Lower Gas Prices are a Good Thing

I was shocked when I read the “Higher Gas Prices Are Needed” column in the July edition of Virginia Business.

Affordable energy is not the result of any subsidy, nor is it a subsidy in and of itself. “Cheap” energy is the result of a free-market, capitalist system that, absent government intervention, always results in the most efficient allocation of scarce resources.

In fact, the situation is quite the opposite of the premise stated in the column. Cheap energy is not the result of subsidies, nor is it a subsidy. When government purposefully and willfully obstructs carbon-based energy development and production, that government is in fact providing a subsidy for so-called green energy projects. The Biden Administration is very transparent about this and has a stated policy goal of weaning the USA off of the oil and gas industry. The Administration arbitrarily stopped all federal oil and gas leasing on shore and off shore, it stopped issuing permits for safe and efficient oil and gas pipelines, it stopped the Congressionally authorized development of the substantial and proven ANWR oil and gas reserves, and it unleashed the punitive powers of the EPA on all things carbon.

The United States has more coal than any other nation in the world, enough to supply nearly 50% of our current demand for electricity for hundreds of years at costs that make green energy look like highway robbery. Thanks to improved burner technology, but for CO2, coal can be burned completely emission free. The USA also has more proven oil and gas reserves than any other nation, and we produce it safer and cleaner than any other nation in the world. Moreover, the USA has enough proven oil and gas reserves to meet all of its current needs at affordable prices. Do accidents happen? Yes. Should we do more to stop them? Yes.

Is green energy cleaner? No. When you consider the environmental impacts of mining of lithium for batteries, the inability to recycle those same batteries, the coke and iron mining for steel windmill towers and solar panel racks, the barrel of oil in every windmill gear box, the birds and bats killed by wind farms, the wildlife habitat lost to millions of acres of scorched-earth solar farms, the landfills filled with unrecyclable windmill blades, the rare earth minerals used to make solar panels mined by children in third-world countries that have no environmental protections… I could go on.

Is reducing carbon and addressing the so-called “manmade, catastrophic climate change” a worthwhile endeavor? Not when you consider the failures of the climate modeling “science” to accurately predict temperature variations. Not when you put the effects of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (and, yes, water vapor is the most abundant and significant greenhouse gas) in the context of solar cycles, historic natural climate variations, and the significant impacts on climate that result from naturally occurring changes in ocean currents caused by cyclical events such as El Nino, La Nina, and the Pacific Decadal Cycle.

If you want to address environmental issues and have a strong Virginia economy (I hope you do), then you should support policies that provide “cheap” energy. Affordable energy is the essential element of a strong economy and reduced poverty, and it takes a robust economy to fund the kind of research and development that will result in the next truly clean form of energy.

If you want a weak economy, a depressed Virginia business climate, increased poverty, more food shortages, more supply-chain issues, more inflation, and yes, even more pollution, then by all means keep pushing the dream of clean energy. But, if you truly believe in Virginia Business, then I suggest editorials and content that supports free enterprise, capitalism, and clean, abundant and affordable energy from every possible source. If you can’t do that, then consider changing the name of the magazine to “Virginia Woke.”

The Healthcare Credibility Problem

Editor's Note: This column was published in the American Thinker on September 4

I am a strong supporter of doctors and the healthcare industry in general. I grew up with a step father who was a general practicing physician and a surgeon. He was a family doctor in the truest sense of the word. He made house calls, delivered more than 5,000 babies, bartered for fees, and often just waived the charges. He had a God-given genius for diagnosis, and he spoke to his patients in plain English, sometimes very colorful language. But my mother was always quick to remind him, “After all, you are just ‘practicing’ medicine!”

People have a tendency to venerate doctors, and when they heroically save your life, this hero worship can be justified. Our long-time family doctor is another diagnostician extraordinaire, who also happens to be one of my best friends and hunting buddy. When he sewed up my son’s forehead on our dining room table, he too was vaulted into that hero category.

