Back in my political science college days, there was an adage that politics makes strange bedfellows.  That was never more true than in 2010 America.

Last week, thousands of religious conservatives joined a political rally at the Lincoln Memorial where they sat at the feet of neo-con superstar Glenn Beck.  Beck led them in a rally cry to return to the Christian roots of our heritage.

As Russell Moore so sweetly points out, there is a heretical problem with the whole rally. http://www.russellmoore.com/2010/08/29/god-the-gospel-and-glenn-beck/

The Christian conservatives rallied around in a revival fervor drinking tea from a common chalice and following the newfound leader of the Christian conservative movement.

But, back in their churches, Christian conservatives would not associate with the likes of Glenn Beck.  They certainly wouldn’t call him brother.  Beck doesn’t even read the same Bible as Christian conservatives and follows a new revelation that evangelicals denounce.  As a Mormon, Beck is disqualified to lead any evangelical movement for revival.

Except, it is not an evangelical revival Beck is leading.  It is a political revival. As Moore says: “It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined ‘revival’ and ‘turning America back to God’ that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.”

So, in the interest of politics, conservative evangelical Christians find themselves dancing cheek to cheek with someone they otherwise wouldn’t take communion with — strange bedfellows indeed.

Too long we have been looking for an American gospel, when all along there has been a New Testament gospel that is far different than any American gospel has ever been or ever will be.  We probably won’t find it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Some things may seem insignificant at the time but have a major impact later on.  The problem is, you never know which little things are going to have the biggest impact.

I came to that realization this weekend while going through some things we had put aside for our 27-year-old son to deal with.  It was most interesting to see which things attracted his attention the most and what impact they seemed to have had.

He focused most on a Hot Wheels collection box that folded out into an auto service center.  He observed that he had spent hours playing with that.  Now, he operates an auto service center.   He pointed out how the Hot Wheels kit had an operating lift and many other features of his current business.

He pulled a Pilot fuel truck out of the Hot Wheels collection and began an extended discussion about Pilot truck stops.  What had little significance 20 years ago falls into place now.

He talked about how when he travels he always stops at a Pilot truck stop because he has found them to be consistently reliable with good prices, diesel fuel, clean restrooms and good food.

That explains his sudden interest in politics, too.  During the recent primary election, he asked me to let him know when Bill Haslam would be in town.  I thought that pretty odd since I had never known him to be interested in politics.  A few days before the primary election, Haslam stopped in Clarksville on a final whirlwind tour of the state.  Andrew and I went to his rally. I was surprised again to see a Haslam sticker show up on his truck.

It all came together.   Andrew’s attraction to Bill Haslam’s campaign is tied to his positive impressions of Haslam’s Pilot truck stops.  His interest in Pilot truck stops is tied to his association with vehicles.

How much of that is tied to a Hot Wheels collection that included a service station and a Pilot Hot Wheels model?   Who knows?  Who ever knows what is going to have an impact

It was August 9, 1974.  I was sitting in the cavernous terminal at Travis AFB in a khaki uniform that was regulation travel wear back in the day.  Gerald R. Ford was on the terminal television monitor.  Ford was giving his first press conference as president of the United States.  I was leaving the country for the first time in my life.  I suppose it was a momentous day for both of us.  It was a time of change.

A friend last week posted his memory of an older family member at the time questioning whether or not our nation would ever overcome such a scandal as the move to impeach a sitting president.

We have survived the last 36 years to move on to newer and fresher scandals.  And, arch-villain Richard Nixon is all but forgotten.  Recently, an inquisitive young Army wife asked me why I decided to join the Army.  I responded that I had a personal invitation from Richard Nixon.  She looked at me quizzically and said, “Who?”  She is an intelligent young lady, but the concept of young men receiving draft notifications signed by the President of the United States was totally alien to her.

Her husband is in Afghanistan for his fourth combat tour.  He was a cadet when the country was racked by the 9/11 events of 2001.  Thousands of young men have boarded planes to Iraq and Afghanistan since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  All have served in the military by choice.  From 1963 to 1975, thousands of soldiers boarded flights through Travis Air Force Base to the sound of distant thunder.  The vast majority of them were going by personal invitation from Lyndon B. Johnson or Richard M. Nixon.

The times have changed.  The scandals are different.  But, we move forward.  Are we wiser, or just older?  Have we learned from the past or do we just forget?

I saw a bumper sticker this week that said American-American.  Really?  I seriously doubt that.  I didn’t see the driver, so I couldn’t profile him.  But I can bet that he was not a pure blooded American.

Unless he can trace his American heritage back to the 15^th Century with assurance of no inbreeding with English, Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Spanish or whatever, he is not American-American.  There is something else to the left of the hyphen.

The truth is that none of us could gain registration through the American Kennel Club.  We’re all mutts.  Very few of us are pure breed.  Sorry if you find that insulting, but it is true.

So, why can’t we be friends?  We all came from somewhere.  Back in Genesis, God saw fit to split us up and give us different languages and ethnic origins.  We’re all God’s children.  Why can’t we act like it?

