By J. Matt Barber
We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. – C.S. Lewis
Comedian Jim Wiegand – aka “Jim Wiggins, the last hippie in America” – is a throwback to a bygone era. The hilarious 70-year-old wisecracker is known for, among other things, a quite liberal worldview. He’s also known for raising Joe Wiegand, his rebellious, good-for-nothing son. Apart from sharing both a sharp sense of humor and mutual love and admiration, father and son see eye to eye on little else.
Joe, a good friend of mine, isn’t a rebellious good-for-nothing in the conventional sense. He’s a 40-something Illinois-based GOP strategist, a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator without equal and a buttoned-up evangelical Christian.
The elder Mr. Wiegand can’t figure out where he went wrong. He jokes that when Joe was a youngster, he once discovered magazines hidden under the boy’s mattress. He was shocked to find his son looking at such smut: National Review.
Hippies once were the counterculture. Liberals were the nonconformist rebels, boldly wearing unwashed anarchy on tattered sleeve. They loudly and proudly raged against the establishment machine.
Today, they are the establishment machine.
All of our ruling-class institutions – academia, courts, government, media and entertainment industries – are teeming with closed-minded, hard-left ideologues who seek to “fundamentally transform America.”
Consider that, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, self-identified liberals outweigh their conservative counterparts in the mainstream media by a 5-1 margin.
Likewise, a 1999 North American Academic Study Survey (NAASS) of students, faculty and administrators in colleges and universities throughout the United States determined that five times as many college faculty members vote Democratic as Republican. In fact, 72 percent described themselves as “to the left of center,” while a mere 15 percent identified themselves as “right of center.”
One can only imagine that in the ensuing decade, the ideological disparity has increased. Ask any kid in the halls of academia, and he’ll tell you, with few exceptions, that professor so-and-so is a liberal so-and-so.
Still, liberals – or “progressives,” as they prefer to be called – persist in laboring under an embarrassing misconception: They honestly believe they remain the nonconformists. It’s precious.
In fact, today’s liberals are nothing of the sort. They compliantly conform – like little windup, patchouli-daubed lemmings – to a carnival-prize caricature of what they imagine nonconformity to look like. You know, the usual stuff: neo-Marxism, environmentalist activism, sexual relativism, big-government nanny statism, an actions-without-consequences rendering of reproductive rights, and other such populist nonsense. Simply put, today’s progressive nonconformist conforms.
Indeed, the “Stepford Wives” have become the “Stepford Lesbians.” The prudish, judgmental church lady has swapped spots with the easy – yet somehow self-righteous – birth-bashing feminist.
So what is a young person – brimming over with that instinctive, defiant impulse to rebel against “the man” – to do?
Well, in this up-is-down, spend-money-to-save-money world, conservatives have become the contemporary nonconformists. Today’s rebellious youth are telling the progressive establishment to put its moral-relativist, redistributionist party-line pig swill in its well-used chamber pipe and smoke it.
Kids: Really want to get under your obnoxiously “tolerant,” Volvo-driving, MSNBC-watching folks’ skin? Try this: Go to church, abstain from premarital sex, join the Young America’s Foundation, attend a Tea Party rally, enroll at Liberty University, listen to Rush Limbaugh and vote Republican.
You’ll have them writhing in their Birkenstocks.
I’ve often said that President Obama could either be the best thing to happen to America or the worst. The best insofar as this man’s policies are so radical, so extreme that, in keeping with Newton’s third law of motion, the “opposite reaction” might well trigger Republican rule in perpetuity.
First, the bad news: So far, Mr. Obama is the worst. Now, the good news: I believe he has awakened a sleeping giant in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 29). Today’s counterculture is rejecting the tired progressive policies pushed by this president and his secular-socialist sycophants.
For instance, a 2010 Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll determined that nearly 60 percent of millennials believe abortion is “morally wrong,” a nearly 10-point increase over the more progressive baby-boomer generation. The tide is turning.
Similarly, a recent survey from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics found that millennials are worried sick about their futures. Yet President Hopey Changey and Democrats in Congress continue to play back-alley dice with their lives via incomprehensible deficit spending and a national debt that swells annually by the trillions.
Do you think these kids won’t rebel as the clouds quickly darken?
Winston Churchill once observed,
“If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.”
Liberalism is emotion-based and rooted in soaring, knee-jerk notions of “social justice.” Conservatism is logic-based and rooted in reality.
Today’s rebellious youth have the heart part down. I’m glad to see they’re developing some brains.
Matt Barber is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.
