by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh –
“It’s a great day in America.” The atheist left is rejoicing that an NBA player is out of the closet and Tim Tebow, “the often-polarizing quarterback,” as the Washington Post describes him, is gone. Sport analysts and other NFL teams did not think he was good enough as a pro quarterback but he was a very popular player. His overt Christianity was offensive and annoying to the liberal PC police.
We are living in the “Great Diversion” era, one unresolved real or manufactured crisis after another and a disastrous economy, yet an NBA player’s sexual orientation, which should be nobody’s business, demands accolades and public speeches.
The word “courage,” which MSM uses loosely to describe such public disclosure, has lost its meaning entirely. Courage is fighting in battle when everyone else retreats, saving another human being from peril when the rest are cowards, and sacrificing heroically and bravely to the betterment of mankind.
No wonder people are turning away from the ugly and terrible reality to the “pane et circenses” (bread and circuses) reality TV, not just any reality TV, but Duck Dynasty.
Duck Dynasty is the most popular reality show on A&E, the formerly artsy elitist channel which must irritate and drive to distraction the New York opera crowd. Why do people watch and love Duck Dynasty? What is it that attracts people to the reality show and its Louisiana cast of beautiful real women and their bearded husbands who make duck calls for a living?
Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the clan, gave up his promising football career to make duck calls for hunters. The show ends each time with a prayer around the dinner table of extended family and friends. It is something America longs for, a return to family values and Christianity.
The Robertsons love and care for their family, believe in God and country, hunt, fish, and teach their grandchildren to carry, use, and handle guns responsibly.
The Robertsons love and care for their family, believe in God and country, hunt, fish, and teach their grandchildren to carry, use, and handle guns responsibly. Through comedic situations, they emphasize the value of work and respect for elders. Most of them, with the exception of Willie, the CEO, live, dress, and eat simply in spite of their vast fortune.
The sage brother Jase and the Jack-of-all trades Vietnam War vet uncle Si delivers witty one-liners while sipping his ever present glass of iced tea, a southern tradition.
Miss Kay, the matriarch of the clan, is the sweet and doting mother, wife, mother-in-law, and grandma, who uses humor and southern wit to teach her teenage grandchildren how to handle dating and abstinence from sex. This must irritate liberals who encourage sex, out of wedlock pregnancies, co-habitation, and abortion.
Americans love the Robertsons because they long for a return to family tradition, respect, and interaction with meaningful, clean language, and dialog. The back to nature, outdoorsy life is appealing to many Americans who love the simple, witty ways of the Robertsons. The innocence of their daily lives is lost in our troubled country.
The clan is made up of ordinary Americans, who, in spite of their wealth, have not changed their family values, traditions, and faith, all deeply rooted in the American pioneer spirit and exceptionalism.
The clan is made up of ordinary Americans, who, in spite of their wealth, have not changed their family values, traditions, and faith, all deeply rooted in the American pioneer spirit and exceptionalism.
One episode pokes fun at fancy coffee shops patronized by liberals who drink strange and expensive concoctions of the caffeinated brew. Another makes fun of the southern love of donuts. Jase runs into trouble with the communistic Home Owners Association staffed by community volunteers who like to control other people’s lives. Jase had chickens in his yard and burned leaves on his property. He was told that he signed a contract in order to live in that neighborhood and thus had to abide by the rules the HOA saw fit.
Avid hunters, camouflage wearing, gun toting, blowing up beaver dams on their property, eating squirrels, frogs, and other critters, the Robertson men must have inflamed PETA and animal rights activists.
Duck Dynasty is a show about southern culture, about family, about values unaffected by wealth earned through entrepreneurship and hard work, a show about what liberals call “rednecks with money” who live normal lives. It is a show about American nostalgia for a time and innocence lost.
The Robertsons embody the myth of what America used to be, the America in which the family did not fight, did not use profanity, mom and dad did not divorce, people respected each other and their elders, traditional marriage was important in raising kids into healthy adults, and children did not move far away from their roots, values, and from mom and dad.
Severing ties from family and God has fundamentally changed our formerly cohesive society. The massive dependency on government welfare as the daddy of all out of wedlock newborns further eroded the American family. The Planned Parenthood abortion mill, the “social justice” indoctrination in school, the lack of morality, glamorizing the drug infested Hollywood lifestyle, and attacks on the Christian faith exacerbated the damage done to traditional marriage and family.
We should be celebrating the Robertsons and their lifestyle. It is what made America great. Their family values are shared by the core majority of our country. If we are to succeed, we have to return to those healthy principles and celebrate Tebow for his character.
