Monthly Archives: August 2017

August 19, 2017 · 22:22

A Monument to Murder

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In light of the Confederate Monument controversy I am posting a part of one of my book drafts regarding the Colfax Massacre. This event occurred eight years after the Civil War ended when hundreds of heavily armed men from the White Liners, a White Supremacist movement in Louisiana attacked the town of Colfax on Easter Sunday 1863. There are monuments to the murderers, one which I have included in this article.

When it comes to the monuments everything depends on context. Since the vast majority of the monuments were placed in the aftermath of Plessy v. Ferguson during the height of the Jim Crow Era, and many others as a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement there is no doubt that those that erected them intended them to be symbols which reminded Blacks of their inferior place.

I am in the process of writing a number of articles dealing with the monuments.  This is not because I am trying in any way to denigrate the lives of ordinary Confederate soldiers, many of whom were drafted against their will beginning in 1862 because there were not enough volunteers. Many of those conscripted soldiers died in hopeless battles and others when they attempted to desert from the Army of Northern Virginia to help their families when Sherman’s Army marched through Georgia and the Carolinas, were summarily executed on the orders of General Robert E. Lee.

Likewise this is not an indictment of men who men who were gallant soldiers who in volunteering to serve alongside their friends and fellow townspeople fought for a abhorrent cause, as many of them didn’t see their fight in that manner. If you read their letters and correspondence on can see a number of different reasons that they fought, some were true believers in the Confederacy and Slavery, but others were not. But to be sure their leaders did understand.

In the case of the Colfax massacre, some of the men involved were former Confederate soldiers, while others either never served or were to young to serve in the war. But at Colfax they were not soldiers, they were terrorists. In this case the heritage is hate. Interestingly the historical marker on the site terms in a “riot” not a massacre or act of terrorism and in blames in on “Carpetbagger misrule.”

So anyway, that is why the context of the various monuments matters. You’ll see more over the next few days, but this is something that matters more than a meme, more than a false comparison of being on a slippery slope to removing the statues of George Washington and other Founding Fathers who owned slaves.

Here is the excerpt from my book.

Peace

Padre Steve+

The violence against Southern blacks escalated in the wake of the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and with the increasing number of blacks being elected to office in some Southern states during the elections of 1872. In Louisiana a Federal court ruled in favor of Republican Reconstruction candidates following a Democrat campaign to interfere with the vote, which included attacks on polling sites and the theft of ballot boxes. As a result the Louisiana Democrats “established a shadow government and organized paramilitary unit known as the White League to intimidate and attack black and white Republicans.” [1]

The White League in Louisiana was particularly brutal in its use of violence. The worst massacre committed by the White League occurred Easter Sunday 1873 when it massacred blacks in Colfax, Louisiana. Colfax was an isolated nondescript hamlet about three hundred fifty miles northwest of New Orleans. It sat on the grounds of a former plantation whose owner, William Calhoun, who worked with the former slaves who were now freedmen. The town itself“composed of only a few hundred white and black votes” [2] was located in the newly established Grant Parish. The “parish totaled about 4,500, of whom about 2,400 were Negroes living on the lowlands along the east bank of the Red.” [3] Between 1869 and 1873 the town and the parish were the scene of numerous violent incidents and following the 1872 elections, the whites of the parish were out for blood.

White leaders in Grant Parish “retaliated by unleashing a reign of terror in rural districts, forcing blacks to flee to Colfax for protection.” [4]The blacks of parish fled to the courthouse seeking protection from a violent white mob following the brutal murder of a black farmer and his family on the outskirts of town. The people of Colfax, protected by just a few armed black militiamen and citizens deputized by the sheriff took shelter in the courthouse knowing an attack by the White Supremacists was coming.  As the White League force assembled one of its leaders told his men what the day was about. He said, “Boys, this is a struggle for white supremacy….There are one hundred-sixty-five of us to go into Colfax this morning. God only knows who will come out. Those who do will probably be prosecuted for treason, and the punishment for treason is death.” [5] The attack by over 150 heavily armed men of the White League, most of whom were former Confederate soldiers, killed at least seventy-one and possibly as many as three-hundred blacks. Most of the victims were killed as they tried to surrender. The people, protected by just a few armed men were butchered or burned alive by the armed terrorist marauders. It was “the bloodiest peacetime massacre in nineteenth-century America.” [6]

The instigators of the attack claimed that they acted in self-defense. They claimed that “armed Negroes, stirred up by white Radical Republicans, seized the courthouse, throwing out the rightful officeholders: the white judge and sheriff” and they claimed that the blacks had openly proclaimed “their intention to kill all the white men, they boasted they would use white women to breed a new race.” [7]The claims were completely fabricated, after sending veteran former army officers who were serving in the Secret Service to investigate, the U.S. Attorney for Louisiana, J.R. Beckwith sent an urgent telegram to the Attorney General:

