Category Archives: civil rights

September 5, 2016 · 06:30

The Importance of the Worker: Labor Day 2016

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It is Labor Day and so I am going back to the vault to remember what this day is all about. By the way, it has nothing to do with the troops, or nationalism, or the greatness of America. But it is really all about the people who labor, especially those who paid with their blood for basic human rights, rights that are under fire today and which will die if we as a people do not stand up for the very workers who make our country great.

Abraham Lincoln, who was perhaps our only President who was a real working man once said, “If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.”

It is hard to believe that at one time workers had no rights. It was not until the mid-1800s in the United States and Europe that workers began to organize and protest for the right to decent wages and working conditions. There were many instances when this cost them their lives. Employers, often backed by heavily armed private security contractors like the Pinkerton Agency, used deadly force to break up peaceful strikes. In the days of the Robber Barons, when business ran the government at almost every level, employers frequently called in local and state law enforcement, as well as the National Guard, and occasionally Federal troops to break strikes. They played various ethnic and racial groups off of each in order to divide the labor movement. There are hundreds of instances of such violence being used against workers, in some strikes the dead numbered in the hundreds.

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Lawrence Massachusetts Textile Strike; the National Guard with Bayonets Fixed against unarmed strikers

Some of these attacks on workers occurred in major cities, others at isolated work sites and factories. Some are famous, the Haymarket Massacre of May 4th 1886 in Chicago, the Pullman Strike Massacre of 1894, the Homestead Strike and Massacre of 1892, the Lattimer Massacre of 1897, the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, and the Columbine Mine Massacre of 1927.

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Aftermath of the Ludlow Massacre (above) and the Bisbee Deportation

Others less so, but there was more. In the Bisbee Deportation of 1917 1300 striking miners and their families were deported from their homes in Bisbee Arizona by 2000 armed deputies, put in box cars and transported 200 miles to the New Mexico desert, where without food, water or money they were left. There was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire where managers locked the doors in order to ensure that the fleeing women workers did not put anything unauthorized in their purses. One hundred forty-four workers, mostly young women died.

There are many other instances where workers were shot down in cold blood by private security forces, local police, the National Guard of Federal Troops for simply protesting or striking to gain better conditions of employment, safe working places, or a living wage.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Early labor organizations such as the Knights of Labor led the effort to bring about better conditions. For doing so they were labeled subversive and even called communists. Their meetings were often attacked and the leaders jailed and some lynched.

The sacrifices of those early workers, and organizers are why we have Labor Day. One of the early American labor leaders was a man named Eugene Debs. He said something remarkable which still is as timely as when he uttered the words:

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

On September 5th 1882 the first Labor Day was observed when members of several Unions in New York City organized the first Labor Day parade. The police came armed and ready to intervene if the workers got out of hand, but the parade was peaceful. It ended and the marchers moved over to Wendell’s Elm Park where they had a party. Twenty-five thousand Union men and their families celebrated, with hundreds of kegs of lager beer.

Within a few years many states began to institute Labor days of their own. In 1894, just days after the violent end of the Pullman strike in which Federal troops and Marshalls killed 30 workers and wounded 57 more, Congress and President Grover Cleveland rushed through legislation to establish a Federal Labor Day.

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My Great Aunt Goldie Dundas was a labor organizer for the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union in West Virginia in the 1920s – 1950s. I wish I had gotten to really know her, but she died when I was about 8 or 9 years old. Sadly the workers represented by that Union have had almost all of their jobs in the textile industry outsourced to China, India, Pakistan, the Caribbean, and Bangladesh where cheaply made garments are produced, and workers abused. The examples of mass deaths due to safety issues and fires in Bangladeshi factories are too numerous to list. But then who cares? The fact is you can drive through many parts of the South and see the poverty created by the exodus of these Union employers, the textile industry, which was part of the fabric of the South is gone. Empty factories and poverty stricken towns dot the countryside. I saw a lot of them living in Eastern North Carolina, towns that once thrived are ghost towns, riddled with crime, unemployment and no hope, unless Wal-Mart opens a store in town. Ironically it sells the clothing made overseas that used to be manufactured by the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of the people who live there today.

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Adam Smith, the father of Capitalism understood it in a very different manner than those who claim to be Capitalists today. He wrote in his magnum opus, The Wealth of All Nations:

“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

The fact is that today, labor is under threat. Unions have been demonized by politicians and pundits and their power and influence much reduced. Some of this was due to their own success in improving conditions from workers, and not just Union workers. When my dad retired from the Navy in 1974, he went to work at one of the few non-Union warehouses of the John Deere Company in Stockton, California. While they were not union, the workers received every benefit won by the majority of the workers in the company who were members of the United Auto Workers Union. Due to that my dad had high wages, excellent working conditions and benefits. The company had a program for the children of workers, which allowed them to work in the summer in the warehouse and receive incredibly high pay and benefits while in college. I did that for two years, and it helped pay for much of my college. I was not a union member but I benefited.

However, in many places, Unions and labor are under attack, sometimes not just by corporations, but also by state governments. Job security and stability for most American workers is a thing of the past. Federal and State agencies charged with protecting those rights, including safety in the workplace are being cut in the mad rush to reduce government power. It seems to me that we are returning to the days of the Robber Barons. I wonder when violence against workers and those who support them will be condoned or simply ignored.

So please, when you celebrate Labor Day, do not forget that it is important, and that we should not forget why we celebrate it. If we forget that, it will become a meaningless holiday and our children may have to make the same sacrifices of our ancestors.

Oh, by the way…. If you see a meme on Facebook telling you to “thank the troops” for Labor Day, it is a bullshit meme. We troops have our days. Labor day is not ours. Labor Day is a day to remember those civilians, some of them who may have been former soldiers, but more often than not were civilian labor leaders, organizers and union members; some of whom were killed by National Guard and Federal troops for their efforts to secure the rights of working men and women; which paved the way for workers today.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 31, 2016 · 07:00

Jackie Robinson and the Freedom Summer

Jackie Robinson Speaking with the Press

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am still on vacation and will posting some new material have brought an older article out of the vault. I think it is important because it covers a watershed moment in American politics, a moment that started the Republican Party down the path that has culminated today. It is about the Freedom Summer of 1964 and baseball icon and civil rights pioneer Jackie Robinson’s trip to the 1964 Republican National Convention. Though the events happened some fifty-two years ago, they are not ancient history, and the spirit and ideology that characterized them is all to present today, especially in the modern Republican Party. 