But something has happened to the medical profession and the healthcare industry—at 15% of the US economy, it has become an industry complete with industry titans—and as the pandemic accelerated, healthcare’s credibility problem only worsened.

Beginning in the 1990s, many doctors stopped practicing medicine on their own as the medical profession model changed from entrepreneurial to corporate medicine. As doctors and their offices began to be overwhelmed with insurance claim processing, Medicare and Medicaid compliance, malpractice suits, and medical liability insurance issues, doctors saw the hospital-affiliated-clinic model as the way to skip the bureaucratic headaches and allow the professional to focus on practicing medicine. However, corporate medicine brought corporate practices: cutting back time with patients to increase cash flow, more Medicare/Medicaid compliant procedures rather than patient-centric medicine, and outsourced billing and collection systems.

Around the same time, pharmaceutical companies began marketing drugs directly to the consumers. Like the “Mother’s Little Helper” of the sixties, new medicines were being developed at a staggering pace. Television ads portray every drug as the new panacea for whatever ails you. In fact, consumers become so mesmerized by the truth-in-beauty scenes of a perfect life that they almost never hear the legally required disclosure of contraindications that should scare anybody who listens. “May cause an uncontrollable urge to gamble” one drug ad warned! I remember watching a football game with my 12-year-old son around 2002. One ad for a giddyup (ED) drug kept showing a guy throwing a football at a moving tire swing. As I watched the imagery, I was not paying attention and wondered out loud, “I wonder what this drug does?” My son’s reply was priceless: “I think it makes you throw the ball better.” About ten years ago, a pharmacist told me that the average customer was on 5 to 6 different prescription medicines, and several of those were to counteract the bad side effects of the other drugs. The proliferation of pharmaceuticals has even created a spin-off industry for lawyers: 1-800 BAD DRUG!

Queue up the American Medical Association-supported Obamacare. Not only did I not get to keep my insurance, my doctor refused to see me because I had the Bronze Level health insurance plan from the federal marketplace. Doctors, who had for decades been trying to make ends meet with increasingly lower limits on what Medicare and Medicaid would pay for visits and procedures, were now being forced to accept less from the new federally underwritten health plans being forced upon millions of Americans.

As though all these trends were not bad enough, the SARS Coronavirus-2 Covid-19 pandemic has undermined doctors’ credibility. Doctors can be found everywhere arguing about the merits of wearing a mask, social distancing, excessive handwashing, quarantine time, the efficacy of various treatments promoted by some and castigated by others, and the efficacy and risks of vaccines. Many doctors bemoan the fact that Covid is keeping people from their regular checkups and screenings. My dermatologist diagnosed seven melanoma skin cancers during the first month of the shutdown in 2020, while the number of patients she saw was about one half of her normal workload. She lamented that perhaps an equal number of melanomas went undetected during the same timeframe. People were suffering heart-attack symptoms but would not go see their doctors. Colonoscopies, mammograms, and many other cancer screenings went by the boards. While medical professionals, policymakers, and especially the media whipped up Covid fears, cases of depression and suicides increased dramatically, and now, schools are finding multiple psychological problems among returning school children.

Hospitals stopped scheduling elective procedures to make room for the onslaught of Covid patients, even though elective procedures have long been the cash cow of every hospital business model. Since this threatened their financial stability, the federal government came to the rescue with cash payments for each confirmed Covid patient treated. This created a perverse economic incentive to make every patient a Covid patient, regardless of their condition. There are thousands of anecdotal reports of doctors wanting to report deaths as Covid related no matter the actual cause of death.

Most medical professionals recognize that Covid will never be eliminated. We hope to control it and learn to live with it. The world has an aspiration of reaching what is known as “herd immunity,” where the percentage of population that has been vaccinated or has developed natural immunity (antibodies) is high enough that the disease no longer presents a threat to humanity as a whole. The concept gives people a goal and a hope, but instead we have arguments and changing estimates among the medical and scientific communities, about what percentage constitutes herd immunity.

