Abbey Road, Helter Skelter, and Woodstock

For my birthday in 1969 my brother gave me Abbey Road, the Beatles next to last album. In the intervening years my children and then my grandchildren have become Beatles fans. My twenty-one year old daughter (yes, I have a child that young) has many Beatle tunes on her MP-3.  

I became aware of the Beatles in 1964 when they burst upon the American scene with their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. After that I heard their songs again and again on the radio and especially at work on the ship’s entertainment system. (I had been in the Navy about ten years by then.) I heard the songs so often I still know most of the words.

            At that time I was (and still am) a jazz enthusiast but I always loved rhythm and blues and then its offspring, rock and roll, but I looked askance at the Beatles. Who were these unkempt upstarts in ill fitting suits who needed a good barber and a competent tailor? But then the tunes won me over.

In the strictest sense the Beatles were more British music hall than rock and roll, especially by the time Abbey Road came along. “Something,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” and “Octopus’s Garden” are more music hall and novelty than blues or rock and roll. (“Come Together” now underscores a TV ad.) Earlier albums like the very imaginative White Album, from which “Helter Skelter” comes (more about that below), and beautiful songs like “And I Love Her” and “Yesterday” established the Beatles as important 20^th century popular music composers.

            Also in 1969 American Neal Armstrong walked on the moon, giving Americans reasons to feel patriotic, especially with the anti war and racial turmoil that then plagued the cities. The year before, 1968, (the year the White Album appeared) had seen assassinations and riots in Chicago. 1969 was a slight improvement. Even Woodstock, that demonstration of mass debauchery still celebrated by aging flower children, was better than the hate America, anti establishment sloganeering that characterized earlier years of the decade. If I had to choose between stoned, mud-wallowing hippies and angry, rock throwing anti war demonstrators, I would take the former.

            That same year my brother, who gave me Abbey Road, was a recovery swimmer on Apollo 11, the shot that put an American on the moon. After a couple of deployments to Vietnam with the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams, he went to work on Apollo, participating in three recoveries, 6, 10, and 11. He then left the Navy and with two others bought a thirty-six foot ketch and sailed the Caribbean for a year.

            Additionally, 1969 witnessed the murders of Sharon Tate and the LaBianca family, which were masterminded by psychopath Charles Manson, who claimed to have been inspired by the White Album’s “Helter Skelter,” the name Manson family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi gave his book about the murders and the trial.

            Manson’s fevered reading of “Helter Skelter” made him believe that the current national turmoil would culminate in a race war between black and white. That didn’t happen, but the 1960’s greatly accelerated, if they didn’t begin, the moral and cultural rot that has given the nation increased promiscuity, increased out of wedlock births, decaying central cities, the decline of respect for marriage and the family, the dumbing down of education, a popular culture that is an open sewer, and a President and a White House full of advisors whose ruling philosophy is informed by the decadent 1960’s.

            Except for Tate/LaBianca 1969 was festive, but forty years later we see the ugly result of 1960’s nihilism. I doubt the nation will ever recover.

This was originally published in the Crossville Chronicle, Crossville, Tennessee, on September 9, 2009

           

           

             

           

           

Traveling the World Searching for the Meaning of Life

     

In my youth I traveled widely across the world, most travel courtesy of the Navy. A jazz and blues enthusiast, I cultivated friends with the same interests. When our ships made port visits, we looked for clubs that played jazz and we found them everywhere. In Japan, for example, we heard musicians who could copy exquisitely the sounds and phrasings of American jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis, not to mention the big band jazz and swing music of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Stan Kenton. And we enjoyed similarly talented jazz groups in other places.

            In October of 1960 my ship stopped at New York and I went to 52^nd and Broadway, to Birdland, a jazz club named for Charlie “The Yardbird” Parker. I saw two groups, one headed by drummer Buddy Rich, the other headlining Max Roach and Clifford Brown. I nursed a beer, bought a pack of stale Pall Mall’s from a pretty cigarette girl, and listened for hours to great jazz. That evening I was the only sailor in the crowded club and I had a great time.  

            I recalled all this after recently reading Jack Kerouac’s 1957 classic On the Road, which became a cult novel for the Beat Generation. Why the book attained cult status escapes me, but I recommend it because it is well written and entertaining, a story of Sal Paradise and his immoral friend Dean Moriority, who travel back and forth across the US and down to Mexico City.

