Tag Archives: declaration of independence

October 14, 2017 · 23:59

I Will Bear True Faith and Allegiance: Patriotism and Protest

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Over the past month I have been watching and occasionally commenting on the kneeling during the National Anthem controversy on my social media accounts but not here. But tonight I want to share a few thoughts on the actions of NFL players who have protested continued inequities, injustice, evil, and racism in the United States by choosing to kneel during the National Anthem.

The fact is these players as much as their critics claim otherwise are not protesting the Flag, nor are they insulting the troops. They are doing what all true American patriots have done since the beginning of our American experiment. They are being as patriotic as our founders were when they not only criticized, but took up arms against England. After all as Adlai Stevenson once said “Do not… regard the critics as questionable patriots.  What were Washington and Jefferson and Adams but profound critics of the colonial status quo?”

They are acting in the best tradition of America, they are peacefully protesting. They are not committing violence, they are using their position to draw attention to things in our society which must be addressed if we are in the words of the Preamble of the Constitution “to form a more perfect Union.” They are speaking of how we as Americans still fail to live up to the promise embodied but never perfected in the words“we hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal…” From our earliest days as a nation we as a people have struggled with that ideal and at every point in our there have been Americans who have, often much to the chagrin of others have protested in some way how we failed to live up to that ideal.

When freshman Congressman Abraham Lincoln spoke up against James K. Polk’s invasion of Mexico in 1848 he was condemned as unpatriotic by many and was not returned to the House of Representatives, but he was heard. When Henry Clay, a slave-owner himself condemned that war as a means to expand slavery he lost his last chance to gain the Presidency. When Stephen Douglas opposed the attempt by pro-slavery partisans to use an illegitimate election in Kansas to have that territory admitted as a slave state he lost his chance to win the Presidency in 1860. I could go on with hundreds of examples, from the Suffragettes of the early Women’s rights movement who fought for the right to vote and equality in the workplace; the abolitionists, white and black, who resisted laws which enslaved Blacks in the slave states and enabled slave owners to go into Free States and avoid U.S. courts to re-enslave any Black be they a former slave or not solely based on the word of a slave holder; Civil Rights leaders who were imprisoned, beaten, and sometimes killed for defying unjust laws…

I am sorry but the list could go on and on and on. In every case they were declared by their opponents to be both unpatriotic and lawbreakers. Today, many are saying those things about those who protest during the National anthem at sporting events while defending people who are working day in and day out to roll back the rights of other Americans, and sadly, that does include the President and many members of his political party. When I say sadly, it is because I belonged to and supported that party for 32 years until after my tour in Iraq, when I saw the lies of how the war had been sold by my party, lies which I believed in spite of evidence to the contrary. The last part was my fault, I should have known better, yet I condemned the war’s opponents as being unpatriotic only to find that they were right.

So now, nearly a decade later I support the right to protest as I would not have before Iraq. While I would not take a knee at the National Anthem even if I wasn’t still in the military I cannot condemn those who do. Patriotism involves much more than respecting the Flag, it means respecting and honoring the principles and ideals in Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream and re-dedicating ourselves to the “new birth of freedom” that Lincoln alluded in the Gettysburg Address. To do that we must remove the blinders from our eyes, to re-look at our own history to get past the myths and untruths that have been used to buttress the the claims of those who want to squelch unpopular dissent and uncomfortable truths.

Mark Twain said some words that all should hold dear:

“Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way accordng to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country—hold up your head.”

One cannot sit in silence while Americans, particularly racial or religious minorities, women, and gays are threatened through legislation and sometimes violent action by other Americans who for whatever reason want to return the country to a place where those people cannot exercise those rights. If we do what good are we? If we do are we any better than those who looked the other way in the Third Reich when Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Handicapped, and others were marched off to Concentration Camps?

