Category Archives: Political Commentary

September 14, 2016 · 07:00

Who is Guilty?

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World

On September 16th 1963 a young Southern White lawyer in Birmingham Alabama spoke these words after a black church was bombed and the police attacked peaceful protesters:

“from anger and despair, from frustration and empathy. And from years of hopes, hopes that were shattered and crumbled with the steps of that Negro Baptist Church.”

Most Americans will not recognize the names and I would dare say that many do not even know about what happened in Birmingham Alabama 52 years ago today. At 10:22 in the morning on September 15th 1963 a bomb exploded during the worship service at the 16th Street Baptist Church. It was one of the most brazen attacks against a church in the modern era, and men who claimed to be “Christians” committed it.

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Four young girls, three 14 year olds and one 13 year old were killed. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley lost their lives that day. Twenty-two other church members were wounded in an attack, which was carried out by members of the KKK and tacitly approved of by many political leaders including Alabama Governor George Wallace. Why were they killed and why were the others wounded? For the crime of being black and the crime of their church serving as a focal point of the Civil Rights movement.

Likewise, most people, including many blacks do not know that before that beginning in 1955 there had been 19 other bombings of black churches and the homes of black leaders in Birmingham before this one. But even before that outbreak of violence, Birmingham had become known as “Bombingham” because over 50 bombing attacks against blacks, black churches and black institutions in the years after the First World War.

The church had served as a focal point of the Freedom Summer where Civil Rights activists and students from around the country had met, trained and organized to register blacks to vote. This made it a prominent target for violence.

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Early in the morning of September 15th four members of the United Klans of America Frank Bobby Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Cash and Robert Chambliss placed a box of 10 sticks of dynamite under the church steps near the basement. A time delay detonator was set o ensure that the church was filled when the bomb went off. The blast occurred as children were entering the to listen to a sermon, ironically entitled “The Love that Forgives.”

The attack was a heinous crime and an act of cold-blooded premeditated murder that maybe a number of years before might not have made the news in much of the country. But this was 1963 and over the preceding months of the Freedom Summer opened the eyes of people across the nation to what was happening in the South. The brutal attacks on many blacks, civil rights workers and student volunteers during that time raised the profile of the Civil Rights Movement and shown the ugly hatred towards blacks held by many Southerners hidden underneath the veneer of polite Southern hospitality.

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Blacks protested and were met with a massive police response coordinated by Governor Wallace that brought about more violence, and more dead blacks. A day later a young white lawyer, Charles Morgan Jr.; a true Southerner by right and heritage spoke to the White Businessman’s club of Birmingham. His words were forceful and to the point. Instead of simply asking why, the young man began his speech with this poignant remark:

“Four little girls were killed in Birmingham yesterday. A mad, remorseful worried community asks, “Who did it? Who threw that bomb? Was it a Negro or a white?” The answer should be, “We all did it.” Every last one of us is condemned for that crime and the bombing before it and a decade ago. We all did it.”

He continued, “A short time later, white policemen kill a Negro and wound another. A few hours later, two young men on a motorbike shoot and kill a Negro child. Fires break out, and, in Montgomery, white youths assault Negroes. And all across Alabama, an angry, guilty people cry out their mocking shouts of indignity and say they wonder, “Why?” “Who?” Everyone then “deplores” the “dastardly” act. But you know the “who” of “Who did it” is really rather simple.”

Not only was the attack heinous, but, the response of many in law enforcement at the local level and even at the office of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was criminal. Hoover refused to investigate, and although a witness identified Chambliss, he was not charged with the bombing; instead he was charged for having a case of dynamite without a permit. He was fined $100 and given a six-month jail sentence.

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Robert Chambliss 

Thought FBI agents had investigated the crime and discovered evidence against all four men, Hoover ordered the evidence not be provided to local or Federal prosecutors. So for eight years the crime was covered up.

However in 1971 Bill Baxley was elected Attorney General of Alabama. Baxley re-opened the case and requested the FBI files, which had been suppressed by Hoover, who had died in 1972. In 1977 Chambliss was indicted and convicted of first degree murder, he died in prison. Blanton was tried in 2001, convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Cash died in 1994 with ever having been charged with a crime and Cherry was convicted in 2002, sentenced to life in prison and died in 2004.