            Using the argot of the times Sal and Dean visit jazz clubs and cities to “dig” the music, the musicians, and the people, which for Dean is a search for a “pure sense of being,” in reality a religious search for truth and meaning in life. The improvised jazz solo provides this kind of experience. These solos, the kind one can hear only imperfectly on recordings – they must be experienced live – if done well by gifted players can carry listeners along from one point to another the way speaking in tongues carries Pentecostal listeners to their Beatific vision. G.K. Chesterton says that everyone is looking for God, even the man entering a brothel, and Dean and Sal do that too.

            I never found the Lord listening to jazz but I had a lot of fun hearing great music, much of which is now available on CD, and I had good friends like Kerouac’s Dean Moriority who took me from one near disaster to another until I finally decided to quit pushing my luck. I then found a good woman, got married, and had a family, becoming the kind of bourgeois conformist that Beat Generation writers and artists disdained and that spoiled 1960’s baby boomers ridiculed.

            In On the Road Kerouac does not celebrate the Beat life of immorality and nonconformity and does not write with the self congratulatory tone so common among baby boomers who go on and on about the debauchery (to them the great causes) of the 1960’s; he just tells his travel story.

            In fact, Kerouac, who died at age forty-seven in 1969, did not like the emerging 1960’s counter culture. Today, of course, a new counter culture has emerged consisting of religious conservatives who value tradition and the wisdom of the ages over Beat Generation and baby boomer hedonism. They know that Dean Moriority’s road to a pure sense of being and the baby boomers’ road to Utopia are roads to nowhere.

This was originally published in the Crossville Chronicle, Crossville, Tennessee on November 10, 2008 

           

           

Worse than Watergate

It looks like the Anointed One has changed himself into an ordinary hack politician (or else he always was one) like Chicago’s legendary Mayor Dick Daly, who helped steal the 1960 Presidential election for JFK and away from Richard Nixon. Nixon got even in 1968, of course, but that was only temporary. Although it took them almost six years, the red diaper babies who drank in Nixon hate with their mother’s milk finally destroyed him in the Watergate imbroglio of 1974. JFK’s plurality in 1960 was about 100,000, about 50,000 less than Algor’s 2000 margin, but Algor lost to the despised W. Bush when he was unable to steal Florida. Daly, on the other hand, was able to open the cemeteries of Cook County, Illinois, to provide JFK with enough votes to carry Illinois and thus to win in the Electoral College.

            But the hack politician, let’s call him the Real Obama, likely stole the 2012 Presidential election using methods more nakedly corrupt and flagrantly tyrannical than Dick Daly, who after all was just following old tried and true Democratic traditions dating back to the Founding. Real Obama discovered the IRS (for those who just got a job: IRS stands for the Internal Revenue Service, which collects taxes and puts you in jail if you don’t pay. They can take your income, your property, and your freedom, so always file and always pay what you owe. They are probably the most powerful and most intimidating agency of the Federal Government).

            Protected by an age-old tried and true Presidential stratagem called plausible deniability, Real Obama discovered that IRS functionaries can do just about anything they want with impunity. His agents found that Real Obama’s most effective political enemies – Tea Party activists, pro-life workers, conservative political action groups, and even people seeking the legal tax relief available to those adopting children – could be severely handicapped when their tax exemption applications were delayed with detailed, exhaustive questionnaires, some even asking people what books they read and even if they prayed and to whom.

            These IRS actions delayed fund raising for these groups until after the November 2012 elections. At the same time liberal groups with the same tax status were immediately approved. Had the IRS actions been even-handed no one could have accused Real Obama’s agents of political chicanery, but they weren’t. In this way the Romney campaign was denied the benefit of massive get-out-the-vote efforts of the kind that won Congress for the Republicans in 2010. Had the Tea Party and other groups been able to mount the same efforts in 2012, the outcome of the election would have been different and a President Romney would have been doing his own brand of political damage, which many of us prefer to the Democratic variety, even though neither party is anything to brag about.  

            In the wake of Fast and Furious, the IRS revelations, Justice Department harassment of AP and Fox News reporters, and the Benghazi scandal, Real Obama’s operatives have adopted tactics used by children in the cartoon series, The Family Circus.   In that cartoon whenever the children are caught in some mischief and asked to account for their actions, for example if something is missing or broken and their parents want to know who is responsible, they reply, “Ida No.” Experienced parents know that “Ida No” is a fiction. She doesn’t exist, but to Real Obama’s functionaries who testify before Congressional committees she is very much alive.