“The Democrats (White) of Grant Parish attempted to oust the incumbent parish officers by force and failed, the sheriff protecting the officers with a colored posse. Several days afterward recruits from other parishes, to the number of 300, came to the assistance of the assailants, when they demanded the surrender of the colored people. This was refused. An attack was made and the Negroes were driven into the courthouse. The courthouse was fired and the Negroes slaughtered as they left the burning building, after resistance ceased. Sixty-five Negroes terribly mutilated were found dead near the ruins of the courthouse. Thirty, known to have been taken prisoners, are said to have been shot after the surrender, and thrown into the river. Two of the assailants were wounded. The slaughter is greater than the riot of 1866 in this city. Will send report by mail.” [8]

Federal authorities arrested nine white men in the wake of the massacre and after two trials in which white majority juries were afraid to go against public opinion, three were “convicted of violating the Enforcement Act of 1871.” [9] None were convicted of murder despite the overwhelming evidence against them and even the lesser convictions enraged the White Supremacists in Louisiana who had employed the best lawyers possible and provided them and the defendants with unlimited financial backing. Assisted by the ruling of Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Bradley, who had a long history of neglecting Southern racism, white Democrats appealed the convictions to the Supreme Court.

The attack, and the court cases which followed, notably the judgment of the Supreme Court in United States v. Cruickshank which dealt with the appeal of the men responsible for the Colfax Massacre led to a “narrowing of Federal law enforcement authority” and were “milestones on the road to a “solid” Democratic South.” [10] The decision of the court in United States v. Cruikshank was particularly perverse in its interpretation of constitutional rights and protections. The court ruled in favor of the terrorists and declared that “the right of the black victims at Colfax to assemble hand not been guaranteed because they were neither petitioning Congress nor protesting a federal law. Assembling for any other cause was not protected.” [11] The Cruikshank decision amounted to a Supreme Court endorsement of violence against blacks, and made it “impossible for the federal government to prosecute crimes against blacks unless they were perpetrated by a state and unless it could prove a racial motive unequivocally.” [12] Northern politicians and newspapers, reeling under the effects of the stock market crash of 1873, which had denounced the massacre just a year before now ran from the story and from support of African Americans. A Republican office holder wrote, “The truth is, our people are tired out with this worn cry of ‘Southern outrages…. Hard times and heavy taxes make them wish the ‘nigger,’ the ‘everlasting nigger,’ were in hell or Africa.” [13] Racism and race hatred was not exclusively the parlance of the South.

In the wake of Justice Bradley’s reversal of the Colfax convictions whites in Grant Parish engaged in brutal reprisals against blacks, leading to many murders and lynching’s, crimes which law enforcement, even that favorable to the rights of African Americans were afraid to prosecute for fear of their own lives. Louisiana’s Republican Governor, William Pitt Kellogg wrote Attorney General Williams blaming the violence on Bradley’s ruling, which he wrote, “was regarded as establishing the principle that hereafter no white man could be punished for killing a negro, and as virtually wiping the Ku Klux laws of the statute books.” He added that with the Army leaving the state that his government and other Reconstruction governments would fall, “if Louisiana goes,” Kellogg wrote, “Mississippi will inevitably follow and, that end attained, all the results of the war so far as the colored people are concerned will be neutralized, all the reconstruction acts of Congress will be of no more value than so much waste paper and the colored people, though free in name, will be practically remitted back to servitude.” [14] Governor Kellogg could not have been more correct.

In the years that followed many of the men involved in the massacre and other murders before and after were hailed as heroes, some, including the leader of the attackers, Christopher Columbus Nash were again appointed to office in Colfax and Grant Parish and blacks were reminded every day of just what they had lost. On April 13th 1921 the men who committed the massacre were honored with a memorial in the Colfax cemetery honoring them as “Heroes… who fell in the Colfax Riot fighting for White Supremacy.” In 1951 the State of Louisiana Department of Commerce and Industry dedicated a marker outside the Courthouse which read: “On the site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three White men and 150 Negroes were slain, this event on April 13, 1873 marked the end of Carpetbag misrule in the South.”[15] That marker still stands, there is no marker commemorating the victims.

Other massacres followed across the South, aimed at both blacks and their white Republican allies. In Louisiana the White League had some 14,000 men under arms, in many cases drilling as military units led by former Confederate officers. A White League detachment southwest of Shreveport “forced six white Republicans to resign their office on pain of death – and then brutally murdered them after they had resigned.” [16] This became known as the Coushatta Massacre and it was a watershed because for the first time the White League targeted whites as well as African Americans. The violence, now protected by the courts ensured that neither would last long in the post-Reconstruction South and that the freedom of African Americans in those states would amount to a cruel illusion.

In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant including comments about the Colfax massacre and the subsequent court decisions in his message to Congress. Grant was angry and wrote: “Fierce denunciations ring through the country about office-holding and election matters in Louisiana…while every one of the Colfax miscreants goes unwhipped of justice, and no way can be found in this boasted land of civilization and Christianity to punish the perpetrators of this bloody and monstrous crime.” [17]President Grant, the man who so wanted to help African Americans attain the full measure of freedom, was unable to do more as the Congress and Courts took sides with the Southern insurgents.

