Timothy Rollins
Cartoonist, Columnist,
Editor and Publisher
Born
in California, Tim Rollins is an alumnus of both Utah
State University and the University of Utah
where he majored in Business Management and minored in Political Science, and
yet has been described by some of his friends as a New Yorker with attitude
- both barrels blazing and a completely in-your-face personality. He took
over as Editor and Publisher of The American Partisan Magazine (TAP) in July
2001, after being a columnist with TAP and Senior Editor with TAP's predecessor,
RIGHT Magazine.
He was also the author of a well received three-part series in USA Journal Online in 1998 on the inconsistent application of the death penalty in Texas through prosecutions by private lawyers which he felt circumvented accountability to the people through duly elected district attorneys. In addition to his columns, he's completed a novel not yet published, and has started on another. In October 2002, he debuted his first political cartoon in The American Partisan. Next to his family, writing is one of his greatest passions and a common complaint among those who know him is that he spends too much time at the keyboard. A movie buff, his favorite comedy of the 1980's would easily have to be Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School", and his favorite movie of all time would have to be the 1946 Frank Capra classic "It's A Wonderful Life" with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.
Having
started out in politics campaigning for Richard Nixon in 1972 as the youngest
staffer in the office (13) and quite possibly in the country, he developed his
political bearings rather quickly and at a very early age. His political
leanings are generally conservative with a strong support for the right-to-life
as well as the right to keep and bear arms. He has at times targeted even
some conservative politicians for what he describes as "selling out the
American people". Following high school, he went off to serve in and subsequently
became a veteran of the United States Marine
Corps, where he served as both an Administrative Clerk and as Battalion/Group
Legal Chief. After discharge, Tim began his college education at Utah
State University in Logan.
Tim's
fiercely independent political philosophy cemented while in Logan, and especially
at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City,
where he realized that liberal college professors often had fatal flaws in the
positions they took. Poking holes in their arguments became a sport for him,
and it was there he realized an even greater need to be 'on his toes' and be
able to discern truth from the collegiate fiction of a bunch of academics who
he feels even now often can't cut it in the real world - hence their residing
in the halls of academia. One of Tim's additional sports was pointing out to
some of the more conservative locals the sheer lunacy of some of the positions
they embraced, which had neither a legal nor a scriptural justification on which
to base the flawed belief, and that there needed to be more than just sheer
emotion in forming a belief that would sustain one through life. As a practicing
Mormon, Tim was seen as too conservative by his more liberal non-Mormon friends,
and too liberal for many of his other friends. His
favorite president by far is Ronald Reagan, who paved the way for the collapse
of the Iron Curtain of Eastern Europe which occurred on George (Papa) Bush's
watch.
After
working in the private sector for a few years, Tim returned to military service
first part-time, then full-time as a member of the Army
National Guard, where he once again in his words, "flew a desk";
first in an artillery battery, and then later in an aviation unit. It was there
that his love of flying allowed him to realize the fulfillment of some of his
dreams, which came to an end in 1990, following a knee injury from which he
never fully recovered. His column is titled "Beneath
the Surface" because of what he feels is the almost always hidden
and often not-so-hidden agenda of lawmakers and other politicians that often
lies just beneath the proposals they claim will make America a better place,
when all too often, the exact opposite occurs.
In the almost 30 years he has been voting, he has voted for both Democrats and Republicans alike, thus not making him hard and fast in the way of party loyalty. The reason for this is because he votes on principles and not on party loyalty. Having voted in each election the entire time he was registered to vote in New York State, his favorite bumper sticker of the 2000 election was the one he saw in a Palmyra parking lot in that read: "Hillary... Not Here, Not Now, Not Ever!". The downside of the recent election is that he was stuck with her - at least until he moved - but then again, all of America is stuck with her - until New Yorkers have the sense to drive her out of office and into obscurity and from there into oblivion... but don't hold your breath. Next to her fellow Senator Chuck Schumer, she has the safest seat in the Senate, despite the fact that like Bobby Kennedy - whose Senate seat she now occupies - she too, had never lived there.
The 2006 midterm electoral bloodbath sustained was seen by Tim and many of his friends as the GOP getting their just desserts for failing to lead Congress in a decisive manner, and for being too wimpy to stand up and fight for what was right, given the lack of true Conservative direction in the party. For that reason, Tim left the Republican Party after 34 years and is now an Independent Conservative. As Tim has been known to say on more than one occasion: "The only opinions I trust instinctively are God's and my own...in that order." He has long realized that his wife's opinion also weighs in heavily in his decision-making processes.
In
addition to his work at TAP, he's also a contributing columnist with Intellectual
Conservative, OpinioNet
Magazine, The Patriotist and GOP
USA. He was also Associate Editor for USA Journal Online and has
also contributed to Covenant Syndicate where he broke onto the scene, Enter
Stage Right, Femme Soul, Web Today, Real Mensch, Spin
Tech Magazine, and has appeared in print in USA
TODAY, the Toronto SUN,
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Deseret
News (Salt Lake City, Utah), as well as the Halifax
Daily Herald in Nova Scotia, Canada.
A
policy analyst for the Center for
the National Security Interest in Washington DC, he has appeared as a guest
on Michael Coren LIVE in Toronto,
Canada, was featured on Canada's #1 talk radio station CFRB
1010-AM and was called upon for expert analysis by National
Public Radio during the confirmation hearings of Attorney General John Ashcroft
in January 2001 and has been contacted by C-SPAN in their closer look at online
newspapers and magazines.
His
long-term professional ambition is to be a regular columnist for either The
Wall Street Journal or another major American newspaper with a lead into
syndication nationwide - or even better, a shot at a debate show on FOX
News Channel or MSNBC. But then again,
who in this line of work wouldn't want that for themselves? And with faxes,
e-mail and modems available, you have to ask in what other job could you have
the luxury of working from home in your pajamas?
Tim
is 47 years old. A practicing member of The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the Mormons),
he is the father of three children, including T.
J. Rollins, TAP's mascot. Married, he lives with his wife
in Wisconsin. ***
© 2006 Timothy Rollins
COPYRIGHT
© 2006 BY THE AMERICAN PARTISAN.
All writers retain rights to their work.