We have now entered the stage where medical professionals and policymakers are proposing vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and a return to school closures and economic shutdowns as the delta variant of Covid moves through the population with renewed vigor. But amid all this vaccination focus, somehow natural immunity is no longer a consideration. This is most distressing since National Institute of Health research suggests that natural immunity is more robust than vaccine-induced immunity. Studies have shown that survivors of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 were immune up to 90 years later. Similar studies show that survivors of the first SARS Coronavirus epidemic in 2003 are still immune. Because of significant skepticism about the credibility of the healthcare system, it is well known that there are possibly tens of millions of unreported Covid cases, and those people likely have natural immunity.

As Miss Marple says, “Good advice is often given, but seldom taken.” My advice to healthcare providers is to stop speaking in absolutes, recognize that there has always been healthy disagreement among medical professionals, and most of all, recognize that when people decline their well-intended advice, it is because the healthcare community has a serious credibility problem. Most of all, healthcare professionals need to remember that, after all, they are only “practicing” medicine.

Where is the Outrage?

The headlines tell the story, and it’s not a pretty one. Climate realists, like me, are losing the climate change debate. Not because we are wrong. Factually, we win every time! But, we are losing the hearts and minds of the people because we have failed to tap into their emotions.

The climate alarmists don’t care about the facts. They beat us down with children, like Greta Thunberg, and lecture us about self-interest and our cowardice in the face of a “mass extinction event.” They play to our natural emotions and worst fears by linking climate change to those uncontrollable things we are most afraid to face—hurricanes (lions), wildfires (tigers), and tornadoes (and bears, oh my!).

Despite these facts:

• Climate change models have failed to accurately predict the future global average temperature change.
• There is no ideal average temperature for a world where on any given day the temperature could be -50 degrees F in one place and 120 F above zero somewhere else. (Remember, if you live by averages, you would be comfortable standing with one foot on a block of ice and the other in a fire.)
• Global average temperatures have fluctuated much more and have changed much faster in the geologic past and well before humans started burning carbon-based fuels in significant quantities.
• Weather patterns are much more attributable to cyclical changes in ocean currents than to climate change.
• The use of oil, gas, and coal creates a significantly higher quality of life for billions of people, reduces poverty, provides abundant food supplies, and means cleaner air and water.
• There is overwhelming evidence that climate change is neither caused primarily by humans nor an existential threat to mankind or any other species.

Despite all this and more, we are gradually losing the battle for the minds of the people when it comes to the climate change debate. And we are not just losing the debate at the political level. We are losing in the board rooms, and not just the woke corporations like Amazon, Nike, Apple, or Google, but in the corporate board rooms of the utility companies, the oil & gas industry, and the manufacturers.

Why?

We tend to make our case using wonky science that even scientists don’t fully understand. People can’t get their heads around our rational explanations, but they darn sure understand fear of events that may affect them directly and personally.

We tend to argue about the adverse macro-economic effects of climate change policy—the loss of millions of jobs, green energy costing trillions of dollars, and the failed goals of wealth redistribution. These effects are real and catastrophic.

However, have you ever wondered why the voters do not support Social Security or Medicare reforms, despite the overwhelming macro-economic evidence that both systems will likely be bankrupt within the next decade? The answer is fairly simple. People make decisions based on micro-economics, not macro-economics. People will choose to protect their personal benefits over the solvency of the system—every time.

Consider these examples of the micro-economic impacts of climate-change policies. Here in Virginia, Dominion Energy is closing coal-fired power plants in favor of solar and wind farms, and this move toward renewable energy sources will lead to a $1,000 per person per year increase in electric bills by 2030.