            For example, asked about who signed off on Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder replied, “Ida No.” He added that Ida No had recused herself from the case.

When asked if they knew anything about the IRS investigating only conservative groups during the 2012 campaign season, IRS officials Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller answered, “Ida No.” Then we had the alliteratively identified Lois Lerner (who had learned little) who headed the section that investigated tax exemptions: she took the Fifth, but before that said, “I didn’t do nuthin’ wrong, I ain’t seen nuthin,’ and I ain’t sayin’ nuthin.’” She doesn’t know Ida No.

            One of the charges against Richard Nixon listed in the articles of impeachment was misuse of the IRS.

During the Watergate brouhaha I occasionally saw this bumper sticker: “No one drowned in the Watergate,” a reference to Chappaquiddick, Mary Jo Kopechne’s 1969 drowning, and the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Unfortunately for loved ones and for the nation, Real Obama’s scandals have produced four deaths from the mishandling of Benghazi. 

            So, the Anointed One has lifted his disguise to reveal the Real Obama. Do his star struck supporters recognize him?

           

           

             

The Elephant in the Room

     

I recently saw video footage of the President surrounded by the heads of all the services; they had assembled to address the continuing and scandalous problem of sexual harassment in the armed forces. The elephant in the room, of course, was young women in the military serving in close quarters with young men. 

In 1954 at age eighteen I joined the Navy. My reason was the same as everyone else’s in those days: to serve one hitch to satisfy the military obligation and then to get on with the rest of my life. At that time every male between eighteen and twenty-six was subject to the draft.

            Just about every boy I grew up with in my neighborhood joined the Navy; one went to law school and then joined the Air Force. Another got kicked out of the Air Force Academy when he decided that love was more important than flying jets. He got married, which was not permitted in the service academies in those days. For all of my friends and for most young men of the 1950’s and 1960’s, military service was a major inconvenience, so I never heard anyone complain – because no one ever did – about being denied his right to serve, only about the requirement to serve. Most served honorably and after discharge bragged about it, but few young men either enjoyed service or stayed longer than necessary. When I decided to reenlist, no one could understand and some were rude enough to say I was wasting my life. That’s the way it was in the circles in which I grew up.  

            For reasons unrelated to the draft, a few women joined the services. In those days women served in administrative, clerical, or medical areas. At that time I never heard the phrase sexual harassment uttered by anyone because it was not a problem. Men and women lived separately and worked together only ashore in offices, hospitals, or clinics. Women did not serve on ships at sea or in field situations with infantry or other combat units. The armed services of those times recognized the wisdom of the ages. They did not mix hormone ravaged young men and young women together in situations guaranteed to create the problems now plaguing the armed forces. 

Why does anyone, other than pusillanimous admirals and generals and radical feminists who hate the military but want to make a political statement, think that sexual mixing in the armed forces is a good idea? What genius believes that putting healthy young men and women together in explosive, sexually charged situations is not going to cause problems? Who besides the god of political correctness benefits from these arrangements?

            I served twenty years in the Navy, many of them at sea on ships with cramped living and working quarters. At sea men live and work in very close quarters. They sleep one on top of the other in cramped berthing compartments, shower in communal showers, and perform other bodily functions, always in the presence of an audience. Worse, they behave as young men have always behaved. They make crude, bawdy, and obscene remarks and they play offensive practical jokes. For example, one time I returned to my bunk to find a balloon sized condom filled with water in the center of my mattress. Fortunately, I saw it. Had I not I would have had to sleep on a wet mattress for weeks until it dried. And everyone would have had a huge laugh. And that is by no means the worst of it. That’s the way men are. Why put women into the mix?

            Mixing young men and young women together under these circumstances creates huge management problems, which are now causing much hand wringing and consternation among the leaders of the services who serve the god of political correctness above all others.

            Young men by themselves cause enough trouble. When at sea as an independent duty hospital corpsman (a paramedic) I worked directly for the executive officer, the second in command. I saw him spend large portions of his time on personnel matters: sailors who got drunk and got into fights, sailors who got drunk and drove cars into either other cars or trees, sailors who got arrested, sailors who ran up huge debts with local merchants and then would not pay them, sailors who impregnated local girls and then refused to do the honorable thing, and so forth.

