Captives of the media?

(Denver Post, Jan. 18) You, a captive of the media? No way. Nobody mediates for you. You think independently. You gather your own information and decide for yourself. Me too. We don’t need no media mediating for us, no sir. Yeah, right. In our dreams, maybe, but not in America today. The world is so interconnected, changes so fast, and presents each person with so many choices, that reliance on others for much of our knowledge is inescapable. But which media can we trust, and how do we keep them at our service – on tap, not on top? Especially if newspapers as we have known them are on the way out, how can we stay reliably informed as free citizens in a free society? That’s the underlying concern as Coloradans wonder about the fate of the Rocky Mountain News, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and maybe even the Denver Post.

I love newspapers. They’ll always be my preferred window on our civic and cultural life. Online and broadcast media rank a distant second. I hope enough American papers manage to reinvent themselves for the digital era so that print journalism can long continue. Since you’re reading this, you probably agree.

Yet trouble and transformation are stalking the media industry regardless. News providers face brutal pressures to adapt. For us as news users, this is a good time to think about the fundamental question we began with: Who mediates for you? Or as the counter-culture used to say, what do you feed your head?

The media seldom challenge us on this. They have a commercial motive not to. Challenging myself, I find I’m often careless as to both the quality and quantity of what gets fed into my head. New technologies and rebranding by the providers are beside the point. The problem is my passivity about the content they deliver.

A medium is a just a conveyor belt. At one end is a loadmaster, the editor. According to what’s on his clipboard, the belt gets loaded with news from reporters, opinions from pundits, and ads from businesses. It’s all conveniently brought to our homes. That convenience can be a trap, however. We may become too accepting.

“Couldn’t drink coffee without the morning paper,” worried someone at our Vanguard discussion club when the industry’s woes were this month’s topic. “We are Colorado,” says a Denver Post promo campaign. Media companies, this paper included, become part of our lives. They’re still only companies, means to an end. The end is knowing what we need to know to live together responsibly and happily.

Running the conveyor costs money. Persuading us to buy things, either subscriptions or advertised goods and services, is life and death to the company. Print is in trouble because more and more people are buying elsewhere. How concerning is that?

After all, as the Post’s Dean Singleton told fellow publishers in a speech last June, “Newspapers are the cornerstone of democracies everywhere…. If we fail, democracy fails.” Thomas Jefferson said two centuries ago that he’d rather live in a country with newspapers and no government than vice versa. So are bankrupt papers a national crisis?

No. Both men’s points go to freedom of the press via whatever medium works best. They aren’t limited to ink on pulp. In America, thanks to the First Amendment, it’s the marketplace and not government that picks media winners and losers. You and I as consumers, voting with dollars, make that sovereign choice.

Again, as I’ve written before, it’s up to us. Insisting on liberty, WE can make our country’s broadcasting and Internet as free as print has always been. Exercising personal responsibility, WE can choose a healthier information diet, more fiber, less junk. Conveyors inevitably come and go, but independent thinking remains.

Four years, four goals

(Denver Post, Jan. 4) “If it is to be, it is up to me.” Those ten two-letter words express one of the most powerful ideas you’ll ever hear, the black pastor said. They got him through time and again when his life was on the line in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s, he recalled. As the old man told his story to a college audience that day in the ‘80s, lives were changed. I know mine was. His Christian faith was deep, but this declaration of self-determination wasn’t religious. It exemplified an ethic of personal responsibility that anyone can freely choose. What a keynote for 2009. The new year finds our country in a tough recession and on tricky ground politically. Democrats’ control of the executive and legislative branches carries the danger of overreach and the risk of people relying too much on government. Republicans’ exclusion from power may tempt them to sulking and sour grapes. Expecting more from ourselves individually is the right resolution for all of us this January.

Few of us could name the president of India or the governor and junior senator from Maine. We don’t know because we don’t care. How much more does it really matter – be honest – that Obama will be US president the next four years, or that Gov. Ritter and Colorado’s new junior senator will be around for at least the next two? Politics is important, but it’s not the end-all. Thinking it is can paralyze us.

Is there fascination in short-term stories like the scramble to replace Sen. Salazar, Congress convening, and Barack’s inauguration? Sure. But for perspective, we should also focus on longer-term goals. I’d urge fellow conservatives – and open-minded liberals – to set four goals for the coming four years, none of them dependent on electoral majorities.

By 2013, we can be an America that thinks differently about defense, learning, dignity, and decency. This would so alter the political playing field that both parties must change accordingly. New thinking could reveal new possibilities and raise up new leaders. Here’s a sketch.

One: A Churchillian defense alarm is needed. Neighbor to neighbor, the word must go out that radical Islam is no less a threat to our survival than Nazism and Soviet communism were. Patriot voices must warn of the aggressive aims of Russia and China. The choice is awakening or servitude.

Two: A parents’ revolt against classroom fraud is imminent. Downfall awaits the naked emperor of teachers unions that don’t teach and college faculties that indoctrinate, all at gold-plated prices. “Let our kids learn” is the new civil rights battle cry. Who will light this tinderbox?