Notes

[1] Ibid. Foner Forever Free p.151

[2] Ibid. Langguth After Lincoln p.312

[3] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died p.42

[4] Ibid. Goldfield America Aflame p.493

[5] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died p.91

[6] Ibid. Goldfield America Aflame p.493

[7] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died p.11

[8] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died p.22

[9] Ibid. Goldfield America Aflame p.494

[10] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died p.251

[11] Ibid. Langguth After Lincoln p.314

[12] Ibid. Goldfield American Aflame p.494

[13] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died p.213

[14] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died p.217

[15] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died pp.261-262

[16] Ibid. McPherson The War that Forged a Nation p. 185

[17] Ibid. Lane The Day Freedom Died p.228

 

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August 18, 2017 · 06:25

Basketball Court Update: An Activist is Born 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

What an exciting day to be alive and to do something that matters for kids. I have written a couple of times about what is going on in my neighborhood regarding getting the kids of our neighborhood a safe place to play. Since I have shared some of the background in those articles I’ll just tell you about the special meeting of our neighborhood association board of directors which was called to discuss the issue. 

Bottom line up front the board is now looking at ways to keep the courts open and plan for an eventful multi-use facility to replace the current tennis courts. The tennis courts are seldom used and the placement of temporary basketball hoops has resulted in a number of good things, although there are some problems which can be worked out. The really good thing is that the kids now have a safe place to play and don’t have to play in the streets since our parks are mostly covered with very nice lakes. In a number of surveys residents have voted by over a two to one margin to keep the courts. 

That being said, a couple of white ladies, including the lady that got me energized about this by coming to my do to complain and enlist me to help get the courts shut down got the first words in. They were negative and one told such a bold faced lie how two blocks away she could hear the kids cursing over her television that most people were shocked. The lady who complained to me went on her usual way to complain about the kids, but other than them most people were supportive and offered suggestions to the board that were generally well received. 

I got to speak to and I have to say that I was persuasive, witty, and even entertaining; and I’m sure that I offended those ladies and maybe a couple of other self-righteous would be dictators. But as Thomas Paine said: “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” 

So I opened my comments somewhat irreverently, with  with the phrase “May it please the court.” I then introduced myself and noted how long we had lived in the neighborhood and noted that despite the fact that I was a Navy Chaplain with 36 years of military service that I was quite the liberal social justice activist. I then recounted how when I was in Iraq Judy had approached the board about basketball courts and was told by a board member “we have to keep undesirable elements out.”  That brought a gasp from some people and some a number of people nodded their approval. What the people back then said was that they didn’t want Black  kids playing there in so many words even though those are our neighborhood kids. I was able to point out the racism without even saying that word. 

So I continued and pointed pointed out that I wouldn’t have known about the controversy if the older lady hadn’t come to my door to complain about the kids, and pointed her out. That shook her up, she didn’t expect to get called out in public. Later the old bat tried to shut me down by saying “did you say I harassed you?” So I turned and addressed her for a quick moment, and said “yes you did and I won’t have any of it.”  At that the board President told me that I was not to address her but the board members per the rules of order. SoI replied “I do apologize, may it please the court, I was addressing you until she interrupted me so it’s only fair that I be allowed to tell her to shut up.” The board President allowed me to continue and I my words were surprisingly well received by at least half of the board and probably three quarters of the people in the room. 

My only regret is that I didn’t have Judy video my speech, which was longer, more eloquent, and funnier than the others, especially with my satire and ability to respond in the moment with my rapier wit, to the board, the audience, and the old bat. Likewise I didn’t have to threaten to go to the media, the city, or anything, I just spoke the truth and it wa quite the show. The kids and their parents loved it, some people even clapped when I sat down. I am so happy that we often binge watch our collection of all five seasons of Boston Legal. I have to say that I learned a lot from James Spader’s portrayal of attorney Alan Shore. 

The board voted down two motions to shut down the courts and has decided to come back to the issue and study how best to move forward. I volunteered to help out with the kids at closing time and will get a key from the manager tomorrow, heck, I may even get my own basketball to shoot some hoops and get to know them better. 

Over all it was a very nice first outing as a budding community social activist. As one of my friends told me a couple of weeks ago, this might be part of my post-Navy calling. I could see that and I am sure that social activism will be a big part of my life. 

So anyway, I have a couple of draft articles that I am working on and you’ll see those soon. One is about Robert E. Lee, of whose statues there has been so much controversy lately, and another dealing with how I think to best handle the statues. I’m going to hold that last one for a few days to let some of what happened in Charlottesville and other places calm down a bit so it can be read without all the current raw emotions of almost everyone including me overwhelming the message. I have some other articles that I will be producing as well on other hopefully less controversial topics. 

So anyway, until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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August 17, 2017 · 06:30

“Time to Oblterate the Marks of Civil Strife and the Feelings of Oblivion the Feelings it Engendered”  


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Just a short post today because I have become weary of cyber-battles with neo-Confederates and Alt-Right Nazis. That is not to say that I won’t stop fighting them, but don’t have a lot of energy to put into this post because of those battles. I guess it could be worse, I could be tired because I had spent the day getting real bullets fired at me by these people’s Confederate and Nazi ancestors. I have been shot at in combat by Iraqi insurgents, and no it is not fun, especially when you are the only guy there without a weapon. That being said, my ancestors on both sides of my family fought for the Confederacy, and those on my paternal side were slave owners, Confederate officers, and unrepentant rebels who would not reconcile themselves to the defeat of the Confederacy. 