Adding women to this mix is idiotic. It increases the costs of operations and degrades readiness simply to satisfy Gloria and her progeny. Is there really a right to serve in the armed forces? Where exactly is it enumerated? Most of all, how do women benefit from the inevitable sexual harassment? Who benefits? No one; worse, women suffer, and the taxpaying citizens of the United States pay more for less.

             

           

           

Blowback: for every action...

     

Blowback (1) – the escape to the rear of a gun of gases formed by the discharge of a projectile (Funk & Wagnalls, 1963). In 1967 I knew a Marine sergeant at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, who had lost his arm in Vietnam when a 105 mm Howitzer “blew back” on him.  

Blowback (2) – the unintended consequences of well-intentioned actions. “Blowback” was coined by the CIA after the end of the Cold War to describe the unforeseen and harmful effects on US national interests of unwise foreign policy actions. In this piece I broaden the term to describe other profoundly negative reactions to government policy, domestic and foreign.    

First, the attacks of September 11, 2001 were blowback from US actions in the Middle East; which included the continuing, unconditional and uncritical American support of Israel, especially in the light of Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians; the US invasion and ultimate slaughter of thousands of Iraqi Arabs (most of whom were Muslims) in the first Iraq war in 1991; the post 1991 stationing of US forces near Islam’s holiest places in Saudi Arabia; and US support for repressive, dictatorial regimes such as Saudi Arabia. As Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul have said, “They came over here because we were over there.”

            Next, other historical examples of blowback abound: Jim Crow laws, lynching, and the widespread mistreatment of black Americans in the South were blowback from Lincoln’s invasion of the South, his war on civilians where Sheridan’s cavalry slashed and burned in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia while Sherman’s troops burned, raped, and killed their way to the sea in Georgia. And as if the war carnage were not enough, the US government then followed with punitive post war Reconstruction, rubbing Southerners’ noses in defeat. Reconstruction’s strongest champions were vindictive Congressional Republicans like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, who wanted to punish the South for defending themselves against the foreign invader. 

            Still another example of blowback from history: out of Mr. Wilson’s “war to end all wars,” also his war to “make the world safe for democracy,” came Adolph Hitler and World War II in Europe. With Germany’s defeat in World War I, European leaders insisted that excessive reparations be included in the Treaty of Versailles. Humiliating defeat and unpayable reparations created deep resentment among the German people, making them vulnerable to the demagogic appeals of Hitler.           

And incidentally, John Toland’s Infamy, which chronicles US actions in the Far East in the years before 1941, shows that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was blowback for ill advised actions by FDR and his State and War Departments.

At home, the vast expansion of organized crime throughout the nation was blowback from Prohibition, a well intentioned program advocated by early twentieth century feminists who saw families suffer as their working class husbands left their pay in bars on their way home from work. Clever criminals amassed great wealth by providing illegal booze to thirsty citizens.

            Then we have the blowback from forced busing for integration, which led to the destruction urban schools and the hollowing out of urban society. What was the rationale for forced busing? Housing patterns and neighborhood schools notwithstanding, segregation (de facto segregation) was bad; integration good; therefore, black children and white children must be forcibly mixed together in the schools. Predictably (predictors were called racists), forced integration was followed by middle class white flight from urban areas, followed closely by black middle class flight. Forced busing accelerated the creation of the permanent urban underclass, where poor blacks and other minorities now suffer from violent crime (check out the murder rate in President Obama’s Chicago), where seventy percent of children are born out of wedlock, and where single mothers live in poverty.

It is not unreasonable to assert that pre Civil Rights era urban black populations while worse off materially were better off socially and spiritually than they are now. For example, in the Washington, DC, where I was born and in whose suburbs I lived for many years in the 1940’s and 1950’s, there existed a strong and vibrant black professional middle class, successful black owned businesses, elite black schools like Dunbar, and full black churches every Sunday. Of course, the misery and deprivation many black citizens suffered during those years cannot be overstated, but they nonetheless had stable communities with low crime rates and a high number of intact families. The black out of wedlock birth rate in those years paralleled the white rate.

White House occupants of both parties often follow blowback producing US national security and foreign policies, thinking that unlike their predecessors they will achieve great results; they will fix things once and for a all. Domestic social engineers suffer from the same hubris. One can cite historical examples forever; nonetheless, pride filled leaders and their followers always believe, “This time things will be different” because unlike their historical predecessors, they will get it right.

Blowback is activist big government’s greatest scourge.

