Kenneth Xu's Blog, page 4

Week 3: Hold My Tongue

PASSION.  We’re creatures of it.  Some more than others.  Me more than most.

I’ve always known this since I was a little kid.  In the third grade, I became so obsessed with learning new words and language that I dropped a truly unfortunate one on my ex-piano teacher: “plump.”  You know why I said ‘ex’?

In middle school, (okay high school, and maybe a little of college) I had deep crushes on girls that would last for months.  Moreover, I felt the need to express the depth of my feeling for them through expansive, rampant poetry and lyricism.  Blinded by passion, I would fail to see the bright orange cones of the friendzone until I literally ran them over with my train of infatuation.

But it was in eighth grade that still holds the crown for possibly the most cringe-worthy thing I’ve ever done in the name of pure passion.  I was competing with my arch-rival, an Indian dude who I will call Rohan, to be Moody Middle School’s representative and the annual Optimist Public Speaking Competition.  Zealous to do something exceedingly bold, I perhaps stepped over the line a little bit when I wrote a story about a burglar killing a cop after a robbery, and then performed it in front of my gaping audience – describing in oozy detail the blood and guts of the murder.  Right after I uttered the last words, no one clapped.  Instead, I only heard a squeak from the left side of the room: “Kenny, please see me outside.”

My English teacher, fuming red, jabbed her thin finger at my heart when she said: “Kenny, that was one of the best-written stories I’ve ever heard from an eighth-grader.  But it was entirely inappropriate.”  I was nearly suspended from school.  I still remember the blush in her face as she stared me down in that cold hallway, my heart pitter-pattering like the pouring rain.

I remember her coming back to me one day and telling me that I wouldn’t be suspended.  She left me with these words: “Kenny, you’re an extremely talented young man.  Probably one of the brightest I’ve ever seen.  Be careful out there.”

Passion can be an immensely good thing.  For one, it gets things done.  Anybody who knows a successful entrepreneur or activist knows they are only there because they had the passion to actually get their crap together and do something, make something happen.  Imagine an Apple without Steve Jobs.  Evangelicalism without Johnathan Edwards.  They both had missionary zeal for their line of work – Apple even calls its salespeople “evangelists,” as Chief Evangelist Guy Kawasaki explains.  (I read his book.)

But it’s not without its problems.  There’s a reason why the Bible teaches us to “tame our tongue,” asking us to “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.” (James 3:5) An overly zealous or passionate voice, left unchecked, can burn the whole house down.  As someone who believes in the infallibility of Scripture (more on that in a future post), I hesitate to diminish the great power of these exhortations.

And yet I come from a Romantic school of thought, which was a period of European literary innovation during the 18th and 19th centuries that emphasizes the truth value of the imagination, of breaking social structures and of establishing one’s individuality amidst a sea of conformity.  The first time I heard of such a philosophy, I jumped in like a diver off the coast of Cape Town.  My adherence to many tenets of Romanticism and my own personality drive me to ride my passion like a Hawaiian wave – until it crashes suddenly into a rock, that is.

This week I had several conversations with people I like and respect, from a sympathetic professor to my liberal friend to a conservative freshman who’s known me for three weeks, all who seek to help me.  And all three of their prescriptions are the same: be intentional with your words.  I almost don’t realize how public of a figure I have become.  But it’s no longer Kenny Xu just trying to get people to respect his beliefs out of the corner of his dorm and a couple of pocket Constitutions.  It’s Kenny Xu, still fighting for his beliefs, but now with a megaphone and a heaping gob of public scrutiny.

I am so grateful for these people in my life.  They are my checks and balances, my Yangs to my Yins.  Control my tempo.  Control my passion.  Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, they say.  Ever since Mrs. Sudfeld came up to me and pointed her finger at my soul, who would later tell eighth-grade me, who had no understanding of politics whatsoever, that she was a secret Republican who couldn’t say what she truly believed in because of her job security, I’ve been surrounded by whisperers, by consciences, who mean the best for me.  And I believe what they say, lest I become an Icarus, flying too close to the sun.  Hold your tongue, Kenny, hold your tongue.

“But I need to break out.”

“But I need to stand up for the people who can’t.”

“But I need to escape my paralysis, to be authentic to who I am.”

“But I need to tell her how I feel.”

Oh, God, it’s hard.  I say too much.  Bring me Your peace, help me to discern when I should speak up and when I should stay quiet, help me to be careful in my language, help me to not be consumed by passion without mercy, energy without intentionality, righteousness without love.

Help me to stand up for what I believe, and stay true to who I am, but also to express what I believe with the fruits of love, patience, kindness, mercy.

Even if it means holding my tongue just a little tighter to the roof of my mouth.

Week 2: Talking to Gatsby

“Can’t repeat the past?” [Gatsby] cried incredulously.  “Why of course you can.”

“You can’t hide who you are,” the freshmen I met the first week of school told me the very next week.  “Your name is Kenneth.”

I had always wondered why every person I ever meet seems to feel this insane urge to call me by my legal name.  I was born Kenneth Matthew Xu, on the same day as my dad, Kenneth Cheng Xu, in Shady Grove Hospital in Rockville, Maryland.  But my preferred name has always been Kenny.  Kenneth was the name of a 45-year old white-collar professional living in Connecticut.  Kenny was youth – how I viewed myself.

Furthermore, whenever I tell anyone that I come from Virginia and that I am a ‘Southern’ boy, my friends would always loudly interject that I’m actually a Northerner from Princeton, NJ, and that Virginia is not even in the South anyway.  (I would vehemently disagree and an argument would ensue for like the sixty-thousandth time.)

One time, I was talking to a girl and my friends suddenly felt the need to break the ice by telling the entire table about my exploits with a card game that I play.  Nerd alert!

You don’t get to choose your own nicknames; they’re chosen for you.  This week’s nickname for me was “Old Man Kenneth.”  It was because of last week’s blog post, where I talked about how I felt so old in comparison to the youthful buzz of the freshmen around me.  There’s a certain truth to that nickname.  In many cases, I act like an old man.  I’m constantly uber-reflective of my situation.  I ponder things way too hard.  I certainly don’t behave my age but perhaps the age of someone in their late-30s, set to undergo midlife crisis.  But I deny it.

Jay Gatz told everybody he was raised in Oxford, but he was really born in the Upper Midwest to poor parents.  He changed his name to the more refined-sounding “Gatsby” and put up an image of an upper-class elite that nevertheless rejected him.  Tom Buchanan, the symbol of Old Money in The Great Gatsby, said that “no man that ever went to Oxford owns a pink suit.”  In a way you feel sorry for Jay Gatsby, determined to make himself in the image of who he thought his beloved Daisy would want him to be.

“You put up this image of who you are,” my friend told me for the seventh time one night, “depending on who you’re talking to.”

Honestly, what is the significance of me hailing from New Jersey compared to Richmond, VA?  Why do I nevertheless insist on being a ‘Southern’ boy?  Is it because I see myself archetypally confined to the Southern mentality?  But I’m not.

Maybe I’m just listening to too much Country music.  You know – the endless glorification of small towns and Georgia girls and bars that I don’t even go to (“WE ARE SUB-FREE!” was the closing line to the first RLO email I ever got).  It probably contributes to my desire to see myself as this real man’s man – you know, chopping wood all day.  But maybe that just simply is not who I am.  Just maybe.  (But dang, those guitar licks!)

Not that I am somehow less masculine than the average man – I am certainly not! – but that possibly I may be veering too far into building my own self-image, rather than letting my image build me.  No matter what, The Great Gatsby teaches us, the past catches up with us somehow.  Jay Gatz’s roots come back to bite him when he forcefully asks Daisy to fully deny that she ever loved anyone else besides him.  He wants her not only to renounce her present but also her past – in his eyes, his past.  She can’t do it.  And then, after Gatsby is assassinated by a jealous man, the narrator gets a call.  It is Mr. Gatz – Jay’s father.  Jay never talked about his father, ever.  And yet he must come to reckon with who he is, as the child of this man.

