By Mike Huckabee
July 7, 2023
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! Thank you for subscribing!
Programming Note: This week, my writers and IT person will be on a well-deserved Fourth of July vacation. But never fear, we’ve written lots of great material in advance for you, and rest assured that if anything earth-shattering occurs – like Hunter Biden being held accountable for ANYTHING – we’ll rush back to our keyboards to cover it. In the meantime, join us in taking a much-needed break from the news to relax and celebrate the birthday of the greatest nation in the history of the Earth while I’m still allowed to say that.
Sincerely,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.
John 15:13
Keep Your Dirty Laundry Out of Sight and Off the Internet
There’s an old expression: “Don’t air your dirty laundry in public.” It doesn't make sense to many young Americans, partly because thanks to social media, they have no concept of personal privacy anymore, or of self-censoring before blurting out the first angry, ill-considered comment that comes to mind. But it also doesn’t make sense to them because most of them never hung their laundry on a clothesline in their backyard.
When and where I grew up, a clothesline in the yard was as much a given as a roof on the house or gravy on the potatoes. But frankly, the part about airing “dirty” laundry never made sense because no one would place dirty laundry on the line — the whole point was to place the freshly-washed and clean laundry on the clothesline so it would dry and be sanitized by the sun.
There were few secrets in a neighborhood where people put their underwear on a clothesline for the world to see, and whose houses had open windows with screens that kept out flies and mosquitoes, but also let the conversations inside be heard outside. Since we could get only three channels on the old black-and-white TV on a good day off the rooftop antenna, when TV was boring, one could just sit near a window and catch up on what the neighbors were saying.
And if they were on the phone, we could still keep up because in the days before the government monitored all our social media posts and taped our every call, most of us had “party lines” for phone service. That meant that several families in the neighborhood shared a line. Each family had a distinct ring so we knew whether to pick up officially or just pick up and listen in without saying anything. Party lines were much cheaper than private lines, so naturally, we had one.
In the summer, when it was too hot to sit indoors on an August night in Arkansas until well after sundown, most folks would take to the front porch. The porch usually had some chairs, a ceiling fan of some kind, and ideally a porch swing hung from the rafters or ceiling of the porch. If you were lucky, the porch was screened, but if not, there would be several flyswatters and everyone took turns swatting at flies and mosquitoes or wasps or yellow jackets. If insect repellent products like OFF! had been invented, we certainly couldn’t afford to buy them, and a flyswatter would last for several summers and usually was given for free at the hardware store when you bought some stuff. I don't think we ever had a flyswatter at my house that didn't remind us that we could buy lumber or tools at Duffy Hardware. And alI of our yardsticks (three-foot type) and twelve-inch rulers let us know that Lagrone Williams Hardware had paint and pots and pans.
As we sat on the front porch, it was a time to talk and hear stories about the “good ol’ days” from my relatives that didn’t seem all that good to me given the way they described the hardships of the Depression and World War II. We'd break out guitars and play music and hear the same old family stories that we'd all heard a thousand times before. In the sweltering hot nights of the summer, everyone who wasn't playing a musical instrument had to shell purple hull and black-eyed peas that had been bought that day from the back of a farmer's truck that would pass through the neighborhood selling peas by the bushel. Shelling peas made one's fingers turn purple so I hated shelling peas, and thus one of my many reasons for learning to play the guitar.
Sometimes the neighbors or relatives came to sit on the porch and sometimes when things were quiet on our porch, we just listened to what the neighbors were saying on theirs. Many nights, it was for sure better than TV.
The culture I grew up in created a sense of community, but also a sense of accountability. The openness of our lives with our laundry visible to God and all His creation and conversations being heard without the whiz bang electronic surveillance devices we would come to despise meant that we lived with our families, but within a neighborhood and community. And out of a combination of courtesy, old-fashioned manners and the need to survive by having neighbors we could count on, we didn't talk “ugly” about neighbors too much. There was a good chance they could hear us. That meant they’d never help us shell our peas again.
Also something to consider before hitting “send” on an angry, threatening tweet.
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America the Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. We are blessed with his bounty. Take a moment to enjoy it.
A Disconnected Media is Trying to Sell Us a Bill of Goods
How can we all be so connected, and our government be so disconnected?
One of the benefits of living in the 21st century is that thanks to jet travel and the Internet, I constantly talk to Americans from every state and every walk of life. And believe me, they are not shy about sharing their opinions. It gives me a perspective that I wish more of our politicians and media people inside the Beltway Bubble could experience.
