An elderly minister lay dying in a hospital bed. He had asked his lawyer and an IRS agent he knew to come visit him. When they came into the room, he greeted them, but then, because of his severe weakness, he said nothing. For a short time the lawyer and the tax man were silent. Why have we been asked here, each man wondered. Finally the attorney, who knew the minister better, said to the dying man, “Tom, why did you invite us to come here?” Summoning up his rapidly failing strength, the old man gasped, “Jesus died between two thieves, …..and that’s how I want to go.”

A Lifelong Learning Lecture by John M. Miller (The Cypress – November 2, 2012) Should the federal government mandate that every car and truck manufactured and sold in America should have seat belts? Should states require that anyone riding a motorcycle within their jurisdiction must be required to wear a crash helmet? Should the Food and Drug Administration be empowered to inspect slaughterhouses for animals or poultry, and to give their approval to every drug sold in a pharmaceutical free market? Is it truly a free market if such regulations are imposed on private enterprises and on private citizens?

The United States of America is a nation that was born in ideological struggles. Political ideology has shaped the life of our nation from its earliest years, well before the American Revolution. Religious ideology is what impelled many of the colonists to leave England and settle in various parts of the American Colonies where “their kind of people” would choose to live. Economic ideology further divided the colonies, and, after the Revolution, the nation. There was a strong ideological affirmation of slavery in the South, and an ideological aversion to the “peculiar institution” in the North. Cities were ideologically devoted to manufacturing, while rural areas and especially the frontier were committed to agriculture as the primary factor in the American economy. Ideology is as American as apple pie.

Where to begin? There are so many anomalies and discrepancies. For example, do we have a black President, or do we have a white President? Genetically he is in fact half-black and half-white, but almost universally he is considered black. So who – or what – is he, really?