For the longest time, I denied my Asian-ness, diminished it.  Then, a year ago, I decided that I couldn’t hide it anymore (I know guys, I’m Asian).  I published an article explaining my struggles with wanting to be White.  Months later, an Asian girl who I met at a YAF conference in Atlanta texted me.  She had read my article.  She told me she, too, struggled with a feeling of racial inferiority.  She told me my article helped her get out of that funk.  This is the reason why I write, folks.

I always tell people to be authentic to themselves.  That means standing up for what they believe in.  And I guarantee you, it was very difficult to come out as a conservative at Davidson.  As I’ve explained in many articles.  People often want to only reveal the parts of their identity that seem popular and cool, that impress girls and stamp LinkedIn resumes.  It’s much harder to stay true to the whole of yourself.  It’s something I still struggle with.

But Jay Gatsby believed in that idea that he could reinvent himself to become anyone, anything, that his past wouldn’t matter.  Isn’t that, fundamentally, the American Dream?  That you can forget the past and strain towards something greater?  Is that not even what St. Paul said in Philippians, running the race forward and not back?

Reinvention is not something inherently bad.  But it’s important that, when we try our “new me” out, that we don’t forget about where we come from.

And as the boy who made up my own Pokemon and wrote books at recess while all the cool kids were out playing soccer, as the boy who dreamed of becoming a full-time author in an age when other guys were thinking about their first kiss, as the boy who near-constantly fell in love at an age where the other guys were only thinking about their next drunken hookup, I have a lot of past to reckon with.

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Week 1: Youth, or Why We Should All Act Like Freshmen

The activities fair glows with bustle, with wide-eyed freshmen and phosphorescent idealism raining down upon the whole of the crowd at Davidson College.  One two-hour shift where any and all things are possible, where people can get lost into their dreams and commit the cardinal sin of indulging their whimsical fantasies of what their life would be like if they did Crew and Ada Jenkins and Ultimate Frisbee and Mock Trial – before their life actually hits and their imagination succumbs to the near-dogmatic work overload that turns a freshman into a bed-ridden octogenarian with dementia by October.

I soak it all in from a distance, remembering those days when I was in their shoes, scurrying around with my new friends and crushing on every P.Y.T. that ever invited me to come talk to them at their table.   I wonder why college can’t be like the fantasy I had imagined as a freshman.  Why do all the upperclassmen I know have to approach it with such harried cynicism?  Why can’t we be sent to one eternal loop of the first week of my first year, where I met my roommate, met my friends, and met a girl all at the same time?  Isn’t that feeling we all want, the feeling of freshness, of living life anew, basking in the attention of everyone trying to court us to this and that opportunity, knowing we can’t take everything but signing up for it all anyway like a carefree kid picking daises in the open field?

I drove down from Richmond to Davidson, NC, last Friday, to enter into the portal of my Junior Year of college.  The whole way, I was singing country songs.  “Unforgettable” by Thomas Rhett was on repeat, the country crooner singing about the moment when he met his beloved.  I remember distinctly the moment I turned off the interstate into a North Carolina cornfield, the first one I had seen in three months.  It was in that moment when I felt distinctly awed.  The leaves were brushing me by on this one-lane county road with a dinky old gas station propped up to my left and a long winding dirt path to my right.  My windshield was clear as the daylight screened out over the horizon, just me and the road and the New 103.7 – Country’s Hottest Hits – streamed in my car.  Free and Easy Down the Road I Go.

YAF was at the top of my mind, of course.  Over the summer I had worked for YAF for three months, and I wanted desperately to take everything I learned and cake it over campus like a large pie.  I feel so invigorated about YAF – but more importantly, I feel invigorated about the freshmen.  The newly orientated fresh fish, still open-minded in the most genuine of terms, open-minded and needy, needy for the principles that YAF would bring onto them.  I feel confident I have the best team I’ve ever had in my entire life.  I feel big.  I feel like I can really make a difference.  It’s times like these when I have to turn to God for my smallness, and yet I feel like He has empowered me to make a change, to cut through the chaff of this school’s politically correct culture and speak truth to power.

I’ve always been a guy motivated by my ability to make a difference.  If I can make an impact, I will attack at it with all my passion and all my heart.  The first day I was back, a senior approached me at the Union gym.  He told me what I write online inspires him, because I tell the truth, even if it’s unpopular.  Today I was told the same thing, from another student, who said that she could tell that no matter what I said, I could be confident that I am not sinning here, because she knows that I’m coming at it from a place of love.  How beautiful, how wonderful is that?  I feel the need to shout to my Creator, “God, I don’t deserve this.”

I feel young.  Like I can fly.

I’ve resolved this year to stop overanalyzing things.  To stop worrying so much.  I think Davidson culture is way too conducive to worry and frustration.  Last year I got sucked into that mental framework.  I took every situation I was ever in with a girl I liked way too overboard.  My friends would describe the “Kenny face” to me with jarring precision – me, splayed out over a couch, look up at the ceiling with my eyes glazed-open focused at nothing apparent in the middle-distance, overthinking, overhypothesizing, underdoing.  You know what that made me feel?  Old.  Paralyzed.  Unable to move and unable to move on.  This week I made a conscious decision to change that.

Maybe I am simply enamored with the newness.  Maybe I am searching for something that I can’t have – youth.  But it is ironic how we college students are in the prime of our lives and yet still feeling so old, so weary, so lost in our own problems.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Not every day is going to be two hours at the activities fair – but maybe, it’s time for we old upperclassmen to take a page from the optimistic idealism that defines our first week.  To go driving down the cornfield, breeze in your hair, not a worry on your mind.

 

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The Honor of Being Conservative

February 27th, 2017 was the day I was targeted by a political smear operation, one that has in many ways defined my journey and search for wisdom over the next six months of my life.  It was Student Government election day, and I was running for Senate.  On that day, a senior at my college by the name of Nicholas Trevino posted a long rant on the Davidson College Facebook page disparaging me for my outspoken conservatism, quoting fragments of articles that I had published on the Web to support his attack.  His post was crafted specifically to convince college students not to vote for me.  I lost my race for Senate.  He graduated in May.

I remember my friends gathered around my dorm room, staring intently at the screen, monitoring the situation with laser-like focus, as if in a war room.  The blinds were closed; the door was shut.  They were all looking at each other as the comments streamed one after another, knowing that not only they but half the school was watching everything unfold; then one of them tried cracking a joke.

“This is only like the tenth time you’ve been through this, eh, Kenny?” he said.

My friends all looked back at me, the glow of the screen illuminating my face like a pallid lantern, casting the spotlight on me in the dimly lit room.

“More than that,” I replied grimly.

But still I knew, even though I had been through the social media wringer many times before, that this time it was different.  Before, it was an article that I wrote, an idea I put forth, and I could separate my ideas from myself.  But this one was a character assassination; it was aimed at my very person.  It was aimed at taking me down, every part of me, deconstructing me and reducing me to whatever vision of the college Nicholas had where I never existed, where I had instead accepted my scholarship to Wheaton College and lived 4 years in a cloistered Christian environment, never to bother people like him and his friends with my toxic “views.”

It was at that moment when it finally clicked, that I had done something.  A swell of pride erupted from within me, and I thanked my God for His beneficence.

Give credit where its due: Nicholas had, in his blatant attempt to damage me, instead awakened in me something irreplaceable, that only comes upon a select, blessed few: my honor.