           

           

Guns Will Not Go Away

The current gun control debate reminds me of the Nicholas Cage film Lord of War, which accurately and effectively demonstrates, even though it’s fiction, that it’s not only America but the whole world that is armed. The difference is that in America citizens have a legal, that is, a constitutional right to be armed. At the beginning of the film, Cage’s character, an international arms dealer, states that there is an AK 47 Kalashnikov for every twelve people in the world. As a weapons dealer his goal is to arm the other eleven.  

            The AK 47, semi automatic knock offs of which are everywhere, was invented by a Russian sergeant (he was later made a general in the Soviet Army) and is one of the most ubiquitous and most reliable weapons of its type in the world. The Chinese company Norenco manufactures versions of the AK as well as other pistols and rifles, which are sold everywhere. The rifle shoots 7.62x39 bullets, which are available worldwide, but probably in short supply here since the Sandy Hook massacre.

            Recent history shows that the election of liberal Democrats, mass shootings, such as the Gabby Gifford incident in Arizona, the Aurora, Colorado theater massacre, or the Sandy Hook shootings, and also inevitable hysterical and uninformed liberal gun control campaigns, are good for gun and ammunition sales. For example, when Bill Clinton became President in 1993, 7.62x39 semi automatic rifles as well as 7.62x39 cartridges sold rapidly because gun owners feared that Democratic gun grabbers would enact confiscatory gun controls. There followed the semi automatic assault rifle law, a failed attempt to limit magazine size (to ten rounds) and assault weapons sales. Chinese gun makers quickly got around that law by merely making a few cosmetic changes to AK-47 style semi automatic rifles; moreover, thousands of large capacity magazines remained available.

            Later on gun and ammunition sales returned to normal and did not change until the election of Barack Obama, another liberal Democrat who gun owners feared would push for new restrictions on gun ownership, hence ammunition and gun sales exploded and the prices of both rose dramatically.

            This history shows that Americans are not fearful of each other but of government restrictions on gun rights. The rush to buy guns and ammunition after Mr. Obama was elected was not a fearful, hysterical exercise, but a rational decision based on the anti self-defense history of liberal members of the President’s Democratic Party.

Boston and the Joy of Running

In 1969 I was an overweight, out-of-shape, two pack a day smoker who could barely put one foot in front of another without getting winded. I was a Navy submarine sailor who did little other than eat, sleep, drink coffee, smoke, read in my bunk, and stand my watches. Worse, food on submarines in those days was plentiful and very good.

            But then I heard William Talman, the actor who played prosecutor Hamilton Burger on the Perry Mason television show, tell the world in an anti smoking television ad that he was dying of lung cancer. He pleaded, “If you don’t smoke, don’t start, and if you do, quit.” This was five years after the Surgeon General’s report on the dangers of smoking. After the report I had tried from time to time to quit but had failed; but when I heard Talman I turned to my wife, also a heavy smoker, and asked, “How many more people have to tell us?” Talman died a few weeks later.

            After hearing Talman I threw away my cigarettes, replacing them in my shirt pocket with chewing gum and a list of people who had died of smoking related disease; prominent on the list were Talman and the great Nat “King” Cole. Every time I reached into my shirt pocket for a smoke I found the list and the gum. I would read the list and then tear off a small bit of gum. After about a year I no longer needed the list or the gum.

            In addition to quitting smoking, I started to run around my neighborhood in the evenings after work, or when I was at sea and visiting another port, around the streets of that port. For the next four years I ran all over the world, from Plymouth, England, to Barcelona, Spain, to the banks of the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. In 1970 I was transferred to the destroyer Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. and was able to run at sea in good weather around the main deck topside. It was a short run but I did many laps. One evening as we  steamed north of the Arctic Circle, the ship’s Executive Officer saw me running in the gray Arctic dusk and after that called me “The Arctic Flash.”

            From 1969 until 2007 when plantar fasciitis put me on an exercise bicycle, I ran continuously. After leaving the Navy in 1973 I ran in many 10K fun runs at various places. The most enjoyable race I ever joined was the annual Charlie’s Surplus ten mile run through the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts. That was a festive occasion, with the race route closed to traffic and the streets lined several feet deep with cheering people. As in other such races, families and loved ones assembled at the finish line to welcome and congratulate finishers.

            All of this came to my mind on Monday, April 15, 2013, after the terror bombing during the Boston Marathon. Probably the most important of all long distance races, the Boston Marathon gathers runners from everywhere. Many recreational runners train for Boston and the fortunate ones who qualify follow the world class runners who usually finish in less than two and a half hours. The rest take from three and a half to four hours.  But it is a high honor and a great feeling to finish Boston. I have never done a Marathon but I know from my Worcester experience what it’s like to run in a festive atmosphere.