Unlike my ancestors, Confederate General James Longstreet was honest with himself and to the causes of the war. He wrote this in 1867:

“The surrender of the Confederate armies in 1865 involved: 1. The surrender of the claim to the right of secession. 2. The surrender of the former political relations of the negro. 3. The surrender of the Southern Confederacy. These issues expired on the fields last occupied by the Confederate armies. There they should have been buried. The soldier prefers to have the sod that receives him when he falls cover his remains. The political questions of the war should have been buried upon the fields that marked their end.” 

I am going to write about my rather nuanced view of statues dedicated to Confederate soldiers or leaders in the next few days. I had a really good, and lengthy discussion today with a fellow officer and friend about that subject. When I write it my words will probably not make anyone completely happy because I am not an absolutist in my views. While I reject what my ancestors fought for I also know that there were Confederate soldiers who were drafted against their will, Southerners like George Thomas and John Buford, who fought for the Union, and Northerners who fought political battles against Abraham Lincoln and wanted the South to win its independence because it would be good for business, and because they were as racist as the most rabid slave power secessionist. There were also Confederates who after their defeat, including James Longstreet, John Mosby, and Billy Malone who reconciled with the United States, recanted their secessionist views, and were demonized as if they were Judas Iscariot by the leaders of the Lost Cause cult because they did so. 

Robert E. Lee, who as so many statues in his honor including the one in Charlottesville that the Neo-Nazis supposedly went to defend, made this comment regarding such things, he was not in favor of them because he did not think it wise to keep open the wounds of war. He said:

“I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.” 

The neo-Confederates would be wise to heed to his words and those of James Longstreet. 

But I’ll leave that until I write that article. 

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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August 15, 2017 · 22:53

A Contempt for Facts and Defense of Nazis: the President’s Response to Charlottesville 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I feel like I now live in a alternate universe where everything looks like it is supposed to but at the same time everything is different. This has been particularly striking apparent to me some since the Nazi caused violence in Charlottesville and the President’s multiple responses, ending with yesterday’s news conference in which he deflected the blame for that violence onto what he called “the alt-left.”

Honestly I had a hard time believing this was real, but it is, and now I must continue to speak out. If I don’t I will be as guilty before the bar of justice and humanity as the President and his apologists. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: 

“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.” 

The President is a Nationalist who by his words and actions seems to ally himself with the White Nationalists of the Alt-Right. He does his best not to criticize them and when he does he blames their (and his) opponents using a language of moral equivalence. Hannah Arendt wrote: 

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it.” 

It is hard for me to imagine any leader in American history who fits Arendt’s description better than President Trump. 

I was aghast when I heard President Trump’s third set of remarks about the Nazi caused violence and death in Charlottesville this weekend. I hardly could believe my ears and just shook my heard when I read the complete transcript. I never believed that I would ever hear any American President do his utmost to deflect the blame off of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers than I heard today. At the same time I had no doubt that this would happen at some point as since the President first announced his candidacy in 2015 I have been saying it, even here on this website, but every time I wrote about it I wanted to be wrong. Sadly I wasn’t wrong and now the President has a news conference and blames everyone but the Nazis for the violence, insisting that there were some “very good people among them” even as he blame liberals of the fictional “alt-left” for what happened.

Yesterday the President held a news conference in which he said that the ideology of the Alt-Right, including the KKK and the Nazis was against American values. I watched it and it seemed forced as he read it from a teleprompter. It sounded so forced that Richard Spencer, one of the leading Alt-Right agitators said that he didn’t believe the President’s words were sincere. 

Today proved that the Nazi was absolutely right about the President. The press conference was a not only a public relations and political disaster for the President, but it covered him in disgrace and dishonor. It also embarrassed the country in the eyes of the world. It was unbelievable. 

The only people who seem to be happy are the Nazis of the Alt-Right who praised the President for his “honesty and courage.” 

The President and his Nazi like apologists have turned their words to reject and demonize legitimate opposition in order to deflect criticism from themselves. In his book On Tyranny Timothy Snyder wrote about how Hitler did this in Nazi Germany:

“Victor Klemperer, a literary scholar of Jewish origin, turned his philological training against Nazi propaganda. He noticed how Hitler’s language rejected legitimate opposition: The people always meant some people and not others (the president uses the word in this way), encounters were always struggles (the president says winning), and any attempt by free people to understand the world in a different way was defamation of the leader (or, as the president puts it, libel).”

As I said, the only people defending him are the Nazis of the Alt-Right and the Court Evangelicals who have been his most stalwart supports. There seems to be nothing that he can do to disappoint them and they quickly jump to his defense using the same arguments of moral equivalence that that the President does. The former are Nazis whether they assume the title or not, the latter are no better than the German church leaders who encouraged their flocks to support Hitler and refused to speak out against the crimes of the Nazis. 