According to a recent Pew Research survey, 65% of journalists think the news media is doing a good job of covering the important stories of the day, while only 35% of the public agree.
If I had to explain that yawning gap between the media’s public approval and its self-approval in one world , it would be “disconnection” (although I would accept “narcissism.”) I don’t think there’s ever been a time when the media was so out of touch with the people they’re supposed to be serving. You’d think the shock they experienced on Election night 2016 would’ve caused them to reflect a bit and make some changes, but they only doubled down on the demonizing of people they never talk to.
They apparently really believed in 2016 that when voters demanded “change,” they wanted bigger deficits and a bloated, more powerful regulatory state. Trust me, based on what they told me, they did not. And they didn’t think they were getting that when they voted for Biden, either. They’re so angry now not only because Biden’s policies are making their lives so much harder but because many believe they were the victims of a massive bait-and-switch con.
If you ask most Americans what they want from government, it’s not to have every aspect of their lives regulated and “transformed,” including those that worked a lot better before the government “improved” them. They don’t want 2,000-page bills nobody’s read, or bureaucrats telling them which doctor they can see or how much money they’re allowed to make. The list of what most Americans say they want from government is actually pretty short: national defense, secure borders, safe streets; smooth highways; health care for veterans, seniors, poor children, the disabled (all those who genuinely can’t help themselves); good schools, firefighters and (yes) police – now more than ever. And it would be nice if the trash were picked up on time. That’s about it.
Yet somehow, the government finds so many ways to meddle in our lives that federal, state and local government spending combined now equals about 44% of America’s entire gross domestic product. And in some big cities, they don’t pick up the garbage at all. They just let people live in it.
In poll after poll, despite claims that socialism is on the rise, most Americans say they want less government and less spending. Even those who say they want government handouts like “Medicare For All” abruptly change their tunes when told what it will do to their tax bills and quality of services. They don’t give a hoot what the talking heads or the endlessly-surprised economists or the “too-big-to-fail” Wall Street failures say: they want government out of their lives, out of their wallets and out of their way.
Sadly, whenever political candidates support that philosophy, their opponents and the media paint them as cold-hearted and uncaring. Compassion has been redefined as the willingness to spend limitless amounts of other people’s money. The media also devote almost no time to examining political philosophies and a lot of time to gotcha games, gaffes, fake news and who’s ahead in the horse race.
But the horse is now out of the barn. For eight years, Americans experienced firsthand the results of so-called “progressive” policies. Government out of control, a health care boondoggle two-thirds of us didn’t want, and the economy still struggling long after it should’ve roared back.
The Election of 2016 was not a surprise to me. I predicted it months in advance because, unlike so many people who claim to represent or report on the American people, I actually talk to – and more importantly, listen to - people. Things were turning around quite well before a pandemic artificially shut down the economy and people let the media bamboozle them into blaming Trump and thinking they’d be bringing back moderation and “normality” if they elected Biden.
Now, they find themselves stuck with a combination of Obama and Jimmy Carter times 10. This isn’t what they voted for, but they’re getting it good and hard.
I predict that, despite the media’s best efforts to bamboozle us, politicians who try to sell Americans on socialistic, big government policies will eventually fail, for the same reason that a used car salesman has a hard time selling a lemon to the same customer twice. I think those politicians know it, too; hence their desperation to take over elections so they can control the results, and to rig the government through schemes like eliminating the Senate filibuster and the Electoral College and stacking the Supreme Court. They claim to be protecting “our democracy” while trying to silence and neuter all political opposition. They have to kill democracy to save it.
I also predict that politicians who were elected on a promise not to “fundamentally transform” America will remain in office only as long as they remember that Americans did not elect them to turn the United States into Venezuela.
Leave me a comment: A Disconnected Media is Trying to Sell Us a Bill of Goods - Read Mike's News Analysis - Mike Huckabee
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Huckabee torches Ben & Jerry's 'liberal guilt' over Fourth of July message
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee discusses Ben & Jerry's statement on the Fourth of July, companies going woke and Biden officials touting Bidenomics across the U.S.
Watch Mike's interview here: Huckabee torches Ben & Jerry's 'liberal guilt' over Fourth of July message - Read Mike's News Analysis - Mike Huckabee
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Hunter Biden and The SALVATION of Journalism | John Solomon | Huckabee
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author and digital media entrepreneur who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Editor in Chief of Just the News. He's talking how to turn the tide of biased journalism here on Huckabee. Don't miss it!
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