The attack and the deaths of the four girls served as a catalyst in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. However it did not end the fight for equality, and others would die in its aftermath, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who died at the hands of an assassin’s bullet less than 4 years later.

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voters Rights Act of 1965 many blacks have been elected to local, state and federal offices or served in some of the highest ranks of the military, judiciary, and at the Cabinet level. Two, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice have served as Secretary of State, two, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, as Attorney General of the United States; one, Clarence Thomas, as a Justice of the Supreme Court; and one, Barak Obama elected as President of the United States. Black sports stars, actors and singers are celebrated as heroes among much of society.

But despite these advances, racism is still quite prevalent. One of my former co-workers from Georgia, a white Southern Baptist minister and retired military chaplain noted that many whites may not be explicitly racists in interpersonal relationships with blacks, but have an attitude that blacks still need “to stay in their place.” He noted that he thinks that quite a few believe that many whites believe that this is a large part of the reason that President Obama is opposed and even hated by so many whites. It is not just politics or ideology. While politics may play a role the root of the hatred is racism because I cannot for the life of me imagining any white Democrat, including Hilary Clinton getting this kind of treatment.

But the sad truth is there still is an undercurrent of unrepentant racism in the country and not just the South. In fact many places in the South have seen greater advances in racial relations than other parts of the country. That is not to say that there are those who would attempt to disenfranchise blacks, some of the voting laws recently passed are designed to ensure that significant parts of the black population, specifically the elderly and students living away from home have greater difficulty voting. It is actually a more insidious method than past Jim Crow laws because the drafters of these laws hope to keep just enough black and other poor or minority voters from voting to ensure that they maintain power. Some of those who drafted or supported these state laws designed to disenfranchise voters have openly admitted that fact.

Not only is racial prejudice experienced by blacks, it is experienced by many Americans of Hispanic origins, some of Asian descent but also by those of Middle Eastern, Iranian, Pakistani or Indian descent. And yes, people of all races, including racial, ethnic and religious minorities can be as racist and violent as the men who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church 52 years ago. Racism is an ugly part of our human condition and no matter whom it is targeted against, and who does the targeting, it is wrong and needs to be fought.

The Southern Poverty Law Center http://www.splcenter.org lists nearly 800 active hate groups of all types operating across the country, including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others. (See the Hate Map here https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map) The number is down from recent because a number of more the virulent White Supremacist and militia groups have gone underground, shut down websites and social media pages.

Too many people have died in this struggle to stop now. If today you read this before or after going to church, remember those four little girls who died at the hands of four murdering, racist Klansmen. Likewise remember that there are others out there full of hate who would not hesitate to do the same again and others who would actively support those efforts. Sometimes even in the name of God.

As for me I will fight it no matter whom it is against.

Charles Morgan Jr. closed the speech which brought about death threats against him and his family and forced him to leave Birmingham with these words.

“And who is really guilty? Each of us. Each citizen who has not consciously attempted to bring about peaceful compliance with the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, every citizen who has ever said “they ought to kill that nigger,” every citizen who votes for the candidate with the bloody flag, every citizen and every school board member and schoolteacher and principal and businessman and judge and lawyer who has corrupted the minds of our youth; every person in this community who has in any way contributed during the past several years to the popularity of hatred, is at least as guilty, or more so, than the demented fool who threw that bomb.”

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Charles Morgan Jr.

Charles Morgan died in 2009, but after he left Birmingham he went on to lead a remarkable life, especially in his commitment to Civil Rights and Justice. The New York Times obituary noted:

“Among his many cases as a civil rights lawyer, Mr. Morgan sued to desegregate his alma mater, the University of Alabama; forced a new election in Greene County, Ala., that led to the election of six black candidates for local offices in 1969; and successfully challenged racially segregated juries and prisons. After the civil rights movement began to subside, Mr. Morgan, as a leader of the American Civil Liberties Union, fought three celebrated court cases involving protests against the Vietnam War.

He represented Muhammad Ali in his successful court fight to avoid being drafted. He represented the civil rights activist Julian Bond in the early stages of an ultimately successful lawsuit after Mr. Bond had been denied a seat in the Georgia legislature because of his antiwar views. And he defended an officer when he was court-martialed for refusing to help instruct Green Berets headed for Vietnam.”

