A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Love, Baseball, and A Man Named Christie

By: R.J. Moeller

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There continues to be a lot of public pining on the part of conservatives and Republicans as it pertains to potential presidential candidates like Chris Christie and Marco Rubio.  I hope you’re sitting down for this shocker, but I have a few thoughts on the matter.

If you’ve seen the new Brad Pitt-Jonah Hill drama Moneyball, you know two things about baseball.  First, there are no “sure things.”  Second, taking a risk on something you believe in is a necessary part of growth – as a person, baseball franchise, small business, or Words With Friends player.  (Speaking of which, I’m under “RJ Moeller” if you’re up for a WWF game.)

While there are no “sure things” in life – apart from death, taxes, and liberals calling any group of 2 or more conservatives gathered together to protest run-away spending in Washington “racists” – sometimes you just know that something, if given a chance, is going to work out.

Few things are more daunting than telling a cute girl how you feel about her, especially when you have no idea what she’s thinking.  But sometimes you just know, should she be up for it, things would work out between the two of you.  You know that this person is someone worth putting yourself out on a lonely line for.  The risk of being rejected is more than worth the potential reward.

Or, if you’ll indulge me one more analogy, consider one from the realm of the best sport ever invented by humans: baseball.  Currently my favorite team (the Chicago Cubs) is rudder-less without a manager.  I know that former Boston Red Sox skipper Terry Francona could turn things around on the North Side of Chicago.  I just know it.  I’m no baseball soothsayer, and Francona did just help to bring two World Series championships to Boston in the past 7 years, so such a statement on my part is nothing revelatory by any means.  But I am entirely confident things will get better for my Cubbies if their ownership team ponies up the cash for Terry Francona.

I just know.

Conservatives and Republicans want people like Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan to grace the GOP’s presidential ticket because, if I may speak on their behalf, we just know they are better than any of the current wanna-be’s.  And not just “better” in a “barely scraping by” sense of the word.  I mean “better” in the “you can pack your things up and go home Barack Obama” sense of the term.

Gov. Christie is definitely imperfect (and looks like he ate New Jersey), but that’s like saying the Cubs have had “a few rough years” as a franchise.  Duh?  No politician is perfect because Jesus hasn’t run for public office yet.

As far as Christie goes, the man says what he’s going to do, and then does it.  He articulates himself well, and in the face of fierce critics and an antagonistic media in New Jersey.  He’s currently absorbing executive experience by running a state.  (For our liberal friends who may be reading this, that is a tougher, more important job than organizing communities among White Sox fans on the South Side of Chicago.)  He’s taken public sector unions on, a point that may be all I would need to know to get me to endorse a candidate for any level of elected office.

He’s funny, well spoken (just YouTube him), aggressive, interesting, compelling, and, for lack of a better term, “real.”  (Don’t make me say that the governor is “keepin’ it real.”)  If “we the people” can also provide him with major majorities in both houses of congress, and promise to keep our boots on the throats of elected officials from both parties when it comes to spending and taxation, Christie could do some real damage to the progressive-Left infrastructure in every level of government from Berkeley to Boston.

Then there are the legitimate up-and-comer’s like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio who are, without a doubt, the future of the conservative movement.  If, say in 2016 or 2020, those two teamed up on a presidential ticket, the Democrats would have a Walter Mondale situation on their hands.

But although the future may be bright, that does little for voters and taxpayers who correctly view the 2012 election a pivotal one in the history of the country.  What do we do in 2012 if Mitt Romney or Rick Perry is the last man standing in the GOP primaries?  In that case, I’m hitting the snooze alarm and asking someone to wake me up when it’s all over.

Certainly you can’t force someone to do what they don’t feel ready (or willing) to do, but sometimes the talent – in this case Chris Christie – can’t always see the forest for the trees and needs some convincing.  Sometimes the manager you want for your baseball team needs to hear more of the general manager’s vision for the team going forward before he’s ready to take the position.  Sometimes a little wooing can go a long way with a young lady your keen on.

Listen, I’m not trying to convince you that Chris Christie and Marco Rubio would be the best duo to tackle the Obama-Biden (or, more likely, Obama-Clinton) incumbent administration.  I already know that Christie-Rubio would be the best.  What I’m trying to do is talk through my thinking on the matter – thinking that many on the Right share.  If you’re a conservative, Republican, or anything but a Ron Paul devotee, and you can’t see that Chris and Marco, should they be convinced to run, are the best option we have to not only defeat President Obama but turn this sinking ship of state around, you’re not paying attention.

