Many of you don’t know who The Jayhawks are. But you should.

I was introduced to The Jayhawks in 2000 on my local public radio station. Back then, National Public Radio was on during drive times, but the rest of the programming was mostly local DJs playing local and independent music. Sad to say, most of the programming is political in nature now, and music shows are relegated to the wee hours. I’ve quit listening.

But in the early 2000s, I was introduced to a number of bands I would never have heard on mainstream FM radio. Kim Richey, Allison Moorer, Uncle Tupelo, and The Jayhawks. I actually heard Lucinda Williams for the first time on public radio, before her Car Wheels on a Gravel Road album became a success. Uncle Tupelo went on to become two bands you probably have heard of, Jeff Tweety formed Wilco and Son Volt became Jay Farrar’s band. But The Jayhawks, Kim Richey, Cross Canadian Ragweed and many others were lost in a genre that is fast disappearing and is often relegated to “Country” stations. In fact, this rock music is called “alt-country” now and it doesn’t feel comfortable in today’s country or rock radio formats.

It seems any modern rock bands with a folk or southern influence are tagged “country” today. There’s something not right about that, mainly because I don’t listen to Country music. Country means George Jones or Merle Haggard or Loretta Lynn to me and with few exceptions that doesn’t hold much interest. Country is big, though, and getting bigger. And it is swallowing up bands like The Jayhawks. Heck, the only place you can hear The Eagles today is on country radio – The Eagles’ latest album even won some “Best Country Album” awards. Thirty years ago, these alt-country bands would have been the heirs of The Byrds and The Eagles, The Mamas & The Papas and Carole King. Today they are lost in a musical in-between land where they can not find the mass audience they deserve.

The Jayhawks are a prime example of this unfortunate state of affairs. They have produced six records, including Mockingbird Time, released in 2011 – eight years after their previous studio album, Rainy Day Music. They are not a household name even though albums like 1992’s Hollywood Town Hall and 2000’s Smile are classics comparable to anything from The Eagles or Jackson Browne. Certainly better than anything the more poplar Wilco or Drive-by Truckers have produced.

But most of you don’t know who The Jayhawks are. Maybe you should.

[ A list of Jayhawks songs is in the My Playlist section. The selections include songs from all 6 of their studio albums. These are simply my favorites across The Jayhawks’ career. Many of their more popular songs and/or songs they tend to do live are not here – songs like A Break in the Clouds (that includes the line that is the headline for this commentary) from Smile or Wichita and Martin’s Song from Hollywood Town Hall or Miss Williams’ Guitar from Tomorrow the Green Grass. Those are all great songs, too, and you should listen to them all. ]

That’s enough. An American tragedy happened several days ago, a member of the United States House of Representatives was shot by someone from her district at a political rally. This type of violence against our government is in fact extremely rare. Only 6 members of the United States Congress have been assassinated in the history of our country. The last was Leo Ryan, a California Congressman who was assassinated by followers of the certifiable Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. That’s over 40 years ago. Sometimes the perpetrators of these murders are politically motivated, like John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Most often, however, they are not, unless you believe Jodie Foster was the political lightning rod that caused John Hinckley, Jr. to shoot Ronald Reagan. The recent attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, a member of the House of Representatives from Arizona, falls into the not politically motivated category.

So, why then are Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, et al. responsible for this heinous act of violence? Apparently it is because they are conservative. Oops, sorry. I mean because their hateful rhetoric incites violence. Guess that means hateful rhetoric doth never pass the lips of liberals. What a crock.

But wait. Now we must control our political discourse through legislation. No more targeting a district in an election, someone could get hurt. Have to regulate the airwaves, someone might say something conservative. Guess it was right to quit calling it the War on Terror. How insightful. Starting to see a pattern here? Liberal politicians and pundits believe disagreement with their world view is hate speech and must not be tolerated. It will cause someone else to shoot another member of Congress. Never mind the facts. Never mind that Jared Loughner was not motivated to shoot Gabrielle Giffords because of something Sarah Palin or Fox News or anyone else conservative or liberal said or posted on their website. Never mind that political violence rarely happens in this country, and that, left alone, the American people will continue to meet and discuss their views with their elected officials at shopping malls and school gymnasiums and town halls across the country.