When I salute the Flag I salute the symbol of ideals not yet fully realized, and when I do so I pay honor and respect to all of those whose patriotism was lived out over a lifetime, and while I include the men and women who served in the military in that, I also include all of those dissidents whose sacrifice paved the way for every new advance of freedom in this country. Likewise, I remember the times that we as a nation have fallen short of those ideals and I recommit myself to my oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same…

As I do that I have to stand for the right of the players and others to peacefully protest anywhere and by whatever means they choose no matter how unpopular it is or how uncomfortable it makes us. Frederick Douglass said:

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

So until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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August 13, 2017 · 06:30

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


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll leave you with that.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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July 4, 2017 · 06:30

Stand by Those Principles, Against All Foes, At Any Cost: Independence Day 2017


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It is July 4th and the 241st anniversary of the declaration by the leaders of 13 colonies of their independence from Britain and the founding on a new nation. It was a nation founded on a principle of the Enlightenment, the principle that all men are created equal, and as their Declaration of Independence noted that as such are “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

That founding principle was revolutionary and regardless of how badly it was many times lived out in the history of our nation, it was and still is the first time that a nation was not founded on the basis of ethnicity or religion, but rather a principle, a proposition that no matter how noble was, and still is often despised by Americans. 

One of the most notable was George Fitzhugh, a major Southern slaveholder and apologist for not only slavery but the inequality of poor whites and women 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.

Fitzhugh also wrote: 

“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.”

But he was not alone. In 1860 South Carolina led a procession of 11 states out of the Union based on the proposition that only certain men were created equal. Every declaration of secession had at its heart the statement that the institution of slavery was to be protected and expanded with the implication that African American slaves could never be equal, free, or enjoy the slightest legal protections of citizenship. These states were willing to fight a war for this and even at the end of that war many of their leaders resisted any call for granting emancipation to blacks, and then when that was over use terrorism and law to again strip away the rights from newly freed blacks through lynching, the Black Codes, and Jim Crow. 

In 1852 not long after the passage of the Compromise of 1850 which included an enhanced Fugitive Slave Act which dictated that Northerners had to cooperate in the recapture and reenslavement of blacks residing in their free states, Frederick Douglass preached one of the most damning sermons about what July 4th meant to slaves. He said:

“I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.” 

Even so men like Fitzhugh would proclaim: “Liberty for the few – slavery in every form, for the mass.”

Of course such is not liberty, it is tyranny and it is the seedbed of dictatorship. The word liberty is often abused by those who seek total power and control over the lives of others. Abraham Lincoln said as much when he noted: 

“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.” 

The proposition in the Declaration that all men are created equal is essential to understanding or appreciating liberty. If we view others as below us, as even less than human then we cannot say that we believe in liberty. If we decide to limit the right of citizens to speak out because of their color, their national origin, their race, their religion, their gender, or sexual identity then we are not for liberty, we are no better than George Fitzhugh or others, even the Nazis, who enslaved, imprisoned, and exterminated others in the name of their power, and their right. 

If our concept of liberty is so limited by our ideology that we cannot accept others having it or being equal to us then we stand against the very proposition that the United States was founded and we should bury the American experiment and stop lying about a proposition that we no longer believe in. The eminent American jurist wrote these words, which for me are like the Declaration, the Preamble of the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech are secular scripture that are sacred to my understanding of being an American, and something that I will never yield. Judge Hand said: 

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. The spirit of Liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of Liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of Liberty is that which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.”

So today, on this 241st anniversary of our independence when the rights of citizenship, the rights of suffrage, the rights of the freedom of the press and freedom of speech are under assault for the man occupying the highest office in the land I do not despair. I do not despair because the spirit of liberty still lives in my heart as it does many others who still believe in that sacred and revolutionary proposition that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

In the darkness of 1852 Frederick Douglass said these words to people who at the time were refused citizenship and who were enslaved:  

“I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”

May we not forget those words on this day when the founding proposition of our country is under attack. 

Cherish our independence and never stop believing in or fighting for liberty. 

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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June 29, 2017 · 06:30

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident…

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In a few days we as Americans will be celebrating the 241st anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As the day approaches I’ll be writing more reflections on what it means even as I intersperse some articles on the Battle of Gettysburg, a victory that helped ensure that the Union would survive and that helped to pave the way for the understanding that the Declaration must be understood in its universal sense. In a day like ours where many localities, states, and even the Federal government appear to be working to limit those rights, often based on the religious beliefs of a powerful, well-funded and militant minority of conservative Christians, this all the more important.