So have a great day. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

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“A new breed of Republicans had taken over the GOP. As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.” Jackie Robinson on his observations of the 1964 Republican National Convention

Jackie Robinson was a Republican. So was I for 32 years and for much of that time I considered myself a “conservative” whatever that means, though I thought it meant freedom, limited government and opportunity for all regardless of race, color, religion or any other trait or belief. I also believed and still do in a strong defense, but I can no longer consider myself a man that blesses American intervention in other people’s wars unless there is a clear and present danger to the United States, not simply our so called “interests” which may not be those of the nation at all but of multi-national corporations which were originally American businesses but not only need our military, diplomatic and intelligence resources to increase their profits.

My parents were Kennedy type Democrats, but in the 1970s, torn by the extremism of the 1972 Democratic Convention in Chicago and feeling the hatred of people for those in the military, including a Sunday School teacher who told me that my dad, then serving in Vietnam was “baby killer” I at the age of 12 decided that I would be a Republican. I was a Republican until I returned from Iraq in 2008, fully aware of the lies that took us into that war and seeing the cost both to American servicemen and the people of Iraq.

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I have been doing a lot of reading lately on a period of history that as a historian I had pretty much skipped over. That is the period of the Civil Rights movement of the early to mid-1960s. I guess I skipped over it because I was more interested in the glory of war and patriotism wrapped in historic myth than in the experiences of fellow citizens who had been killed, abused, tormented and persecuted by people like me simply because of the color of their skin. I had not yet begun to appreciate the concept of justice at home being interconnected to our deepest held principles and how we embody them in our foreign policy.

For many years I echoed the point made by some conservatives that it was the GOP that helped make the Voter’s Rights Act of 1964 and Civil Rights Act of 1965 passed into law. That is true. Most Republicans voted for them, with a notable exception, Barry Goldwater. However, what is also true is that the Republicans that voted for the 1964 act were considered “liberals” and treated shamefully at the 1964 convention, whose delegates voted down a part of the platform that would have supported that act. Of the Democrats that voted against those bills almost all came from the Deep South, a region which within a decade become a Republican stronghold and a key part of the Southern Strategy of every GOP Presidential Candidate since Richard Nixon. A Republican aide at the 1964 convention told a reporter that “the nigger issue was sure to put Goldwater in the White House.” (See Freedom Summer by Bruce Watson p.163)

However as a life long baseball fan there is one thing that I know, that if there had been no Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson we might not have gotten Rosa Parks or the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

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Robinson was appointed as a special delegate to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller who was running against Goldwater and attended the convention. He had given up his job as a spokesman for and Vice President of the Chock Full O’Nuts Coffee Company to assist Rockefeller’s campaign in 1964.

Robinson knew what it was like to be the “point man” in the integration of baseball and in his career was threatened with physical violence and death on many occasions. Some teammates circulated petitions that they would not play for a team that had a “black” on it. Robinson, encouraged by Rickey persevered and became an icon in baseball, the Civil Rights movement and the history of the United States. However, not even 10 years after his retirement from baseball and 2 years after he was elected to the Hall of Fame he once again discovered just how deep racism still ran in this country. As he attended the convention FBI agents and other Federal authorities attempted to find the bodies of three young Voting Rights staff who were part of the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi. Eventually, later in the summer the bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner would be discovered buried in the base of a dam near Philadelphia Mississippi. Their killers were local law enforcement officers and members of the Ku Klux Klan.

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Maybe I lived in my own fantasy world. My experience growing up was on the West Coast living in a military family in small towns and big cities. I am proud to be part of the first class that attended high school in my home town when the courts ordered desegregation in our schools. That experience at Edison High School of Stockton California from 1975-78 changed me, as did having a black roommate in college.

However, that being said it took me a long time to realize that things really haven’t changed that much from 1964 in many parts of the country, especially since I have lived most of my adult live in the historic States that comprised the Confederacy. I can say from practical observation and knowledge that racism and other forms of more acceptable prejudice live on in this country. There is not a day that goes by that I do not run into the vestiges of the hate that lived during the Freedom Summer of 1964. It is more subtle in some cases, but other times is so blatant that is sickening. I never expected that I would ever be called a “nigger lover” or “wigger” until I had people make those comments on this website in response to articles that had nothing to do with race relations or civil rights, nor did I expect physical threats from people who call themselves “Christian.” Those were learning experiences that I won’t soon forget.

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Robinson wrote of his experience at the 1964 Convention:

“I wasn’t altogether caught of guard by the victory of the reactionary forces in the Republican party, but I was appalled by the tactics they used to stifle their liberal opposition. I was a special delegate to the convention through an arrangement made by the Rockefeller office. That convention was one of the most unforgettable and frightening experiences of my life. The hatred I saw was unique to me because it was hatred directed against a white man. It embodied a revulsion for all he stood for, including his enlightened attitude toward black people.

A new breed of Republicans had taken over the GOP. As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.

The same high-handed methods had been there.

The same belief in the superiority of one religious or racial group over another was here. Liberals who fought so hard and so vainly were afraid not only of what would happen to the GOP but of what would happen to America. The Goldwaterites were afraid – afraid not to hew strictly to the line they had been spoon-fed, afraid to listen to logic and reason if it was not in their script.

I will never forget the fantastic scene of Governor Rockefeller’s ordeal as he endured what must have been three minutes of hysterical abuse and booing which interrupted his fighting statement which the convention managers had managed to delay until the wee hours of the morning. Since the telecast was coming from the West Coast, that meant that many people in other sections of the country, because of the time differential, would be in their beds. I don’t think he has ever stood taller than that night when he refused to be silenced until he had had his say.