Yesterday the President lost any remaining credibility he had in terms of upholding his office and defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. 

God help us,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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August 15, 2017 · 06:30

The Vision of the Alt-Right Nazis: Allied Footage of the Nazi Concentration Camps


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am going to keep this short today. Bottom line up front I have grown weary of the moral equivalency that I see in the comments of many conservatives, especially conservative Christians, including friends who cannot seem to find the courage to publicly denounce the White Supremacists of the Alt-Right, or as they should be labeled Nazis, because that is what they are. 

I returned from my vacation yesterday and of course I heard the President’s two day’s late and devoid of passion statement about the Nazi caused violence in Charlottesville. They were nice words, and had he said them two days ago, or tweeted them as quickly as he denounces his critics I might have believed his words. Truth be told, I’ll believe him when his actions match his words, but I digress… 

Last night I watched the movie Nuremberg just to remind myself of the evils of Naziism. During the scene where the prosecution shows the film made by the allies on the liberation of various Nazi Concentration Camps I wept. I have seen them before, but after the public display made by the American Nazis of the Alt-Right this weekend I was horrified to see so many people use the argument of moral equivalency to dismiss criticism of the Nazis. The argument that, “yes this was bad, but…”  was so prevalent that among so many Christians that I wanted to throw up. 

But today I want to remind people about when they refuse to take a public stand regarding the evil of White Supremacy, whether it be in its American form of the KKK, or the most notorious, that of the Nazis. Honestly, I have a hard time believing that anyone who calls themeselves a patriotic American, or a Christian is either if they let the lies, hatred, and violence of these Nazis, who now call themselves the Alt-Right go unopposed. 

What is the desired end state that the Nazis of the Alt-Right? It is the deaths of those who oppose them and the establishment of a ethnocentric, or racist state. That has always been their goal, whether they be the Jim Crow loving, slavery supporting, American racists, or those who followed, or still subscribe to  Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic theories of the Master Race. 

So here’s the deal. Watch the film that was show at Nuremberg, all of it. Then, if you have the slightest compunction to sweep the words and the actions of this latest bunch of American Nazis under the rug, then just own the name and title of Nazi. 

Here’s the film, and don’t bother with the popcorn, if you have a soul you’ll probably vomit it. 

https://youtu.be/xlhZe0uWYoo 

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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August 14, 2017 · 06:30

“Silence in the Face of Evil is Evil Itself” Charlottesville and the Deafening Silence of Conservative Christians 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As I spent time watching for the response of many friends on social media to what happened in Charlottesville over the weekend there was one thing that stood out more glaringly than anything else. It wasn’t the response or lack thereof of President Trump. It wasn’t the hate filled invective of the damned Nazis and Klan, or as they call themselves now, the “Alt-Right.” It wasn’t the response most elected Republican or Democrat office holders, or of civil rights activists. It was the silence of conservative Christians and ordained clergy of whom I have many friends, some going back decades. The silence was deafening. 

But the silence of conservative Christians was even more deafening when I heard the claims of the Nazis and their supporters who called the violence “a victory of victories,” “the beginning of their revolution,” “their Beer Hall Putsch,” and that it “fulfills the promises of Donald Trump.” Even so most remained silent, the great and the small, the elected and the ordained, the politically active and the non-politically active. 

As I thought about this I knew that it had happened before, both in the United States and elsewhere. So I mused upon the words of the German pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer that he wrote while a prisoner of the Nazi Gestapo, and the question that he posed to himself, and to those who would read his writings after his execution at Flosseberg Concentration camp. He wrote:

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?” 


It is a good question for all of us to ponder. But I think that it is a more pertinent question who for whatever reason cannot condemn the evil of racism, race hatred, and racial superiority. Whether it is those who excuse evil by using the argument of moral equivalence, those who are too afraid to speak up because it might cause them the loss of popularity or profit, and those who while maintaining their outward respectability quietly agree with the evil. I found it troubling that I saw very few conservative Christians, great or small, openly condemn the violence and death caused by the Nazis in Charlottesville, and like Bonhoeffer I ask, are we still of any use? 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Yes, this does matter. It is a stain upon our nation, but even more for the Christian it is a profound witness against Jesus Christ, and a stain upon his Church. If those who profess the name of Christ cannot stand in the face of evil then what use are we? 

Bonhoeffer wrote: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” 

Please don’t get me wrong, I know a number of theologically conservative Christian friends, including my Friend Fr. Kenneth Tanner who have been a consistent witness for Christ and justice, and Kenneth is quite eloquent in his witness. But sadly I haven’t seen many who can even bother to put a like on an anti-Nazi and anti-racism post. Why I don’t know, maybe they don’t want to appear political, but there are times that even the most non-political people have to speak up. 


Charles Morgan Jr., a lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama, risked his status and reputation to speak out against the racism that helped bring about the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church by members of the KKK which killed four little girls and wounded many more. He noted: “It is not by great acts but by small failures that freedom dies. . . . Justice and liberty die quietly, because men first learn to ignore injustice and then no longer recognize it.” 