For me it is the truth both of a concept of Liberty which must continuously be advanced or expanded, and the still imperfect embodiment of that concept in the land that it was born. The authors of the declaration wrote, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”  Eighty-seven years later while dedicating the Soldier’s Cemetery at Gettysburg noted that the new nation was “conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” 

Lincoln understood from the reality of war, and the statements of European leaders that the whole concept of a country being founded on a proposition like this, not race, not class, not religion, not station in life, was bound to be opposed, and was incredibly fragile. He confronted a rebellion which based itself on the belief that African Americans were less than equal, in fact subhuman and deserving of being enslaved by a superior race. Likewise, there were those in Europe who cheered the rebellion and believed that it proved that such experiments were doomed to failure, a belief that is still widely held, but more often by American elites than others.

But like it or not, the proposition that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights; a concept so imperfectly practiced by the very men who drafted it and those who followed them, still is right. That proposition was universalized as a political philosophy by Abraham Lincoln, is the basis of all hope for humanity. Tyrants, despots, dictators, terrorists, religious zealots of every sect filled with messianic visions, as well as madmen all desire to trample this proposition. Some desire to believe that those rights can simply be maintained by the power of a Constitution, but unless the people who swear to uphold that Constitution are dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal that very Constitution can be perverted and used to enslave people, as it was by the men who drafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Fugitive Slave Laws, and the Supreme Court decisions in Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson cases ruled that African Americans were less than equal as human beings, and therefore not entitled to the same rights and liberties as were white people. It is the same constitution and laws that were used to deny citizenship and rights to Chinese immigrants until 1942, that were used by the government to interment native born Japanese American citizens in concentration camps during the Second World War, which drove Native Americans off their ancestral homelands, massacred them by the tens of millions, and placed them on reservations without any rights of American citizens until 1924; and which denied suffrage to women until 1919, and denied basic civil rights to LGBTQ people until recently; rights that in many states are still denied by state legislatures. But without equality, freedom is an illusion.

Judge Learned Hand, perhaps the best qualified man ever to not serve on the Supreme Court wrote,

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. The spirit of Liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of Liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of othe men and women; the spirit of Liberty is that which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.” 

That is why the proposition in the Declaration which was universalized by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address is still of the utmost importance. It is why it must be fought for, especially when politicians like Donald Trump and others threaten its very existence, and whose followers see it as only as Liberty for themselves and their interests. That proposition is under duress today, there are millions of followers of Trump and the demagogues who would deny Liberty to others based on race, religion, ethnicity, economic status, gender, or by them being LGBTQ. But, Liberty is a perilous thing, but once that proposition of Liberty dies in our hearts, there is nothing that can save it, no constitution, no law, no court; and those who place their trust in it the demagogues will find that they will eventually lose their Liberty as well.

In 1858 Lincoln spoke in Chicago, and in that speech he linked the common connection of all Americans share, even recent immigrants, through the Declaration. It was an era of intense anti-immigrant passions, the American Party, which sprang from the Know Nothing movement which founded upon extreme hatred of immigrants, and Roman Catholics, and violence against them, had run former President Millard Fillmore for election as at their candidate in 1856 following the collapse of the Whig Party.

In opposition to this party and movement  Lincoln proclaimed that immigrants, “cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel a part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find those old men say that “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,… That is the father of all moral principle to them, and they have a right to claim it as if they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote the Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in the Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and Liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.” 

Lincoln was absolutely correct, it is that love of freedom, liberty, and equality that echoes in the Declaration, and it is still a revolutionary idea. We hold these truths to be self evident…

As a historian I cannot get away from this. Whether it is in my study of European history, particularly the Weimar Republic and the Nazi takeover, or the American Civil War, especially the times I visit the Soldier’s Cemetery at Gettysburg and talk about the Gettysburg Address with my students. The breadth of my experience, having visited Dachau and Bergen-Belsen, having watched the unadulterated adulation of crowds of Germans chanting Sieg Heil!,  having grown up in this country at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and having walked so many battlegrounds where American men have died fighting such tyranny makes me all too sensitive to why this proposition is so important.

That is why the quest for the fulfillment of that proposition is something that cannot be given up, it is in the words of Lincoln, “it is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who have fought for have thus far so nobly advanced. That it is for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead should 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, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” 

For me it is this proposition, the proposition mocked by the elites of Europe, the proposition that any republic founded on such a proposition was doomed to fail, this proposition that says “we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal” is what Independence Day is about. That is why in my remaining service to this country I will rededicate myself to seeing that “new birth of freedom” is fulfilled for every American.

