Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
With Dr Rex Rogers

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Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 15 March 2021

From the moment we first heard of the coronavirus, media have provided us with a daily presentation of the nature, threat, global progress, and for some, deadly effect of the pandemic.

With more than 119 million worldwide and about 30 million in the United States listed as confirmed cases and over 2.6 million deaths worldwide and over 535,000 deaths in the United States, clearly it is a virulent disease.

For much of year 2020 we heard the pandemic described as “unprecedented,” but while the coronavirus pandemic may be the greatest physical ailment to attack humanity in our lifetime, pandemics are really not unprecedented. Historically, whether the bubonic plague or the Spanish flu, great illnesses have periodically infected the human race.

Media, with many politicians as willing accomplices, has also treated us to a steady drumbeat of fear. In saying this, I’m not belittling people’s genuine anxieties or their legitimate concern for the elderly or other highly vulnerable loved ones. I’m simply saying media knows fear sells, so to speak, and knows it’s a good business plan for their channels to hype the threat. There’s no question this approach has heightened peoples’ mental stress. Extensive coverage of the pandemic on social media also increases people’s stress.

III

Meanwhile, overreaching government in the U.S. and around the world has leveraged the pandemic to increase political power, e.g., tapping into state emergency powers laws to introduce a steady string of “executive orders” that limited freedom, undermined civil liberties, curtailed dissent or silenced reporting all to reinforce “public safety.”

Politicians, especially executives, want to appear to be in charge. They and their supporters and to some extent the general public want them to “do something.” But what do they do in the face of a pandemic? They begin issuing a series of behavioral orders, ostensibly to “flatten the curve” or “save hospital beds” or “slow the spread” or “save lives”… In Michigan and California, for example, these orders became increasingly obtrusive and, because politicians are not omniscient, inevitably inconsistent, contradictory, and for some, lacking common sense. Why? Because governors and public health officials play God but can’t pull off the role.

Then there is the politics of COVID. Governments issued a string of propagandistic statements encouraging behaviors in the name of public health, like “We’re all in this together,” “Stay at home, save lives,” “Stay six feet apart,” “Wear a mask,” “Wash your hands,” “Hands, face, space.” There is nothing wrong with these statements per se. But they can become a problem when they’re promoted with religious zeal as a new unquestioned orthodoxy, about which if you disagree or act differently, you will reap some sort of dire condemnation. In this regard, these statements become big sticks to control the public.

Worse, officials in several states eventually were caught violating their own policies, as if somehow such rules were for the masses and not for them the philosopher-kings. Some visited restaurants (CA Governor Gavin Newsom; RI Governor Gina Raimondo), got their hair done in salons (Speaker Nancy Pelosi), traveled to other homes or events (MI Governor Gretchen Whitmer), held gatherings (White House Coordinator of COVID Response Dr. Deborah Birx), and more. This kind of hypocrisy only undermines public confidence.

VII

Government leaders have acted as if their COVID restrictions—lockdowns, stay at home orders—occurred in a vacuum with no side-effects. Somehow, for example, governors seem to think they could require children to stay home from school to protect them from the virus yet not incur any other downsides. Actually, though, there are an enormous number of confounding variables (those that always exist but are not usually foreseen yet affect the independent and dependent variables in an experiment) and unintended consequences. We’re just now beginning to understand the huge personal, social, economic ripple effects COVID-19 lockdowns have unleashed. Some are calling these restrictions the biggest mistake in human history.

I say “unintended consequences” because I’m not accusing politicians of malicious behavior or purposefully malevolent actions. I’m just noting, again, that politicians are not omniscient, so what they do in their effort to create in essence planned economies do not work. Planned economies have never worked. Among the unintended consequences of government pandemic lockdowns are increases in:

domestic, child abuse.
mental health problems.
drug and substance addiction.
suicides
unemployment and underemployment.
poverty.
hunger.

In addition, children and youth have experiencing a year of lost education. And children are damaged by social isolation.

VIII

Another and I’d say the most serious impact of government response to the pandemic has been the repression of freedom of speech, including curtailing or silencing dissent, and threats to religious liberty, in the name of public safety. While this voracious virus, bad though it is, is short-term, the loss of liberties can be long-term and of much more significant impact upon the future of free societies.

