Two New eBooks at Amazon Kindle!
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This is a 5:41 remembrance of my colleague Ray Heinen’s and my visit to Petra, Jordan, April 2019. We also talk about developing issues in the Middle East and SAT-7’s ministry.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*This vlog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers at www.rexmrogers.com/. Follow at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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I am not an infectious disease expert, so I can only go so far commenting about coronavirus. But I can make these observations:
*Human beings (leaders, professionals) are not omniscient, can’t predict the future, make mistakes, and the Law of Unintended Consequences happens.
For example, schools close to reduce spread of the virus. Good? Maybe. But we can’t foresee what kids will do w/this time, or ID umpteen other ripple effects.
Similar re shutting down major sports schedules. Good? No one knows.
Remember Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld?
“We know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”
By the way, this goes for Republicans and Democrats, Media and Entertainment, Business and Nonprofit, even Religion.
This said, I also don’t know if draconian mass closings will help slow the virus. However, I can say that I do not like governors like Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer using executive orders to ban gatherings including churches.
I know this is not an anti-religious action. But I still don’t like ceding to the government power over religious assembly. A public health crisis is short-term, while unhindered religious congregation is a matter of church and state, a long-term basic civil liberty essential to free society.
Sorry, I just don’t like the optics or the reality of these “orders.”
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*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.
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This 57 sec video talks about COVID-19, the Coronavirus, now declared a worldwide pandemic.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*This vlog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers at www.rexmrogers.com/. Follow at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
In the new, emerging “call-out culture,” those with whom you disagree, or those who somehow make you uncomfortable, are ipso facto labeled dangerous and must be silenced or otherwise banished. Call-out culture, and its cousin, “cancel culture,” are a new scourge on the Body Politic.
In the call-out culture people regularly and publicly proclaim their bona-fides, i.e., “virtue-signaling,” within a given ideologically righteous group by attacking (calling out) others within, by definition, an ideologically unrighteous, therefore dangerous, group.
Call-out culture suddenly is the way to behave on social media. Have offense, will travel, will call-out. And it seems everyone is offended by everything. While there may indeed be wrong, even needlessly offensive behavior to which one should respond, there are ways to do it that does not turn into social toxicity. But this is not call-out culture.
Call-out culture is not about tolerance, though this concept is constantly referenced, but intolerance, particularly toward any idea and person defined as unacceptable or unworthy in this new pop worldview. Call-out culture intolerance, especially when it morphs to cancel culture, can be wielded in authoritarian if not totalitarian fashion. Freedom is not the first priority. Removing all offense to anyone and everyone’s feelings is the absolute goal, which requires silencing “insensitive” ideas—Who gets to decide what idea is offensive?— and even getting offenders removed from, among other places, faculty positions and speakers’ daises.
This self-righteous idea is one reason young people are now suffering record mental issues and are fearful, anxious, and unhappy. They’ve been taught to be offended, to believe their personal well-being hinges upon what others might say or do. They’ve been sold a bill of goods by misguided ideological pied pipers.
These social developments now have a grip on academia, politics, and Hollywood and in their worst forms amount to a direct threat to Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech, America’s fundamental distinctives. It’s not paranoia to say this is scary. It’s not exaggeration or overstatement to say these ideas and associated actions undermine and put at risk America as a free society.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*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.
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Americans express angst about perceived slights, biases, denial of rights, to the point some citizens now consider their own country and its ideals corrupt and unworthy.
I’m not suggesting these social problems are not real, but I’m grateful that in the US a free society in which to debate, a gift from those who sacrificed, actually exists.
In several countries in the Middle East (and other regions) millions are far worse off: freedom of speech and religion are suppressed, churches burned, women, minorities have no rights, and the vulnerable are persecuted, tortured, killed.
Perspective matters.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*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.
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© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
*This article may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers at www.rexmrogers.com/. Follow at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.