It was a terrible hour for the relatively few black delegates who were present. Distinguished in their communities, identified with the cause of Republicanism, an extremely unpopular cause among blacks, they had been served notice that the party they had fought for considered them just another bunch of “niggers”. They had no real standing in the convention, no clout. They were unimportant and ignored. One bigot from one of the Deep South states actually threw acid on a black delegate’s suit jacket and burned it. Another one, from the Alabama delegation where I was standing at the time of the Rockefeller speech, turned on me menacingly while I was shouting “C’mon Rocky” as the governor stood his ground. He started up in his seat as if to come after me. His wife grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

“Turn him loose, lady, turn him loose,” I shouted.

I was ready for him. I wanted him badly, but luckily for him he obeyed his wife…” From Jackie Robinson “I Never Had it Made” Chapter XV On Being Black Among the Republicans

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Belva Davis, then a young journalist wrote of her experiences at that convention:

While the Goldwater organization tried to keep its delegates in check on the floor, snarling Goldwater fans in the galleries around us were off the leash. The mood turned unmistakably menacing…

Suddenly Louis and I heard a voice yell, “Hey, look at those two up there!” The accuser pointed us out, and several spectators swarmed beneath us. “Hey niggers!” they yelled. “What the hell are you niggers doing in here?’”

I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck as I looked into faces turned scarlet and sweaty by heat and hostility. Louis, in suit and tie and perpetually dignified, turned to me and said with all the nonchalance he could muster, “Well, I think that’s enough for today.” Methodically we began wrapping up our equipment into suitcases.

As we began our descent down the ramps of the Cow Palace, a self-appointed posse dangled over the railings, taunting. “Niggers!” “Get out of here, boy!” “You too, nigger bitch!” “Go on, get out!” “I’m gonna kill your ass!”

I stared straight ahead, putting one foot in front of the other like a soldier who would not be deterred from a mission. The throng began tossing garbage at us: wadded up convention programs, mustard-soaked hot dogs, half-eaten Snickers bars. My goal was to appear deceptively serene, mastering the mask of dispassion I had perfected since childhood to steel myself against any insults the outside world hurled my way.

Then a glass soda bottle whizzed within inches of my skull. I heard it whack against the concrete and shatter. I didn’t look back, but I glanced sideways at Louis and felt my lower lip began to quiver. He was determined we would give our tormentors no satisfaction.

“If you start to cry,” he muttered, “I’ll break your leg.” ( Belva Davis “Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism)

The sad thing is that in many states the new GOP has taken a page out of the past and has been either passing legislation or attempting to pass legislation that makes it harder for Blacks and other minorities to vote. Groups have shown up armed at heavily black polling sites in recent elections and efforts have been made to ensure that minorities cannot vote. They have also challenged the 1964 Voter’s Rights Act in Court and have a friend in Justice Antonine Scalia who called it a “racial entitlement” and violation of State sovereignty.

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The tactics are quite similar to those used in the Deep South prior to 1964 which made it virtually impossible for a Black man or woman to cast a vote, and if they tried even to register to vote did so at the peril of their lives or families. The opponents of integration, voter’s rights and equal rights used some of the same lines used today against those that support these rights. “Communists sympathizers, Socialists, Atheists, Anti-Christian, Anti-American, Anti-Constitution,” you name it the same labels are being applied to those that simply want to be at the table. The sad thing that many of the most vicious users of such untruths are my fellow Christians.

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These are hard things to look at and it is far easier to believe myth than it is to actually seek truth. A few years back I cannot every in a million years having written this article. However the threats to minorities be they racial, religious or even gender have become part an parcel of the new GOP, the GOP that I could not remain a part of when I returned from Iraq.

I guess that I am becoming a Civil Rights advocate, or then, maybe it’s that I’m actually becoming more of a Christian. Branch Rickey said “I may not be able to do something about racism in every field, but I can sure do something about it in baseball.” Oh well, I amy not be able to do something about racism and other prejudice everywhere but I can do it here and wherever I work or preach.

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Oh well whatever, it really doesn’t matter so long as I can live with myself. Besides, I’ll get labeled anyway so what does it matter? I would rather be in the same camp as someone like Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey than Antonine Scalia or those that seek to keep people down simply because they are different anyway.

Martin Niemoller once said:

First they came for the , communist
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Friends, it is all too important that we not forget this, even as Donald Trump and many of his supporters who include most of the White Supremacists, Klansmen, and Neo-Nazis in this country offer the same threats against blacks, other minorities, and political moderates and liberals. Make no mistake, what is happening now is nothing more than a resurgence of the hatred and violence that was unleashed against those who fought for civil rights fifty years ago.

 

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August 29, 2016 · 14:52

Norman Rockwell’s Southern Justice and the Continued Fight for Civil Rights

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am on vacation this week and though I have posted a few new articles today I am going back to the vault to reflect on the killings of three young civil rights workers during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Their brutal murders by Ku Klux Klan members aided and abetted by law enforcement officials was memorialized in Norman Rockwell’s painting Southern Justice and dramatized in the film Mississippi Burning. It is import that we remember this because the ideology and spirit of their killers is rising again in too many places in this country, and not just in the South. 

Please never forget their sacrifice and why it is important to fight for real justice. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

Fifty-two years ago three young men working to register blacks to vote as part of the Freedom Summer in Mississippi were brutally murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

The men, twenty year old Andrew Goodman from New York City, was a progressive activist and Anthropology student at Queens College. Twenty-four year old Mickey Schwerner was a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of Social Work. Both Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish. Twenty-one year old James Chaney was from Meridian Mississippi and was a volunteer with CORE, the Congress of Racial Equity working on voter registration and education with local churches.

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On June 21st 1964 the three men were in Philadelphia Mississippi where they were investigating the burning of Mount Zion Methodist Church which had been working with CORE in the town. In the wake of that many black citizens and church members were beaten by whites, and they accused Sheriff’s Deputy Cecil Price of abuse.