Ask anybody if they are willing to pay a thousand dollars a year when it is not likely to change the average global temperature at all? This question brings the issue home, and the answer will much more often be a resounding “No!” Ask the same person if they think climate change is a threat and whether we should do something about it, and you will get many more affirmative responses.

The Transportation & Climate Initiative, a regional collaboration of 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states plus DC, is proposing a 20-25% reduction of carbon dioxide emissions for the region. Their policy of choice is a “carbon [dioxide] tax.” Recently, Virginia enacted a carbon dioxide tax on utility generation, and the General Assembly will be considering one on transportation fuels that may include a 28 cent per gallon gasoline tax and a 26 cent per gallon diesel tax. Based on current mileage rates and miles driven per capita, these tax increases could cost each driver more than $1,000 per year! Once again, I can fairly easily predict the response from most people to the question of whether they are willing to pay another $1,000 per year for no material effect on the climate.

People expect their lights and their computer to work when they flip the power switch. Talk about the potential for rolling brown-outs, or planned black-outs, so that someone else can charge their electric vehicle at the charging station built with tax dollars (ever seen a government-built gas station?), and I think you will get a predictable negative response.

I am certain that we can come up with many more examples, but my point is this: let’s take the case against climate change down to the personal, micro-economic level. Remember the charge against George H. W. Bush: “It’s the economy stupid!” It wasn’t that Bush didn’t understand that there was a recession; it was that he failed to recognize how that recession affected people at the personal level.

To put it another way, everything in life is political, except politics, that’s personal. When you explain how a policy threatens someone’s pocket book, you’ll get their attention.

Just Build Them Please 

Note: This Guest Column was published in the Farmville Herald in December 2018, and it was written in response to a number of opposition letters to the editor about three different projects being considered in the local area and region.

I have been casually observing the permitting processes for several area projects—the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, the Green Ridge landfill in Cumberland, and the student housing on the Martin property. Now, I feel compelled to speak out at the risk of offending certain constituencies. Can we just get on and build these projects?!

Before you dismiss me as some minion of industry, consider my background. I was the founding treasurer of an environmental group in Wyoming that was formed to stop an oil well on the national forest near Yellowstone. When that effort failed, I watched the group succumb to cause fever in their zealous efforts to save the earth. After that I made the transformation from environmentalist to conservationist which means I consider mankind to be part of the landscape and responsible for good stewardship (wise use) of resources.

One of the constants of life is change. Everybody wants progress, but it is the change they don’t like. Several counties in the area have for decades had an anti-growth attitude. Now, those same counties find themselves unable to provide even the most basic of public services without raising tax rates on the citizens who already struggle to get by. When a large project comes along that will create jobs and add significant value to the local tax base, a small cadre of opponents rise up and adamantly oppose the project. We have transcended from the Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) attitude to BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Buckingham compressor station has been rigorously analyzed and is likely the most thoroughly vetted pipeline in American history. Ironically, the Buckingham citizens fighting the new pipeline have been living near an existing pipeline that has operated for decades without any significant impacts. According to the US Energy Information Administration, there are 210 different major pipeline systems that comprise about 1.5 million miles of pipe in the USA. There are another 1.5 million miles of consumer gas distribution lines in America. Serious pipeline accidents (those accidents that result in fatality or injury requiring hospitalization) have ranged from 70 per year in 1998 to 24 in 2017. Nothing in life can be accident free, but overall natural gas pipelines are extremely safe. Regarding the opponent’s claims about the health effects of emissions from the compressor station, perhaps some research about the emissions from wood stoves used extensively in the area, including formaldehyde and other aldehydes, would be enlightening.