Honor is a difficult concept to define, but at its core, it is adherence to the good, the right.  It requires both a solid knowledge of what is good and right and a devotion to that knowledge.  American college students largely live in a dishonorable world, one where the reality of one Truth has been shunned in favor of the more socially passable falsehood of multiculturalism, of the logically laughable but appallingly insurgent celebration of “subjective truths.”

The challenge of the conservative is to, as William F. Buckley says, “stand athwart history, yelling stop.”  It is to sift through the lies harped on by our educational establishments and our news media and guide them to truth.  It also comes with great social cost.  Standing up for truth will inevitably mean fewer friends, fewer likes on Facebook, and a smaller dating pool.  I once received a 5000 word essay in my inbox from a girl who hated my guts so much she swore to tell her friends not to befriend me – all because I published an article about masculinity.

That’s why I believe conservatives need to recover the sense of honor that I was blessed to receive on that February day.  If conservatism is the ideology of truth, then liberalism is the ideology of peer pressure.  Socialism is what looks cool to hipster liberals who fawn over Che Guevara and his genocidal mania.  White Privilege is an empty ideology nothing more than popular white people virtue-signaling that they are “woke” before they get their job in banking.*  Social Justice is no justice at all, but a rhetorical strategy that sounds nice when you’re trying to hook up with that girl at a frat party.  Liberals have popularity, coolness, and the backing of the administration on their side… what do conservatives have if not their honor?

And yet that honor is enough.  A conservative’s guide is his moral and truth compass, and that is enough.  Conservatives now risk so much just to say the truth in the middle of a sea of hatred and intolerance of their views.  It makes a conservative that much stronger in life to go through these trials, to have to endure violence and hardship for the sake of standing up for truth.  It also makes him a leader.  Conservatives should take pride in the amount of hate that we get.  When my Black Lives Matter hall counselor assailed me for saying that America is the greatest country in the world, I was ready to back up what I said with facts and figures – but she didn’t want to hear it.  She just wanted to silence me.  But I won’t be silenced.  I have enormous pride in what I believe in – because unlike most progressives, whose intersectionality narrative is so intellectually fragile they have to censor other people to keep it afloat, I’m confident that what I believe in is true.  I don’t have to shut you down to know that I am right (though feel free to debate me.  I’ve never turned down a debate!)

Not only should conservatives recognize the sufficiency of their honor, but they should recognize its desirability.  Among men, the true conservative has no equal – devotion to one’s faith, self-discipline, and confidence being its essence.  While progressives show how easily manipulated they are by the media, going berserk over something so inane as a mostly-Caucasian White House intern photo, conservatives can take quiet assurance that their views at least don’t stoop to this level of baseness and cynical identity politics.  Our calmness in times of trouble, our steadfastness, are rare and attractive qualities in an infantile America, “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” (Ephesians 4:14)

Because of our honor, we are made freer and more golden than our liberal counterparts.  The Biblical wisdom never fails: “you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) Our devotion to truth gives us the freedom to release ourselves from the chains of social status and become trailblazers.  I have no better example to quote than myself: ever since breaking free of popular opinion, I have been able to express myself in ways I would have never else thought possible.  And with every hateful comment I receive in return, there is one who privately messages me, telling me to keep it up.  On the other hand, the Leftist is chained to his community, unable to say anything nonconformist for fear of pissing someone else off.  The spark that I see light up in the freshmen’s eyes when they first come to a Young Americans for Freedom conference can sustain me five, ten years.

We are also made more beautiful by our honor.  And I mean that in every sense of the word.  Conservative women are by far the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.  I have to agree with The Federalist’s Henry Scanlon here when he says “The young women who attend CPAC are spectacular. No kidding: What’s up with this concentration of incredibly attractive young, conservative women?” (In rather hilarious contrast, he also points out that the conservative men generally look like they “seem to be trying out for the part of the overtaxed congressional aide in this season of ‘Veep’.”) Conservative women, who understand and exploit the wonderful God-given differences between men and women, carry themselves with such poise and grace that we lucky men cannot help but fall for them.  And instead of talking like a perpetually harried soul buried by the tracks of the patriarchy, they talk like truly liberated women, utilizing every tool in their uniquely feminine vocabulary to make idiot men like me chase after them like drooling dogs fighting for the bone on the other side of the pond.  Ladies, it has been an honor to be friends with so many of you, and to even have the occasional privilege of taking a gracious few of you on dates.

(By the way, if you’re triggered by that previous paragraph, you should really come to a conservative conference.)

Finally, a conservative’s honor is worth it in it of itself.  We are the people of our generation standing up for truth amidst a post-truth world (a fault on both sides of the political aisle).  There is no guarantee of America’s freedom – no divine endowment upon America, no Abrahamic promise.  We are the only ones standing between our country and its ruins, tossed in the wind and left to be excavated as the Roman Empire was, due to moral decay and the destruction of truth.

Oh, there is so much to do!  A conservative’s strength is in his honor – but we must not waste it.  We must clamber on, driving forward, standing strong, a mast in a heady wind, a rock amidst rain – that is the only way we can save our country.  That is the honorable man’s responsibility.

 

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Only Conservatism Can Save the Poor Black Community

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I walk the streets of Baltimore on a sunny Monday afternoon, taking in the draught of two worlds violently enmeshed together in this city of simultaneous, and often paradoxical, eminence and decay. Only one look upwards at the old steeples and pastel rowhouses reminds me of the city’s richness, the city of Poe and Fitzgerald and the newly beautified Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose 2015 book Between the World and Me launched him into the upper echelon of Black American voices…

The Top Ten Country Artists Perfect for Cracking Open a Cold Non-Alcoholic Beverage with the Boys

As the days get longer and the tanlines get darker, I thought it nothing short of my civic duty to give my definitive ranking of the country artists that will make any cowboy in his blue jeans pick up a cold [Pepsi] and party it up in a cornfield.  Whether you’re celebrating America’s birthday in the bed of a tractor or in a [soda] bar in the middle of small town USA, you’ll find my absolutely final and authoritative ranking of the best country artists to be useful to your frolicking exploits.  So grab your girl, grab your… dude, and have a good time to the tunes that will be blasting out of every tailgate from now through the end of SEC football.

These are the top ten country artists you need to listen to this Independence Day to make you go America AF with the boys:

10. Sam Hunt

 

Like smooth football players-turned hunky musicians?  Like chillin’ it out with a [Coke] and your girl while driving on a back road?  Care for an injection of R&B and Dubstep to your country fare?  Sam Hunt’s got a groove for you.  Especially if you’ve just broken up with someone.  He’s got like half of his catalogue devoted to that.

Tracks to Love: “Body Like a Back Road” is a real candidate for song of the summer. “Cop Car” is a neatly written ode to forbidden love, country-style.

Tracks to Avoid: “Take Your Time,” despite being the song that got him on the map, is clunky, wordy, and about as country as your yoga-loving cousin from San Francisco.

9.  Kelsea Ballerini

 

The queen of country-crossover pop, her honeysuckle-sweet voice and weird obsession with males in baseball caps will make you really really sad that you’re single.  But you deny she’s got spunk and just enough juice for you to rule the square dance at the annual Sherri’s Country BBQ hoedown.

Tracks to Love: “Dibs” is a cute way to see that women are actually just as romantically anxious as your sorry self!  “Yeah Boy” is the affirmation you need to go get that crush of yours.

Tracks to Avoid: Besides being like to fourth single this year to be entitled “Peter Pan,” this song is a glorification of never growing up and breaking hearts in the process.  Grow up, guys.  Please.  Society needs us.

8. Billy Currington

 

Curly-haired and wide-eyed, Billy Currington is who you listen to when you’re really angsty and just want somebody to relate to your predicament.  He specializes in the earnest, gushy jams that you would never sing to your girl because she’ll think you’re Oprah or something.