The three were arrested for an alleged traffic violation, jailed and released that evening without being allowed to make any phone calls. On the way back to Meridian, two carloads of Klan members forced them over, abducted them and killed them. The bodies were not discovered for 44 days. Their disappearance brought national attention and a major investigation to the town. Eventually seven men, including deputy Price were convicted of the murders. The murders and the investigation became the subject of the movie Mississippi Burning.

Rockwell, well known for his portraits of American life and the Civil Rights movement painted “Southern Justice” which is sometimes known as “Murder in Mississippi” in 1965. This was not long after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which has been under attack in many southern states over the past decade and had a key provision gutted by the Supreme Court last year.

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52 years ago the murders of these three young men brought national attention to the pervasive racism and discrimination in the country. So many murders, lynchings and burnings of homes businesses and that went before had been covered up by the media. I do hope and pray that we never go back to those days, but as laws are passed to limit voting rights in various states I wonder if the clock will be turned back. I don’t thing that it will in the long run, but the sacrifice of so many for those rights should never be forgotten.

In memory of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner and others of the Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights movement who died or suffered to peacefully bring about change to our society.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 28, 2016 · 23:17

The Dream at 53: Still Laboring for the New Birth of Freedom


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Since I am out of town this week I am going to post a short article tonight. Today was the fifty-third anniversary of one of the greatest speeches in American history. It was on this day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The speech was powerful, eloquent, and even today when one listnes to Dr. King’s marvelous oratory the effect is electrifying. I was on three years old and living in the Philippines when he spoke them and so it was not until years later that I heard it for the first time.  Every time I watch the films of Dr. King speaking those words I am forced to recall not just his eloquence, but the depth of what he said, and how much is still true today. While I think I am a pretty good writer I would only hope to half as gifted as a speaker as Dr. King. 

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http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm 
I did get to speak yesterday at the Morehead Pride Festival and afterwards I was thinking about Dr. King’s message for all people. I do have that dream for all who are oppressed. I was talking to a lot of people before and after and so many told me how many of how they had been ostracized by the church for being Gay but still longed for that sense of spiritual support and acceptance. I began thinking what it would be like if most churches would simply accept people and love them. But many churches and Christians, especially the more conservative types of churches who are so willing to accept people and even bless people like Donald Trump as “God’s choice” for the highest office in the land, treat LGBTQ people as worse than the devil. Why? Because they are gay and according to their interpretation of the Bible that seems to be the only sin God cannot forgive. Less than fifty years ago many people in this country felt the same way about African Americans. But I digress… 

But the fact is that for many people, especially African Americans, other people of color, poor whites, women, religious minorities, as well as LGBTQ people, the promise of this nation is not yet fully realized. Dr. King equated the words of the Declaration of Independence as a promissory note, meant for all people that had been defaulted on by our nation, and how could he not? 

As a historian I know the words of the preamble of the Declaration, as well as the Gettysburg Address are for all purposes are the cornerstone of American Secular Scripture. They define what we can and should be. And yesterday while I was speaking I again realized just how much promise those words have: they are what make us Americans and if we fail to remember them, if we fail to work to ensure that they are the basis of who we are as a people both in word and deed, then we too will default on that promissory note, and the treasury of freedom and justice will be bankrupt; and we have none to blame but ourselves. 

But I have a dream, as Dr. King so eloquently put it “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Far too many people have shed their blood for that sacred proposition for us to abandon it: soldiers, civil rights leaders, men and women, black and white, straight and gay, of every religion and race that have ever longed for the realization of that proposition. Dr. King was one of them, as was Harvey Milk, they and so many others cut down by assassin’s bullets, or murdered, or lynched. So with them in mind we must take heed of the words of Abraham Lincoln, another martyr in the cause of freedom, who reminded those present at the dedication of the Soldier’s Cemetery at Gettysburg, “that is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us here to be dedication to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” 

So until tomorrow. 

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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August 27, 2016 · 21:50

Pride in Morehead


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today was a special day for me and a lot of other people. I was honored to have a very minor speaking role at the Morehead Pride Festival in Morehead, Kentucky. It was amazing event, the first of its kind in that beautiful Eastern Kentucky town and it was a big change from just one year ago where the city was surrounded in controversy when Kim Davis the Rowan County Clerk refused to issue marriage certificates in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Obergfell  v. Hodges which granted marriage equality to Gays, Lesbians, and other members of the LGBTQ community. At that time various wanna be presidential candidates including Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, as well as all kinds of other anti-LGBTQ leaders descended on the town turning it into a circus. Interestingly enough once these politically minded preachers and ant-LGBTQ professionals had milked Kim Davis for all the publicity they could get they abandoned here and Rowan County, but I predicted that last year. 


Timothy Love, Mark Ebenhoch, Me and Larry Love in front of Section 93 

In contrast to that time today was a joyful occasion for the many people in attendance, most of whom are from Morehead and the surrounding area. It was amazing, for them it was the first time that many of them could openly show who they are in a safe place. Last year with all of the out of town zealots present it was not safe. Today the local LGBTQ community, led by David Moore put on a wonderful event working with the leaders of the town. It was a safe, family friendly event which drew more vendors and participants than any other festival hosted by the town. There were young and old, male and female, gay and straight, and people of every color, quite a few from Morehead State University. It was really eat to see local people, especially seniors stayingfor the whole event. The love and kindness was wonderful.




There were musical performances by local musicians, including those who honor the great Bluegrass music which is a rich part of the local musical heritage, and there were some great Drag Queens, including Kentucky drag queen Cadillac Seville who served as the MC for the event. Speakers included Mark Ebenhoch who brought section 93 of the original Sea to Sea Pride flag which is an iconic piece of LGBTQ heritage; Timothy Love and a number of the other plaintiffs in Obergfell v. Hodges, Aaron Jackson, the founder of Planting Peace, and many others.


Like I said, I had the honor of speaking and I basically talked about things that have brought me as a Christian, as a Priest, and as a career military officer, and historian to become a vocal propponent for equally for all. Mark recorded my speech and once I figure out how to put it on the blog I will do it. 

So anyway, it has been a long day. I am back in Huntington, West Virginia with Judy and our friend Patty. We’ll be attending church Sundy at a local Methodist congregation that was formed from several churches which no longer could make it one their own, including Southside Methodist where my parents and grandparents attended and at which I was baptized as a baby back in 1960. My cousin Paula is the music director there as she was at Southside. 