I’m sorry, it’s enough. Politicians with a D after their name can not be allowed to stifle any opposition to their view, and that’s all their posturing amounts to as they illustrate the narrow-minded, superior attitude that caused such a landslide election last November. Just get back to work. Let the families of the victims grieve. Let America grieve. And if we do not believe what you believe, it does not make us assassins.

Arrogance is one’s belief he is superior to others. It is the corruption of confidence and, in the political arena, it leads to dogma rather than dialogue. It is what leads the political class to assure us what they are doing is for our own good, as if we were children who just don’t know any better yet. If, as children, we ask why (and as anyone with young children knows, that is a frequent question), we are told, “Only bad children don’t listen to their mommy and daddy.”

The only problem with all this is that the American people are not children. We don’t just ask, “Why?” We ask, “Why not this way?” That question is too much. To ask such a thing, we must hate the poor or Muslims or Mexicans or, worst of all, the working man. Never has the affliction of arrogance been more clearly present than in today’s political landscape. We must nationalize healthcare. We must grant amnesty to illegal immigrants. Racism and bigotry is a one-way street. Spending is good. Lower taxes are bad. Together these pieces construct a monolith of national government, and that is not what the children want. In fact, the American people reject each of these “because I said so” policies by a 2 to 1 margin.

Americans spend too much on healthcare. Mostly because it is more like spending Monopoly money than their own. I doubt if most of us know how much a regular “my child has a fever and runny nose” doctor visit costs – it’s just a $30 co-pay. We spend too much on healthcare because it is subsidized by our employers and our government. We should pay a small amount every month to protect ourselves and our families from catastrophic accidents or illness (isn’t that what insurance is anyway?) and pay for our regular medical maintenance out of our own pocket. If we did, two things would happen. We would go to the doctor less and going to the doctor would cost less.

But how heartless of me. What about those who can’t pay? What about the children whose parents can’t afford to get their immunizations? Well, that’s what the government is for, isn’t it? Protecting those who can’t protect themselves. Paying for those in need would cost a whole lot less than nationalizing healthcare. We can talk about portability and choice and mandates all we want. The problem is responsibility. Are you responsible for your health, or is somebody else?

Responsibility, that might be the new theme here. Who is responsible for enforcing the law? Who is responsible for the attacks on 9/11? Who is responsible for your money? It is amazing that we seem to have forgotten the word “illegal” in the immigration debate. In this country, if you break the law, if you do something illegal there is a penalty, not amnesty. If Islamic terrorists attacked our country, then Islamists don’t get to build anything at the site of the attack unless they win the war. If I keep more of my money, I spend more of my money and the economy grows. These are not the only arguments, but they are valid ones. And that’s where arrogance comes to town. If you disagree with these arguments, and Washington seems to, then arrogance dictates that the arguments are wrong, even childish.

The dogma is that we need the government to take care of us. There is no acceptable dialogue to the contrary. Disagreement is uncaring, bigoted, greedy. This political season, one side says we must make a choice between going forward or going back to the ways of the past. C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

Thomas Frediman is at it again. This week he reassured us that the Gulf oil spill is not this president’s Katrina. Obama is doing everything right, and Bush did everything wrong. This in the same week that Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said, “They told us it was under control. Then they told us it wasn’t,” about the spill. It may just be me, but that sounds a lot like the former Democratic governor of Louisiana telling Bush they had the response to Katrina under control. Then telling him they didn’t. Maybe pictures of an oil rig spouting geysers of fire and falling into the sea isn’t as sure a sign of disaster as radar images of a hurricane heading towards New Orleans. Both presidents would have been better off ignoring what somebody else told them and taking quicker control of the situation.

But that’s not what has Friedman in a twist. It seems we’ve missed another opportunity. George Bush shouldn’t have wasted his time standing on the rubble of the twin towers with a bullhorn saying, ” I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” Obama should never have engaged in all the finger pointing about who’s to blame or “we’ve been on top of this since day one” garbage. Both presidents would have been better off heading straight to Congress and demanding something much more important.

A tax hike. On gasoline.

An extra dollar a gallon at the pump seems to be about right to Mr. Friedman. I guess Rahm Emmanuel is right. Never let a crisis go to waste. After all, a new tax is a panacea for what ails our country. Ram ’em through whenever you get a chance, and there is no better opportunity than when the country is worrying about a real problem.