We cannot ever let ourselves forget that it was supposedly Christian men who bombed a church and killed those four little girls, and that as long as all of us fail to live up to our responsibilities such things will happen again. If we do not, we are as guilty as those who throw the bombs, shoot the bullets, and those preachers, pundits and politicians who deny the fact that these things are still commonplace. Sadly the candidate of the Republican Party for President as well as many GOP operatives and candidates for office dow the ballot seem to have no interest in justice and Trump’s many supporters in the badly named “Alt-Right” which would be better called Klansmen and Nazis long for the return of the society that allowed the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

Sadly my friends, if we allow a racist like Donald Trump to become President we will be at least as guilty as the brazen killers who continue to try to kill the dreams of those who are not like them. As for me, I hope that I will be as committed to stand for the rights of the oppressed and for justice as did Charles Morgan no matter what the results of the upcoming election.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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September 6, 2016 · 06:30

Hell Hath no Fury Like a Fundamentalist Scorned: Phyllis Schafly Dead at 92


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I never rejoice in the death of anyone, but there are some people who because of their body of life’s work that I will not miss. Phyllis Schafly is one of them. She was one of the leading religious agitators who fought to deny equal rights to women by stopping the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment which by an act of Congress would have guaranteed women the same rights as men, and to the end of her life was a strident opponent of equality for LGBTQ people, and immigrants. 

Schafly used her religious beliefs as a weapon to deny rights to fellow citizens, and in doing so became one of the most forceful advocates of a supposedly Christian theocracy which mobilized millions of voters and made her the darling of the political preachers of the religious right for over forty years. Most recently she had cast her political power as a leader of the Christian Right behind Donald Trump. Honestly, I can think of few people who so vehemently and successfully used the power of religiously infused politics to such a degree as Schafly, and the words of James Spader’s character in the television series The Blacklist seem to apply to this now dead woman, “hell hath no fury like a fundamentalist scorned.” 

But there is always a price for such foolishness. Schafly and her allies in the political Christian Right who so desired to bring about the Kingdom of God by attempting to both subvert the Constitution through biased religious lawmaking, by demonizing her opponents, and by denying the very source of life of our nation, the proposition that all men are created equal actually helped destroy the real spiritual influence of the Christian faith in the United States more than anyone. They sold their birthright, discredited the church, and for what? The illusion of political power and influence. 

A few years back the Barna Report, a very reputable Evangelical Christian polling organization noted that the fastest growing segment of the American religious mosaic was “the nones,” people who have no preference in religious belief, and the fastest growing subsets of the “nones” are Atheists, Agnostics, and Free Thinkers. In fact number one of the reasons cited by Barna is that a vast majority of young people, including those who grew up in the church, described the church as too political. A February 2016 study by Barna noted that almost half of non-religious Americans view Christianity as extremist, and dangerous. That should trouble any Christian leader, but it never bothered Schafly or for that matter any of her political preacher allies. Likewise according to a Barna study released in October 2014, nearly half of the ever rising number of “the unchurched” find it hard to name a single positive contribution of the church to society. 

But the situation is worse if you look at why young Christians leave the church. According to a Barna survey in September 2011 young Christians believe that the church is overprotective, shallow, antagonistic toward science, that they feel judged by older church members who are simplistic and judgemental, that church is like a “country club” that is antagonistic and unwelcoming of outsiders, and that it is a place unfriendly to those that doubt. Specific comments by large numbers of Christian young people who are feeling the church include that it is “too political,” “fear based and risk adverse,” and that it “demonizes those outside the church.” But I think the most damning finding of that survey was that twenty percent  of Christian young people said that “God seems missing from my experience in church.” 

Throughout her life Phyllis Schafly made her money and fame by demonizing all opposition, she rallied supporters by promoting fear, and she, maybe even more that the Elmer Gantry types of charlatan political and prosperity preachers is in large part responsible for the current sad state of the Christian church in the United States. I remember back in the late 1970s and 1980s the hold that she had on churches that I attended. She was practically deified for her opposition to women’s rights, and LGBTQ people. She could be found at the side of any political hack willing to give her a place in the podium almost to the day she died, even this summer she appeared at the side of Donald Trump, as always casting the pearls of the Gospel at the feet of a man whose life and work exemplifies the complete opposite of what was once considered Christian virtue. 