            I was and continue to be deeply saddened by the events of April 15, 2013, because some of the nicest people I have ever known I met at fun runs. At one time I belonged to runners’ clubs in one place or another and would often join 10K or longer fun runs on weekends. The camaraderie among runners before and after the races was an experience I will never forget.

            We should pray for those who suffered on April 15 and celebrate long distance runners everywhere. 

           

           

             

English Ancestors Sentenced to Transportation

            Minor theft in the eighteenth century London was often treated harshly. It could result in job loss, criminal charges, and prison sentences. London at this time contained hordes of desperately poor people who had for years traveled from the countryside to avoid starvation (after industrialism’s disruptions and Protestant Reformers had destroyed the Church’s ability to care for them), so petty theft was common, and those convicted of petty crime were jailed even for such things as theft of a handkerchief or a loaf of bread.

            These arrests produced terrible overcrowding as people were stuffed into conditions of filth, disease, and deprivation. In Newgate, London’s infamous prison, people died “by the dozens of the jail distemper,” a disease of crowding, filth, and malnutrition. Prison workers carried the dead out by the cartload, threw them into pits, and buried them without ceremony.

            In 1718, to alleviate overcrowding His Majesty George I gave judges the authority to impose the sentence of transportation to America as a standard penalty for all but the most serious crimes. Excluded from transportation were hanging offenses such as murder, treason, rape, witchcraft, highway robbery, arson, and burglary.         

His Majesty’s government bonded sentenced people over to shipping merchants who could sell them for from two to seven years’ service. These agents arranged transportation for bonded passengers, who in most instances went to Virginia or Maryland where tobacco planters paid well for skilled and unskilled labor. In London shipping merchants struck deals with ships’ masters who paid them with tobacco shipped from America to pay for previous loads of laborers. Unskilled laborers sold for ten pounds while skilled craftsmen could bring as much as twenty-five pounds. Ships’ masters received an additional transportation fare of about four pounds per passenger.

            Shipping merchants also handled people under indenture. Indentured people voluntarily bonded themselves over to serve a stated period, usually seven years. Initially there appeared to be a difference between convicts and indentured servants, but to shipping merchants, ships’ masters, ships’ crews, and the people who received the convicts and indentures, there was little difference, and by the time they arrived in America any differences had been forgotten. Indentures and bonded passengers had been badly mistreated.

            Ill treatment began as soon as they left England. Ever mindful of profit, masters packed people in as tightly as possible, restricted their movement, and fed them poorly. Not surprisingly, people died in the process, and not only men but also women and children were transported. At times officials emptied brothels, rounded up orphans, and bonded the lot over. Ships’ crews abused women, sometimes unto death.

            When convicts and indentures landed in America, merchants reloaded ships with tobacco for the return trip to England. Because tobacco was highly prized in England, men made fortunes.

            As with African slaves, arriving indentures and convicts were marched to a central platform for display to potential buyers who poked, prodded, questioned, and then bought whom they wished. At this point the only differences among, bonded passengers, indentures and Negro slaves were the indentures’ length. As a matter of fact, in the early days of America some African slaves also came with limited indentures. It was not until later that African slavery became permanent.

            Transportation of convicts to America did not begin in 1718, but most were transported during the eighteenth century. Between 1615 and 1775 an estimated 50,000 people came to America as bonded passengers.

            Like many Americans of English ancestry some in my family have believed we descended from royalty – not very likely. Coats of Arms with the Chesser name are several and varied.     

Research prompted me to look at English shipping passenger lists for the period. I didn’t find Chesser but did find several Cheshire’s, of which Chesser is a variant spelling. In fact, in early U.S. censuses beginning in 1790 my ancestors spelled the name both ways, finally settling on Chesser in the 1810 census. I cannot say for certain if these bonded and indentured passengers are my direct descendants but in the absence of evidence of royal lineage, who knows?

            I know that some in my family were slow to abandon notions of descent from royalty.   

           

           

           

           

Constitutional Rigts v. Gimme Rights

            The Bill of Rights was not part of the document the Framers produced in Philadelphia but was added later in order to get reluctant states, those fearful of an all powerful central government, to ratify. And until the Supreme Court invented the incorporation doctrine, the Bill of Rights applied to the Federal government only. Only after the War of Northern Aggression and the cruel excesses of Reconstruction was the Bill of Rights extended to the states.