Of course to acknowledge your dream-team is something very different than seeing that dream-team realize their potential.  But if you don’t know what you’re aiming at, how can you even be sure you’re headed in the right direction?  Christie-Rubio (or Ryan) should be our ideal pairing in 2012.  Political realities will have their say no matter what we do, so why not set out to meet the gold-standard and then adapt to silver or bronze if a roll-with-the-punches attitude is called for?

Christie may say no.  Terry Fancona may tell the Cubs to take their 103 years of losing and stick it where the Billy Goat don’t bleat.  The girl you’re smitten with may do what far too many quality women end up doing – settling for some loser who doesn’t realize what he’s fallen tookus-backward into.

And in each instance, the rational, mature thing to do is accept that this person wasn’t part of God’s plan for your life (or the life of your franchise/nation) and go find the next best (and possibly even better) option.

You still need a presidential candidate.  You still need a Skipper for your ballclub.  You still want to share your life with someone and have a family some day.

The end result is largely out of your hands anyway, so why not shoot for the stars?

It’s by the North Star all other stars are properly identified and turned into useful instruments that make the journey navigable.

Par For The Course with Louis C.K.

By: R.J. Moeller

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One of the most popular podcasts on the inter-web today is hosted by a far-Left comedian (and former Air America host) named Marc Maron.  The “WTF Podcast” is a wildly entertaining, stream-of-consciousness interview show where Mr. Maron sits in the garage of his L.A.-area home and chats with various entertainers, comedians, and actors.  The most downloaded episode of Maron’s show thus far has been a two-part interview he conducted with his long-time friend, and comedy juggernaut Louis CK.

In the midst of reminiscing about old times, and while searching for a metaphor to describe the way that some friends hold on to memories for you that you might have forgotten, the celebrated funny-man (Louis C.K.) landed on this analogy:

“There was a library that Alexander the Great built in Egypt, and it had all the great Greek works of literature and philosophy and art and everything.  And then when we became a Christian…West…world, they burned, you know, the Christians burned everything.  They burned that library down.  I don’t know…I may be wrong about that.  I could be wrong.

But we still have a little bit of Plato and Socrates…because the Muslims kept it.  Because when the Muslims took…took their run of conquering the world, they kept stuff.  They didn’t burn other peoples’ work.  They would integrate and save it.  So we have all the, uh, Greek literature and wisdom and all of that stuff because the Muslims held on to it.  While we were going through the Dark Ages, and forgetting everything and letting this Jesus-ey sh$% ruin everything, when we came out of that haze the Muslims were still there saving it for us.”

There, in one winding diatribe, Louis C.K. re-capped nearly all of the most disappointing talking points in modern, progressive, liberal thought.  This is Noam Chomsky meets Charlie Sheen meets the angst-ridden loner kid in your high school Civics class who has some “interesting YouTube’s” he wants to show you about what temperature the steel in Tower 2 should have melted at.

Christianity – apart from the brand Jeremiah Wright teaches to future presidents – is loathed and blamed for the “backwardness” of anything the progressive Left doesn’t like.  Our Western, Judeo-Christian culture is always the thing the world had to overcome to become enlightened, never the thing that propelled us toward such concepts as individual liberty, free markets, and a sustainable version of representative democracy.

In Louis C.K.’s universe, and like the renegade teenagers from the town in Foot Loose, the Muslims of the 7^th century apparently knew better than to conform to the book-burning ways of the “old townspeople” living back on the Jesus-ey Shore in Christian Europe.

The reason for this all-to0-typical desperate grasp to praise anything but anything relating to Judeo-Christian values and ideals in the past is easy to explain: If their narrative is correct, than anything dark, close-minded, or repressive in the history of the world can conveniently be blamed on Jerry Falwell, Michelle Bachmann, etc. etc.  If the roots of what they dislike can be sullied, then their current attacks and stereotypes won't need any modern intellectual backing or evidence.  Look (to the) past, young man!

If traditional, religious Americans today can be lured into having to deal with the largely fabricated Redwood timber in their eyes, then the (by comparison) measly plank in the eye of a morally relativistic liberal won’t seem as protruding as it actually is.