When I learned of Mrs Schafly’s death I was watching an episode of The Blacklist. Reddington made the comment “you know what my problem with religion is? Man. Like anything that has potential to be beautiful, man will turn it into somethings ugly.” I could not help by think of the irony. 


Schafly spent her last year nearly destroying the Eagle Forum organization that she helped to found by endorsing Trump, a man who she called “the last hope for America” even as she filed a lawsuit against nephew Tom from trademarking his Schafly Beer because she was the person who made her name famous. 

Truthfully, like I said, I never rejoice in the death of anyone, even someone like Mrs Schafly whose actions I believe we’re so detrimental to so many people and to the church itself. I pray that she finds God to be more merciful to her than she was to others, and I do hope after a life spent demonizing and denying the rights of people that she despised, I hope that her tortured and embittered soul finds some measure of peace that she seemed unable to find in life. 

What a shame… 

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 

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September 2, 2016 · 00:05

When Despots Gain Power


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have returned home from my vacation in time to spend some time relaxing over the Labor Day weekend while hopefully dodging the worst of what will be Tropical Storm Hermine. I am going to be writing a number of articles as well as pictures from our time in Huntington, West Virginia this weekend, articles that will deal with history, art and culture, as well as social and political commentary. 

Yesterday I posted a short article about how despots come to power referencing the words of British military historian B.H. Liddell-Hart in his book Why Don’t We Learn from History?  Since I gave a brief introduction to that work yesterday I will not repeat the introduction. Instead I will go to the second part of how he described despots, or what we commonly call dictators today. 

Yesterday I briefly discussed Liddell-Hart’s understanding of the important differences between democracy and dictatorship and why despite all the inefficiency of the former that it is infinitely preferable to the latter or for that matter any other form of government. 

Since I left off and let you my friends and readers meditate on how despots come to power, I will now finish with what Liddell-Hart said about what happens after a despot takes power. He is right of course. Since the French Revolution we can look to Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, three generations of North Korean Kims, Mussolini, Ceausescu, Pol Pot, the Castros, Pinocet, Mugabe, not to mention the multitude of other despots of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe, but I digress. 

Liddell-Hart wrote:

We learn from history that time does little to alter the psychology of dictatorship. The effect of power on the mind of the man who possesses it, especially when he has gained it by successful aggression, tends to be remarkably similar in every age and in every country.

Yesterday I asked you my readers to compare what Liddell-Hart said about how despots come to power and think about how what he said is evidenced in the campaign of Donald Trump. So that being said, Liddell-Hart noted that once a despot achieves power that their reign is marked by the following types of events:

On gaining power: 

They soon begin to rid themselves of their chief helpers, “discovering” that those who brought about the new order have suddenly become traitors to it. 

They suppress criticism on one pretext or another and punish anyone who mentions facts which, however true, are unfavourable to their policy. They enlist religion on their side, if possible, or, if its leaders are not compliant, foster a new kind of religion subservient to their ends. 

They spend public money lavishly on material works of a striking kind, in compensation for the freedom of spirit and thought of which they have robbed the public. 

They manipulate the currency to make the economic position of the state appear better than it is in reality. 

They ultimately make war on some other state as a means of diverting attention from internal conditions and allowing discontent to explode outward. 

They use the rallying cry of patriotism as a means of riveting the chains of their personal authority more firmly on the people. 

They expand the superstructure of the state while undermining its foundations by breeding sycophants at the expense of self-respecting collaborators, by appealing to the popular taste for the grandiose and sensational instead of true values, and by fostering a romantic instead of a realistic view, thus ensuring the ultimate collapse, under their successors if not themselves, of what they have created. 

This political confidence trick, itself a familiar string of tricks, has been repeated all down the ages. Yet it rarely fails to take in a fresh generation.

Now pause for a moment. Donald Trump has not been elected to anything, but compare his business career and current political campaign rhetoric to Liddell-Hart’s words about despots in power. And since I am tired I will leave you to contemplate Liddell-Hart’s words from a half-century ago and imagine a Trump presidency. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

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September 1, 2016 · 04:20

How Despots Gain Power


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today I am traveling back home after a wonderful visit with friends and family in Huntington, West Virginia. The visit was nice, I got a chance to do some serious reflection, especially as I walked about the city and along the Ohio River waterfront, visited the Museum of Art, and walked the entirety of its wonderful Ritter Park. 