I’m sorry to pick on Mr. Friedman. He’s not the only one over at the New York Times that seems to have lost their logic gene. In just the past couple of weeks we’ve learned what a terrible thing it is that people aren’t watching the network news anymore, or CNN or MSNBC or (gasp!) reading the Times – they’re watching an evil news network that shall not be named or listening to that pesky talk radio. We’ve learned how bigoted the people of Arizona are, as well as 70% of all Americans, for passing such a “troubling” illegal immigration law. Perhaps, like the administration, they haven’t read the law and don’t understand that if the Arizona law is racial profiling waiting to happen then so is the SEVENTY YEAR OLD Federal immigration law. Oh, and the Tea Party. They’re hillbillies. No, they’re racists. No, they’re – what is it they are now? Please.

I don’t think the Old Gray Lady is just old. I think she has dementia. She remembers what happened in the sixties like it was yesterday. But she just can’t seem to remember that two out of three Americans are against about every position they take today.

A tax hike? On gasoline? As a response to 9/11? They must be crazy.

Thomas Frediman wrote an editorial for the New York Times on April 4, 2010 that I was agreeing with. The engine of economic growth is small, start-up companies, he said. It seems those types of companies accounted for virtually all job growth in the United States between 1980 and 2005.

According to Freidman, “You cannot say this often enough: Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts. They come from start-ups. And where do start-ups come from? They come from smart, creative, inspired risk-takers. How do we get more of those?”

I couldn’t wait for his conclusions. What are the first things that come to mind when asked, “How do we get more start-up companies?” I bet what came to your mind is not what came to Freidman’s. “There are only two ways,” he says. Only two, and here they are: “Grow more by improving our schools or import more by recruiting talented immigrants.”

What? These are the ONLY two ways to get more start-ups in America? And they involve education and immigration policy? I don’t suppose these policies being hot-button political issues has anything to do with this logic.

Just get this straight, Mr. Freidman leaps to the conclusion that our colleges and universities aren’t producing enough would-be entrepreneurs and that if we allow Juan to cross the border unfettered he’ll get an “improved” education and start a new company. Yet even Freidman admits there are thousands of foreign students in our colleges and universities and millions of foreign graduates in professional jobs in this country. Sounds like our underperforming schools and backwards immigration policy is working for them.

Go back, then, to the original premise. “Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts. They come from start-ups. How do we get more of those?” What if we told would-be entrepreneurs in and graduated from our schools that we we will reduced or eliminate their corporate taxes during the start-up phase, say for three to five years. Not only is that a strong incentive to start a new company, all the new employees of the company will be paying taxes, increasing revenues. Many cities already do this sort of thing with reinvestment zones, providing investors tax breaks for redeveloping blighted neighborhoods. New businesses and consumer spending in the zones more than make up for the tax breaks.

But new companies are having difficulties getting investment capital – too risky, much more risky than, say, mortgage loans. Perhaps, while we’re in the mood to tells banks what to do, we should require a certain percentage of their loan portfolios be for new businesses. If banks want to make more consumer or business loans, they have to increase the capital they invest in new businesses.

Now that’s just two MORE ways to get more start-up companies in America, because Mr. Freidman is right, “Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts. They come from start-ups.” They do not come when politics takes the place of policy.

America is the greatest country the world has ever known, save God’s chosen people. It’s greatness is not found in capitalism nor democracy, not even in freedom. America is great because we were founded under God. But that all disappeared on a Sunday night on the second day of Spring. We sold capitalism to government-run. We replaced democracy with mandates. And freedom was lost to the ones we chose to represent us.

Slowly, inexorably, suddenly we abandoned our foundation, and like the Jewish nation of scripture we will suffer the fate of nations professing faith in God and then turning from Him. The wall of separation we have erected in this beloved America is not between church and state, it is between us and God. And we should be prepared as a country to live without God on our side. For the Jews that meant a divided nation. It meant they would be delivered into the hands of their enemies and scattered, dissipated, lost. That is our fate now.