Too many Christians are turning a blind eye and remaining silent in the face of the evil of White Supremacy and race hatred, remaining silent and not surprisingly justice and liberty are dying. 

Thus I repeat Bonhoeffer’s question, are we still of any use?

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 13, 2017 · 06:30

A Pivotal Moment: The Nazi “Beer Hall Putsch” in Charlottesville 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In light of the last two days of Alt-Right, or as it is more truthfully called Nazi violence and chaos in Charlottesville, Virginia, I am reminded of the words of General George Patton, “the Nazis are the enemy.” Over the last two days members of various New-Nazi, KKK, and other White Supremcist groups gathered in Charlottesville for what organizers called a “pro-white” rally. For the purposes of this article and for clarity’s sake, I’m just going to call all of them by the one ideology that they seem to agree on, Nazi. Some people might take umbrage to that characterization, but they can stick their umbrage up their asses. I’m not going to mince words, if people march with Nazis they are Nazis no matter what they call themselves, and any support given to them, even by omission, is giving aid and comfort to the enemies of America. 

On Friday night hundreds of Nazis marched through the campus of the University of Virginia carrying tiki-lamps as ersatz Nazi torches as they chanted “Blood and Soil,” “White lives matter!” “You will not replace us!” “Jews will not replace us!” And “Russia is our friend.” They also surrounded an African American church were people were gathered on Friday night. Saturday morning several dozen so-called militia members dressed in military style garb, wearing protective vests, and helmets, carrying assault rifles and other long guns marched through town allegedly to keep things from getting violent. But it did get violent, the Nazis clashed with some left-wing opponents and also assaulted peaceful anti-Nazi protesters, including one terrorist, a 20 year old white man from Ohio who drove his car into a peaceful crowed, killing one person and injuring nineteen. I’ll call the that man and the other violent Nazis terrorists,because that’s what they are. Later a Virginia State Police helicopter that had been observing the march crashed, killing both troopers. 

In a tweet President Trump condemned the violence and hatred “from all sides” but couldn’t be bothered to specifically call out the Nazis. It was a display of moral moral equivalency that will only embolden the Nazis. Yet even so former KKK Grand Master and perennial GOP candidate for elected office in Louisiana, David Duke called out the President in his own tweet, acknowledging the role that the Nazis, which he called “white people”‘ had in getting Trump elected, and saying that the rally “fulfills the promises of Donald Trump.” At the same time the Nazi Daily Stormer praised the words of the President and proclaimed the march “a victory of victories, this war has just begun… The Alt-Right has risen… There is no going back form this. This is our Beer Hall Putsch. this was the beginning of our revolution.” 

One of the Nazis at Charlottesville, “Michael Von Kotch, a Pennsylvania resident who called himself a Nazi, said the rally made him “proud to be white.” He said that he’s long held white supremacist views and that Trump’s election has “emboldened” him and the members of his own Nazi group. “We are assembled to defend our history, our heritage and to protect our race to the last man,” Von Kotch said, wearing a protective helmet and sporting a wooden shield and a broken pool cue. “We came here to stand up for the white race.” 

A few hours after his first tweet the President entered damage control mode and while he still could not call out the Nazis he tweeted “we must remember this truth: No matter what our color, creed, religion, or political party, we are ALL AMERICANS FIRST.” I agree with the President, but he didn’t condemn the damned Nazis, he went to a moral equivalence argument and blamed everyone and the Nazis loved it, as the Daily Stormer wrote afterward “he implied that there is hate… on both sides. So he implied the antifa (anti-fascists) are haters. There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all. He said he loves us all. Also refused to answer a question about White Nationalists supporting him. No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.” 

After the march Richard Spencer and other organizers blamed opponents and the police for what happened and Spencer finished by threatening Charlottesville saying, “You think that we’re going to back down to this kind of behavior to you and your little provincial town? No,’’ he said. “We are going to make Charlottesville the center of the universe.” 

But over a week after another terrorist attack occurred, the bombing of a Mosque in Minnesota, Trump has yet to respond even as his aide Sebastian Gorka, who has his own ties to Fascist groups in Hungary stated that the attack might have been set by leftists in order to blame the right. Trump’s supporter in the conspiracy theory media, Alex Jones said that the violence was designed to “bring in martial law and ban conservative gatherings.” 

At least former Arkansas Governor and Trump supporter Mike Huckabee had the decency to remember something from his seminary days tweeting “White supremacy” crap is the worst kind of racism- it’s EVIL and a perversion of God’s truth to ever think our Creator values some above others.” Likewise Senator Orrin Hatch tweeted: “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideals to go unchallenged here at home.” 

Personally I cannot understand why the President finds it so difficult to just speak the truth and call these people what they are, but I suspect that I know why. For years he has tweeted and spoke so many words that are the polar opposite of what was his latest tweet quoted above is, that when I listened to his comments they seemed unnatural and forced. It looked like he was reading from a script written by General Kelly that he didn’t believe but was forced to say, and even then it was far too little. I will leave it at that for now. 