I did some writing but spent more time in reading and reflection than anything. I kept up on some of the headlines but didn’t let myself get beaten down by the negativity and cynicism of our time.

Last night I read the short but poignant little but by the British military historian B.H. Liddell-Hart entitled Why Don’t We Learn from History. The book was written in not long before his death in 1970 and it is good quite good. It deals with a number of issues, including the conflict between history and propaganda, or when faith, especially religious faith as treated as historic or scientific fact; especially when propaganda or faith is preached as if it were history, if it were truth. But he also contrasted democracy and totalitarianism. 

Liddell-Hart was a realist, especially about democracy and totalitarianism. While he admitted the inefficiencies of democracy, he realized that it was far less dangerous than the “stupidity” of totalitarianism. In fact it was important for him to note just how this inefficient system was for freedom. He wrote:

What is of value in “England” and “America” and worth defending is its tradition of freedom, the guarantee of its vitality. Our civilization, like the Greek, has, for all its blundering way, taught the value of freedom, of criticism of authority, and of harmonising this with order. Anyone who urges a different system, for efficiency’s sake, is betraying the vital tradition.

There was was much to ponder in his book and I will probably write some more of my thoughts on it, but since I am going to be traveling I will quote what he said about self-made despotic rulers and how they come to power. When I read it I was struck by just how much Liddell-Hart in his description of a despot describes Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump through the his campaign and especially his remarks on immigration hours after returning from a brief meeting with Mexican President Pena Nieto. 

We learn from history that self-made despotic rulers follow a standard pattern. In gaining power: They exploit, consciously or unconsciously, a state of popular dissatisfaction with the existing regime or of hostility between different sections of the people. They attack the existing regime violently and combine their appeal to discontent with unlimited promises (which, if successful, they fulfil only to a limited extent). They claim that they want absolute power for only a short time (but “find” subsequently that the time to relinquish it never comes). They excite popular sympathy by presenting the picture of a conspiracy against them and use this as a lever to gain a firmer hold at some crucial stage.

He wrote about how they behave in power as well, but for now I will close and let you my readers ponder his statement before I follow up with Liddell-Hart’s observations from history on how despots act once they achieve power. 

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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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 15, 2016 · 21:49

Reflecting on “Inherit the Wind”

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

“As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.” Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) Inherit the Wind

Today has been a very busy day at work but I have been doing some reflection and instead of watching the Olympics tonight I decided to again watch the classic film Inherit the Wind. I really do believe that it is well worth watching, especially when a charlatan with no Christian virtues whatsoever stokes up the hopes of conservative Christians by promising that if he is elected he will make Christianity great again. Of course the Christianity that he refers to is not that of Jesus, but that of Constantine and every other strongman who has used the Christians and the church to achieve earthly power and to crush any opposition. Noted televangelists have come to Trump’s side, many like John Hagee saying that Christians that God will punish Christians, that vote against Trump. That is why this film is still so pertinent.

It is fascinating that a play and film set about an incident that actually occurred in the 1920s remains so timeless. It is hard to believe that 90 years after the trial and over 50 years after the movie that our society would still be debating the issue in the movie and that legislatures and school boards are still attempting to pass religious doctrine off as science.

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It is a film about what is commonly called the “Scopes Monkey Trial” which was litigated in July of 1925 and featured an epic battle between populist three time Presidential Candidate and former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow.

The trial was brought about after the passage of the Butler Act in Tennessee. It was an act that made it a criminal offense to teach evolution in any publicly funded school. The act stipulated:

“That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

The author of the act was Tennessee State Representative John W. Butler, a farmer and the head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association an interdenominational organization dedicated to a “New Protestantism” based on the Pre-Millennial interpretation of Bible prophecy.

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Butler was heavily influenced by William Jennings Bryant who with his followers had gotten legislation banning evolution in 15 states. H.L. Mencken commented that over the years of his public life that Bryan had “transformed himself” into some “sort of Fundamentalist Pope.”

Butler was opposed to the teaching of evolution and the act passed the house by a vote of 75-1. No public hearings had been held on it and no debate proffered.