That may seem a pipe dream to some people, and even impossible to others; but it is what far too many of the men and women who served before me gave the last full measure of devotion to duty to bring to fulfillment. Learned Hand was right, if Liberty dies in our hearts, no law, no constitution, no court, can save us.

Have a great Independence Day and please remember it is not about the day off, the picnics, or displays of military might, it is about that proposition; the one that is so easy to forget, the proposition that all men are created equal.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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June 28, 2017 · 06:30

The “Saving Principles” of the Declaration of Independence

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Abraham Lincoln spoke these words in Springfield, Illinois on June 26th 1857, nearly 160 years ago. They are part of a continuum in the development of his philosophy of liberty and how he understood the words of the Declaration of Independence, and how he believed that the authors 0f that document understood the words that set the United States apart from all other nations. The words “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” were revolutionary for their time and the Jefferson understood them in that manner.

“They [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right; so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.”

Though at the time they words of the Declaration only applied to white men, the words and writings of many of the founders were uncomfortable with the actual condition of black slaves as well as Native Americans. The had enough integrity to understand that what they wrote was a proposition that had universal implications which were not yet realized and would take time to happen. Those who mocked the document, the proposition, the founders, and the new nation understood that as well. It was a watershed moment for all of Europe was still under the control of Kings and despots. Thomas Jefferson understood how these words threatened despotic rule around the world and in 1821 he wrote to John Adams:

“The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.”

But this was something that the people of the United States would have to wrestle with for decades before the most glaring aspect of inequality, that of slavery was overthrown. Frederick Douglass understood the importance of the Declaration even as white Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line crafted compromises that left blacks in slavery and gave unfettered access for slave owners to go to Free States to recover their human property. In 1852 he wrote:

“I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”

It is that ring bolt and it must be understood in its universal application and people in the United States and in countries which have embraces some portions of the concept and fight for it, otherwise it could be lost. Harry Truman noted this danger in 1952 when he said:

“We find it hard to believe that liberty could ever be lost in this country. But it can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded not as the supreme expression of our profound belief, but merely as curiosities in glass cases.”

Today the rights, protections, civil liberties, and opportunity to advance themselves of Americans are being rolled back in a manner that a few decades ago most of us would have found unimaginable. They are under threat many ways, too many to mention today and they must be continually fought for or we will lose them.

As Independence Day draws near I will continue to write about this subject even as I write about the Battle of Gettysburg. It matters too much.

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

 

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June 3, 2017 · 06:30

A Sense of Foreboding and a Determination to Fight

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Hannah Arendt wrote: “When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

She was right. We are seeing a populist appeal that is embracing evil and it is happening before our very eyes.

I cannot shake the deep sense of foreboding I have regarding the country and the world after President Trump’s repeated attacks on NATO, his shredding of the Paris Climate accord, and the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula are enough to concern any right thinking person. Likewise, the swirl of allegations concerning what appears to be treasonous activities by his closest advisers and his apparent attempts to have them covered up by the FBI and various intelligence agencies. There is something very wrong going on and it almost feels that I can see the disaster unfolding before it happens.

I am not the only one to notice, leading conservative writers, foreign policy experts, and constitutional scholars have pointed out the same things that I have been saying for over a year. I do try to be positive and to believe that things will work out for the best, but the more I observe the more my confidence in our leaders and for that purpose many of our people to do the right thing is diminished.

That being said I do not give in to the feelings of foreboding or intend give up without a fight. I want my country to live up to its ideals, I am concerned about the real world, our alliances, our environment, and the real threat to freedom.  I believe in a particular universal ideal enunciated in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence that All men are created equal, and as such that I must continually stand for what is right, what is true, and what is enduring.

I am worried about our democracy and I agree with Timothy Snyder who wrote:

“Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.”  

It can happen here, and if we are patriots and not simply nationalists we must stand for principle and work for a new birth of freedom even as it seems that freedom itself is in danger. So as I write about some of the notable events of our history that we commemorate over the coming days please know that I take inspiration from them as I hope you will.  We must stand.