Three: Let a reborn belief in the dignity of work, saving, sound money, and self-reliance arise from the economic ashes of 2008. Hold up deficits, debt, inflation, and something-for-nothing to public shunning. Away with economic make-believe.

Four: Americans know decency when they see it, and many want to see more of it. What corrupts children, demeans women, degrades men, divides families, and corrodes civilization doesn’t belong in the public square. Marginalize it with shame, not laws. It’s time to retire political correctness and bring back old-fashioned disgust.

Noble ideals of goodness, the dignity of a dollar earned, the honest love of learning, and the warning to all enemies, “Don’t tread on me” – such attitudes used to be as American as the flag and as bipartisan as the Bill of Rights. Why can’t they be again? If we worked as hard at spreading them as we do at electing candidates, they could.

True, attitudes change slower than policies. Obama’s first 100 days will bring policy changes we may not like. It could be a long four years. But our four goals have the facts on their side, and facts are stubborn things. My old pastor friend would say it’s up to us.

Why Christmas matters

(Denver Post, Dec. 21) Good news. Death is on defense this week. That’s a big reason for the excitement about Christmas and Hanukkah. It should make these holidays welcome even among people who don’t share the biblical beliefs they represent. And it should humble the believers themselves. Civil harmony would benefit. “Merry Christmas” and “Peace on Earth” are still annually proclaimed in lights on the City and County Building, after Denver’s mayor decided against substituting something generic a few years ago. Following a similar bout of hesitation, Golden has its menorah display. We all ought to cheer if we love life. The Christian faith, along with the Jewish tradition from which it grew, has enlivened our civilization through the centuries with a message of unshakable hope for the human future. The Old and New Testaments argue for an eternal reality in which the grave is not the last word. America as we know it is more humane, dynamic, and purposeful as a result. That’s well worth a celebration every December.

Long before Jesus or Moses, of course, rituals of rebirth were observed at this time of year as the life-giving sun starts its comeback and the days lengthen. So if you prefer a winter solstice festival, fine. Solar cycles will always be with us. But they don’t put death on defense as Christmas and Hanukkah do.

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” says the fatalism that believes bodily existence is all there is. Scripture contradicts it. Economic guru John Maynard Keynes gave the modernist version when he shrugged, “In the long run, we’re all dead." Don’t be so sure, say the faithful.

Hope of immortality through their descendants was already a given for the Jews among whom Jesus was born. Many also believed in a bodily resurrection. Christ’s followers were sure of it. Correct or not, that meant conducting themselves in this world so as to be worthy of the next. Moral seriousness grew. All of society felt the gentling effect.

If death cancels life, period, why shouldn’t might make right? Why shouldn’t ethics begin and end with “if it feels good, do it”? It’s different if eternal punishment awaits brutality and tyranny. New incentives come with expecting we’ll have to live forever with the consequences of how we treat each other. This was the awesome force of good that arrived with the baby in the manger.

The Romans who ruled Bethlehem, like the Magi who brought gifts, idealized justice but never knew its author. Knowledge of “the Supreme Judge of the World,” as the Declaration of Independence calls him, is uniquely the Judeo-Christian contribution to history. The result was a vast increase in motivation for achieving peace on earth through goodwill to men.

Peace and justice are far from realized, as today’s paper attests. But infanticide, genocide, slavery, and the subjugation of women, once accepted, are now condemned. Freedom and democracy, once rare, are spreading. Heartless death-dealing and all kinds of living death are lessening in our world because of the Hebrew girl’s son who was “born that man no more may die.”

Think about it. Every news story about economic relief or homeless shelters or animal rescue bespeaks a life-affirming ethos that is the very opposite of Lord Keynes’s “dead in the long run” callousness. We’re that way partly because of a faith tradition that sees past death.

As for the so-called Christmas wars, isn’t government or commercial sanction of Jesus’ birthday a false issue? He asked for nothing of the kind. He did ask us who follow him to be more childlike, less demanding. Faithful and unfaithful alike need to lighten up. After all, many believe the light of the world is here – and they don’t just mean the solstice.

Anti-slavery then, pro-life now

(Denver Post, Dec. 7) What many call a concern for social issues, I call a passion for protection of the human person. With Democrats on a winning streak, some Republicans are asking why that passion is so strong in our party. Does it even belong in American politics? Thinking the question through, you’ll see that it does and it always has. Imagine you’re an Irish cop living in a Chicago slum. In the neighborhood you meet Barry and Shelley, a black couple who help the poor. You’re impressed with their efforts to bring the community better jobs, doctors, and schools. But one day you are ordered to raid their home and arrest them. Barry and Shelley are not criminals. They have harmed no one. But the year is 1858, and a man from Mississippi named Davis claims to own them as property. Federal law requires Illinois to enforce his claim. The black man “has no rights which the white man is bound to respect,” according to a US Supreme Court ruling in 1857.

You see your friends hauled away in chains. A month later you learn that Davis has sold the man into Alabama and taken the wife as his concubine. Their young daughters were put to work as field hands. The older one, defiant and desperate, dies after a whipping. Mississippi brings no charges.