But here is the deal. This is not a subject that I enter into without a decent knowledge of American history and racism in America. My first book, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory” Race, Religion, Ideology, and Poltics in the Civil War Era which hopefully will be published within the next year deals with the subject extensively. I know the history of American racism, the violence of the KKK, the White Leagues, the Red Shirts, and the White Liners, and their current descendants all too well to not call this out for what it is. 

What happened in Charlotte is going to keep happening until the President is willing to both condemn them and to take action against those who would use race supremacy to attempt to force the reinstatement of Jim Crow type laws on racism, and Know Nothing policies on immigration. The President will also have to do something about Gorka, Steven Bannon, and Stephen Miller, who all are key aides with long and strong ties to the Alt Right if he is to be taken seriously. Ulysses Grant was willing to make that hard call against White Supremacists despite bi-partisan opposition, but the President does not seem to be a Grant. 

This is a pivotal moment in our history. What we and our leaders do in response to the calls for an America based on the Blood and Soil doctrine of the new American Nazis matters to us all. Their aims are clear, and most have bet on the President to do their bidding. It will be a dark day if he does not stand against them. 

The Nazis by whatever name they call themselves are the enemy of every American who believes in that sacred proposition of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truth to be self-evident, all men are created equal…” This is something that one of the Alt-Right leaders who was at Charlottesville this weekend opposes. In a 2013 interview Spencer said “Our dream is a new society, an ethno-state that would be… based on very different ideals than, say, the Declaration of Independence.” But that is nothing new in this country, George Fitzhugh, one of the Slave industry and later one of the Confederacy’s leading spokesman condemned the Declaration saying:

“We must combat the doctrines of natural liberty and human equality, and the social contract as taught by Locke and the American sages of 1776. Under the spell of Locke and the Enlightenment, Jefferson and other misguided patriots ruined the splendid political edifice they erected by espousing dangerous abstractions – the crazy notions of liberty and equality that they wrote into the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Bill of Rights…” 

As the President said today, this has been around a long time, maybe he and his supporters should actually read the history and re-embrace the Declaration and that sacred proposition that the Nazis so thoroughly despise. 

Again, this is a pivotal moment in the life of our Republic. 

I’ll leave you with that.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 12, 2017 · 06:30

“Read a Lot and Write a Lot” How I Avoid Misery 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

British historian Sir Max Hastings, whose book Catastrophe 1914, Europe Goes to War I am re-reading since I just completed another trip through Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, once made the comment: “I would be miserable if I went to bed without having written 1,000 words about something.” I am much the same way and hopefully one day I might be one tenth as good, and as successful writer as him or Tuchman. 

I do most of my writing before I go to bed at night and usually set my articles to post at 6:30 in the morning. I have a hard time going to sleep without writing be it for this website or for one of the books that I am working on. I read voraciously whenever I get the chance sometimes going to a bar just to read a book while enjoying a good craft beer or Germanor Irish import. Likewise once I am done with whatever I am writing I go right back to reading, sometimes keeping whatever Papillon is sleeping with me from getting the sleep that they want. That’s what I will be doing tonight when I finish this article which you will be reading tomorrow when it posts. In a sense my writings are kind of like Schroedinger’s cat, they are written yet unwritten at the same time, but I digress…

Today while on vacation in Huntington, West Virginia, I have been doing a lot of my own reading, as well as keeping up with the latest news about the building crisis regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles and President Trump’s unrelenting bellicose tweets and statements. Likewise today I’ve walked about seven and a half miles, much of it around the campus of Marshall University and walking my dogs around the neighborhood that we are staying. As I walk I tend to take in everything I see and because of my PTSD I am still somewhat hyper vigilant which causes me to be a bit more observant about my surroundings than a lot of other people. But I also muse about things going on in the world as well as things that I am writing or plan on writing about. I did a lot of today and over the past few days. The next couple of days won’t be as free because Judy has scheduled us for some social activities, but I will still find a way to in get my reading, writing, and walking. 

But going back to writing and reading I have to say that I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t do either, I think I would be in some sort of hell if I couldn’t write every night or read. Doing these things helps me keep my perspective and to more fully appreciate the events of the day. Honestly, if I had not consciously immersed myself in history from the time that I was a child, including the many days that I cut 10th grade Geometry class to read the history reference books that I couldn’t check out of the school library I wouldn’t be who I am today. 

I like writing history because I become immersed in the people, the places, and the intricacies and complexity of the events. I like to incorporate the little known back stories of people help understand their actions at a given point. Likewise think that the lives of the individuals involved in the events I write about, both before, and after the event should they have lived through it, give my readers a more human connection to the events, as well as understanding of the people involved. I find that the stories of people allow readers to make those connections, maybe even inspiring in them a bit of sympathy for scoundrels or suspicion of supposed saints. 