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

 

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January 30, 2017 · 06:30

Survival as What?

justice-weeps

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

The events, including the executive orders and actions of President Trump on a number of subject over the past few days have given me cause for much concern. Likewise, seeing the comments of people that I know personally doing backflips to justify actions that had they been done by any other President leave me dumbfounded. I have Muslim friends, including friends who are Naval officers with distinguished careers of service to this country whose families now live in fear because of what has been unleashed. People I know are being threatened by people who don’t just want political power to enact tax cuts, repeal the ACA, or reduce regulations, but who want to crush and destroy their opposition. Some of the memes that I have seen on Facebook and Twitter are to be kind, little better than Julius Streicher and Joseph Goebbel’s Nazi murder inducing racist pornography of the Third Reich. If you have never been physically threatened by such people you have no idea, I have been threatened more times than I can count going back to 2010, well before the advent of President Trump.

In the television series Star Trek the Next Generation there is an episode called The Drumhead. In it there is a dialogue between Captain Picard and his Chief of Security, Lieutenant Worf. It sums up what I am feeling regarding the events of the last week.

Lieutenant Worf: “Sir, the Federation does have enemies. We must seek them out.”


Captain Jean-Luc Picard: “Oh, yes. That’s how it starts. But the road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think. Something is wrong here, Mister Worf. I don’t like what we have become.”

I do not like what we have become.

For me this is not about political party, though I did have a number of people suggest this. My political beliefs, while liberal and progressive are founded on the premise in the proposition of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, which was reiterated by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, that “all men are created equal.”

Those who have read my writings for any length of time have heard me talk about that time after time, whether it be in the words of Jefferson, Madison, Virginia Baptist leader John Leland, and of course Lincoln himself. What the Trump administration is doing today is destroying that proposition before our eyes in the name of the false god of security, flamed by fear, suspicion, hatred, and ignorance. He promises a utopia where he will “make America great again,” but to quote Spencer Tracy’s character in the film Inherit the Wind:  “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.”

If followed to their logical end, it will be then end of the proposition that is the spiritual heart of the United States of America. It is the one proposition that set us apart, even when imperfectly done, that set us apart from every nation on earth. It is the one thing that most Americans ancestors came to this country to enjoy; the proposition that “we hold these truth to be self evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”  

Charles Morgan Jr. who I have written about before, wrote these haunting words after the bombing the the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1964:

“It is not by great acts but by small failures that freedom dies. . . . Justice and liberty die quietly, because men first learn to ignore injustice and then no longer recognize it.”

That my friends is happening today before our very eyes. Judge Learned Hand, perhaps the best qualified man ever to not serve on the Supreme Court wrote,

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. The spirit of Liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of Liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of Liberty is that which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.” 

During the climax of The Drumhead, Captain Picard tells his inquisitor, “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.”

The question is: Will we sell the very proposition that sets us apart from all other nations for the false god of security? of survival? If so, we have to answer the question: “survival as what?”

That is the question my friends that I leave you with to start this week. Survival as what?

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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November 6, 2016 · 05:30

Gettysburg and the Meaning of Democracy: Can the Republic Survive?

Gettysburg Address

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am at Gettysburg with my students this weekend and today we finish our Staff Ride concluding at the Soldier’s Cemetery where Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. I usual close the staff ride by reading his address. I always get a bit choked up because I realize just how important what he said was then, and still is today. 

I expect with our democracy under assault from Donald Trump and his supporters that I will choke up, for I know not what I will wake up to on November 9th. If Trump wins, and his supporters on the Alt-Right have their way, our system of government will be destroyed, the civil liberties that the men who died here to establish will be curtailed or even rolled back. I fear that possibility and honestly if Trump were to win I cannot imagine what this country will devolve into.

In November of 1863 Abraham Lincoln was sick when when he traveled by train from Washington DC to Gettysburg. When Lincoln delivered the address having what was mostly likely a mild form of Smallpox. Thus the tenor, simplicity and philosophical depth of the address are even more remarkable. It is a speech given in the manner of Winston Churchill’s “Blood sweat toil and tears” address to Parliament upon being appoint Prime Minister in 1940. Likewise it echoes the Transcendentalist understanding of the Declaration of Independence as a “test for all other things.”

