Civic virtue anyone?
Slated on Backbone Radio, March 16
Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver.. 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs… and streaming live at 710knus.com.
Civic virtue is an old idea you won’t hear about on the cable channels, but it’s alive and well on our radio show. It means the moral qualities and character attributes required of citizens in a free society. Integrity, honesty, probity, and trustworthiness, being in fact what you claim to be, stand high on any list of indispensable civic virtues — and they are even more essential in officers of the public trust than in private citizens. This, not the childish squabble over sexual mores, is the lesson of the spectacular downfall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer after this week’s prostitution scandal. Once his crusading career of public righteousness was shown to be a sustained fraud, he was at least man enough to resign. The Hillary Clinton super-delegate stopped short of Bill Clinton-style shamelessness.
So the Empire State moves on under new Gov. David Paterson, and our attention will soon return to the presidential race, the dwindling credibility of Bill Ritter, and the Rockies’ upcoming season. On Backbone Radio this Sunday we’ll look at the condition of civic virtue in America — top to bottom, not just among the famous — and we’ll survey the headlines as well as the spiritual weather on Palm Sunday 2008. I hope you will be listening.
** Former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, state chairman for McCain, will update us on the Republican nominee’s campaign. Black conservative commentator Joseph C. Phillips will size up the Obama-Ferraro flap, the howling Rev. Wright, and other race-laden concerns on the Democratic side.
** Plus a deeper look at the war with radical jihadism from Marvin Hutchens of ThreatsWatch.org, and the latest common sense from Rocky Mountain News columnist Jay Ambrose, our politically incorrect Backbone regular.
“Our constitution,” as John Adams said to Thomas Jefferson, “was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Power checking power, as with the federal prosecutors who brought down Spitzer, is one safeguard for liberty; but the only ultimate safeguard is civic virtue. Which is, come to think of it, backbone by another name. That’s why we do this program!
Yours for self-government,
JOHN ANDREWS
The author can be reached at John@BackBoneAmerica.net
I’m listening to the show, so I decided to visit the website for the first time. I clicked on the “BACKBONE RADIO” window in the header and saw the list of radio guests. Other than local liberals Mike Littwin and Paul Campos, I don’t see much backbone to confront the opposition directly. Have other liberals (or Ron Paul type libertarians) been too scared to come on the show?
Now to the real point of this comment. I just heard John Andrews say something to the effect that Islamic Jihad desires global dominance and the destruction of all the freedoms we enjoy. OK. Please tell me how they will accomplish that.
If you think they have the capacity to do that, John, you’re a lunatic. I’m not afraid of them. And I think if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone.
Come on, John, have some respect for your listeners. It’s clear that you want a John Hagee style American-Israeli hegemony, and the way to get it is to make us all scaredy cats. What a bunch of nonsense.
by mauman | Sunday, Mar 16, 2008 | 6:36 pmJohn Andrews kindly replied to my comment with a personal e-mail. I thank him for it, and I would like to share it (with his permission of course) with the Backbone America audience. I think it could spark an interesting discussion about American foreign policy and blowback.
But first, for those who are interested, John Hagee is Pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. He founded Christians United for Israel (www.cufi.org).
http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer
Here is John Andrews’s reply to my comment:
Dear Sir or Madam: Thanks for listening and for writing this comment, which will be posted shortly. I hope you will listen again and call the show – we don’t take a lot of calls, but sometimes.
Your comment about guests reminds me we need to update our list. I have quite a few who don’t see the issues my way. Libertarians, Democratic politicians, liberal pundits – all get their chance.
“I think if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone,” you write. Well, that’s not what I find in the voluminous, explicit, and emphatic published manifestos of Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. I deem it wiser to take them at their word, than to ignore it as grandpa did with Mein Kampf.
Their material capacity to dominate the world isn’t evident yet, it’s true, but one wouldn’t think grass could push through pavement either. The moral exhaustion of the West, combined with petrodollar power and patient determination of a fanatical sect, poses great dangers in my opinion. I have no idea what Hagee preaches, and no interest in knowing.
Thanks again for writing – John Andrews
by mauman | Monday, Mar 17, 2008 | 5:07 amI forgot to mention: Pastor John Hagee has endorsed John McCain. My, my! There have been a lot of Johns in the news lately.
by mauman | Monday, Mar 17, 2008 | 5:17 am