Can I Start a Trend?

I posted this from another Facebook user this morning.



My explanation that went with it was:

OK- I'm hoping to start a trend among Liberals like myself. It is time to reclaim patriotism from a one-sided view of the USA! I'm very proud to be an American, the son of a WW II Vet.

Just because my politics isn't right-wing does not mean I don't like this country!!

Just because my theology isn't based on fundamentalism doesn't mean I'm not a true American.

Just because I don't agree with Ayn Rand does not make me a socialist.

So I do share this post, proudly, as a Liberal!

So let me go further since this is my blog and I have the space.

Just because I call for the outcast and the poor to be taken care of by a just society, does not mean I am not patriotic.

Just because I continue to be afraid of an endemic racism in our greater society, does not mean I think we have failed as a nation.

Just because I do not blindly follow whatever leader is in power AND which you or others agree with does not make me a traitor.

Just because I believe that a two party system calls for differences- patriotic differences- does not make me any less proud to be an American.

I could rant on this one for a long time. I am offended by those who question my patriotism because I do not agree with right-wing politics, right-wing greed, or right-wing religion. As a citizen who has voted in every national election since I was of legal age, I still believe our nation is doing the best we can at any given moment to live up to our national ideals.

Yet we must remain steadfast in those ideals and not let them be co-opted by the wealthy who are now buying our elections or the voices of paranoia crying in their own wilderness or the politicians of either/both side who are simply looking to further ideology as opposed to American ideals.

Sure we have our faults. The United States is made of human beings- and none is perfect.

My goal, then, by posting the above picture is to hopefully start a small trend. May those of us who are liberal be proud in our citizenship. Let's take the flag pins and flag pictures back from the right-wing. Let's be willing to admit that the National Anthem still stirs us (and I wish the fans could sing it at sporting events, not celebrities!)

Let's find all these right-wing co-opted symbols and bring them back to stand for ALL Americans!

Rant - far from over.

Darkness Amidst the Light: Light Beating the Darkness

Dec. 28- Liturgical Calendar date of The Slaughter of the Innocents

 It is now 14 days since the tragedy at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School. Two weeks of mourning, questions, fears, and a seemingly endless news cycle broken only momentarily by Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Time to make real what President Obama said at the vigil on that Sunday evening: This has to end.

That means some sensible gun control discussions and debate. Let's forget the hysteria. You know it well. I know it well. We need assault weapons in private ownership like we need to return to using quill pens and oil lamps. NO, it is not a way to protect ourselves from the government, as I heard one legislator say. Are you freakin' insane, I wanted to ask? Having hoardes of private citizens own assault weapons to "protect from our own government" is not a constitutional right. That is NOT a "well-regulated militia." That is anarchy, which by definition is not well-regulated. Arm the principals of the schools? You may very well lose a lot of good principals who don't want to be part of a gun-culture. Put armed guards in every school? Columbine and Virgina Tech had those.

And will we put armed guards at every mall, place of worship or beauty spa in the country? Will we become an armed camp with guns in the hands of every Tom, Dick, and Harry? How scary!

Cars don't kill people, drunk drivers do. That is just insane to even post as a reasonable thought. It is why we have laws ABOUT drunken driving, what you could call "Drunken Driving Control." When Minnesota got tough on drunken driving, for example, DUI arrests shot up AND deaths from drunk driving dropped. Note that no one outlawed cars- or even drinking. Just putting the two together.

Why should it be harder to get good mental health care than to buy an assault rifle? Why are background checks for gun ownership so difficult? We do it for teachers and counselors. Is owning a gun so much of a right? Freedom of the press is just as constitutionally protected, yet we say there are times and places when there is such a thing as privacy and confidentiality limiting some of that. Why are firearms so sacred?

Perhaps in that last word is part of the problem. They have become sacred- a holy grail- inviolable- more important than human lives. They have become a god. There is the real, profound issue that no one can talk about. We have set up a false god that controls us. The power of the gun. No, not the gun lobby. The power of the gun. It is devouring our nation in its primal scream to survive.

I am not a gun owner. I don't believe I would ever own one. Protection? I wouldn't be able to use it for that. I would be so afraid of over-reacting and shooting someone I love by mistake. It happened locally here just a few weeks ago. Accidental deaths by guns may be more than were killed at Newtown.

I am not against gun ownership any more than I am against people owning cars or driving cars. Let's not over-react in either direction. But let's be sensible and reasonable about it. High-capacity weapons and clips controlled or banned; assault rifles made for the single purpose of killing people banned; background checks required. These are reasonable.