The Green Ridge landfill in Cumberland will be a state-of-the-art facility that will handle garbage from around the region, but will also serve the needs of Cumberland residents. About half of the 1,144 acre site will be buffer between the working part of the landfill and its neighbors. In a recent 50 Years Ago Today section of the Farmville Herald, I read about the 200 informal dumps alongside roads in Prince Edward. The county supervisors’ solution back then was to build five unlined, open-trench dump sites. I believe worrying about garbage being processed and disposed of in a modern, highly regulated facility is misplaced fear. And, as for the truck traffic, I heard the same fears expressed about the Luck Stone facility on US 460 west of Farmville. I drive that road almost daily. I have yet to even be slowed down by trucks entering or leaving the site, and to my knowledge, there has not been a single accident associated with that truck traffic.

Lastly, I believe the Martins should be allowed to build student housing on the corner of Oak and High Streets. I can’t think of a more suitable location for student housing than right across the street from Longwood. For most Americans, their homes are their most significant asset and source of retirement. I believe it is wrong to deny the Martins their opportunity to divest of a costly old home and finance their golden years. Imagine you’re playing Monopoly. You’re fortunate enough to acquire Boardwalk and Park Place. You hold on to it, build up some cash, and when you go to put a hotel on your properties, suddenly the rules are changed, and you are denied. Regarding the historic district designation, all old homes are not historically significant.

We can grow our economy, keep our community character, preserve our history, and protect our environment. This is not a zero sum game. The demand for affordable energy is increasing, especially if we are going to provide jobs for our citizens. The volume of garbage produced every day is growing, and we need places to properly dispose of it in the most environmentally sound way. And, we need housing to accommodate our growing university and student body, and right across the street from Longwood is the most logical place for that to happen. So, in the broader interest of the region and its people, can we please just build these projects?

Musings of a Climate-Change Skeptic 

Note: This column was published in the Farmville Herald in August 2018, in response to a letter to the editor. Four different Longwood University professors responded to my assertions in two subsequent Guest Columns to which I wrote a rebuttal.

I must respond to a recent LTE regarding climate change. By way of background, I graduated from UC San Diego’s Revelle College with a degree in biology and economics, so I have a science background. Moreover, I have over 30 years of conservation and environmental policy experience at the federal and state levels in the legislative and executive branches.

One of the first things you learn as a policymaker is that science informs policy; it does not establish policy. The reasons are simple. First, science is usually narrowly focused on a specific issue or challenge while policy has broad-based implications and impacts on a much wider spectrum of disciplines including science, economics, sociology, and governance. Second, science is wildly inconsistent, and all too often, scientists have become political advocates with pre-determined outcomes driving their scientific processes.

In a time when we hear daily about “scientific” studies—mostly statistical correlations with no determination of cause and effect—that suggest conclusions such as “90% of women who eat chocolate during pregnancy have happier children,” we should be skeptical. My point is that “science” is a term that is thrown around flippantly in an attempt to discredit anyone who has the temerity to disagree. More importantly, scientists by nature are skeptical, and the notion that there is consensus about any scientific theory is ludicrous. Science is never “done.”

Regarding climate change, or more accurately anthropogenic catastrophic global warming, here are some things to consider.

• Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes warming and mankind is putting a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. 

• CO2 makes up 6% of the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and H2O (water vapors) makes up 90%. 

• There is no “ideal” average global temperature and an increase of 2-3 Fahrenheit over 100 years is not significant in a world where on any given day some place is -40 F and another is 120 F. 

• Cold is much more dangerous to all life forms and kills more people each year than heat. 

• CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been as much as 10-20 times higher during nearly every other geologic period of the earth. The atmospheric CO2 levels in 1850 were near record lows. 

• CO2 is plant food—essential to all vegetative growth—and higher CO2 levels have resulted in more plant growth and crop production around the globe. 

• Global temperature has been rising since the end of the Little Ice Age (around 1850), but have not reached the temperatures seen during the Medieval Warming Period—when Vikings were growing grapes in Greenland—or those of the Roman Warming Period. 

• Sea levels have been rising for centuries, but the rate of sea level rise has declined in recent decades. 

• The frequency and severity of droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding are not increasing, but the 24/7 media cycle makes every event “newsworthy.” 