But in this specific case of the Muslims courageously saving books (that millions of them apparently still have yet to read), let’s put aside inconvenient truths like that Muslims burned, plundered, and pillaged everything in the Mediterranean they could get their right hands on during their “run of conquering the world.”  Let’s even forget that the first and most devastating attack on the library at Alexandria was by the pagan Romans 50 years before the “Christ” in “Christian” had even been born.

The question here is this: Are Louis C.K.’s general and sweeping claims regarding the backwardness of Christianity accurate?  What, if any, positive impact did Christianity have on the development of Western ideas, ideals, and values?

Author Rodney Stark, in his book The Victory of Reason, has a very different story to tell.

Soon after the fall of Rome, Christianity encouraged an era of extraordinary invention and innovation.  To appreciate this remarkable achievement it is necessary to confront an incredible lie that long disfigured our knowledge of history.  For the past two or three centuries, every educated person has known that from the fall of Rome until about the fifteenth century Europe was submerged in the "Dark Ages" – centuries of ignorance, superstition, and misery – from which it was suddenly, almost miraculously rescued, first by the Renaissance and then by the Enlightenment.

Bur it didn't happen that way.  Instead, during the so called Dark Ages, European technology and science overtook and surpassed the rest of the world!

The idea that Europe fell into the Dark Ages is a hoax originated by antireligious, and bitterly anti-Catholic, eighteenth-century intellectuals who were determined to assert the cultural superiority of their own time and who boosted their claim by denigrating previous centuries as – in the words of Voltaire – a time when "barbarism, superstition, [and] ignorance covered the face of the world."

Views such as these were repeated so often and so unanimously that, until very recently, even dictionaries and encyclopedias accepted the Dark Ages as an historical fact.  Some writers even seemed to suggest that people living in, say, the ninth century described their own time as one of backwardness and superstition.  Fortunately, in the past few years these views have been so completely discredited that even some dictionaries and encyclopedias have begun to refer to the notion of Dark Ages as mythical.

Unfortunately, the myth has so deeply penetrated our culture that even most scholars continue to take it for granted that-in the words of Edward Gibbon- after Rome fell came the "triumph of barbarism and religion."

In part this is because no one has provided an adequate summary of what really took place.

Okay, stick with me here.  We’re almost done, and how this all ties together is fairly simple.

Either Louis C.K. is right, or Rodney Stark is.  They can’t both be.  And if you’ll be so kind as to remember Mr C.K.’s own words: “I may be wrong about this”.

Think about what is at stake here, and what the implications of the answer to “Who is right about this?” are?  Think of the countless lives that have been steered away from religion because they have accepted this interpretation of history and culture?

If Louis C.K. (and the weight of modern Academia that his views represent) is right, then we should all just keep cruising along in terms of how young people are educated about such matters.

Par for the course.

But if Rodney Stark is even just “more right” than Louis C.K., then millions – and I mean millions – of students have been taught intellectually dishonest rubbish for the past 40 years (or more).  If Stark is right, there are, in my humble estimation, only two explanations for how higher (and by default, public school) education could get something so important and pertinent, so wrong.

1)Contemporary educators are simply regurgitating what they learned from the “smart” people who taught them in college and graduate school.

2)A certain demographic of contemporary educators hold religion –Christianity in particular – in utter contempt and relish the chance to embellish its flaws.

Dennis Prager often says, “First tell the truth; then give your opinion.”  I couldn’t agree more.  But “truth” is a relative term these days.  We’ve never had more access to more information in human history, and yet more of us seem to know less than ever before.

I’m speaking here directly to you God-fearing, Center-Right people out there.  We’ve let the other side – whether we’re talking politics or faith – set the terms of the debate for far too long.  And it feels like this is the case simply because we think the other side knows more.  And why do we think such a thing?  Well, typically because we know that we don’t know what we should.  We don’t know the things that would enable us to enter the public square and market of ideas boldly.

We don’t know our history.  We don’t know much about economics and the free market.  Everything from theology to an appropriate analysis of pop-culture is jumbled together in bits-and-pieces in our earnest, well-intentioned, cable news-addled minds.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.  Spiritual and moral revival can feed, but can also be fed by, intellectual revival.  A revival of our minds.  A revival in our minds.

Louis CK is a very funny man.  Truly, he is.  But he’s also a very confused, very sad individual.  The best way to ensure that your kids, and your kids’ kids, never grow up to be/think like him is to start equipping yourself today with the knowledge, insight, and wisdom that built the West, advanced liberty, and invented iPhones.