God loves all of us…red, yellow, black and white.  We just don’t trust each other — let along love each other. So, we wind up putting out all kinds of hate and distrust.  And, rather than building relationships with each other, we want to build fences and throw stones at each other.

After all, except for those American-Americans who were standing on the shore watching trouble come over the horizon in the 15^th Century, all off us got off the boat from somewhere at some point.  So, quit being so arrogant about being American.  You just ain’t all that.

Gail Kerr is certain that Tennessee will survive this week.  I know she is right, but it will be painful.  We’re facing the last few days before the primary election.

It’s getting crazy.  Boot boy has become as disoriented as a coon dog on a moonless night.  Now, whinny boy has thrown a tantrum.

It seems that whinny boy, the runty little congressman from Chattanooga, is upset that one of his competitors has used an unflattering photo of him in a mailing.

Surely he understands the process.  He has used enough negative campaigning that he knows all the tricks.

Did he really expect a phone call like this:  “Whinny boy, this is truck stop mogul.   You know, the guy you have slung mud at. I need one of your best publicity photos to use in a mailing.  I want to be sure we use the most flattering photo you have.”

No, that’s not the way it happens.  The photo used was less than flattering.

What really troubles whinny boy is that he says it makes him appear of Middle Eastern origin.  That strikes fear in his heart.  He clearly understands that every red-blooded, conservative, tea-drinking Republican in Tennessee is distrustful of anyone who is not Anglo.  When you get back in the hills of East Tennessee, they know pretty quickly that you ain’t one of them.  If you don’t look like them, talk like them, and think like them; they know immediately that you ain’t from around here.  And, those folks are the core of his support base.  That’s why a campaign based on fear rather than ideas works so well in Tennessee.

He countered with a quickly produced commercial that is so packed with code words that you have to be a card carrying member of one of three ultra right wing groups to know what he was saying.  If your not clued into the language, it sounds like just a bit of fluffy political rhetoric.  If you know and understand the language, it is frightening – very frightening.  I know we are supposed to trust the process, but it makes me nervous.

Corporations have no moral compass and therefore have no concern for anything other than stockholder profits.

That indictment of corporate America is personified in the fate of BP chief Tony Hayward.  Hayward spent 20 years as a corporate ninja fighter before becoming head of BP three years ago.  Although he promised to focus on safety and to change the company’s champagne culture, he managed the latter and failed at the former.

Stockholders were pleased that he was making the company fiscally stronger but didn’t notice, didn’t know, or didn’t care that the safety issue was a pending oil well explosion.

Now, after more than three months of being bothered with the distraction of a Gulf oil disaster, Hayward has been replaced as head of the corporate giant.  If a moral compass existed, Hayward would be limping away from BP in shame and poverty as he was fired and stripped of any company benefits.  Not so.  Hayward is being sent to Russia to a plum BP post with a pay raise. Hayward got rewarded for being inconvenienced with the Gulf oil spill!

I have friends who are BP stockholders.  They are morally focused and environmentally conscious.  Over the years, they have enjoyed the financial success of their stock but have been hard pressed to come up with defenses for the company’s environmental practices.  With a corporation as large as BP, few stockholders have the knowledge, ability, or clout to have an impact even if they tried.

That’s not the America we started out to be.  That is the America we have become.  And, after more than a century of corporate control, it will be impossible to reclaim the moral compass.   There will be other disasters.  I’d place bets on Russia for the next fuel-related disaster.

“I don’t think you’re going to have SWAT teams out there looking for somebody with dark skin, or can’t speak the language.”

That was the comment of a Tennessee lawmaker who plans to fly to Arizona on July 29 to commemorate that state’s immigration enforcement legislation become law.

Her statement was in response to fears that the law would result in racial profiling – targeting people based solely on physical appearance.

Already, one of her state House colleagues has charged that workers at the Nashville Music City Center construction site are illegal immigrants.  How did he know?  He saw them and he could tell by looking at them.

Ten Tennessee lawmakers taking a junket to Arizona plan to craft similar legislation.  “The majority of the Americans have spoken, they support this legislation,” the Tennessee lawmaker said.  Really?  And what plebiscite did she review to come up with that statement.  Perhaps she’s simply reading tealeaves.

Arizona’s law gives uniformed police officers the right to demand identification papers during lawful stops, detentions or arrests.  Arizona residents will have the ability to report folks whom they suspect to be in the country illegally.

If I decide to go to Arizona, or if such legislation is enacted in Tennessee, I have a question no one has ever answered.  If on the remote chance that I might possibly be stopped for speeding, what are these identification papers I will need to prove I am a U.S. citizen?  Will I need to carry my passport around like when I leave the United States?  Is there some other official document I will need?  Or, will the well-discerning police officer have the good sense to see that I am a red-neck (excuse me, red blooded) American and obviously am not an illegal immigrant.  I mean, I’m as Anglo as they come.  How could I possibly be an illegal immigrant?