Butler’s legislation did face some opposition in the State Senate. However it passed there on a vote of 24-6 after the famous Fundamentalist evangelist Billy Sunday preached as series of revival meetings to incite public opinion in favor of the bill. Sunday’s message was clear, he preached that “Education today is chained to the Devil’s throne” and praised Butler and the House for their “action against that God forsaken gang of evolutionary cutthroats.” The bill was signed into law by Governor Austin Peay, but Peay expected little to come of it.

The American Civil Liberties Union put the law to the test using high school biology teacher John Scopes who was charged with breaking the law. The trial ended up becoming less about the guilt or innocence of Scopes or even the constitutionality of the law, but rather as the field where the conflict between religious and social issues and faith versus intellectualism was fought. Butler, the man who legislated the law on religious grounds covered it as a correspondent.

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Mencken wrote of the trial:

“The Scopes trial, from the start, has been carried on in a manner exactly fitted to the anti- evolution law and the simian imbecility under it. There hasn’t been the slightest pretense to decorum. The rustic judge, a candidate for re-election, has postured the yokels like a clown in a ten-cent side show, and almost every word he has uttered has been an undisguised appeal to their prejudices and superstitions. The chief prosecuting attorney, beginning like a competent lawyer and a man of self-respect, ended like a convert at a Billy Sunday revival. It fell to him, finally, to make a clear and astounding statement of theory of justice prevailing under fundamentalism. What he said, in brief, was that a man accused of infidelity had no rights whatever under Tennessee law…”

 

It was an epic event covered by news outlets across the nation and the atmosphere in the town outside the courthouse was circus like, something that the movie depicts very well. The defense was not allowed to produce Scientists as witnesses, even to the chagrin of Butler who despite his opposition to evolutionary theory felt that it was not fair. When all was said and done Scopes had been convicted and a fine of $100 assessed, which was overturned on appeal. Bryan died a week after the trial and of the 15 states with similar legislation to Butler passed them into law.

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The film is based on the play of the same name written in 1950 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. It was written during the height of the McCarthy Era and opened in 1955. The first film version starring Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow), Frederic March as Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan), Gene Kelly as E.K. Hornbeck (H.L. Mencken) while Dick York played Bertram Cates (John Scopes). Lawrence and Lee invented some fictional characters including Reverend Brown played by Claude Akins.

The film directed by Stanley Kramer captures the raw emotions of the trial, the participants and the spectators who came from near and far. The depiction of the angry mob of Christians is terrifying to watch. In the film they sing:

“We’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree. Our God is marching on! Glory Glory Hallelujah! Glory Glory Hallelujah! Glory Gory Hallelujah! His truth is marching on. We’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, our God is marching on.”

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March’s depiction of Matthew Harrison Brady is riveting. The Brady of the film does not do justice to other parts of Bryan’s life. Bryan, outside his fight against evolution was ahead of his time in many ways. Earlier in his career he had pressed for Universal Suffrage, fought against war and labored against the social Darwinism of the banks, business and the Robber Barons. However the loss of three Presidential elections left him bitter and it is believed that he saw the trial as an opportunity to regain the limelight and perhaps build a base to again run for President. This speech by Brady is a fair characterization of Bryan’s beliefs:

“I have been to their cities and I have seen the altars upon which they sacrifice the futures of their children to the gods of science. And what are their rewards? Confusion and self-destruction. New ways to kill each other in wars. I tell you gentlemen the way of science is the way of darkness.”

The problem with the Bryan of the Scopes Trial was that he was a caricature of his former self, he played to the crowds. The trial played to the worst parts of his character and that shows in the movie depiction. Some Christians find this an unfair portrayal and even call it a lie, however even though March’s portrayal is fictional it does fit the spirit of the trial which is captured in the writings of many of the contemporary commentators of the trial. Mencken wrote of the real Bryan: It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon.

 

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Another of those commentators, Marcet Haldeman-Julius wrote of the real Bryan:

“As he sat there in the court room, day after day, silent, fanning, fanning, his face set I was appalled by the hardness, the malice in it. No one who has watched the fanatical light in those hard, glittering black eyes of Bryan’s can doubt but that he believes both in a heaven and in a hell. At the same time the cruel lines of his thin, tight-pressed mouth proclaim, it seems to me, that he would stop at nothing to attain his own ends. It is anything but a weak face–Bryan’s. But it is a face from which one could expect neither understanding nor pity. My own opinion is that he is sincere enough in his religion. Also that in it is included the doctrine Paul so frankly taught–that a lie told for the glory of God is justified…”

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But I think that the real drama and tension in the film comes from Spencer Tracy in his portrayal of Drummond. This speech is taken almost verbatim from the trial:

“Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!”

