even conservatives pay attention to. She is a feminist, an atheist and is gay, and she is also fair-minded. She was on the conservative Laura Ingraham radio program and spoke her mind just as Phil Robertson did. She responded to a question with this, "I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenility.......this is not the mark of a true intellectual life. This is why there is no cultural life now in the U. S., why nothing is of interest coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism." Professor Paglia then commented on something that Christians have known for quite some time that the elite northeastern universities put out graduates that are "cultural illiterates.....because they are not being educated in any way to give respect to opposing view points."
The other day I picked up a DVD at Rite-Aid. It was a three hour HBO mini-series from the 90s starring Robert Duvall and titled Stalin. In spite of the magnificent portrayal that Duvall gave it was a difficult film to watch and he himself has said that it was a difficult character to, in effect, become. Duvall gets my vote as America's finest actor. I'm thinking of his portrayal of Robert E. Lee in God's And Generals, Stalin and just about everything else he did. It was reported this week that the U. S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., which I enjoy visiting on occasion, is considering taking down portraits of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson because they were Confederates. Back to Camille Paglia, she likened the uproar over comments by the Robertson patriarch as "utterly Stalinist." That's what this is. Whether it is over Duck Dynasty or these portraits it is attempts to purify society of the vestiges of its past. We are in the middle of a coup in our government and an attempted forced cultural shift that has elements from Brave New World, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 not to mention the Stalinist purges!
The very first post that I had written back in November of 2009 was on a topic that comes into play with the Duck Dynasty uproar. The bundling of cable stations that we are forced to accept if we want a specific channel has been a huge tool in this attempted cultural shift. One cannot boycott A&E, nor can it evict MSNBC from their home as it stands now. My position has been that a la carte cable for consumers, for Americans, would be a "game changer!" In a short period of time after we were allowed to pick and choose the cable channels for our television the hold that the liberal and progressive television industry has on us would be broken! No, we do not have to watch their indoctrination programming today but the temptation and the visual enticements are an effective tool in breaking down our resolve. Cancelling specific channels would be much easier and would shake the industry to the core as to their agenda which is true intolerance. But enacting laws for a la carte cable is a long-term plan and we have to deal with the situation as it presently exists.
Prayer is and has always been our primary weapon and the Robertson's apparently do that well also.
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Political Thought and the Christian