Read more.  Read a lot more.  Discuss what you’ve read.  Seek truth.  Love thy neighbor.

Prager, Moeller, and The American Dream

By: R.J. Moeller

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It has been nearly three years since I sent my first electronic mail (some say "e-mail") to my second favorite Jew of all time.  As an evangelical Christian, my respect and admiration (some say "obsession") with syndicated columnist and radio talk show host Dennis Prager may have appeared to most observers as strange and out-of-place.  Since my introduction to Mr. Prager in 2005 - I was sitting on a roof in Marion, IN painting shutters to help pay my college bills and happened to have a small radio tuned to a talk radio station hanging from a nearby ladder - I have never thought twice about the theological, geographical, and generational differences between us.

For me, Dennis Prager has always represented two things: truth and clarity.  He is, and remains, a man of ideas.

Ideas and their study, cultivation, and dissemination are what get me out of the bed most mornings.   They mean everything to me, and it takes only a few minutes of listening to The Dennis Prager Show to know Dennis feels the same way.

That first email I sent in the fall of 2008 was probably four or five paragraphs long, and contained what I felt was the clearest articulation of why it was I so appreciate this man and his show.  I've always been an auditory learner.  I've always connected intellectually with what I hear over the radio (and now podcast) in a way that television and movies and teachers standing in front of chalkboards never could match.

I told Dennis in that email that he was my favorite voice of reason on my favorite medium of communication.  I told him that when he spoke, I heard the wisdom of the ages cascading forth from my ear-phones or car stereo.  I told him that his unapologetic defense of Judeo-Christian values and free market economics on the air and in his weekly columns had inspired me to start writing during and since college.  I told him that I had begun turning dozens of friends, family members, and total strangers on to his work.  I told him I believed in what he was doing and hoped one day to meet and work alongside him in the cultural battle that is unmistakably being waged in family rooms, schoolrooms, and board rooms across the country.

Okay, so the e-mail was a little over-the-top.  I figured the guy would probably never read it, and truth be told, I wrote my thoughts out more for myself than anything else.  These were my true feelings, ones I truly wanted to express, but it's a little awkward to recite such a laudatory soliloquy of sorts (intended for a 60 year-old Jewish man from Los Angeles) out-loud to your buddies over some buffalo wings at a sports bar watching the Cubs get spanked by the only team with a worse record than their own.

Writing it out made the most sense.  Once I had written my thoughts out, it made even more sense to actually send them along to the man who inspired them.

To my surprise, not more than a few days later, I had a response in my inbox from both Dennis Prager and one of his employees.  I still have both correspondences saved.  The first, from Dennis himself, simply said:

"Dear R.J.-  Thank you for your kind words.  They meant a lot to me.  Keep writing and always feel free to use anything I've said or written in your own work.

Best regards,

Dennis"

The second e-mail, from his assistant, was e-ven better.

"Dear R.J.-

I saw your note to Dennis and told him about it.  He had me read it out-loud to him and was very moved by it.  You made his day."

I made his day?  By this point I had a pretty good case to make that if anyone's day had been made, it was mine.  What a thrill!  This man who I had entrusted so much of my intellectual training to for the previous three years, this man who had turned me on to some of the best thinkers and authors of our time, had been moved by my humble attempt to thank him for his efforts and applaud him for his courage to do what he does with grace, patience and dignity.  Those two emails gave me the emotional coal I needed to burn the fire inside my creative engines for at least a year.

You see, I'm the kind of person who thrives on being reminded every so often that I am on the right path.  A nice note, a kind word or a knowing nod from someone I love and/or respect goes such a long way with me.  Perhaps it is because deep down I have a sensitive ego, and I desperately crave hearing positive affirmation.  I know at least part of it has to do with the fact that I am terrified of wasting the time God has given me on this earth.  I need to know I'm heading in the right direction.