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I think that this speech is the real crux of the tension that we face even now. Legislators in a number of States have enacted laws of much the same kind of spirit as Butler and defended them with the same kind of fire as Bryan. Civil libertarians, especially secular ones bring up the same issues as Darrow did. I am a Christian and a Priest and my thinking about this is much like that espoused by Drummond in the movie.

So the film may be a fictional depiction of the Scopes Trial, but it is a film that I think that people would do well to watch. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me or the issues that I agree with brought up by the character of Henry Drummond. However, I think that everyone should watch the film and come to their own conclusions as well as to ask themselves how their particular ethic, whether secular or religious informs them in how they deal with this issue and so many others that divide us today.

I just know when I watched it again this week that it could have been in the news this week, only with a different cast of characters. My concern is that there is a very loud minority that wants to inflict its particular religious view on everyone and use the public treasure to do it. The attitude of many of these people is much like the characters from the actual Scopes Trial including their view that pushes both demonizes those they oppose and their desire to regulate the secular opposition to the sidelines.

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I know that the same accusation is made by religious people of secularists, however I have seen the results of religious wars in Iraq and the Balkans, and from history. Those conflicts and the brutality of religious people in them give me great pause when I see religious and political leaders here suggest curtailing the civil liberties and even using the law against those that they oppose. As Drummond asked in the movie: “Must men go to jail because they find themselves at odds with a self-appointed prophet?”

That is why this film is so important.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 9, 2016 · 22:43

A Suggestion of Assassination 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World

I had planned of starting a new series tonight about the Guadalcanal campaign since it began 74 years ago yesterday but I got distracted. Sadly it wasn’t unexpected but I had hoped to avoid writing  on Donald Trump until at least Labor Day. In fact, if he had just been his normal narcissistic self, or repetition of flagrant lies, I probably would have said nothing. Trump is so full of this stuff that it really is getting out and boring. 

But today he did something that went beyond anything I could have imagined that a major political party nominee would ever say. During a campaign speech in Wilmington, North Carolina he not only made false allegations on Clinton’s gun policy, he suggested that if she were elected and appointed Supreme Court justices that she would destroy the Second Ammendment. If he had stopped at that I would have let it pass, but he then told his supporters that “there was nothing they could do.” His actual comments which were delivered in a word salad manner were: “If she gets to pick her judges – nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people. Maybe there is. I don’t know.” 

Of course there was the outright lie that if Clinton gets to pick judges that people have no choice. He seems to ignore the legislative process, but then if he causes the GOP to implode and lose their House and Senate majorities neither he or they have nobody else but themselves to blame. But that wasn’t all. He made a suggestion, which Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said could have been a “joke” that implied that “Second Amendment people” could do something. His spokesmen said that it meant that they would come out and vote, but the language, facial expression and body language of Trump spoke volumes. Since one of his advisers said less than two weeks ago that Hillary should be put before a foreign something that Trump never repudiated, and the fact that Trump has incited and encouraged physical violence against opponents, it was hard not to conclude that Trump was suggesting that his supporters kill Hillary Clinton, Supreme Court justices, or Federal judges. 

But Trump jumped the shark on this one. Rational people from across the political spectrum realized exactly what Trump meant. Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, herself a survivor of an assassination attempt said “Donald Trump might astound Americans on a routine basis, but we must draw a bright red line between political speech and suggestions of violence. Responsible, stable individuals won’t take Trump’s rhetoric to its literal end, but his words may provide a magnet for those seeking infamy. They may provide inspiration or permission for those bent on bloodshed.”

Former CIA Director and Air Force General, Michael Hayden told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “If someone else had said that outside the hall, he’d be in the back of a police Eagan now with the Secret Service questioning him.” Hayden added: “You’re not just responsible for What you say. You are responsible for what people hear. That was more than a speed bump. That is actually a very arresting comment. It suggests either a very bad taste with reference to political assassination and an attempt at humor or an incredible insensitively – it may be the latter – an incredible insensitivity to the prevalence of political assassination inside of American history.” 