Many in the United States and Europe did not agree and argued that no nation found on such principles could long survive. The more reactionary European subscribers of Romanticism ridiculed the “idea that a nation could be founded on a proposition….and they were not reluctant to point to the Civil War as proof that attempting to build a government around something as bloodless and logical as a proposition was futile.” [1]

But Lincoln disagreed. He believed that the “sacrifices of Gettysburg, Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chancellorsville, and a hundred other places demonstrated otherwise, that men would die rather than to lose hold of that proposition. Reflecting on that dedication, the living should themselves experience a new birth of freedom, a determination- and he drove his point home with a deliberate evocation of the great Whig orator Daniel Webster- “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” [2]

The Unitarian pastor and leading Transcendentalist Theodore Parker wrote:

“Our national ideal out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began our national career by setting all history at defiance – for that said, “A republic on a large scale cannot exist.” Our progress since that has shown that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The practical ideas of the nation are transcendent, not empirical. Human history could not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of the new idea: the nation went beyond human history and appealed to human nature.” [3]

Likewise Lincoln’s address echoes the thought of George Bancroft who wrote of the Declaration:

“The bill of rights which it promulgates is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice…. The heart of Jefferson in writing the Declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire world of mankind and all coming generations, without any exceptions whatsoever.” [4]

Theodore Parker’s words also prefigured an idea that Lincoln used in his address, that being: “the American Revolution, with American history since, is an attempt to prove by experience this transcendental proposition, to organize the transcendental idea of politics. The ideal demands for its organization a democracy- a government of all, for all, and by all…” [5]

Lincoln delivered these immortal words on that November afternoon:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that 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.[6]

In a time where many are wearied by the foibles and follies of our politicians, especially a man as singularity ill-equipped and ill-tempered as Donald Trump and his supporters, many of whom are White Nationalists and authoritarian types unseen since secession could possibly take power; one has to wonder if our very form of government can survive, or if  Lincoln’s words still matter. 

But they do. Dr. Allen Guelzo, Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College wrote in the New York Times:

“The genius of the address thus lay not in its language or in its brevity (virtues though these were), but in the new birth it gave to those who had become discouraged and wearied by democracy’s follies, and in the reminder that democracy’s survival rested ultimately in the hands of citizens who saw something in democracy worth dying for. We could use that reminder again today.” [7]

Dr. Guelzo is quite correct. Many people in this country and around the world are having grave doubts about our democracy. I wonder myself, but I am an optimist. I do believe that we will eventually recover because for the life of me I see no nation anywhere else with our resiliency and ability to overcome the stupidity of politicians, pundits and preachers and the hate filled message of Donald Trump and his White Supremacist supporters, especially supposedly “conservative ” Christians. 

The amazing thing during the Civil War was that in spite of everything the Union survived. Lincoln was a big part of that but it was the men who left lives of comfort and security like Joshua Chamberlain and so many others who brought about that victory. Throughout the war, even to the end Southern political leaders failed to understand that Union men would fight and die for an ideal, something greater than themselves, the preservation of the Union and the freedom of an enslaved race. For those men that volunteered to serve, the war was not about personal gain, loot or land, it was about something greater. It was about freedom, and when we realize this fact “then we can contemplate the real meaning of “that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” [8]

Now I for one do not think that we are currently living up to the ideals enunciated by Lincoln that day at Gettysburg. I can understand the cynicism disillusionment of Americans as well as those around the world who have for over 200 years looked to us and our system as a “city set on a hill.” That being said, when I read these words and walk that hallowed ground I am again a believer. I believe that we can realize the ideal, even in our lifetime should we desire. That being said I cannot imagine what will happen to our country if Donald Trump is elected to the presidency. 