When you put as much time into your own intellectual development and writing skills  as I have since graduating Taylor University in 2005 - sometimes neglecting my Greek homework from graduate school to read Paul Johnson's Modern Times because Dennis had recommended it on his radio program that day as one of the books that most shaped his thinking as an adult - you can't help but worry that all those hours spent reading alone in a dimly-lit basement in Arlington Heights, IL, long after everyone else is asleep, might not be worth it.  That you may in fact have wasted your money, your time, your family's time, and your friends' patience.  You begin to worry that God's will for your life may not involve Mark Steyn columns and G.K. Chesterton essays and Michael Medved tapes chronicling of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

I may have worried about such things, perhaps even lost some sleep over them, but if I'm being totally honest, deep down, even back in 2008, I knew it wasn't true.  I knew God had plans for my life that would require me to be a student of everything from popular culture to history to economics and, of course, theology.  And I somehow knew that Dennis Prager would one day play a role in taking my passions for these things and turning them into legitimate work that could pay my bills.

And when you think about it, isn't that the "American dream"?  Not all the "Keepin' up with the Jones'" and "Greed is good" garbage Hollywood condescendingly masquerades as being what hard-working Americans "really want", but I mean being able to have the chance to get paid to do what you love?  People in probably 90% of the world never get that opportunity, but that is the dream.

Well, that whole "one day" Dennis will help me find my calling thing has now turned into "this day".

During the past few years, and since that initial email, I had stayed in touch with Dennis and had even been invited to visit him at his studios in California a handful of times.  But honestly, I had no idea what would come of the friendly, but casual, relationship I had developed with Prager over that time period.

This past Monday, August 15th, while on my trip to Los Angeles to meet and interview the likes of Andrew Breitbart, Rob Long, Adam Carolla, and Walter E. Williams, I was privileged enough to once more sit in on the live broadcast of The Dennis Prager Show from Glendale, CA. After the show had wrapped, I chatted with Dennis about ways to get his message out more effectively to people under the age of 30.  At one point, he smiled, looked me right in the eyes, and said, "R.J., you are a man of ideas and I want you on my team."

It had come full circle.  Dennis Prager, the man who, apart from my father (Dr. Robert L. Moeller), has had the most influence on my worldview and passion for cultural engagement, identified in me the very thing I go on a daily basis to Dennis for.

Without wanting to sound melodramatic, when Dennis said those words to me it was as if Clarence the Angel himself had appeared to tell me that, although I hadn't always been able to see it, God had had a plan for my life.

A few minutes later, still reeling from the overwhelmingly kind affirmation I had just received, I was offered a job by Dennis' producer (fellow New Trier High School alum, Allen Estrin) to immediately begin working for the show, helping run Prager's blog, social networking sites, and YouTube Channel (Prager University).

I start Monday.

For now, I'll be working from Chicago because most of my duties involve the on-line universe.  But eventually, and sooner rather than later, I am moving to Los Angeles.

I don't know where things go from here, but I know things will never be the same.  My life has changed forever.  It is the start of something big.

You hope and you pray and throw your heart and soul into something and you never really know if it is going to work out.  I'm not genius.  I'm not an expert.  I'm not even that good of a student.  School has always been a struggle for me.  In the classroom, I have been a perpetual under-achiever since 8th grade when I found out that girls didn't have cooties and some even liked funny athletes who treated them kindly.  I've worked in church ministry, human resources, small business offices, country clubs, pizza places, and even helped run a dog-walking business last summer.  Nothing has ever satisfied me like writing this blog and doing my podcast has.

With this new job, I am, for the first time, going to be doing what I love more than anything in this world.  Apart from my faith in God and my love for my family, nothing matters more to me than the defense and articulation of Truth.  My goal isn't Republican victories at the ballot boxes, but the utter and profound re-awakening of the hearts and minds of young people in this country. As Dr. Albert Mohler puts it, a "culture shift."  I want to affect real change that leads to a re-shuffling of the nation's priorities.

God, Family, Country (and in that order).

Working for Dennis allows me the dual luxury of pursuing this goal and doing so under the banner of someone I believe in.

As for A Voice in the Wilderness and The RJ Moeller Show podcast (as well as my work for American Enterprise Institute and Americans For Prosperity), nothing changes there.  We're still fully armed and operational.  That stuff has always been what I do on my own time anyway.  The only thing that changes is that my day job will now be Prager-centric (a fact some would argue has been already the case for years).

I have more stories to share about my trip to Los Angeles and the other adventures I had in the Golden Bear state, but today I simply wanted to share this good news with you, my readers.  I thank all of you who have supported and encouraged me over the years.  I hope to live up to the trust many have placed in me.  You're all invited along for the ride, and I hope to see many of you along the way the rest of journey.

Here we go.

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"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
— G.K. Chesterton