Tracks to Love: “It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To” is actually country gold, with heartfelt lyrics and classy instrumentation.  “Do I Make You Wanna” is for when you’re on your front porch, sippin’ on sweet tea and thinking about getting out of the friendzone.

Tracks to Avoid: “We Are Tonight” was stolen from Sam Hunt, and personally I like Sam Hunt’s version better.

7. Old Dominion

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This is a pretty new band, but Old Dominion’s debut Meat and Candy is simply so catchy that I couldn’t not include them on this list, despite the fact that their debut is named Meat and Candy.  Perfect band for driving a 4-wheeler down to a lake and going fishing shirtless with your bros.

Tracks to Love: “Wrong Turns” is an arena-ready anthem with clever lyrics about making wrong turns to spend more time with your girl?  “Nowhere Fast” is another driving analogy about a relationship destined to crash and burn – supplemented by intuitive guitar and emotional piano.

Tracks to Avoid: “Song for Another Time” should be saved for another time.

6. Cole Swindell

 

When I first heard him, I thought his voice was nasal and scratchy.  But that’s all part of his down-home charm – he’s a clever son of a gun who has a freaking way with words and Southern stereotypes.  And whiskey.  This is a non-alcoholic zone.  Yeesh.

Tracks to Love: A long time ago, I once took a girl to a lunch and she played “Blue Lights,” the first time I ever heard that song.  The girl didn’t work out, but the song stuck.  Also “Flatliner” gets catchier every time you play it.

Tracks to Avoid:  “Let Me See Ya Girl” is unfortunately all too generic for an artist as clever as Cole.

5. Blake Shelton

 

Man, he just don’t give a crap!  The seasoned country vet has appeared on The Voice, and probably plenty of other places I’m too lazy to research.  Blakey-Blake’s signature pipes always sound like he’s wavering between ice-cold country crooner and total broooo.

Tracks to Love: “Every Time I Hear that Song” is probably one of the catchiest earworms this side of “California Gurls.”  “Came Here to Forget” tells this cool story of a couple meeting after getting dumped by their exes, and then sending revenge Snapchats back to them.  Who says country ain’t modern?

Tracks to Avoid: “Guy With a Girl” takes itself, and whoever the girl is, way too seriously.  I mean I’ve heard more than my fair share of “I’m just lucky to have you” country anthems, but this one is tackier than most.

4. Luke Bryan

 

I know what my boys are thinkin’ – WHAAT?  Only #4?  True, I think Luke’s got some superior competition coming along – but hey, the king of booty-shaking dance moves in a barn can’t be too far down below the top spot.

Tracks to Love: “Roller Coaster” is probably his best cut out of his megahit album Crash My Party, with its inventive analogy and wild vibes.  “Fast” is an ironically slow-paced anthem about the kind of car you want to drive and kid you want for your baseball team.  Oozes manliness.

Tracks to Avoid: IF I EVER HAVE TO HEAR “HUNTING FISHING AND LOVING EVERY DAY” ON THE RADIO AGAIN I’M GONNA GO FULL KANYE. NEVER GO FULL KANYE.

3. Zac Brown Band

 

I’m a little biased because I saw them in concert, but my goodness they were good.  Zac Brown Band can basically do anything.  They can do small town bluegrass and party anthems for the All-American Party alike.

Tracks to Love: “Homegrown” is the song I can play over and over again.  “As She’s Walking Away” is Zac Brown’s answer to any guy worried about getting rejected.  So, any guy.

Tracks to Avoid: This might violate 22 different country music dogmas, but I never found “Chicken Fried” as cool as Zac Brown’s other cuts.  Please don’t slaughter me alive…

2. Keith Urban

 

Keith Urban was the dude who got me into country music.  My friends mock me relentlessly for loving an artist who’s not even American, but you know what?  Without Keith, I never would’ve even found country music, back in January of 2016.  Plus, his guitar solos are sick.

Tracks to Love: “Somewhere In My Car” I have defined definitively as the best country song ever.  What’s more relatable than jamming with a dude thinking about a girl in his car??  “Once In A Lifetime” is absolute madness in the best possible way.

Tracks to Avoid: His newest hit “Blue Ain’t Your Color” could use a little color.

1. Dierks Bentley

 

Ah, Dierks.  So we’ve reached the end of this list.  So much I could say about you.  First I laughed at your name.  Then I laughed at your voice.  Finally I realized that Dierks is probably the most creative bro with the best lyrical chops I’ve ever encountered in God’s great industry of country music.  And now you’re number one.

Tracks to Love: Um, just two?  “Black” is beautiful, contemporary, and lush.  “5-1-5-0,” on the other hand, is a rambunctious joyride of energy and risky [non-alcoholic, obviously] business.

Tracks to Avoid: “Different for Girls.”  Just listen to it.  And then you’ll know.

 

 

Honorable Mentions: Lady Antebellum, Thomas Rhett, Kenny Chesney, Brett Eldredge, Jake Owen

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Think Twice Before Throwing Around the “R” Word

The term “Racism” is a loaded one, and for good reason too: racism has legitimately tainted the brunt of America’s history.  There’s no denying the struggles of enslavement to lynching to civil rights today.  It is true that at least to some extent, the shadow of racism lingers on, deeply – perhaps too deeply.

While researching, I recently encountered a study on racial attitudes from White Americans on people of color entitled “Crime and the Racial Fears of White Americans.” Research methodology aside, I discovered one word that the scholars used consistently, and even defined, in a way that’s highly problematic: the term “prejudice.” The scholars defined the word “prejudice” in a very sly but misleading way, and put that definition in the paper’s abstract: prejudice is “opposition to school and neighborhood integration.”  In this case, prejudice, which is inherently a negative term, is associated not with attitudes towards Blacks but attitudes towards a policy that impacts Blacks.  This use of the term “prejudiced Whites” is repeated throughout the article despite the fact that Whites could be, and are, opposed to forced integration policy for reasons that have nothing to do with race (for example, that it is an overreach of federal authority, because it wastes money, etc.).

The use, and implementation of blanket negative descriptors even to people and situations that don’t embody those descriptors has always been a problem, but recently, in today’s politics of outrage, this problem has been amplified via the blanket (and entirely inappropriate) overuse of the word “racism.”  In 2013, Guardian author and progressive Reniqua Allen implored her readers to stop throwing around the term “racist” to call out merely insensitive actions and word.  “Racism” causes White Americans to lash out defensively, she admits, but often justifiably – because their actions are overwhelmingly not constitutive of actual racism.  Wearing a sombrero at a party might be insensitive to Latino students, but they’re not embodying Richard Spencer.

In fact, Allen goes on to argue that incessant calling out of people for racism actually harms achieving racial justice.  By attacking scapegoats, the liberal community risks alienating the very people who they want to help fight with them against the threats of real racism, says Allen.

Since 2013, however, Allen’s warning to liberals hasn’t gone very far.  The poorly titled Atlantic article in 2016, “The Cost of Balancing Academia and Racism,” makes this error an unfathomable amount of times, such as in this quote: “research has shown that the higher-education experience often requires that black students employ even more grit than their white peers if they want to achieve both in the classroom and outside of it, where they have to overcome stereotype threat and straight-up racism.”  What is, may I ask, “straight-up racism?”  She never defines it.  She doesn’t want to, because the trick of it all is that hardball words like “racism” are enough to express the outrage she wants to express – at the expense of precision of language.