Of course Trump spokesmen and supporters including Rudy Guilinani rapidly defended Trump by saying that he actually didn’t say or mean what he said. But context is everything. He provided cover for any person bent on infamy, or those bent on bloodshed. It is inexcusable and vile, and to hear people who say that they are all about law and order  defend the remarks and spin them beyond recognition goes beyond my capacity for understanding. We had four Presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley,and Kenedy) killed by assassins in a period of less than one hundred years, and and at least four others (Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan) survived such attempts. Name one other civilized country where that has occured? To even joke about it on the campaign trail shows the moral and ethical depravity of Donald Trump. 

Now I know a lot of gun owners whose position on the Second Amendment more closely resembles Trump’s than mine. That being said I don’t know a one who would ever try to kill a political opponent, or assassinate a President, Presidential candidate, or Federal judge. These are rational, law abiding people, but Trump is appealing to the hate filled and deranged conspiracy theory types. The latter are the kind of people who would attempt such an action. Trump’s words are also insulting to the vast number of gun-owners who are law abiding citizens, by using the term “Second Amendment people” Trump, lumped together the law abiding and the law breaking, the sane and the insane, the rational and the irrational. 

Anyway. I am tired. It has been a long but good day. I had another crazy PTSD nightmare last night, thankfully instead of my face hitting the nightstand I gave it an overhead kick during a close combat nightmare. But I got another three mile run in this afternoon and unlike yesterday my legs felt good the entire run.

So have a good night.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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August 6, 2016 · 07:00

Hiroshima, Nukes, and Trump

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Hiroshima, August 6th 1945

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today is the 71st anniversary of the first atomic bomb being used against the city of Hiroshima. In an instant ninety percent of the city was destroyed, 80,000 people killed, and tens of thousands more would die of radiation exposure in the weeks, months, and years following the bombing. Three days later another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. In the decades that followed, the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, probably Israel, and maybe even North Korea have constructed thousands of nuclear weapons, most of them more powerful than the ones used by the United States against Japan.

In the decades since, none of the countries that have built these weapons have used them. There is a good reason for that. Once a nation crosses the nuclear threshold today there is no going back. It was something that President John F. Kennedy understood, and he led the nation through a potential nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis, “We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth.”

I have always been concerned about the character and temperament of Donald Trump, especially when I think of the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons, Back in the 1980s during the Cold War I was a Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Officer. I had to learn all about the effects of nuclear weapons on people. I could tell you how many Rads, or the absorbed radiation dose that a soldier could be exposed to and still function. I could tell you how best to survive a nuclear strike, what kind of structure, or vehicle would provided you some amount of protection from radiation exposure. I could tell you how long you could remain in an area where a nuclear blast, or in the case of the Chernobyl meltdown occurred, and I could plot fallout patterns. The maps we used to plot those things in our training included the city that I lived in. I know more about this than I ever wanted to, and those when I hear politicians or for that matter anyone advocating for the use of nuclear weapons, especially as a first strike option, I get concerned.

This week, Joe Scarborough of the MSNBC morning show “The Morning Joe” reported that a senior national security policy adviser was asked by Donald Trump “why can’t we use nukes?” three times within less than an hour. When I heard Trump’s acceptance speech, he said that he would defeat the Islamic State “quickly,” even as he derided the U.S. Miltary as a “disaster.” To me that meant only one thing, that he would use nuclear weapons as a first strike option against an enemy that has no capacity to destroy us. The Islamic State is evil, but it is not an existential threat to the United States or any of its allies, thus from an ethical, moral, legal, and military standpoint the use of nuclear weapons would be criminal.

I believe that it spoke volumes as to why he is unfit to lead this country, and why so many military and national security experts are not supporting him. The fact is that Trump has no self-control. He acts on emotion and perceived slights to his person. His prejudices are now legend, and his ignorance of basic national security strategy policy, government, and even the Constitution itself are shown on a daily basis. Barbara Tuchman wrote something that I think is very applicable to Trump. “Strong prejudices and an ill-informed mind are hazardous to government, and when combined with a position of power even more so.” [1]

When I read Tuchman’s words I can only think about Donald Trump with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Anyway, it is something to seriously ponder. Have a great weekend.

Peace

Padre Steve+

[1] Tuchman, Barbara The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam A Ballantine Book published by Random House, New York 1984 p.138

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