After witnessing this, if a new political party called for changing the law so it would safeguard the life and liberty of all persons equally, wouldn’t you vote for them? If the same party insisted on strong marriage laws to protect women and children, wouldn’t you support that too?

I have just described the origins of the Republican Party in this country 150 years ago, during the crisis over human slavery in the South and plural marriage in Utah. Both injustices were condemned in the earliest GOP platforms on which Abraham Lincoln and his fellow partisans appealed to Americans’ moral conscience. A passion for protection of the human person is bred in our party’s DNA.

Bring the scenario forward to 1978. You’re an Italian nurse in Denver, mother of a pregnant 17-year-old. The whole family, even the expected child’s father, wants to see it born and either raised or offered for adoption. But your daughter wants the baby aborted.

Coloradans once made their own laws to balance this difficult issue where precious lives are at stake. Now they can’t. A US Supreme Court ruling in 1973 has barred state action, effectively saying that the child in the womb has no rights which adults are bound to respect.

Your long allegiance to the Democratic Party is no help; they favor court-sanctioned abortion on demand. If the Republicans called for letting elected legislators instead of robed judges seek a life-affirming compromise on the issue, wouldn’t you move their way? Millions would and did.

Forward again to 2008. You’re an African-American pastor in Los Angeles. You marched at Selma with Dr. King. You can’t wait to see Obama in the White House. California’s huge Democratic landslide will be partly your doing. But all your faith and common sense tell you marriage means one man and one woman, as voters affirmed by over 60% before the state’s highest court said otherwise last spring.

Now your congregation puts its weight behind Proposition 8, writing traditional marriage into the state constitution, even as most of them also vote for Barack. You’re not about to register Republican, but you’re quietly thankful that America still has one major party with a passion for protection of the human person, including the biological family.

Should the GOP abandon its defense of the unborn and the married moms and dads who await them? Not unless we’re ready to renounce our humanitarian patriarch and founder, Lincoln.

The grateful Americans

(Denver Post, Nov. 23) We are the grateful Americans. We counted our blessings today, some of us in church or in prayer, some on the job or war patrol or a golf course, even some hospitalized or serving time, others just at home with the paper. Or we tried to; the list is long. Sure, we have our share of troubles, some obvious and others carried secretly. But we don’t take today for granted. Remembering those who will never see another sunrise, who gave or lost or wore out their lives to make ours possible, we live in the attitude of gratitude. To us it’s an obligation. We are the grateful Americans. We’re not showy about it; that’s not our way. We’ll dive in on the three F’s of Thanksgiving Day, family, feasting, and football, with the best of them. But the meaning of this season of thanks will be on our minds. The only “made in America” sacred day of the year won’t be lost on us.

Yes, we know. The country is hurting economically right now. Almost half the voters are still getting over their election loss, and the other half are impatient with them. The premise of Thanksgiving itself, recognition of God, has many a doubter nowadays. Won’t the thankfulness feel a little forced this year?

Actually, to the grateful Americans, it won’t. We recall the pauper who could smile though he had no shoes – for he knew a man who had no feet. The unimaginably affluent Uncle Sam is hardly barefoot, recession or not. Our resilience and resourcefulness that made the last boom will make the next one. Till then, our communal concern will relieve the hardest-hit. Our Pilgrim heritage is self-reliance and mutual help, not self-pity and blame.

Nor can political disagreements and disappointments make us unthankful. Our good fortune to live in a republic by consent of the governed is a treasure. Here ballots not bullets pick winners. Here the defeated have recourse to persuasion, not violence. Imagine life under the Chinese or Cuban or Saudi despots. Congratulations, Barack, say grateful Americans of both parties.

As for the tradition of dedicating an autumn Thursday to honor the Creator in our increasingly secularist culture, look at it this way: Many still revere Him according to the faith of their fathers. Growing numbers are equally devout, but outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. Others simply want to access gratitude’s awesome power as humanists. But all can join this week in saying, “Thanks, America.”

America deserves our gratitude for the liberty and justice, dignity and opportunity, prosperity and advancement, liberation and participation it has extended to more people from more places across more centuries than any other nation in human history.

America deserves our gratitude for the beauty and bounty of its land, the wisdom and goodness of its constitution, the decency and openness of its institutions, the nobility and generosity of its role in the world, the toughness of its idealism – and, yes, agrees this Republican, for the audacity of its hope.

America deserves our gratitude for the forgiveness in families, the neighborliness on your block, the caring of teachers, the cop who risked his life for you last night, the amputee home from Iraq – and for the self-correction that flares if these are betrayed or neglected.

When my house thanks America for such riches, we’re really thanking the God who we believe bestowed them and still stands “within the shadows keeping watch,” as a Civil War hymn says. Your house may be no less heartfelt in their thanks while believing otherwise.

Bridging our differences is the humble joy of the extravagantly blessed. In time, we hope, even the ingrate next door will warm to the Thanksgiving spirit as we have. We are the grateful Americans.