And it hasn’t just been government politicians willingly using the virus to wield power. It’s been people willing to trade freedom for perceived security. This is a cultural trend that was well underway before the pandemic hit, but Year 2020 saw this writ large.

This is something the late Francis A. Schaeffer warned us about in the 1970s: “I believe the majority of the silent majority, young and old will sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own life-styles are not threatened. And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that count with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things. Politics has largely become not a matter of ideals–increasingly men and women are not stirred by the values of liberty and truth–but of supplying a constituency with a frosting of personal peace and affluence. They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them.” Growing authoritarianism, he said, arises out of desperate people given to self-interest.

A related freedom issue is Big Tech’s selective censorship of any content it deemed “misinformation” or “dangerous” vis-à-vis the “prevailing acceptable narrative,” particularly concerning the pandemic. Big Tech has acted in a similar fashion re partisan and ideological politics, so this is also a cultural trend that’s bigger than the pandemic. But with its actions, Big Tech affirmed a kind of monolithic COVID orthodoxy that must not be questioned, thus curtailing the free exchange of ideas. Big Tech has also threatened religious liberty, not with anti-religious statements but in suppressing religious posts or videos a committee working with Facebook’s “Community Standards” (which are not all bad or wrong) decides is somehow unacceptable.

“The argument is made that First Amendment speech protections only pertain to government action, not private companies. But technology has enabled a concentration of private power not previously imagined. The Communications Decency Act could be amended such that speech on technology platforms receives the same protections as all speech protected by the First Amendment.”

“In no “free” society can mass censorship, by government or the private sector, be considered a positive trait. History teaches us that when censorship occurs, authoritarianism is not far behind.”

Some states are now finally beginning to push back. Let’s hope their efforts are the beginning of a trend to curtail the excesses of the Big Tech monopoly.

I don’t claim to have identified all the negative side-effects that have resulted from COVID politics in 2020-2021, only highlights. There are more that we’ll come to understand with the passing of time. Hopefully, we’ll consider them objectively.

But for now, chaos, confusion, irresponsible and hysterical media, opportunistic politicians, we’ve seen it all. The pandemic has brought out the best, the noble in some of us, and the worst, the ignoble in a lot of us, particularly among the ruling elite and the tech oligarchs of Silcon Valley.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, COVID-19 will pass as other plagues, afflictions, and pandemics before it have passed. But it remains to be seen if or when the steady increase of government power and consequent loss of individual freedom in the United States will be stopped or reversed. Pray that it will, for the future of this free society depends upon it.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 04 March 2021

For some time now, I’ve been saying that sexual progressivism (abortion, LGBTQ+, SOGI=sexual orientation and gender identities) is the point of the spear for the radical Left’s onslaught on American culture.

In the name of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion—or negatively stated, attacking those who disagree as bigots, racists, or haters—the radical Left is conducting a full-on, worldview-based, ideological attempt to rewrite America’s moral consensus and identity.

The sexual progressivism of the radical Left overlaps with equally pernicious movements like “woke” race and gender wars and ugly efforts to cancel anyone who disagrees.

Advocates of sexual progressivism know their demands cannot mutually exist with biblical morality, so Christian teachings about sexuality and the family are now targets for suppression. In this way, both freedom of religion and freedom of speech in the First Amendment are threatened. Pastors in some European countries, Canada have been charged with hate speech for preaching biblical moral views of homosexuality. This could happen in the U.S.

The radical Left’s politics, as almost daily propounded, show up in Hasbro declaring Mr. Potato Head henceforth gender neutral, several of Dr. Seuss works deemed racist, the Cartoon Network running public service announcements telling children to “see color” when they look at people, public school districts and universities adopting policies and curricula demanding gender neutrality and gender-neutral pronouns, Coca Cola instructing employees to “try to be less white,” or celebrities and some corporations falling all over themselves virtue signaling their woke bonafides asserting their support for the latest amoral radical Left orthodoxy.

The radical Left keeps moving its goal posts, for it is never satisfied, in large part because each cultural victory is a matter of power and a step toward its utopian vision. However, another sad consequence of all this is that sexual progressivism’s results or its reality is not a happy place. The people caught up in this movement, who are not simply activists but participants in this false sexual worldview, find an endgame of sadness, suffering, self-harm, destruction of life and relationships, and all too often, suicide. Sexual progressivism that rejects God’s design for the human being yields nothing but darkness. They need our compassion and the Light of the Gospel.