Is this politicizing the deaths on Connecticut? Yes. It was politicized the minute the shooter walked into the school. It is an issue of how resolute we can be to both protect lives and rights. We have to be able to do both. We remember the freedom of speech measurement- you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. That limits free speech just as libel laws limit it and the freedom of the press. Democracy is a delicate balance between rights and protection; freedom and life.

We can do it. We are a bright and caring nation. Let's use our ability to overcome the barriers to discussion and sane legislation. Too many ore people will die if we don't.

Proclaim Liberty .. To All the Inhabitants

Liberty Bell

Philadelphia, PA

August 19, 2012

Eight-Years Gone

Those iconic towers in lower Manhattan in 1993, from the top of the Empire State Building at sunset.
Statue of Liberty barely visible in center of picture.

We knew that day eight years ago that things would never be the same again. In those few short moments of horror and disbelief we knew that what we had assumed since the end of World War II was gone. Our American self-assurance was challenged and we responded. Some of it good; some not so good; and some may one day be found to be ways that hurt us more than we were hurt. Yes, the world is different.

Skyline of lower Manhattan from Liberty Island, 1987.

I was struck in the picture above from Liberty Island, that the New York harbor haze made an interesting contrast in the picture, perhaps metaphorically. Over there is what isn't anymore. The Towers represent September 10, 2001 and before. We stand here in the still green grass of liberty and look back. We wonder and ponder and dream.

We can't go back. The world is different. We are no longer as separated from the rest of the world as we used to be. Even North Korea has talked about throwing missiles our way. We have gone to war twice in these eight years- Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither has turned out the way we hoped and Afghanistan is looking more troubling than we would like. Our nation is more divided than we have been since those turbulent 60s, both the 1860s and 1960s. We refuse to let our children watch the President of the United States on TV. THAT is division unlike we have seen in a very, very long time.

Yet- YET- we elected our first African-American President. We are surviving a difficult economic recession. We are still free. The liberals will say that freedom is in spite of Bush; the conservatives say it is in spite of Obama. Neither are right!! We are free because of Bush and Obama and our basic American freedoms that we have not lost. In difficult times as we have faced over the past 8 years those freedoms can get a little tattered around the edges. It is not the first time that our freedoms got shaky. They did in the Civil War when Lincoln suspended habeus corpus. They did in WW II when we put our own citizens of Japanese origin into internment camps. They did in the 1960s when we fought each other over the length of hair and whether you were born before or after 1946.

But that grass on Liberty Island is still green. It is not because of Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives. It is green because of you and me- the great American people. We may be cynical at times, wishing a pox on both of the extremes, wanting to be left alone to enjoy our liberties. We may be frustrated at times that things aren't moving as fast in some directions- and too fast in others. We are still proud that we elected an African-American president, even if we don't agree with everything he says, does, or wants. We want him to succeed as president, for if he fails- so do we, and it takes a lot of work to rebuild.

Overall we have not forgotten that we are Americans. Of that we are proud. We are proud that we can still help the least and the lost. In many ways we still believe the words on that Statue barely visible in the top picture. All of us except Native Americans have benefited from the liberty and freedom presented in those words...

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

—Emma Lazarus, 1883

Independence Day, 2007
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

--Top picture- pmPilgrim;
--Center and Bottom linked from Wikipedia

Quotes In Preparation for the Fourth of July
Tomorrow is American Independence Day, July 4. It is a day to celebrate what would be illegal if attempted today. Such is the fate of revolutions. But at the same time it challenges us to think deeply about what it all can mean for us. So, to get us ready, here are some appropriate quotes.

First, George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist and literary critic, reminds us that liberty is a dangerous thing.

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

Laurence J. Peter, educator and author of The Peter Principle, gets a little cynical, as may very well be appropriate.

"Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame."

Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist and poet, shows that the desire for rebellion is more than just a value of the depths of American history.

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made."

Statesman and President Thomas Jefferson, would agree, I am sure, with Wilde’s attitude. He said it so well himself.

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."

Charles Austin Beard, constitutional historian and political scientist, reflects on the same theme and gives us a warning about being too American when it comes to truly paying attention to history.

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

And finally, former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis gives us the final warning that what we have will probably not be taken away through outside intervention but the actions of those who think they are really doing the right thing.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

I sure am glad I am an American where I can think and write these things and celebrate my freedom and hope and liberty.