This country is already divided between conservative and liberal, between Christian and secular, not between black and white or rich and poor. And now the states will line up in opposition to the federal government, unable to meet its demands. And our enemies will build bombs or buy up our credit. And we will help them to destroy us by embracing them while we chastise our friends. Because when we turn our gaze from God, we see the world instead. A world that sees man as master, that believes we make the choices of life and death, that has the arrogance to suppose we can destroy God’s creation.

For everything good God provides, the world debases. Responsibility becomes entitlement. Love becomes sex. Murder becomes a choice. How silly we become, mere pawns in the battle between good and evil, between God and the Great Deceiver. We are helpless to defeat the lies of this world and do not see it. We must understand we are powerless. We must petition God for guidance. Our founding fathers understood that, and His guidance is what produced our prosperity, our very supremacy. If we do not submit we are lost, and like Bart Stupak we will sell our souls for a promise from a liar.

Always, though, there is a remnant that continues to believe in the God of our fathers. And God has made specific promises to those accepting the salvation of his Son. And unlike man’s promises, God’s word can not be rescinded or altered. That may be just a quaint concept in this secular world, but some things are true whether you believe them or not. When the Jews in their despair turned back to God, He was always there waiting for them. He is waiting for us, too. But America must decide what we will become, one nation under God or just another fallen empire.

I want to thank all of y’all for coming today. We all loved my dad. He asked me a while ago to say something at this service. It’s something I really didn’t think about again until this week. When I thought about it I thought I might come up here and tell some funny stories about Dad, or maybe I’d tell about things I learned from him or things he taught me or things I leaned from him by what he did.

But I decided instead to talk about a time he was feeling sorry for himself. Everybody here knew Dad. He didn’t usually feel sorry for himself. He was a man that had a heart of hope. It was almost an assurance that things were going to be okay, that everything was going to turn out alright. But we’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God and every man, even my dad, is made imperfect by sin. Sometimes we don’t feel right about ourselves. Things aren’t going the way we want them to go. We’re not letting Jesus lead our lives at that moment. And we don’t stop for a moment and remember, what God wants for us is so much better than what we want for ourselves, and we spend all our lives getting in the way. If we would just get out of the way things would be much better. I think that my dad spent most of his life trying to get out of the way. I think from an early age, from the time he accepted Jesus into his heart, he knew that his life was Christ’s. When you have a heart of hope like that, when you have a heart for Jesus like that, a funny thing happens.

I’ve talked to a lot of people this week, people I’ve known all my life and some I’ve just met this week. And most of them, if not all of them, wanted to tell me about something Dad helped them to do. How Dad helped them with this or that, or that they knew someone Dad helped. That’s what Dad did, he wanted to help you – his family, his friends, people he didn’t even know. He helped me understand that when you accept Jesus into your life, starting that very day, you should try to be more like Jesus than you were yesterday. And tomorrow you should try to be a little more like Jesus than you were the day before. But even a man like that is just a man and sometimes they feel sorry for themselves, and Dad was feeling sorry for himself. When that happens, sometimes you just keep feeling sorry for yourself and it can become a habit. Not Dad. You know what he did? He prayed about it.

He went straight to the person with the answers and he prayed, “God, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

Dad said he heard a voice in his head. He heard God’s voice in his head, and God was laughing at him.

And God said, “Troy, what are you so worried about?”

And Dad said, “Well God, you know what I’m worried about. You know why I’m so upset.”

And God said, “Troy, haven’t I always taken care of you?”

Dad didn’t even have to think about it. He knew God had always taken care of him. From his earliest memories of his mother and father, of his sisters he loved so much, of his sister’s children that he considered his own children. To his family in Houston, to his wife, to his sons that he loved beyond measure. Even at his work, even at HBU (Houston Baptist University), a place he helped to found and that will leave a legacy of helping others for many years after all of us are gone. And finally here, where he came for the last years of his life. Where he found another family. Where he found y’all. And where he found two more boys to take care of. Yes, God had always taken care of him. And I believe, on the morning he had his accident, God took care of him one more time. This is not a time to be sad, because Dad’s okay. And what we need to do is be a little bit more like Christ today than we were yesterday. Because that’s what Dad wanted. That’s what Jesus wants. And as it turns out, a lot of times what they wanted were the same things.

I appreciate y’all being here. We loved our dad. Y’all loved our dad. In fact, we love him still.