In none of this am I supporting the denial of any American citizen his or her civil liberties and established civil rights. Nor am I in any way advocating any kind of personal animosity, much less harm. But I do disagree with the moral choices referenced here. This is what I'm talking about, ideas and values. For the individuals involved, God says to Love our neighbors as ourself.

Finally, there is much about this that is sad and frightening, including that these irrational arguments suck the air out of public discussions that should be taking place about genuine issues re sexuality and race in America.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 02 March 2021

I read articles written by conservatives, liberals, and leftists, many of which now regularly resort to juvenile insults. Name-calling masquerading as erudition.

Words like moron, maggot, idiot, their softer equivalents goon, clown, jerk, twit, the all-purpose hater, or the latest nasty epithet du jour are now the common parlance of pundits, politicians…and people on social media. Some even use vulgarities.

Former President Trump is a leading if not the lead example of this, but he’s not alone. Playground rhetoric has been used by the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senator Chuck Schumer, and many more politicians. It’s like there’s an arms race to see who can come up with the lowest, most childish nickname or rejoinder.

But what good is this kind of cheap shot? Calling someone with a different point of view a derogatory name doesn’t win the argument? It doesn’t encourage people to change their mind. Indeed, it can harden opposition. It only demeans, the speaker more than the recipient.

Name-calling has tainted US politics since before there was a USA. But insults accomplished nothing back then, and they accomplish nothing now. They only divide, which is the enemy of consensus and achievement.

We can’t make others change, but we can raise the level of our own discourse. We can have a sense of self-respect that intentionally improves the caliber of our vocabulary and incisiveness of our critical thinking. We can never use juvenile name-calling again, which is what most of our Mothers told us in 1^st Grade anyway.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 28 February 2021

Thou Shalt Not:

1-Enjoy wearing clothes or eating food developed by another culture because you’ll be guilty of cultural appropriation.

2-Oppose abortion, because if you do you really don’t care about women’s health.

3-Question any “settled science” re climate change or coronavirus orthodoxy because you will be spreading misinformation.

4-Express your ideas in public forums, i.e., freedom of speech, for you might use a microaggression and make someone uncomfortable, so you will be canceled.

5-Express moral convictions regarding LGBTQ+ because this makes you a bigot.

6-Be patriotic, for this is white supremacy.

7-Consider it straightforward that men who identify as women should not participate in women’s sports, for this is discriminatory, at least toward women but apparently women don’t matter.

8-Argue critical race theory, intersectionality, and “anti-racism” are actually racist, directly counter to the tenets of Martin Luther King, Jr’s Civil Rights Movement, and you’ll be dismissed as someone caught in your own white fragility.

9-Favor border security and question the wisdom of open borders, because this makes you racist.

10-Own a gun, for this demonstrates you clearly don’t care about gun violence.

11-Disagree with, criticize, or even question another person’s behavior or attitudes because then you will be a hater.

12-Identify as an Evangelical, for this means you are a racist deplorable who endorsed everything former Pres Trump said or did, even if you didn’t vote for him.

13-Support law enforcement, for this means you are supremacist and racist.

14-Expect teachers to teach for this is common sense, something no longer endorsed by teachers’ unions.

15-Point out that every cell in the female body possesses XX chromosomes and every cell in the male body is comprised of XY chromosomes and no gender fluidity or sex change efforts will ever change this, which means that you are a hater who does not care about people struggling with gender dysphoria.

16-Note the threat to religious liberty written into the proposed Equality Act, for this makes you intolerant and prejudiced.

17-Point out the wildly anti-family, anti-Christianity, anti-American and racist values of the organization Black Lives Matter because this means ispso facto you support racism, bigotry, and discrimination.

18-Eat meat or other animal products because this is offensive to the animals.

19-Speak about virtually anything for fear of political correctness missteps.

20-Be assertive or express middle class bourgeois values for this is too much whiteness.

21-Expect media news programs to present developments without partisan or ideological messaging, encouraging citizens to decide for themselves, because this demonstrates you are hopelessly naïve.

22-Say you believe the U.S.A. was founded upon principles of liberty in 1776 not slavery in 1619, or say you believe American culture should be “color blind,” for you are demonstrating your white privilege.

23-Refer to your favorite animal as a pet for this is supremacist language.