• There is no evidence that the acidity of the oceans is increasing, but the acidity of oceans does vary widely around the world. 

• Suggesting that developing countries go without carbon-based energy in the form of electricity condemns the world’s poor to starvation, food poisoning, diseases, and poverty. It is the modern-day equivalent of “Let them eat cake.” 

• Without abundant and affordable electricity that can only be provided by fossil fuels, billions of people around the world will continue to cook and heat by burning wood and dung, and as a result, millions of people will continue to die each year from the indoor pollution caused by wood and dung smoke. 

• According to the “climate change experts,” spending (redistributing) a trillion dollars a year on climate change policies will only reduce the increase in global temperature over 100 years by a fraction of a degree. 

There are bigger and more important issues facing humanity, and there are ways to address them that will achieve the desired outcomes. Worrying about climate change and whatever, if any, role humans may have in it is tantamount to encountering a grizzly bear and wondering when you last had your teeth cleaned by the dentist.

A Message to ALL Republicans

This message is to ALL Republicans—establishment, fiscal conservatives, RINO, social conservatives, moderates, ultra-conservative, Trumpers, and never Trumpers.

On November 7^th, 2017, Virginia’s political complexion changed from purple to blue. On November 8^th, all the Monday-morning quarterbacks were out in force with full-throated criticism of Ed Gillespie. I am not going to counter the critics except to say that Virginia ran a rock-hard conservative for Governor in 2013, and we came up short in that election too.

To all the arm-chair quarterbacks out there, instead of picking on the quarterback—and forgive me while I torture the football metaphor—we should be trying to figure out why the Republican Team can’t win games (elections). Politics, like football, is a team sport. And, politics, like football, is a full-contact sport. To put check marks in the win column, we all must subordinate our personal agendas to the team game plan. If we all play for individual records, we may make it to the Hall of Fame, but we will never get to the Super Bowl.

If you want to wins games (elections), here are some football basics to live your political life by:

#1: If your favorite quarterback (candidate) doesn’t get the starting job (nomination), suck it up and start playing for the starter. As the old saying goes, “You gotta dance with the girl who brung ya.”

#2: If the starting quarterback doesn’t throw well, but can run the ball, then adjust your play to maximize your QB’s effectiveness.

#3: No quarterback can win games if the linemen don’t block, the running backs fumble, or the receivers don’t run their routes as planned.

#4: No quarterback can win games if the defense can’t stop the other team from scoring or controlling the ball.

#5: You will never win any games if you don’t show up at the field on game day to play (vote).

#6: Sometimes the other team’s players are bigger (population), stronger (money), and faster (cleaver). You will have losses on the field and in life. Winners pick themselves up, don’t pout or cry, and get back to the hard work of learning from their mistakes and becoming better.

If Republicans want to win, then let’s start to act like were on the same team, improve our skills, work out, come to practices, show up on game day, act like we want to win, play our hearts out, and win one for the Gipper.

On Defeat

On Defeat

I have seen and heard a lot of comments about Cam Newton’s post-Super Bowl Press Conference. Most people have characterized his press conference as “disappointing,” “inappropriate,” “rude,” or “revealing.”
Please allow me to offer an alternative view.

There is an old saying, “Don’t judge a person until you have walked a mile in their shoes.” Precious view of us have ever even worn cleats in a real football game, let alone in the NFL, and even fewer have ever run a “mile” in the Super Bowl. I am not sure there is any greater high or low in sports than winning or losing the Super Bowl, with the possible exception of competing in the Olympics. Time and time again, it has been the team that is the most emotionally prepared for the Super Bowl that wins. Teams that have been there before are often assumed to have an advantage. Butterflies in the first quarter have dictated the outcome more often than not. Can anybody forget the snap whizzing by Peyton Manning’s head for the opening play two years ago? If there is anything worse than having a terrible season in the NFL, it is going to the Super Bowl and losing. I have been excited to see my San Diego Chargers get to the playoffs for several seasons, but, in the back of my mind, I knew they did not have what it takes to win the big one. Secretly, I was often relieved when they did not make it. The one time the Chargers made it to the big dance, they got beat badly—so badly I have erased the experience from my head.