Have a great night and a better tomorrow. 

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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August 22, 2016 · 16:05

Blacks in the U.S. Navy: 1798-1917

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

I’m back with something fresh, a short article from my text A Great War in a Revolutionary Age of Change. As I was looking at the text I realized that there were some major gaps to fill in regarding the service of African Americans in the military. So over the past couple of weeks I have been working on covering those gaps in order to smooth out the text and show how the social and political changes that began during the Civil War continued to work their way through our history to the present day. This section is about the African American experience in the U.S. Navy from 1798 until World War One.

There will be more so enjoy and have a great day,

Peace

Padre Steve+

uss-miami-crew

Unlike the Army, African Americans had served aboard United States Naval vessels since the Revolution, and were an important part of ship’s crews all through the age of sail and the Civil War. In 1798, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert, a slaveholder “barred “Negroes or Mulattoes” from serving in the new navy, and the Marine Corps did the same. Given the need to fill out their crews, however, captains often took free blacks as crew members. Both free blacks and slaves had served in the Continental Navy, the state navies, and privateers during the revolution, but that precedent had been forgotten.” [1] Even so, the Navy would continue to recruit free African Americans and they would make up a significant percentage of the crews of U.S. Navy ships, part of the reason that since the earliest times in the colonies, free blacks had taken up a seafaring way of life serving on merchantmen or in the Royal Navy. Likewise, “life at sea during the eighteenth century was difficult and dangerous. Therefore navies were forced to enlist practically anyone who was willing to serve.” [2]

During the War of 1812 free blacks comprised between ten and twenty percent of the crews of U.S. Navy ships. Captains like Oliver Hazard Perry who initial complained about having blacks on his ships became believers in their ability. At the Battle of Lake Erie “blacks constituted one-fourth of his 400 man force aboard the 10-vessel fleet.” He was so impressed by their performance under fire that he wrote the Secretary of the Navy “praising their fearlessness in the face of excessive danger.” [3] During the war, the Secretary of the Navy lifted Stoddert’s ban on blacks serving and free blacks responded by joining in increasing numbers.

Unlike the Army, the Navy became a place for free blacks to find a place to serve their country, and when the Civil War erupted these men continued to serve, and they would continue to serve throughout the war, and the Union Navy enlisted a proportionally higher number of its personnel from free blacks, nearly seventeen percent than did the Army, a force of approximately 30,000 sailors. Navy officers like David Dixon Porter praised them. He recruited them for his Mississippi Squadron as “coal heavers, firemen, and even gun crews.” He wrote “They do first rate work, and are far better behaved than their masters,” he declared. “What injustice to these poor people, to say they are only fit for slaves. They are far better than the white people here, who I look upon as brutes.” [4]

In 1862 the Union Navy was facing a manpower shortage the Federal and state governments discouraged whites from serving in the Navy due to the vast manpower needs of the Army. The government did not provide “bounties for those who joined nor counting them in local recruiting quotas.” [5] When confronted with the thousands of escaped slaves, or “contrabands” Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles authorized their enlistment, and they were treated comparatively well. There were no segregated quarters due to the cramped conditions of shipboard life and as a result the men messed and were quartered in common spaces. Black sailors had complete control of their pay and had the same privileges as their white shipmates.

Most Naval officers had never been abolitionists before the war, and some had been defenders of slavery before the war, but their wartime experiences converted them to the abolitionist cause. Samuel Francis Du Pont wrote “I have never been an abolitionist… on the contrary most of my life a sturdy conservative on the vexed question.” He explained that he had “defended it all over the world, argued for it for it as patriarchal in its tendencies,” he admitted in 1861.“Oh my! What a delusion…. The degradation, the overwork, and ill treatment of the slaves in the cotton states is great than I deemed possible, while the capacity of the Negro for improvement is higher than I believed.” He noted that no officer in his squadron had voted for Lincoln, by April 1862 he wrote “there is not one proslavery man among them.” [6]

Sadly after the war the opportunities for blacks began to decrease in the Navy. They still served but as the Navy became more technological, recruiters began to seek out more educated men to crew the ships of the new steel and steam navy. Increasing segregation and Jim Crow affected naval recruiting and by 1917 only about 7,500 blacks were still in the service. In the 1890s the navy began to exclude blacks from “all but the most undesirable jobs. Moreover, whites still would not tolerate blacks in blacks in positions of authority over them.” As a result promotion was rare, they worked in segregated conditions, and “to avoid friction between the two races,” commanders also segregated their eating and sleeping areas.” [7] With the exception of a successful experiment by Secretary of the Navy to integrate crews of certain auxiliary ships in 1944, these conditions would continue until President Truman ordered to integrate all branches of the military in 1948.

Notes

[1] Daughan, George C. If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy – From the Revolution to the War of 1812 Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group, New York 2008 p.320

[2] Fields, Elizabeth Arnett African American Soldiers Before the Civil War in A Historic context for the African American Military Experience – Before the Civil War, Blacks in the Union and Confederate Armies, Buffalo Soldier, Scouts, Spanish American War, World War I and II, U.S. Government, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington D.C. 1998, Amazon Kindle edition Progressive Management location 624  of 11320

[3] Ibid. Fields African American Soldiers Before the Civil War in A Historic context for the African American Military Experience location 668 of 11320

[4] McPherson, James M. War Upon the Waters: The Union and the Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2012 p.137

[5] Ibid. Fields African American Soldiers Before the Civil War in A Historic context for the African American Military Experience location 844 of 11320

[6] Ibid. McPherson War Upon the Waters: The Union and the Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 p.137

[7] Kraeczynski, Keith The Spanish American War and After in A Historic context for the African American Military Experience – Before the Civil War, Blacks in the Union and Confederate Armies, Buffalo Soldier, Scouts, Spanish American War, World War I and II, U.S. Government, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington D.C. 1998, Amazon Kindle edition Progressive Management location 2842  of 11320

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August 3, 2016 · 23:07

Opposing Ideas of Liberty: Slave Power vs. the Declaration of Independence

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This is something that I pulled from the text that I am currently working on regarding the role of race, religion, ideology and politics in the Civil War era. It deals with the thought of George Fitzhugh, a Southern Social social theorist whose views on race and humanity were quite common in the ante-bellum South, and directly opposed to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, if you look closely at Fitzhugh’s words, they are very similar to those today who seek to reestablish a society built on an aristocracy of race. They are worth taking some time to read, and then to compare with people today who oppose civil rights based on race, religion, gender, or any other difference that they believe makes people undeserving of liberty. 