24-Oppose the idea college debts should be forgiven because this destroys accountability and disillusions those who paid their debts, for this demonstrates you are privileged and insensitive.

25-Note the smug moral superiority of cancel culture and you’ll be considered a retrograde fly-over person.

26-Ask about a political appointee’s credentials, who is being celebrated for little more than his or her demography, and you’ll be noted as sexist or racist.

Woke-ism is about power created through victimhood. It can only perpetuate itself by continually identifying oppressors and newly perceived affronts, starting with language. Indeed, controlling the definition of words or inventing new vocabularies is one way to control the debate.

So, to demonstrate their bonafides, the newly woke or woke activists now continuously and endlessly seek out new social activities about which to be offended. Celebrities and corporations in utter fear of being labeled “racist” or some other epithet suggesting they are not “with it,” rush to virtue signal their level of “offended-ness” and their newly declared woke status. In their rush to ride the wave, public institutions of learning embrace new “anti-racist” curricula and policies that condemn them to states of paralysis where everyone informs on everyone else or they just try to keep their head down, both approaches stifling education.

And the list of what’s not allowed or what’s racist or sexist or intolerant or “hateful” grows by the minute. The list here is simply an illustrative not an exhaustive list. But does any of this really help anyone?

Meanwhile, legitimate, needed discussions about racism, male-female relationships, gender issues, environmental concerns, election integrity, immigration policy go wanting.

Is this the kind of country re really want?

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 25 February 2021

The Left is a new religion in which right and wrong exist not based on objective moral truth but upon sociological definitions, the will of the moment.

This new religiously held worldview is not confined to a given political party or denomination.

Its tenets include pro-choice, sexual progressivism, identity politics, us vs them victim vs oppressor, multicultural relativism, “intersectionality” and a woke mentality ironically propagating racism as “anti-racism,” equality defined as equity or sameness of results, suppression of disagreement, i.e., free speech, to the point of cancelling opposition.

This new religion now empowers much of journalism, academia at all levels, Hollywood and Broadway, Big Tech, and increasingly, big corporations and government.

Sexual progressivism is the Left’s point of the spear vs traditional and certainly Christian morality, and increasingly vs freedom of religion. To be committed to biblical sexuality is now in the Left, Big Media, Big Social Media, the organization Black Lives Matter, Amazon, and Starbucks’ view to be ipso facto intolerant and unworthy of free speech or even a right to exist.

The Left cannot tolerate biblical Christianity, which acknowledges a real God who reveals himself and holds all accountable to the moral absolutes He wrote into the fabric of creation.

It’s going to get worse as the US rushes pell-mell to embrace “inclusion” as a sacred right.

There are going to be more instances of religious liberty being challenged, or accused, or even denied based on Leftist arguments about “hate speech.”

Women’s and girls’ sports are now facing a highly divisive and destructive time in which men or boys “identifying as” women or girls seek to compete in women’s and girls’ athletics. In the name of anti-discrimination and tolerance these sports are being destroyed by discrimination and intolerance toward women and girls.

More organizations and individuals are going to be accused with today’s ultimate epithet, “racist,” in the Left’s woke mission to root out “privilege” and “white supremacy” not simply wherever it is found but finding it wherever any woke person wishes to say it exists.

The current Left may be a new religion, but it offers the same old story: rejection of God and truth as He revealed himself in the created order, an effort like ancient Babel to build a tower to utopia and significance of its own making (Gen. 11:1-9). But like Babel, the Left is doomed to failure because it starts with false presuppositions.

Biblical Christianity’s ethic of love your neighbor as yourself is still the most powerful expression of acceptance, tolerance, inclusion, and respect ever expressed. Pointing individuals and indeed American culture toward its historic Judeo-Christian moral consensus is the culture’s greatest hope.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 24 February 2021

1–What will the Internet, originally envisioned as a place open to everyone for the free exchange of ideas, become in the months/years ahead?

2–Who will control the Internet?

3–Will tomorrow’s Internet block certain religions, like Christianity—what historically has been considered a matter of religious liberty and freedom of speech?

4–Will tomorrow’s Internet censor given religious beliefs deemed misinformation or out of sync with the “prevailing acceptable narrative,” e.g., biblical moral teachings about sexuality, gender, abortion, or maybe ideas about health or climate change, etc.?

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