Dr. George Grant in one of his lectures on ancient history tells a story about a visit to a large museum he made. Dr. Grant told about the grand displays of Egypt replete with mock pyramids and tombs. He then went on to tell about the grand displays of ancient Greece and other well known cultures. Dr. Grant emphasized the power and scope of the museum displays of these mighty civilizations. Dr. Grant then went on to tell how after he had viewed these great civilizations he walked into a room where the civilization of ancient Israel was on display. Dr. Grant went on to tell how the ancient Israel display wasn’t nearly as ostentatious as the displays of the other great civilizations. Grant tells how the Israel civilization display was characterized by pottery and eating utensils and other items that comparatively speaking were nick-knacks when compared to the power displays of the ancient cultures such as Egypt and Greece.

Dr. Grant’s point out of this is that Israel didn’t build the kind of civilization as other power civilizations because Israel’s civilization was not built on the basis of slave labor nor was it primarily a centralized state such as the other civilizations. Instead Israel culture was about simple matters like community, family, food, and song. Not the kinds of things that make for grandiose museum displays.

This evening I attended a theatrical version of “Sound of Music” which reminded me of Dr. Grant’s lectures. “Sound of Music” is a musical that has as a backdrop 1938 Austrian culture trying to maintain its simple civilization against the giant Fascist totalitarian culture of Germany. In this way the musical is very Christian. The songs reflect a particular culture and are about love of family, love of music, and love of country. The songs and dances, though not all original to Austria, are in praise of a culture that doesn’t want to be swallowed whole by a “great civilization.”

The christian themes that proclaim the love found in the simplicity of community, family, food, and drink are likewise found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s works. The success of great wars and movements against totalitarian regimes is waged, at least in part, so that simple people can continue to love eating mushrooms, drinking beer, spending time with family, and being indulgent to children.

The christian themes of love for what is nearby in family, community and church are also put on display in Wendell Berry’s Port William novels. In Jayber Crow the story is told of what it means to live in community. In one of the most tender scenes that I’ve ever read in any novel Berry puts Jayber Crow in a local church where he has a vision of the church community over the years so that one gets the sense that even though many of these people lived and died before others they were all one community and belonged to one another because they belonged to that Church.

In all of these the love is for local in defiance of love for the spectacular and grandiose. In all of these the love is for the familiar in contrast to love for wide-scale fame. In all of these there is a turning of the back on mass appeal in order to embrace what is known and has been known for generations.

This desire for the simple, the separate, and the known is a Christian theme it would be good to return to once again.

During the month of March, I enjoy watching the NCAA Basketball tournament. This year I have the added incentive of rooting for Michigan State which is a scant 30 minute drive from where I live. So, for the past couple weeks I’ve watched a number of tournament games that have involved hundreds of NCAA college Basketball players. Now, during the tournament games the cameras will sometimes focus on those in attendance. Maybe the camera will pan a coach’s wife during a particularly dramatic point of the game. Maybe the camera will locate a celebrity in attendance.

I must admit though that one thing that is driving me mad with curiosity is why the cameras keep panning the parents of Oklahoma Stars Blake and Taylor Griffin. With the exception of once seeing the cameras pan the father of UNC star Tyler Hansbrough the only parents I’ve seen the cameras focus on are the parents of the Griffin brothers of Oklahoma. The cameras have been on these parents so often during Oklahoma games I’ve begun to think that the Griffins were starring in some kind of bizarre reality Television show.

Now, naturally, I’ve found myself asking why the cameras have focused so much on the Griffins. I mean, after all, if there are 10 guys on each team that is potentially twenty set of parents that cameras could pan. But lets reduce the pool by 16 sets of parents and suggest that the cameras are only interested in showing family members of star players and coaches. That would reduce it to a far more manageable handful of people that the cameras might pan. Still, even by those reduced numbers the Griffin parents are getting far far more face time on camera proportionally then any other family members. Indeed, one begins to wonder if all their camera time is designed.

So why do the Griffins get all this camera time? Are they the only family members in attendance supporting their star basketball player sons? Is it because they are more telegenic then other people? Or is it because CBS is subtly communicating that inter-racial marriages are something to be esteemed and aspired to?

“The people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could win it back only by redoubled efforts. Wouldn’t it be easier to dissolve the people and elect another in their place?”

Bertold Brecht
German Communist Poet / Playwright

The politicians and bureaucrats of the American state, at almost every level are criminal guilty of the crime of cultural-cide. The policies they are pursuing are tantamount to seeking to dissolve the people and their culture while electing another in their place. Americans are being dissolved by illegal immigration. Americans are being dissolved by multiculturalism. Americans are being dissolved by planned financial ruin. Americans are being dissolved by the death cult of abortion. Americans are being dissolved by a educational system that has spent decades preparing Americans for dissolution.

In Barack Obama we are being led by a man who is a stranger and an alien to all things Americans. Even if Obama is legally President he should be characterized as a “accidental American.” He is a man who had a mother who hated her own people. He had a Father who was a Tomcat who spread his seed over more than one continent. For a substantive period of his life he was raised by a Step-Father in Indonesia. Obama is the perfect character to dissolve America because he doesn’t belong to America.

In 2007 in America almost 40% (39.7%) of children born are born to unwed mothers. This is an increase of 1.2% from the statistics of 2006. For those who attended government schools this means that almost 4 out of 10 (2 out of 5 if you never learned fractions) babies were born to unwed mothers. The statistic reveal that from 2005-2007 the number of children born in these United States to married women has declined 0.3% while the number born to unmarried women has mushroomed to 12.3%

Broken down by ethnicity the numbers reveal that between the years 2005-2007 that among blacks the percentage of children birthed to single moms grew from 69.9% to 71.6%. Among whites, who have considerably more ceiling room for increase, the numbers of bastard children, in terms of percentage expanded from 25.3% to 27.8% over the same two year period. The largest increase in out of wedlock births was found in the Hispanic community as their numbers jumped from 48%-51.3% of illegitimate children. If we take 1980 as a base for the Hispanic community that is a 32.3% increase from the base year 1980 when the rate was 19%.

Rutgers sociologist David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project, He writes,

“…Hispanics seem to have assimilated into the American culture of secular individualism more than the reverse. … These trends contradict earlier expectations that Hispanics might bring this nation a new wave of family traditionalism.” [The State of Our Unions |The Social Health of Marriage in America]

The growth in Hispanic illegitimacy is especially important because Hispanics keep increasing as a share of all new births, married or unmarried, up from 14.3 percent in 1990 to 23.8 percent in 2005 to 24.6 percent in 2007.

Thus, from 2005 to 2007, the number of babies born to unmarried white women dropped 2.0 percent, while the number of babies born to unmarried Hispanic women grew 15.2 percent.

If you’re under 35 I hope you’re taking Spanish classes because demography is destiny.