I think that the character of people, good, bad, or wherever it falls on the spectrum, and their basic humanity; their strengths, weaknesses, contradictions, and their feet of clay, matter immensely and need to be part a of the story. I hate it when I read a history where a given character’s actions during a given event are examined in detail, but who they are as a person never comes through because the authors didn’t give their readers the courtesy of introducing them as people because they included little or no biographical details to make them interesting. Instead they become one dimensional caricatures of who they were in life, which in my view does them, the story, and the reader a grave injustice. So when I write I try to find interesting parts of a person’s life that is not directly related to the event to paint the picture. Walter Lord, who wrote prolific books on some of the key events of the Twentieth Century including books about the Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Midway, Dunkirk, the desegregation of the University of Mississippi, and many more noted something that I have taken to heart, I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.”

That’s one reason I like the writings of both Tuchman and Hastings, they bring life to to the events they write about, they allow your imagination to run and to want discover more about the people and the events. The late Walter Lord, who I also mentioned was also excellent at doing that, and I think that is how I would like my writings be remembered. But in order to do that I have to read and write, as Stephen King said “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” So back to Hastings’ Catastrophe 1914.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 11, 2017 · 06:30

Nuclear Giants and Ethical Infants


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Just a short couple of thoughts today since I was hoping that yesterday would see a ratcheting down of the war rhetoric coming out of President Trump, some of his advisers, and the Kim Jong Un regime in North Korea. But that has not been the case. On the American side the President upped the ante with his rhetoric even as some cabinet members seem to be trying to moderate those comments. Of course the North Koreans are upping the ante by threatening the American bases on Guam. 

With every new threat uttered by President Trump and the North Korean regime the stakes get higher and the chances of miscalculation that lead to war grow. Barbara Tuchman wrote in her book The March of Folly, From Troy to Vietnam, “To those who think them selves strong, force always seems the easiest solution.” That sums up the behavior of President Trump and Kim Jong Un, although the Korean despot is the one who is putting the American President on the defensive, in a sense allowing President Trump to back himself into a corner where if he doesn’t resort to force he will lose face. Both sides are playing with fire while standing in gasoline. North Korea would certainly be defeated, but the cost will be dreadful, especially to South Korea, and probably Japan, and yes, even to the United States, and we cannot assume that other nations will not become involved in a war should it occur. 

Over a decade before the first atomic bomb was used, Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler wrote about the cost of war: “What is the cost of war? what is the bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all of its attendant miseries. Back -breaking taxation for generations and generations…” Those words have a greater significance in the nuclear age than when he wrote them. 

There have been many times in history where leaders of nations allowed their rhetoric to take them to war when other options we still viable, but not between nuclear armed powers. It is the incredible destructive power of nuclear weapons and the real possibility that their use would be not be limited to so-called surgical strikes. The destructive power of this technology and lack of impulse control of the American President and the North Korean dictator are a recipe for disaster. It is no wonder that over a half-century ago General of the Army Omar Bradley said: “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.” 

In writing about the 14th Century Tuchman wrote: “For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.” Things have changed very little in regard to the humanity involved and we can only hope that cooler heads prevail. 

Anyway, that is all for today.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 10, 2017 · 06:30

Great Illusions and the Threat of War 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have been reflecting on the words and actions of President Trump, Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and their sycophants over the past day and a half. I wrote some of my thoughts down yesterday before continuing to read and reflect. While I was doing so the words of William Shirer wrote in his forward to his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, as well as some thought from Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. While they deal with different eras, they also deal with the one constant in history, that of fallible human beings. I think that they are quite appropriate to reflect upon today. Shirer wrote: 

“In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet.”

There are some people who think that globalization and the interdependence of the economies of the world on international commerce and trade will ensure that nuclear war never occurs. They believe that realists will ensure that it never happens. That is a nice thought. During the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union maintained a tenuous balance of terror that never resulted in a nuclear exchange, but they did come close, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But we no longer live in that world where the leaders two heavily armed yet rational powers did not succumb to the temptation of using them. 

In 1914 the realists of the world believed that if a war broke out among the great powers of Europe that it would of necessity be short. Inspired by the writings of Norman Angell whose book The Great Ilusion drove home the message that war as no longer profitable and therefore capitalists would resist appeals to war and nationalist fervor, Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“By impressive examples and incontrovertible argument Angell showed that in the present financial and economic interdependence of nations, the victor would suffer equally with the vanquished; therefore war had become unprofitable; therefore no nation would be so foolish as to start one.” 

The book had a cult like following in Europe and when Europe went to war in August 1914 many people and governments believed that any war would have to be short, and as such none of them prepared for the long and catastrophic war that ensued. The Germans did not follow Angell, but Clausewitz who preached a dogma of short and decisive wars. Sadly, both authors were misunderstood by their most devoted disciples and as Tuchman wrote: “Clausewitz, a dead Prussian, and Norman Angell, a living if misunderstood professor, had combined to fasten the short-war concept upon the European mind. Quick, decisive victory was the German orthodoxy; the economic impossibility of a long war was everybody’s orthodoxy.” 

There are political, business, and military leaders around the world today who see the world much the same as the generation of leaders who took Europe to war in 1914. Now a chubby little madman in North Korea has his finger on the button and the American President seems to be goading him on and threatening preemptive war, and policy makers are scrambling. 

I don’t pretend to know what will happen in the coming days, weeks, or months, but I do know that this is a very dangerous time. 

Until tomorrow, 

Peace

Padre Steve+

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