It’s sad that journalists resort to the shoehorning of language in order to force their narrative.  Consider even this article by PBS’ journalist Sean McElwee on “The Hidden Racism of Young White Americans.”   What this article actually accomplishes is not much more than a haphazard, sad conflation of statistics showing mere racial bias (such as “Black people are lazier than Whites,”) and statements that reflect possibly idealistic but certainly not racist worldviews (such as “Blacks face little Discrimination”) in a portion of the White populace.  And yet the label expressed by the title?  Racism.  Attitudes that may be merely race-neutral, or cynical at worst, are hereby classified as racist.  The widespread bait-and-switch going on with progressive rhetoric surrounding race has infected the supposedly highest arbiters of public information, or should I say, misinformation.

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Fathers, Sons, The Crisis of Masculinity

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Why we need a return to true fatherhood.

With “Despacito,” Justin Bieber Has Finally Won Over this Longtime Critic

Once upon a time, I was in middle school, desperate to prove my place among the vicious social circles of self-important tween boys.  Justin Bieber had just released his first megahit, “Baby.”  All the girls were listening to it, professing their crushes on him and his big flap of puppy-dog hair.  My boys and I, jealous for their attention, began to mercilessly mock him, using “Baby” as the butt of pretty much every joke we made about pretty much everything.  Even when the Beebs pivoted intentionally towards a more “adult” sound (after all, his prepubescent pipes couldn’t last forever), I laughed him off.  And after he got plastered all over the tabloids, arrested for drinking and driving and partying like a nut, seeing his life fall apart like the broken hearts he wrote about (including Selena’s… whoops I went there), I dismissed him entirely as just another teen pop star gone off the wayside.  Think a male Miley Cyrus.  I smh’ed and lamented the sordid state of teen celebrity culture.  I prayed that God would rapture us quickly so we wouldn’t have to witness the inevitable Justin Bieber / Jaden Smith entitled-rich-kids collab (oh wait… they already did that in a “Never Say Never” remix… and I never want to hear it again).

Then Justin released probably the most surprising album, personally, in the past five years: his tour de force, Purpose (Deluxe).  At first, I greeted Purpose with the same amount of skepticism as I had everything else he had written up to this point.  Then I heard “What Do U Mean” on the radio.  I was like “holy crap, who’s this?”  When I realized it was none less than the Beebs himself, I felt an entire sector of my brain crumble into the nether, Inside Out-like.  My childhood was bashing Bieber at school, bashing Bieber playing video games, bashing Bieber at church… and now he dares to release something catchy and appealing to me and my world spun right round.  But it was undeniable: “What Do U Mean?” is sweet, electronically-tinged, and especially beautiful on acoustic – and Justin’s supple and breathy vocals add, rather than detract, to its production.

Almost as if hoping for this to be an aberration, I listened to Purpose by myself at a fitness center in my dad’s apartment in Baltimore, red-faced, hoping no one would step in and see me even for the miniscule possibility that they would catch me listening to Beebs.  I was stupefied.  “Sorry” was an exercise in pop engineering at its finest.  “The Feeling” with Halsey (of “Closer” fame) experimented successfully with lush atmospherics and sky-soaring duet vocals.  And my favorite cut of them all, the silky-savage “Love Yourself,” is a total roast disguised as a feel-good positivity song.  Its vicious satire not only of the poor girl he’s singing about but also cheesy positivity songs in general.  “Love Yourself” is the ultimate in lyrical genius, mixing with a minimalist texture that grows with every listen.  One can almost hear him growl under those husky pipes.  Well done, Beebs.

But it wasn’t until a couple days ago when Justin forced his way into my life again, this time in his sultry new remix of a Latin jam, “Despacito” (by Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber).  YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS SONG.  Honestly, here’s the link.  Reggaeton in essence and urban in production, Bieber shows off his Spanish vibes in this song to smooth thrills and seductive heights.  He sings:

Come and move that in my direction

So thankful for that, it’s such a blessin’, yeah

With a hook so cool and infused with suaveness, I can’t help but dance a little, the way I always do when Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors” comes on.  When I compare anything to the finest song in the world, “Mirrors,” you know you’re doing a good job.

I have to hand it to you, Beebs.  You were cynically typecast as a tween-pop idol-turned debauched partyboy, and you turned even that around to release some of the most innovative singles that have touched my ears.  “Love Yourself” and “Sorry.” “What Do U Mean.”  And now, the summer’s hottest new jam, “Despacito.”  I’ve been spinning this song twenty times since I was introduced to it.  This thing is spicier than Sean Spicer, y’all.  Justin Bieber, the singer who I had grown up with and relentlessly criticized most of my life, has dragged me, kicking and screaming, into this awkward, reluctant fandom, one that doesn’t feel right and yet one that I can’t deny.  His music has emerged from being panned by the men of my generation to becoming the club jam we listen to on the dancefloor and the radio.  Yes, this is the day I admit it, but you can officially call me a fan.

Dare I say, a Belieber.

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We’ve Lost Our Love for the Humanities

When I was six years old, I discovered writing.  I wrote a tiny little vignette in the elementary school newspaper called “Winter is Coming” – and I knew, from that point on, that writing and me were meant to be.  Since then, I’ve written almost unceasingly, including seven novels, countless short stories, and this website.  Writing, if nothing else, is my true passion, the spark that lights my fire.  It is this passion – Eros – that I would want any higher educational system to harness and turn into meaningful work.

However, we live in an age that discredits, deconstructs, and ultimately devalues the notion of Eros.  Eros – the term from which we get the word erotic – in the simplest sense, signifies the Greek term for “passionate love”.  In the classical sense, Eros implies three qualities: imagination, which begets passion, grandeur, which justifies passion, and commitment, which maintains and ultimately rewards passion.  It is in these three qualities of Eros in which I believe our culture has strayed.

For this article, I define the humanities as the expressions of meaning that stems from the pursuit and practice of Eros love.  Every work of genius – every great painting, every great musical composition, and yes, every great scientific theory and mathematical breakthrough is an act of Eros love realized to a creative end.  It is true that I define the humanities beyond art, or literature, or music – that I include the sciences and mathematics as well.  But it is the way in which these subjects are taught, not the subjects themselves, that categorize a learning opportunity as part of the humanities.  Are these subjects being taught in a way that emphasizes the pursuit of the universal, that encourages its students to dream big and commit bigger?  Is it Eros at the heart of every class, every college experience?

I assert that most of what we learn on college campuses today is not just separate from the humanities, but antithetical to its pursuit.  Our government-industrial complex treats education as a career mill, rather than an opportunity to fully probe the depths of the imagination.  Our school departments reinforce provincial race/gender/sexuality critiques that sap the grandeur out of a humanities education.     It all adds up to the gradual decay of Eros in our age, and with it, the passionate love that has always defined and given meaning to the pursuit of the humanities.

The Career Mill

[image error] What is the purpose of public colleges such as UCLA (pictured above)?

The devaluation of Eros starts with the devaluation of the imagination.  A UCLA study concludes that “freshmen now list getting a better job as the most important reason to go to college in an annual UCLA survey of first-year students… Previously, the top reason was learning about things that interest them.”  In the Era of the Great Recession, with jobs becoming ever scarcer to an increasingly educated labor supply, more and more students are willing to trade the pursuits that spark the stirrings of their imagination for the ones they deem higher-paying.

These trends reflect a larger societal debate over the purpose of college and the government’s role in education the public.  On February 28th, 1967, then-Governor of California Ronald Reagan famously said that “taxpayers should not be subsidizing intellectual curiosity” but should be only contributing when the state has interest (i.e., when the student can get a productive job from his/her degree).  The movement to change the mission of the university from one of the pursuit of knowledge to the pursuit of a career had its roots in even earlier figures, however.  Booker T. Washington argued that for the Negro to progress, “knowledge must be harnessed to the things of real life.”  Both modern progressivism and modern conservatism contains some powerful arguments for a college system devoted to careers.