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

The issue of slavery even divided the ante-bellum United States on what the words freedom and liberty meant. The dispute can be seen in the writings of many before the war, with each side emphasizing their particular understanding of these concepts. In the South, freedom was reserved for those who occupied the positions of economic power; slavery was key to that from not only an economic point of view but as a social philosophy. The concept of human equality, which was so much a part of the Declaration of Independence was ridiculed by George Fitzhugh, a planter and slave owner in eastern Virginia commented that that concept “is practically impossible, and directly conflicts with all government, all separate property, and all social existence.” [1] Fitzhugh was very critical of the founder’s philosophy of natural liberty and human equality which he found repugnant and error ridden. He wrote:

“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. No wonder the abolitionists loved to quote the Declaration of Independence! Its precepts are wholly at war with slavery and equally at war with all government, all subordination, all order. It is full if mendacity and error. Consider its verbose, newborn, false and unmeaning preamble…. There is, finally, no such thing as inalienable rights. Life and liberty are not inalienable…. Jefferson in sum, was the architect of ruin, the inaugurator of anarchy. As his Declaration of Independence Stands, it deserves the appropriate epithets which Major Lee somewhere applies to the thought of Mr. Jefferson, it is “exuberantly false, and absurdly fallacious.”   ” [2]

fitzhugh

George Fitzhugh

The political philosophy such as Fitzhugh’s, which was quite common in the South, and was buttressed by a profound religious belief that it was the South’s God ordained mission to maintain and expand slavery. One Methodist preacher in his justification of slavery wrote, “God as he is infinitely wise, just and holy never could authorize the practice of moral evil. But God has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by bare permission of his providence, but by the express permission of his word.” [3] Buttressed by such scriptural arguments Southerners increasingly felt that they were the only people following God. The Northern abolitionists as well as those who advocated for the concept of human equality and free labor were heretics to be damned. As such the “South’s ideological isolation within an increasingly antislavery world was not a stigma or a source of guilt but a badge of righteousness and a foundation for national identity and pride.” [4]

Speaking of the necessity for slavery, as well as limitations on the equality of human beings no matter what their race or sex; Fitzhugh penned words that explained that human relationships were not to be seen in terms of individual liberty, “but in relations of strict domination and subordination. Successful societies were those whose members acknowledged their places within that hierarchy.” [5]

Fitzhugh was quite caustic when he discussed the real implications of his philosophy:

“We conclude that about nineteen out of twenty individuals have “a natural and inalienable right” to be taken care of and protected, to have guardians, trustees, husbands or masters; in other words they have a natural and inalienable right to be slaves. The one in twenty are clearly born or educated in some way fitted for command and liberty.” [6]

Fitzhugh’s chilling conclusion was summarized in the words “Liberty for the few – slavery in every form, for the mass.” [7]

Calhoun

John C. Calhoun

But many Southerners, including many poor whites, especially the Yeoman farmers who were the backbone of the Southern populace did not see or understand the limitations that were placed on their own liberty by the slavery system and instead saw slavery as the guarantee of their economic freedom. John C. Calhoun said to the Senate in 1848 that “With us, the two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black; and all of the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.” [8] Calhoun’s racial distinction is important if we are to understand why poor whites would fight and die for a social and economic idea that did not benefit them or their families.

But it was Abraham Lincoln, who cut to the heart of the matter when he noted the difference between his understanding of liberty and that of Calhoun and others in the South who defended slavery and the privileges of the Southern oligarchs:

“We all declare for liberty” but “in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men and the product of other men’s labor.” [9]

Notes 

[1] Ibid. Levine Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War Revised Edition p.140

[2] Fitzhugh, George. New Haven Lecture 1855, in The Approaching Fury: Voices From the Storm, 1820-1861 Stephen B. Oates, Editor, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London 1997 p.135

[3] Ibid. Daly When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War pp.63-64

[4] Ibid. Faust, Drew The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South p.61

[5] Ibid. Levin Half Slave and Half Free p.140

[6] Ibid. Levin Half Slave and Half Free p.140

[7] Ibid. Levin Half Slave and Half Free p.141

[8] McPherson, James M. Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1996 p.50

[9] Ibid. Levin Half Slave and Half Free p.122

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August 2, 2016 · 06:15

Disgusting, Disgraceful, and Dishonorable: Trump’s Pathological Need to Belittle those Who Sacrifice for the Country 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Three words: Disgusting, disgraceful, dishonorable, is how I have to characterize how Donald Trump and his campaign treats those who serve, those who have served, and the families of military personnel. 

Ever since the parents of Army Captain Humayun Khan so eloquently spoke, and criticized Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention there has been a full court press by Trump, his aides, and his most strident supporters to demonize the Khans in the most cruel, senseless, and even evil ways. What they have done and continue to do is so offensive that it drew the official rebuke of many veterans groups, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Iraq Afghanistan Veterans Association. 

Trump is the ultimate bully and crybaby. He went to Twitter to complain of their “vicious attacks,” of course ignoring how has made a career of not only making vicious, and even libelous attacks on people of all walks of life. But then, like I said he is a bully and a crybaby. His assault on military personnel and veterans knows no bounds. He went out of his way to insult, attack, and demonize the Khans, and some of his aides and advisers have insinuated that they are connected to the Islamic Brotherhood, and demanded that they condemn Islamic militants, like losing their son in the battle against them doesn’t count. He mocked John McCain who spent years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, as well as others who have been POWs. He equates his high school years at an elite military prep school as being better than having actually served in the military. He says that he knows more than Generals about how to defeat ISIL. He stated in his acceptance speech that the military was “a disaster.” This list could go on, but even more despicable is the fact that while he claims to “have made sacrifices” he used five deferments to dodge the draft, something that he seems proud of doing. 

