ABOUTWHERE WE PUT THE OLD STUFF
FROM RUBE TO RUBEPUBLICAN

I am trying to provoke you.  So I’ll start by quoting Webster’s - provoke - “…implies beneficially stimulating and
making active” like you didn’t know the definition of the word.  And to provoke you further, rube – Webster’s “1. an
awkward unsophisticated person – 2. a naive or inexperienced person.”  OK, we’re all on the same pages so far,
right?

In 1962 I matriculated…damn, one more (Webster’s for Rio Lindans – matriculate “to enroll as a member of a body
and especially of a college or university”).  I matriculated to the oldest state university in America, the University of
North Carolina.  At that time,    
I WAS A RUBE!

I was born, and lived my early life, less than 100 miles from the geographic center of the lower 48.  And even though
my family and I traveled quite a lot, to places like Minnesota, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, and Iowa, I didn’t see an
ocean until I was 16 years old.  I’ll bet everyone in Rio Linda, California has seen the Pacific Ocean.

My “rubic credentials” hopefully established, consider the campus environment in which I found myself during the
second year of John F. Kennedy’s Presidency.  Twelve percent of my fellow freshmen were graduates of
Northeastern preparatory schools and 100% of the 12% were ethnically white.  Ninety eight percent of the freshman
and sophomore classes of 1965/66 were males (females could only transfer to UNC–Chapel Hill after completing their
underclass work at UNC-Greensboro/Women’s College).  Ninety nine plus percent of the entire student body were
ethnically non-black.  Three students were ethnically black.

Two of the three black students were friends from a summer work experience and both were much more socially
sophisticated than I.  If you recall the “tag line” from the motion picture American Graffiti “where were you in 62”?  I
know precisely, where I was; I was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and in another state as well – confusion.

Truthfully, in retrospect, I believe the swirl of new ideas and experiences surrounding me nearly drove me crazy.  I
was having great difficulty finding “Value Anchors.”  I was also a scholarship (tiny) student athlete, which wasn’t an
oxymoron in 1962.  My coach, bless his also born in rube central heart, encouraged me to get out, make friends,
pledge a fraternity, go to church, and “focus on what your intellect tells you is the truth.”  He said “there are a lot of
weirdo professors on this campus, so take everything you hear and read, with a grain of salt.”  Recall that this was
1962.  People had just started using words like weirdo.  Today, I think it would be nut job.  Also, you might be
interested to know, that in 1962, UNC-Chapel Hill was aka CU (Communist University) among tobacco farming
communities of central and eastern North Carolina.

So if you’re still with me, “here’s the beef.”

I took coaches’ advice and did all those things he suggested.  I also became a voracious reader.  The Daily Tar Heel,
the campus broadsheet, started my morning.  In that school newspaper, I read a young syndicated columnist for the
first time, William Frank Buckley Jr.   I also, shortly thereafter, read his book, Man and God at Yale.

I began forming opinions about what Buckley had to say and opinions about everything else I heard and read over
the next few years, while in school; Always, as coach admonished, shaking a few grains of sodium chloride on top.

The learning process never stops and everyone’s opinions shift over their lives within the boundaries of their core
values.  But it’s the establishment of those core values in America’s youth of today that concerns me and on that
subject I hold strong opinions.

These are a few on the topic “becoming educated.”  Remember, they are just my opinions.  Also they are free to you
so they may be worth exactly what you pay for them:

1.  Written and spoken words are how we communicate with each other and how past generations have
communicated to us over century upon century.  Please don’t bastardize language.  Words have to have meaning.

2.  Be vigilant in your acceptance of new ideas and concepts especially from academicians.  Know that public and
private school faculties and administrators come from the bottom fifth percentile of college and university graduates.  
In other words, consider the source.

3.  In America you are constantly bombarded with information.  We’re fully immersed in the “information age.”  Also
know that every bit of information that comes your way has a mission.  General Motors doesn’t spend millions on TV
ads to get you to buy a Ford.

4.  That sociology professor, who may have you, your child or grandchild by the nose and is trying to lead you or
them to utopia via a Marxist state, has a mission too. And the mission is not to expand your individual freedom and
liberty.

5.  Whenever you or I communicate, we have a mission too.  I have a mission, in this piece.  I want you to agree with
me or, at least come down on my side of the argument that American government and American education has gone
too far Left/Liberal.

6.  Ann Coulter is today’s Bill Buckley.  Find out how many college and university newspapers run her column.  How
frequently is she hooted and heckled when speaking on campus?

7.  Finally, who is responsible for these conditions?  Quote Pogo “we have met the enemy and they is us.”  We are!  I
saw 50 and 60 year olds scuffling in the street to get to the front of a queue for a Sony Playstation.  What a sorry sign
of our times.  And I’m willing to bet that many were not shopping for the kids.

For some reason, the Left finds ways to get organized that the Right doesn’t  I think it may be because those who
hold Leftist views in America are sheep that never had Josef Stalin as their shepherd.  And those on the Right all
want to be shepherds.  I’m just not sure and I’m studying on it.

So that’s how I went from rube to rubepublican.  I don’t agree with everything the Republican Party does but if they
are not to the right of the Dems, then I got educated beyond my intellect.


Let Freedom Ring,

MIKE SHARQ
MOVE-OVER.org