But put this debate in scale: we’re talking about a person’s life here.  One has four years to get an education in anything they seek; one has the rest of his or her life to go to work.  Must we tack on the first four years of one’s adulthood onto the career grind?

Unfortunately, the reality of our societal emphasis on degree-getting and the high cost of college make my wish that people would pursue that which sparks their imagination… well, a wish.  Many others would weigh those factors and choose the less imaginatively satisfying but more lucrative major in a heartbeat, and I can’t blame them.

There is something truly tragic about our reality, however.  Because it is one thing when a college seeks to assist students in finding careers.  It is another when a college rebrands its entire ecosystem for that purpose – and then students buy into it.  And yet, here we are.  Ever since the movement to turn colleges into glorified career centers gained steam, we’ve witnessed music centers closing, history libraries gaining cobwebs, and Adam Gopnik forced to defend his own English major.  And as long as students continue to believe, as politicians and government incentives believe, that their imaginative pursuits come secondarily to a high-paying job, we’ll continue to see the humanities get the short end of the stick.

For the humanities to survive, we need to return to an educational experience that values the curious expression of the imagination.  “The reward” for reading, Gopnik argues, “is that it remains the one kind of time travel that works, where you make a wish and actually become a musketeer in Paris or a used-car salesman in Pennsylvania.”  Gopnik argues that the imagination allows for a sort of vicarious experience essential to the pursuit of all greatness.  The power of big dreaming is that those who dream big may one day see their dreams become reality (with interest), while those who don’t dream will never accomplish even that which they do dream (with apologies to Matthew 25:29).

Illusions of Grandeur

[image error] Should art be used to push a political agenda?

The loss of Eros in our culture extends farther than governments and politicians and businessmen, however – this malaise has infected even academia, and precisely the very departments that we would never think would take their eyes off the ball.  And yet, the contemporary trend among the so-called “humanities departments” is to provincialize, to flout the transcendent grandeur at the heart of Eros and sell themselves out to none other than… politics.

May I present to you the Race/Gender/Sexuality critique, which I will abbreviate the “RGS” critique, as one of the exemplars of this provincialization.  To all the college neophytes out there, the RGS critique is a particular kind of focus in higher education that emphasizes the social construction of experience through the lens of privilege and oppression.  The RGS critique has stemmed from a number of disparate sources, but most prominently from the post-structuralist Foucaultian emphasis on ideas being agglomerates of cultural pressures and Eric Hobsbawm / E.P. Thompson’s Marxist “New Left” doctrine.  In short, it is a critique born and bred in the world of politics, and it’s not particularly subtle about it, either.

Advocates for the RGS critique claim that we need a political critique because the reality is that politically oppressed voices have historically been suppressed in the humanities fields.  I certainly recognize that these voices need to be expanded and that many of these concerns are fair and legitimate.  However, the RGS critique has become more than a way for oppressed voices to break into the field; it has become in many ways the dominant drive of the field itself.  And that is why I have become concerned.

How pervasive is the RGS critique within the humanities?  In a startling analysis of North Carolina public universities’ English departments, Pope Center scholar Jay Schalin studied the ideological tendencies of English professors, particularly whether they were influenced more by RGS critiques or more traditional critiques.  After leafing through the published papers of all these professors, he concluded that an astounding 69 percent of English professors in NC public universities currently publish and teach from the RGS critique, a dominant – and silencing – majority within the department.  The policies of many college English departments reflect this overwhelming seizure of the study of English.  In just one example, UCLA ditched its requirements in Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer for its English majors and replaced it with a requirement “in total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.”

Whether you believe in the oppression structure emblemized by the RGS critique or not, if the humanities wants to slip out of its funk and return to its purpose of instilling Eros in its students, then it must escape the hegemonic reign of politics over the arts; it must represent itself as something more. With the RGS critique, we’re being fed a framework so tied up in the politics of the day that it lacks any sort of transcendence, any sense of grandeur beyond the immediate political needs of the now.  When we invariably replace the pursuit of the transcendent with the interests of the provincial at a rate such as this, we corrode the deep longing for grandeur at the heart of Eros in favor of narrow identity politics.

Today’s politics is draining, soulless, and cynical.  To wed the humanities with the game of politics is to sap the majesty and grandeur from it – to bastardize the original, erotic, purpose of pursuing the humanities in the first place.

Relationship Problems

[image error] What are the consequences of a commitment-free world?

Reversing the course of the humanities was never going to be easy.  But there is one particular cultural trend that I fear will make any attempt all the more fruitless.  Our culture has grown increasingly skeptical of commitment – the same commitment at the heart of Eros, the same commitment that enables works of Eros to be produced as projects of the humanities.

Our increasingly isolating cultural tendencies have made us warier of building relationships with other people.  As Americans moved out from longtime communities and split themselves into nuclear structures, they removed themselves from the intergenerational bonds that had used to inform their human connections.  We began to isolate ourselves, valuing flexibility and economy of living over the community bonds that raised us.  As such, we trust less; we commit less.

Social media was introduced to us as a way to rebuild these connections.  And yet these are “connections” without commitment, friendships with the ability to block the other person out of your life with the touch of a button.  Perhaps that is its appeal.  Even as we’ve expanded our friend list to the thousands over Facebook and Instagram, a new study points out that we actually have fewer close commitments than before, keeping an average of only 2 best friends into adulthood, down from 3 twenty-five years ago.  Could it be that what’s really going on here is that we are becoming a culture afraid of making commitments, preferring to sit back on a screen, where we can enter and exit a conversation with such ease, instead of taking relational risks in the hopes of real connection?

And it’s not getting better the younger you go, either.  In college, the preferred way of asking someone out has become over text rather than in person, to lessen the blow of rejection – but also to highlight its impersonal nature.  Millennials are also having much more casual sex than their parents, as Brooke Wells, a scholar at Hunter College, explains: 38 percent today compared to 25 percent twenty years ago.  In today’s party culture, college students are freer to engage in physical “relationships” without any sort of emotional commitment, often hooking up with others in the hour they meet them.  Afraid of commitment, afraid of risk, afraid of pain, my generation is being taught to seek the momentary over the meaningful.

These particular relationship trends are bad for the humanities because Eros, the passionate love at the root of the humanities, implies a relationship view of knowledge – that the best way to access knowledge is to love pursuing it, to truly commit to it.  It was the passionate relationship he had with music that pushed a deaf Beethoven to draft an Ode to Joy.  It was their covenant with engineering that gave the Wright brothers the blueprint for an airplane.  Yet our culture preaches the opposite: comfort, at the expense of commitment.  When our culture no longer sees or values such dedication, then our culture has turned away from true passion, and thus, the Eros that keeps the humanities aflame.

What’s Next?

But there is a way in which we can read these cultural trends as a potential opportunity for the humanities.  In digitally-obsessed age, people are beginning to notice more and more the downfalls of living behind a screen – evidenced by their 40 percent higher loneliness rates and social isolation.  Even though millennials have more casual sex, they also have fewer partners – suggesting, at least according to Dr. Jean Twenge of San Diego University, that millennials maintain more friends with benefits, social grey areas that require the intervention of the humanities to define.  Similarly, the college emphasis on finding jobs has prompted a glut in the labor supply in STEM fields, causing jobless STEM majors to question the purpose of their four years of college.  And the overwhelming prevalence of the RGS critique has prompted many intellectual, liberal thinkers to question its place in the liberal arts.  Ironically, the de-eroticization of the world has resulted in a need, more than ever, for the humanities to come back in and redefine what has been currently gained – and lost.  It was not too long ago when J. Alfred Prufrock delivered his monologue of loneliness and “wasted years”; perhaps it is time for the next generation to step up and become prophets and preachers of a new age.