Exactly what does an illegal immigrant look like?

Is he a Hispanic who doesn’t speak English, as most people seem to think?  Or, is he Oriental?  Maybe he is of apparent Mid-Eastern origin and without a doubt would be Muslim terrorist out to kill us all.  Or, maybe she is an Anglo with perfect English and apparent middle-class values who is in the United States as a Russian spy with fabricated papers.

Whoever these illegal immigrants are, where ever they came from, and whatever it is they are doing here, every politician who comes screaming into my living room insists that we have got to send them back where they came from.

This whole question of how to identify these miscreants is the focus this week as a Tennessee lawmaker claims he had been on the Nashville Music City Center construction site and had seen workers he suspects are illegal.  Really?  Dude, what made them so obviously illegal?  How does one look at an individual working his butt off in the sweltering Nashville heat and humidity and immediately determine he is illegal and should be loaded on the next boat and shipped back to wherever he came from?

How does an illegal immigrant differ from a legal immigrant?  Does one speak English and the other doesn’t?  Is one dressed better than the other?  I wonder — do they smell different?

This issue is so complex and deep that I can’t even begin to unwrap it.  I’m disturbed by the American mentality of I got mine and I’m keeping it.

Let’s step back from the emotion just a bit.  There is this imposing statue in the New York harbor with a torch lifted high in the air.  I’m pretty sure the inscription on that statue says something about giving me “your tired, your poor, your hungry.”  Until about 1810, we were all about that idea.  But, then we started limiting and establishing quotas for who could get off the boat.  The limitations are consistently based on fear.  Quotas have shifted with the fears.

Apparently, it is time to extinguish the torch, get the lady out of the harbor and close the door.  We’ve reached the point where we are content to be just us and no more.  The land of opportunity is now closed.  The American dream is no longer available. It’s just you and me, buddy.  And, by the way, I need to see your papers.

This week, ABC News picked up on blog comments by Southern Baptist Seminary’s Russell Moore about the moral implications of the Gulf oil crisis.

ABC quoted Moore as saying, “We simply can’t be at the place where some evangelicals were prior to this of simply dismissing the whole idea of environmental protection as … Al Gore’s cause and the cause of hippies on their food co-op.”

A few years ago, I observed a new movement among conservative evangelicals to embrace environmental issues.

Perhaps Moore’s comments signal a breakthrough in conservative consciousness as he has a broad following among evangelical conservatives.

For 30 years now, religious conservatives have rallied with political conservatives which has encamped them with economic conservatives.  In the black-and-white world of politics, this has pitted them against environmental conservationists who for some reason tend to be painted as liberals.

Environmental issues are not exclusively liberal concerns.  Moore gives it a great perspective: “We’ve had an inadequate view of human sin.  Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats.”

Moore observes that the Gulf oil leak will perhaps awaken evangelicals to environmental concerns.  He points to the need to extend healthy skepticism to corporations.

Corporations are not our friends.  They are not looking out for our interests.  They are not looking out for the good of future generations.  They are not concerned about the environment.

But why should conservative evangelicals care?    Taking the Bible literally and wholly requires attention to the Old Testament.   It is there that God commanded us to be stewards of the earth he gave us.  Moore said that caring for God means caring for God’s creation.

God gave us a pretty good earth with lots of neat stuff to enjoy – not to mention the essentials elements for survival the earth provides.  We’re obligated to take care of it.  Moore says we need to hold the government, corporations and individuals accountable as part of our responsibility in caring for the earth.  Well said.

Math is not one of my mad skills.  The closest I got to math in high school geometry was taking census of the cows on the hillside across the football field while staring out the window daydreaming.

Even so, I think I can make sense of the numbers that show coal mining doesn’t add up in Tennessee.

A 51-page report from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy indicates coal mining in Tennessee actually costs state taxpayers.

Apparently, the only people benefitting from coal mining in Tennessee are the boot boy and his buddies.  The report found that the coal industry contributed about $1.1 million to the state budget in taxes and fees but the industry costs taxpayers $1.6 million in subsidies and expenses for mining regulation, reclamation and road repairs.

The coal industry contributed more than $300,000 to political campaigns in the past year.  The boot boy who would be governor was one of the major recipients of that plum pie. Perhaps that would explain why he and 15 of his senate buddies blocked a vote to halt mountaintop removal mining in Tennessee in the final hours of General Assembly session a few weeks ago.

Coal mining creates jobs in Tennessee? The report shows that no county in Tennessee depends on the coal industry for more than two percent of its total employment.  And, coal mining is not a positive economic engine for the state.  Factoring the costs of coal mining along with direct and indirect income from employment in coal mining, the revenue is $5.75 million while the expenditures total $8.74 million.  Wow, that’s a $2.9 million deficit expense for coal mining.

This is the totally crazy part of this whole thing: coal mining costs the state in revenue and at the same time is totally destroying the God-crafted hills of east Tennessee.

Boot boy, are you stupid?  No, you’re just taking care of someone other than the voters who put you in office.