Have a great day and please stop to think about how important Lincoln’s words remain as we wait to see who will be our next President. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

Notes

[1] Ibid. Guelzo. Fateful Lightening p.409

[2] Ibid. Guelzo. Fateful Lightening p.408

[3] Ibid. Wills. Lincoln at Gettysburg p.110

[4] Ibid. Wills. Lincoln at Gettysburg p.105

[5] Ibid. Wills. Lincoln at Gettysburg p.105

[6] Lincoln, Abraham The Gettysburg Address the Bliss Copy retrieved from http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

[7] Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Sound Bite: Have Faith in Democracy New York Time Opinionator, November 17th 2013 retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/lincolns-sound-bite-have-faith-in-democracy/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 July 18th 2014

[8] Ibid. McPherson This Hallowed Ground p.138

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October 10, 2016 · 17:38

Scorched Earth: The Trump Answer for Everything

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I watched the second Presidential debate last night and It was an unbridled and frightening look at how GOP nominee Donald Trump would govern the country. Playing to anger and hatred of his base he did something never done before in American politics, he said he would appoint a special prosecutor to prosecute his opponent and then made the comment “she would be in jail.” He called her “the devil” and said she had “hatred in her heart.” I was amazed, I have never seen anything like this on a public stage in American political history. 

As he did this he stalked about the stage, following behind Clinton as she spoke, his face often twisted as he tried to contain his rage at having been caught on video red handed using the language of sexual assault and rape and saying it was okay to call his daughter a “piece of ass.” His rage had been building as GOP office holders who had previously endorsed him dropped him in the 48 hours following the revelations and as he directed his surrogates and supporters to attack his own party leaders. In order to deflect attention from himself he brought Bill Clinton’s accusers from the 1990s to the debate even trying to sit them in the VIP box. 

He failed to answer direct questions and instead when nuclear with long disproved conspiracy theories about Mrs. Clinton. One GOP leader tweeted that it was like watching a Saturday Night Live debate. 

He made comments supporting Russia and President Putin, even throwing his running mate, Governor Mike Pence under the bus regarding Syria policy. The fact that he did this was not surprising because Pence offered direct criticism of Trump’s sexual assault language. After the debate Pence predictably fell into line and kept rolling under the tires of the bus Trump had thrown him under. 

Likewise he openly lied about things that he has said in public, on television, or on the radio, comments which are so unnerving that had anyone other than him said them their lives and careers would be destroyed. But he is different, the bar has been set so low for him ever since he entered the campaign, waged a scorched earth campaign against his GOP opponents in the primaries with almost no one in the media confronting him, a situation that remained until last Friday’s revelations when he talked about grabbing women by the “pussy.” 

Trump may have held his base in line with his performance because it played to the hatred of his base for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. He played to their xenophobia with his failure to answer his Muslim ban policy, something that Mike Pence said was no longer in place but is still on his website, and which he called “extreme vetting” last night. He still talked about putting up a wall on the southern border, he still refused to apologize to the multitudes of individuals and groups that he has disparaged and attacked in so many ways during the campaign and that will play well with the people that Hillary Clinton called “deplorable.” 

The Trump campaign is not about policy, it is not about principle, and it certainly in not about the Constitution or for that matter the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, or Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. It is about about sowing anger and hatred and the promise of retribution against the people he and his followers despise, especially those in the GOP. This is the campaign of an unprincipled, vicious, power hungry, narcissistic sociopath who has no self-control and no boundaries. 

Today, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that he would no longer defend Trump and instructed GOP House members to do what they needed to save their campaigns in order to hold a majority. When  House GOP extremists scortched him he made sure that they knew that he was still “supporting” Trump. Wayne Gruden, a leading Evangelical Christian theologian who just two moths ago had penned a “Christian” treatise to vote for Trump, dropped his support and told Trump to leave the race. Today George Will wrote that this will be an “acid wash” for the GOP exposing the people who stood beside Trump for what they really are, including Mike Pence who Will noted only looks Presidential because he is next to Trump. Things will get worse, there will be more revelations and Trump will respond with fire. He will destroy the GOP and the country in order to advance himself. 

Get ready for a rough ride, this is going to be a brutal final month as Trump’s campaign collapses and he and his most devoted followers torch the GOP as he rides his campaign into its Wagnerian end. In the closing days of the Third Reich with all collapsing around him Adolf Hitler turned on followers who realized the end was near and were trying to end the war, even Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, and he told Albert Speer that the German people were not worth saving. Just wait and see what Trump does to the GOP in the coming month, it will be a scorched earth campaign the likes of which we have never seen. His wrath against it will be even greater than his wrath against Hillary and it will spell the doom of the GOP. Sadly, it will hurt the country as well. American politics will never be the same after this. 

Have a good day,

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. 

https://vimeo.com/2158959
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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