In Don DeLillo’s short story “Human Moments in World War III,” the narrator orbits the Earth on a satellite while the world is immolating itself in another World War.  When his transmitter picks up strange sound feedback, his central command attributes it to “selective noise.”  But the narrator pushes back.

“‘It was a voice,’ I told them.

‘We copy selective noise.’

‘Someone was talking, Colorado.’”

Out here, in the midst of this lonely expanse of space, the narrator must still grapple with the deepest questions that cling to every human on this Earth – and beyond it.  What is life?  What is human?  Even teetering on the edge of civilized life, in the deep and distant future, people will always need the humanities, because people will always be asking and attempting to answer the deep questions that probe the depths of one’s belief.  For the humanities’ power is its power to project the erotic essence of humankind – our fundamental desire to pursue something earnestly and passionately, to commit to something that sparks the imagination and harnesses in us a sense of grandeur.  Our culture, our academia, our government may devalue it now – but at the heart people will always need it.  That’s why, for all my criticisms of it, I still commit to the humanities.  I commit because I believe in it, because I believe in that first little spark in that poem that I wrote at the age of six.

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SOCIAL MEDIA NEEDS A DISRUPTION

 

 

Photo credits:

Cover photo: http://drwillsparks.com/2016/02/actualized-leadership-solitude/

UCLA: http://luskin.ucla.edu/urban-planning/

Identity Politics: http://www.thefeministwire.com/2016/08/william-ruhm/

Internet User: http://bgr.com/2014/05/29/smartphone-computer-usage-study-chart/

 

 

Works Cited:

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Walter Benjamin. N.p., 1936. Web. 07 May 2017.

Berrett, Dan. “The Day the Purpose of College Changed.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. N.p., 26 Jan. 2015. Web. 07 May 2017.

Bloom, Allan. Love and Friendship. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Print.

Capshaw, Ron. “Roger Scruton and the New Left.” National Review. National Review, 12 Dec. 2015. Web. 07 May 2017.

Dockterman, Eliana. “The ‘Hookup Generation’ Doesn’t Need a Boston College Class on Dating.” Time. Time, 19 May 2014. Web. 07 May 2017.

Entis, Laura. “Chronic Loneliness Is a Modern-Day Epidemic.” Fortune.com. Fortune, 22 Mar. 2017. Web. 07 May 2017.

Gopnik, Adam. “Why Teach English?” The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 05 May 2017. Web. 07 May 2017.

Murphy, Jan. “Nearly Four Dozen Faculty Jobs to Be Cut; Tough times in the Pa. State System of Higher Education.” PennLive.com. N.p., 01 Nov. 2013. Web. 07 May 2017.

MacDonald, Heather. “The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity.” Catholic Education Resource Center. N.p., 2014. Web. 07 May 2017.

Schalin, Jay. “The Decline of the English Department.” James G Martin Center. N.p., Aug. 2015. Web.

Shire, Emily. “Millennials Are Very Mixed Up About Sex.” The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast Company, 30 Jan. 2017. Web. 07 May 2017.

Selingo, Jeffrey J. “What’s the Purpose of College: A Job or an Education?” The Washington Post. WP Company, 02 Feb. 2015. Web. 07 May 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Worship a Jealous God

“You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your god, am a jealous God.” (Exodus 20:4-5)

 

I REMEMBER the first time I told my best friend that I wasn’t going to date that girl after all.  His reaction – a stark mix of indignation, confusion, and utter disbelief – was among the most incredulous I’ve ever seen in my life.

So… you like her?

Yes.

And she likes you?

Yes.

And you’re not gonna date her.

She’s not a Christian.

To my non-believing best friend, the refusal to even attempt to date a girl who I clearly liked, who clearly liked me, simply for her religious beliefs, seemed like the most bigoted thing I could do, and not only that – it fit in so cleanly with the “prude Christian” stereotype that it couldn’t help but reinforce the idea in his head that all Christians were just stuck-up self-righteous brats.

And it’s not like I gained some kind of emotional high after rejecting a relationship with a girl who I really thought I would otherwise come to develop strong feelings for.  Sometimes I still mull over that decision in my head, and wonder what it would have been like had I not chosen the way that I eventually chose to go.  But I don’t regret it.  I don’t ever regret it.  And the reasoning is simple.

It’s because I have a far more important love affair in my life – my relationship with God.  Jealous God.

What has always made Christianity different from every other faith on this Earth is this crazy belief that we can have an intimate love relationship with our Creator.  And this love relationship means that, just like the relationships we have with the people we love, entails sacrifice.

It means that I view dating as a reflection of God’s relationship with his church, and therefore will seek partners in my life that will further my commitment to God in this order: even if it reduces my dating “pool,” so to speak, to a fraction of what it already is.  We date because we want our dating relationship to be about glorifying God, not seeking external pleasure.  Not like I’m gonna pretend that this comes easy to me, especially being the high-minded romantic that I am.  I’ve made plenty of mistakes. (I recognize that that’s a very loaded sentence, and I will take care not to dive in at the moment :P)  But when it comes down to the big decisions, I’ve always tried to make them with a Jealous God on my mind.  My partner should reinforce, rather than distract from, the most important relationship in my life.

My thoughts of furthering my relationship, and keeping my mind fixed on God extend far beyond just the dating realm, however.  Worshipping my God means that I try to maintain my commitment to temperance, knowing that I can’t serve both God and alcohol, man’s ultimate idol (and a problem within my family).  It means that I do my best not to curse in public, because a foul mouth speaks volumes to the people around me, none of which are edifying towards the Creator that I purport to serve.

Who is this Jealous God, so to speak?  Sounds like He never lets me have any fun.  I will admit, oftentimes I wrestle with these questions, over what I can and can’t do, over what a God jealous for my attention, seeking the fullness of my whole heart, demands of me.

Our culture is in the middle of a long march away from the idea of devotion.  We want fun, we want pleasure, we want it now.  As such, we tend to despise the idea of giving away things for now – casual dating, alcohol, and the f-bomb, to name a few – in pursuit of something greater.  Think about it the way I write my novels.  I spend years writing my novels (TRISK – A NEW BREED OF SPORT: AVAILABLE NOW AT www.triskbook.com).  I could spend the wee hours of the morning doing so many other things – video games come salaciously to mind.  But if I spend those hours doing that instead of cranking out another page or two, would I ever have a finished product that I am truly, truly proud of?

But does this jealous God deserve our devotion?  Does God even have a right to demand the fullness of us?  Any God that seems tied up in jealousy seems rather… petty, don’t you think?  And to anyone else I would agree.  But God is entirely a different story.

This Easter, we celebrate the risen God, Jesus Christ.  But let us not forget, that within this amazing story of redemption, lies the moment of the most painful sacrifice ever wrought on this Earth.  God, having loved His own Son Jesus since the dawn of time, sacrificed Him on the altar of the cross to pay for our sins.  In agonizing ritual sacrifice, in painful horror He stared, knowing that no less than Jesus Christ would suffice to pay for the depth of our sinfulness, your sins and my sins.  As the blood dripped from the nails in His hands, He watched Jesus call out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” and let Him die.  All because He loved you and me, and wants to see us in communion with Him, washed by Jesus’ blood on the cross.  Maybe when we consider the breadth of the sacrifice of God (read: His own Son) to give us hope beyond Death, we can understand why God demands what He does of us.  Why God is so jealous.  A Father who gave so much for you and me would hate to see us reject Him.

Oh, God, how you never let go, even when I hated you and wanted nothing to do with you!  I remember His hot pursuit of me in my darkest days, even when I rejected Him out of blind anger against my unpopularity in middle school, how he stuck with me even when I broke all my relationships out of spite, how he gently caressed me to sleep as I laid on my bed, crying because I was friendless and unloved.  How He then lifted me up out of my hatred at the world, assuaged my deep-seated insecurity about my own social status.  How He taught me – often dragging my petulant and self-absorbed body to class – that popularity within this world means nothing.  That only He would bring me true joy.