He claims to have made millions of dollars in donations to military charities but there are no records, he will not name the charities, and he will not reveal his tax returns. He biggest bragging point is his participation as a co-chairman of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission, in which he claimed credit for its construction is also full of deceit. In 1984 he was exposed by fellow members for only showing up at two or three of the twenty meetings. When asked by the Washington post about this he played down the military service of the other commissioners saying “They’re very small thinkers. They’re stockbrokers that were in Vietnam and they don’t have it.” 

The farcical comments by one of the head of his political action committee, that his sacrifice included losing two marriages because he was so committed to his business, conveniently leaving out the part about his constant affairs that led to the break up of those marriages. Some sacrifice. 

Why Trump acts this way might be a mystery to some, but I have a theory. Trump actually feels inferior to the men and women he is insulting because he knows that his avoidance of serving in Vietnam was cowardly. So he has to tear down McCain, he has to say he knows more than the generals, he has to go after the parents of a fallen hero. He is pathological in his need to prove his superiority, but as much as he blusters, Trump knows that he cannot live his own dishonor down, and so he must actively continue to belittle the sacrifices of, and even attempt to destroy the lives and reputations of those who actually did serve. 

Truthfully, the man has no honor, and neither do his henchmen in the Christian Right who have been the loudest and most vicious critics of the Khans, simply because they are Muslim, and who have demeaned Captain Khan’s sacrifice to protect his troops from a terrorist car bomber. Some even said that he was not a hero. To see people who claim to be “Christians” act in such a manner defies the imagination and brings to mind the images of the burning of heretics, witch hunts, and more recently in American history the lynching of blacks by the supposed Christians of the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, and the White Leagues. 

But truthfully I am surprised at none of this. Many American Evangelical and Conservative Christians only care about the military and the men and women who serve in it so long as it fits their political and religious agenda, and they ruthlessly attack anyone who dares to criticize that agenda. I know this because it has happened to me on quite a few occasions. 

The whole affair has both sickened and angered me as a thirty five year veteran of the Army and Navy, as a combat veteran, and as a Christian. When I see the venomous nature of Trump, his campaign, and many of his supporters I fear for the country. A a Mike Pence speech the mother of a current Air Force member asked Pence about Trump’s attack on the Khans and was booed by the attendees, and he made no attempt to stop it. 

The campaign being waged by Trump reminds me of the 1932 campaign of Hitler against Paul Von Hindenburg. In that campaign war veterans of non-Nazi parties were attacked, derided, and sometimes murdered by Nazi Brownshirts. The violence of the Trump campaign language being used against the Khans and others who disagree with Trump could easily lead to physical violence against Trump’s enemies. Don’t say it can’t happen, violence was a central feature of Trump supporters during the primaries and as the election draws closer I would not be surprised to see an uptick in the number of acts of violence against those who oppose Trump. 

So anyway. That will be all. Have a great Tuesday. 

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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August 1, 2016 · 06:30

Rebels and Racism in Gettysburg 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Gettysburg is hallowed ground for all who love this country. It is the site of a defeat which ended any hope for a Confederate military victory, and at which Abraham Lincoln spoke of a new birth of freedom. It is a place that veterans of both sides began to gather both to remember their service and comrades but also to promote reconciliation between the North and the South. 

But it has also become a place in recent years for neo-Confederates to gather, not to remember the new birth of freedom, but to arrogantly defile the site by spewing hate, proclaiming racism, while openly speaking of their hatred of the United States and love of the late Confederacy. Some drive around town and in front of the Soldier’s Cemetery in large and loud pickup trucks, sometimes blaring their horns, while flying large 3′ x 5′ Confederate Battle Flags flying as if to mock the Union soldiers buried there. 

It is also interesting to note that many of these openly racist people are not from the South, nor do they have southern roots. They simply tend to be racist and anti-government and gather around the flag of the Confederacy.  I remember having a beer with a man from upstate New York in a bar a year or so ago who said he was the chaplain for a Confederate reenactment unit (in uniform) and went on to discuss his hatred for the United States, as well as African Americans, and other non-white American citizens. Likewise on another visit an older couple who said they were from Georgia listened to me talk with my students in the Soldier’s Cemetery, and when I was finished with reading the Gettysburg Address, the man made sure that he told me that all people were not created equal. 

But let me be clear, there are also Southerners who love this country very much, who when they come to Gettysburg to remember their fallen ancestors, do so with a reverence which is perfectly in keeping with the desire for reconciliation of the Southern veterans as who returned to Gettysburg in the decades after the war. 

I was walking by one of the gift shops in town and noticed a t-shirt on display. The shirt was adorned with the Confederate Battle Flag and and the words “I will not be reconstructed and I don’t give a damn!” 

To some that may seem like a simple snarky statement. However, when you understand what the phase really means it should leave you cold. In 1866 it became part of the lyrics of a song called Oh, I’m a Good ole Rebel, a song that has been recorded numerous times in the years since it was written. 

It was a phase used by Southerners after the Civil War who opposed the process of reconstruction, opposed all civil rights for blacks, and pushed for the return of white rule, which they achieved in 1877 when Reconstruction ended. At that point nearly every hard fought for right of African Americans was reversed, suppressed, or made so difficult to use as to be effectively revoked. Those rights would not begin to be restored until 1954 when the Supreme Court issued the Brown v. Board of Education decision which overturned the  Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of 1894. This ruling declared that the segregation laws and Black Codes of the Jim Crow era were unconstitutional. It took another ten years for Congress in the face of heated opposition to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1965. 

But among segregationists those rulings were reviled. Governors fought to keep African Americans from entering segregated public schools and universities, civil rights workers were attacked and sometimes killed, civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr were assassinated. Alabama governor George Wallace, who in his 1963 governor’s inauguration address proclaimed “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” ran on a segregationist platform in the 1968 election and won 13.53% of the popular vote. He won Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, while collecting 45 electoral votes. Interestingly enough, the demographics of Wallace’s supporters, heavily white male and lesser educated, were very much like those of current GOP nominee Donald Trump. 