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Happy Birthday to an Extraordinary Man
Roland John Morris, Sr. July 1, 1945 – June 9, 2004
Roland Morris, Sr., 58, ascended to heaven on Wednesday, June 9th after a four year fight with cancer. Roland, a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, was born July 1, 1945, in Cass Lake, MN. Ojibwe was his first language, and he grew up fishing, hunting, and gathering wild rice with family and friends. He also played intramural basketball, worked hard in the woods, spent time in a foster home and various jails, drank, smoked, and played guitar with friends at various bars.
Roland went to college in Kansas and was a draftsman for a short time before becoming an upholsterer. While he struggled with many difficulties in his early years, he was a perfectionist with upholstery and throughout his life performed his craft well.
After a life changing spiritual experience with Jesus in 1988, Roland moved his second family to Ronan, Montana to be near his cousin and Christian evangelist, Frank (Scotty) Butterfly. There, in 1992, Roland and his wife, Elizabeth, created Montana’s first patient transportation service, Mission Valley Medicab. They also helped instigate the Montana Passenger Carriers Association and the charitable organization, Valley Missions, Inc., all without tribal assistance.
Roland taught his children about wild ricing, hunting, fishing, and a little of the Ojibwe language. But the biggest, strongest desire of his heart was that his children, grandchildren, and entire extended family come to the saving knowledge and acceptance of Jesus Christ. Having watched many friends and relatives die physically, spiritually, and emotionally from alcoholism, violence, and suicide, Roland could no longer stand aside and do nothing. He was concerned for the children and felt distress at the attitudes of many adults within his community. He wanted the self-destruction to stop.
Roland’s relationship with Jesus coupled with his conviction that much of the reservation system was harmful led him to some amazing life experiences. Actively opposing much of federal Indian policy, Roland served as President of the Western Montana organization All Citizens Equal, was a board member and Vice-Chairman of the national organization; Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, was the Secretary of Citizens Equal Rights Foundation.
He also ran as a Republican candidate for the Montana House of Representatives in the 1996 and testified before the US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in April,1998, the Minnesota Attorney General in 2000, and numerous Mont. State committees. With his family, he also had a private meeting with a member of the President’s Domestic Policy Council May, 2002 in Washington DC.
As time progressed, Roland became more convinced of the importance of Jesus in his life. So in 2000 he attended a year of training at the Living Faith Bible College, Canada. Over the last three years, he and/or his family went on mission trips in Canada and Mexico. During a 2003 trip to a children’s home in Juarez, Mexico, he fixed most of their dining hall chairs, taught 6 boys how to upholster, donated materials, and preached a Sunday street service.
Through the years, he has appeared in numerous newspaper articles across the country. The last article he appeared in was on Friday, May 14th, in the Washington Times. Reporter Jennifer Lehner wrote, “the ICWA [Indian Child Welfare Act] protects the interests of others over [Mr. Morris'] grandchildren,” and “Mr. Morris said that once children are relocated to the reservations, they are subject to the corrupt law of the tribal government. Instead of preserving culture, he said, the tribal leadership uses the ICWA to acquire funds provided through the legislation.” Ms. Lehner quoted Mr. Morris as saying that the law is “supposed to help children, but instead it helps tribal governments.”
Finally, in February, 2004, he and his wife founded the Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare. The purpose of this was to encourage preaching, teaching and fostering of the growth of the Christian Faith in all places, encourage accountability of governments to families with Indian heritage, and educate the public about Indian rights, laws, and issues.
Roland praised God to the very end. When his final struggle began, several of his friends and family were praying with him. When those present sang old-time hymns, he raised his hand in the air for as long as he could. When “I Surrender” was sung, he sang the echo. While Pastor Kingery sat next to Roland, holding his hand, Roland looked him straight in the eyes and pointed his other hand up to heaven. When he passed on to greater life, his good friend Marvin Bauer was softly playing Gospel songs for him on his accordion.
Roland is survived by his wife, nine children, twelve grandchildren and a great grandson. Also important to his heart was his “special” son, Jesus Garcia, in Juarez, Mexico. Surviving brothers include Harry Morris and Steven Jones; and sisters include Clara Smith, Bernice Hurd, Sharon Goose, and Christine Jones, as well as numerous nephews and nieces and his great cousin, Scotty Butterfly.
Roland was preceded in death by his parents, Jacob and Susan Jones; siblings Thomas and Wallace Morris, Robert, Martin, Caroline, Frances, Barbara and Alvina Jones, Loretta Smith, and grandson Brandon Kier.
Roland’s loving friend, Jim Ball, crafted a beautiful casket for him as a gift. Funeral services were at the CMA Church in Ronan, MT, on Sunday, June 13, 2004 and the CMA Church in Cass Lake, MN, Tuesday, June 15. Internment was at Prince of Peace Cemetery. He is strongly remembered for his strength, character, and love for the Lord Jesus.
Roland, our husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend; We Love you and Miss you so very much. You are with God now.
Gi gi wah ba min me na wah
Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare
Independent Indian Press
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