Since then, I believe that following God has restored true joy in my life.  Indeed, I feel most at peace, most enamored with the world and people around me when I am most enamored with God.  In contrast, I feel most anxious when I find myself dipping into my desire for social status.  Old habits die hard – I still return, sometimes, to the old me, to the me that saw the world as a zero-sum game, that saw fame as man’s only, sick and twisted, motive.  But I’m grateful to God that that mentality no longer defines me, but that my salvation in Christ does.

It all seems so counterintuitive, that a God who loves us so much also demands from us our full and complete selves.  But to me, it is the truth.  Not only is it the truth, but it is a joy ­– a blessing beyond measure.  It is my joy to serve God, to devote the entirety of my life to living for Him.  He asks for our full attention because He knows that He alone is worth our full attention.

This I believe. Amen.

Letter to the Author: ‘In Defense of the Left’s Political Correctness’

If you have a strong opinion which you would like to raise for publication, please contact me here.   

Part of my Letter to the Author series, which pits together social and political commentary from a variety of different perspectives, responded to by me.

 

In Defense of the Left’s Political Correctness

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By Wilson Pava

I am a proud snowflake, social justice warrior, leftie, feminist, globalist, etc. I’m unabashedly liberal, I stand to the left of most within the Democratic Party and even the Progressive movement within it. Don’t stop reading though, I’m also a devout Catholic, I don’t like abortion, and I firmly believe in free speech, so much so that I was ok with Milo coming to campus. I’m not an ivory tower liberal, I don’t intend to talk down to anyone, I don’t think I’m smarter than any of you and I won’t tell you that you’ve been duped by a con artist if you voted for Pres. Trump.

I’ve talked to Trump supporters, I understand where you’re coming from and I think your decision was completely reasonable, though I don’t agree with it. Like Kenny, I enjoy controversy and welcome it. However, I think it’s time someone made the case for the liberal left to all of you [conservatives who are reading, that is]. All I ask is that you keep reading and that you at least give me a chance to defend my party and the left more generally.

Let’s begin by defining political correctness. Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “The avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” Like with all ideas and concepts it can be taken too far. There is no defense for people that take this idea too far. However, MOST of the time political correctness does not go too far. Asking people to stop calling unauthorized immigrants illegals is not going too far. Asking people to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” is not going too far. Asking institutions to rename buildings and remove landmarks dedicate in name of / to white supremacists and racists is not going too far. Asking for symbols of racism and slavery to be removed is not going too far (yes, the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of racism and slavery, just see the Cornerstone Speech).

Allow me to reintroduce the idea of political correctness in a more familiar way. Matthew 7:12, “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets.” To the generations that preceded us, it was called being nice, respectful or well-mannered. The fundamental idea behind political correctness is the Golden Rule. I, as a Colombian immigrant, don’t want to be called a narco, therefore I won’t call an unauthorized immigrant’s baby an anchor baby. I, as a self-identified male, I want to be referred to by masculine pronouns, therefore I will refer to a transgendered person by their preferred pronouns.

The idea that political correctness is keeping us from saying what we really mean is genuinely worrisome. If asking someone to be respectful of others is keeping them from saying what they really mean then I worry about what they really mean. What good natured idea can’t be put in terms that don’t offend? If there’s a thought or idea that you can’t express in a way that doesn’t exclude, marginalize or insult should that idea be accepted?

At this time I’d like to address one term specifically, illegal. Not only is this term offensive, it’s also wrong. Allow me to ask, have you ever driven above the speed limit? Yes? Then you too, according to the logic of the term, are an illegal. Using the term illegals, or illegal as singular noun, is grammatically incorrect. The word illegal is an adjective and not a noun; stop using it like a noun. Aside from the grammatical issues, let’s examine it in terms of the underlying assumptions. It first assumes that a person’s ability to abide by the law is the most important characteristic and the first one that we should look at. But is that really the case? Does the question of whether or not you go 1mph above the limit define you as a person? Does the question of whether or not you drink alcohol before you’re 21 define you as a person? Whether or not you follow every single rule that applies to you at any given moment does not define you.

I won’t just ask you to stop using a term without providing a replacement. Please consider the term unauthorized immigrants. Instead of using an offensive and grammatically incorrect term, use an accurate and neutral one. Unlike undocumented immigrant, it better encapsulates the reality that almost half of unauthorized immigrants are here because they overstayed their visas. It also encapsulates the fact that many have fake documents, real government issued documents like drivers licenses and other documents.

Political correctness, in its mainstream and widely practiced form, does not silence thoughts and ideas that should be accessible. One can make the case for lowering taxes, increasing military spending, removing regulations, enforcing immigration laws, enforcing drug laws, and many countless other issues while still being politically correct. Political correctness asks that you simply keep in mind the idea behind “all men are created equal.”

 

Kenny’s Response:

We can talk etiquette all you want.  I, for example, would never go up to a liberal activist whose parents immigrated here across the border wall without papers and say “YOU’RE AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT.”  Why would I do that.  That’s just rude.  I don’t think a conservative’s concern should be painted as “we want to say whatever we want whenever we want” but rather “we don’t want our perspective to be snuffed out of the public discourse.”

The conservative perspective is an endangered species at college like Davidson, and pretty much extinct at colleges like Brown and Cornell.  There are many ways that progressive activism has silenced us, but one of the most important – and overlooked – is by goading university administrations to censor and discourage legitimate speech.  By limiting the ways that we can express opinions through language (i.e., barring terms like “illegal,” “All Lives Matter,” and even “Trump 2016”) you are limiting forms of conservative expression.  We think your use of “gender-neutral” pronouns like “zhe” and words like “racist police” are absolutely appalling and utterly wrong; do you see us trying to silence you from using those wretched terms?  No, because it’s your free expression.

I go into this argument more in detail on my June 7th, 2016 Odyssey Online article here about how language is used as a means for power, and how progressivism has capitalized on silencing other people’s rhetoric for this purpose.  In many ways, the word “illegal immigrant” is incorrect; in many ways you must also admit it is correct.  The point is not that it is correct or not; the point is that it a form of conservative expression – a way to demonstrate our perspective.  In many ways, it works like “diversity hiring” does for progressives, as an in-group buzzword to unite people of a common cause or temperament.  The difference is that on college campuses, one term is celebrated; the other, vilified.

Or let’s take the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”  Did Donald Trump’s uttering of that word really send ISIS back to the seventh circle of hell for the rest of eternity?  No.  But it did represent a tonal shift in our seriousness of conducting this war.  Progressives would prefer to nix that term because it offends Muslims.  Conservatives care about values like frankness and sincerity.  Progressives may care more about not offending people.  Guess which one college campuses seek to squash.

A Christian should not seek to offend other people of different faiths for the sake of offending them, and neither will I shout “it’s Christmas, b**ch” to anyone who chooses to say “Happy Holidays” instead.  But at the same time, you cannot presume to blot my own perspective on that matter and keep quiet about what I believe.  Give me a chance to make my case about why I think America needs to get back to the Christmas tradition – even if it offends you. Or about why gender pronouns should be kept to a “he” and a “she.” – even if that offends you.  Don’t snuff me out, like college students and progressive activists are doing to conservative speakers like Charles Murray at Middlebury College.  In doing so, you are snuffing out the expression of language – the lifeblood of positive, educational, and rewarding discourse.

https://www.facebook.com/thekennethxu/

 

The Problem with Calling Words ‘Offensive’

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“You might think free speech is a given, but it’s not. On American college campuses, administrators and some student groups are treating some words like they should be banned from all public dialogue…”