But I digress, yet the fact of the matter is that the open proclamation of the phrase I will not be reconstructed on a shirt displaying the flag of the republic that Confederate Vice President Alexander said, was founded on the superiority of the white race and subordination of the negro as slaves. They are the words of the KKK, the Red Shirts, and the White Leagues who used violence and terrorism to intimidate blacks and any of their white supporters. 

So a a historian I will not attempt to silence those people’s free speech rights, as repugnant as I find them to be. But have to call their words what they are, a call for the return to Jim Crow and worse. They are meant to intimidate people, and I find that message evil, in fact it goes against everything that makes America great. Maybe those who say they will “make America great again” should take heed to the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and realize what really makes America great instead of spewing the hate of those who fought the propositions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at every turn, even to begin a bloody civil war. 

So until tomorrow have a great Monday.

Peace,

Padre Steve+


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July 31, 2016 · 13:17

A Cyclorama, a Cornerstone, and a Proposition


Friends of Padre Steve’s World

I have been at Gettysburg this weekend and yesterday was spent doing the Staff Ride on the battlefield. Normally we get all of the first two days of the battle done and conclude at Culp’s Hill and East Cemetery Hill before retiring to dinner. Yesterday, the weather got in the way. Thunderstorms came through and while we were able to finish the final assault of the Confederates on Cemetery Ridge, the storms became worse, so I altered the plan. Instead of pushing on and ensuring that my students would be too wet and miserable to learn anything I changed the plan on the fly and took them to the Visitors Center, where we normally begin our Sunday.


This was a good choice because it also got them more time there than if we had done it today. While there I went the the Cyclorama of Pickett’s Charge, which I had not visited since 1997. The cyclorama is the largest oil and canvas painting in the United States. It give a 360 degree view of the battle. Painted in 1883 by Paul Phillipotaux it is 42 feet high and 377 feet in circumference. It was restored between 2005 and 2008 when it was placed in the new Visitors Center. In all of my trips since then I had not re-visited it. Yesterday I did and it was spectacular, far better than it used to be. 

I also spent time in the museum. One of the displays was a video display of Northern and Southern leaders comments about slavery and abolition in the years leading up to the war and shortly after secession. I stopped and watched and listened, as the words of speeches that I had only read were spoken. One of the statements was that of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in his “Cornerstone Speech” of March 1861. In it Stephens laid out the what he called the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy, that it was a nation conceived on the superiority of the white race, the subordination of the black race, and the error of the founders of the United States in the proposition that “all men are created equal.” 

This was an assertion that Stephens to believed was in error, and he noted that the new Confederacy was “founded on exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subornation to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition…” 

Now I have read that speech many times and it always sends a tremor of revulsion through me. But yesterday was different. I heard an actor speaking those words, and not only did that tremor of revulsion go through me, but I had an emotional reaction, terms filled my eyes in sadness and anger such as I had not experienced when simply reading the words. To hear a voice utter them was to make them real, because I hear all too similar expressions of the racial superiority of the white race from many supporters of Donald Trump, to included prominent White Supremacists, like David Duke and Pat Buchanan as well as many others including the KKK and bro-Nazis. 

 Likewise, it struck me because many people I know who call themselves conservative Evangelical or Catholic Christians use similar terminology not just to describe their racial superiority, but their religious superiority over others. Hearing those words spoken, reminded me of the fact that those who proclaim them are in fact attacking the very foundation, the very e proposition that the founders stated, and which Abraham Lincoln reiterated and universalized, “the proposition that all men are created equal.” 

That proposition is at the heart of the Bill of Rights and if we say that this is wrong, and we attempt to marginalize, disenfranchise, and otherwise discriminate against people based on their race, nationality, skim color, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, then we have forgotten the most important part of who we are as Americans. Thankfully, a number of rooms later I entered a room which dealt with the Gettysburg Address. In it there was a display of that text, with the voice of an actor portraying Abraham Lincoln speaking it. I paused, listened and reflected on the difference of Lincoln’s words and those of Stephens. Truthfully, hearing the words of Stephens and Lincoln being spoke felt like how I reacted the differences between the Trump convention, and the Democratic National Convention. 

The fact is that the United States was founded on that simple proposition that all men are created equal. While we haven’t always practiced it, in this country or abroad, it does not take away the power that simple truth to set people free. In this country it has been an at times grueling task to bring freedom to slaves, to women, to other immigrants, and to the LGBTQ community. It has been 240 years and there are still people trying to roll back the rights of those they think are inferior, or who they believe that their religion condemns. That my friends is not an American concept, it a throwback to the old world, a world which only exists in the Cloud-Cukoo land of ideologues.


So today we finished up the Staff Ride going to Culp’s Hill and East Cemetery Hill prior to retracing the route take by Pickett’s troops as they made their ill-fated charge into the center of the Federal line. The last past is particularly powerful as I quote from the words of the soldiers who observed the attack and the human carnage inflicted by the Federal guns and infantry. As much as I despised the cause of those brave soldiers, I cannot help but to admire their courage in making that attack, call it the common humanity and compassion that I feel towards soldiers who are ordered to do the impossible. When we got to the Angle where Lieutenant William Cushing was killed firing his last rounds of canister at the advancing Confederates, and where the Irishmen of the 69th Pennsylvania joined with others to drive the Confedates back, I am equally amazed by the courage of those Union men.


As always we finished up at the Soldier’s Cemetery where we talked about the human cost of war, and the moves on to talk about the importance of the Gettysburg Address, in particular its relationship to the Declaration of Indpendence and that proposition that is the heart and soul of what makes America different than any other country. The proposition that all men are created equal, and that we are not a nation founded on race, ethnicity, or religion, but on a proposition that most of the world envies, and which we ourselves so often neglect out of fear, of others, much to our detriment. 

So I will write more later to post tomorrow. But for now I am yours.

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 

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