So, what’s my point? Cam Newton’s disappointment—however much it was in itself disappointing—is certainly understandable. Especially, after his team went 17-1 in the regular season, dominated the playoffs, and he earns the MVP award. It had to be a crushing defeat.

When Fritz was wrestling, I took a great interest in the sport. A sport his great grandfather excelled in, but I had aggressively avoided when I saw a friend get a nasty case of cauliflower ear. I read a story about wrestling from an Iowa wrestling coach, and, yes, Iowa is the wrestling capital of America. He talked about the grueling conditioning required, the challenges of making weight, and then having to compete while dehydrated and with little or no energy reserves. He talked about the fact that teams could always comfort each other in loss, or one could attribute a loss to another teammate’s failure, but in wrestling (and other single player sports) losing was a failure each competitor owns singularly. Moreover, when you lose a wrestling match, it is one of the most humiliating forms of defeat that the sporting world has to offer. Think about it. In the natural world, how do predators display dominance over their prey and even their own family group? They roll their opponent over on to their backs, hold them down until the opponent submits—they pin their opponent. You lose a wrestling match by either getting pinned, or rolled over onto your back so many times the opponent out scores you. As Fritz used to say when he lost, “I got owned.”

Well, Cam Newton got owned in Super Bowl 50. No two ways about it. He got sacked 6 times, had the ball wrenched from his hands leading to a touchdown, he got hit and thrown to the ground many more times than I could count. It was like no other game he played this year, and it was humiliating. It would be for anyone. And for the record, he is certainly not the first Super Bowl competitor to look and act defeated after a humbling experience like that.

The Bible says, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” (Luke 12:48) Cam Newton certainly could have shown more grace in defeat. But, honestly, how many of us ever do that? To his credit, he acknowledged that Denver out played them, played better than them, that the Panthers missed opportunities, had their chances, and turned the ball over too many times. Then he left abruptly to lick his wounds.

I learned, while I could easily share in Fritz’s wrestling victories with him, he needed time and to be alone to process his losses—he needed to lick his wounds. If I left him alone, he would quickly rebound; if I pressed the issue, his defeat would get the better of him. Fritz and I both learned from those experiences.

Politics has much in common with sports when it comes to handling losses. I have been a political operative for 30 years. I have managed ballot initiatives, helped elect State Reps, State Senators, three U.S. Congressmen, a U.S. Senator, and even a U.S. President, but I have never put my name on the ballot. As an operative, I could rationalize a defeat by pointing to the candidate’s shortcomings or errors they committed. When you put your name on the ballot, you have only the mirror to gaze at when you lose. And, ironically, it seems that Monday-Morning Quarterbacks are more prevalent in politics than football.

It can be said that adversity is a great teacher. It can make you stronger, or it can crush you. It builds character, or reveals it. It can produce humility, or it can be the fall that goes before a haughty spirit (it is destruction that goes before pride) (Pro. 16:18). Wisdom is a gift from God, but unfortunately, most of us have to get knocked down a notch or two before our pride gives way to humility before God, and we actually ask for the wisdom that God gives liberally (James 1:5). Cam Newton got knocked down more notches last night that many of us have likely experienced in a lifetime. His ultimate response to adversity will be played out over the coming months and next season. His mother raised him to know God, and God has certainly blessed him with tremendous gifts. I believe and hope he will react more appropriately to adversity. In the meantime, I can allow some forbearance for his response last night because I have some empathy for what he experienced.

FYI: Here is a video of Fritz's Senior Year Wrestling Highlights, and, yes, they are all wins because that's what highlights are!
Fritz Senior Year Wrestling Highlights 07-07