Even so, for all that history the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights remain simple and straightforward: speech, assembly, press, and religion; self defense with firearms; no unlawful searches and seizures; no self incrimination; and no cruel and unusual punishments, to name the better known.

Today, however, many people insist that other Constitutional rights exist in spite of the fact that in the U.S. Constitution

1.      There is no right to kill babies in the womb.

2.      There is no right to serve in the armed forces

3.      There is no right to own a house

4.      There is no right to free medical care.

5.      There is no right to employment

6.      There is no right to an education.

 Nevertheless, people assert these rights. For example, despite the Supreme Court invented right to abortion codified in Roe v. Wade, there is no such right in the Constitution. Before Roe abortion was permitted in some states, denied in others. Should Roe ever be overturned, the nation will return to the status quo ante, and who knows, more states, even a majority will pass liberalized abortion laws. Had the Supreme Court refused to rule in Roe and left abortion regulation to the states, abortion laws most likely would have been liberalized in many states, and the religious right as we now know it might never have arisen or have become so influential in politics. Think about that, those readers made apoplectic by the pro life movement.

Another example of made up rights: against human experience, practicality, and common sense, people insist that there is a right to serve in the armed forces and furthermore that women and the openly homosexual have an extraordinary right to serve, the consequences to good order, discipline, and efficiency be damned. And, I might add, should openly homosexual men be allowed to serve but are later determined to undermine good order and discipline, under no circumstances will openly homosexual service be rescinded. As with women, moral cowards in leadership positions will deny problems associated with their service, no matter how readily apparent. And by the way, denial of entrance into the armed forces to the openly homosexual is not the same as being forced to the back of the bus or being denied entrance to school. Suggestions to the contrary outrage many African Americans.    

Other examples: people have a right to own a house. The government’s push to guarantee that right has bankrupted to country. Still another right: people have a right to medical care. That imperative will degrade medical care for everyone and push the government deeper into insolvency. Then there is the right to a job. In practice, the exercise of this right in some areas means that incompetent, unqualified, and insubordinate employees cannot be discharged because of union negotiated and legislatively mandated rules.

Finally, the assumed right to an education: this has dumbed down learning to the point where young people spend lots of time learning very little. Someone suggested to me that were it not for public schools the poor would not be educated. Here’s a flash. The poor don’t get educated now even though more money is spent on them than ever. Programs to improve learning for poor children have not worked and will not work for reasons too many to discuss here.  

            Humorist P.J O’Rourke calls the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, “Get outta here rights!” because they limit the government’s power to interfere with citizens’ personal freedoms. He calls the rights I discuss above “Gimme rights” because they demand material benefits from government. Gimme rights, of course, come at a high price: a government that can do anything for you can do anything to you. A society that insists upon more and more gimme rights is a society of less and less freedom, and in our case, a society in decline. Look for the spectacle of people demonstrating in the streets in Europe now because their governments can no longer afford the gimme rights to which they think they are entitled to repeat itself here.

           

Is the US a Christian Nation?

A recent headline in my local paper asks this question: “Is the U.S. really a Christian nation?” To many the answer is no, and they are right to a point. America is not a juridically Christian nation, that is, the founding documents do not prescribe Christianity for its citizens, but that lawyer’s response in no way gainsays the profoundly Christian culture and character of America’s founders and of generations of American leaders.

The language of the founding documents is redolent of Christian teaching. For example, “All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” Where, pray tell, does that idea come from? It comes from Christian teaching. First from Genesis where God creates man in His own image and then from the New Testament, where St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, writes in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (KJV)

And Christianity suffuses the writing of not only the founders and but also of historical figures like Abraham Lincoln, who, while certainly not a religious man nor even identifiably Christian, demonstrates in his writing the rhythms, cadences, and literary devices of that most poetic of all English translations of the Bible, the Authorized or King James Version. For many generations, Americans of all classes and educational levels breathed the King James Bible in with their mothers’ milk. Anyone possessed of even a modicum of cultural literacy can discern that if he has the ears to hear and the eyes to see.

            In what can only be called special pleading, many choose to believe that secularism motivated the authors of the founding documents when in fact grievances against the established church were never part of the conversation. When our founders led their revolution against England, they were not leading a charge against Christianity or the established church; they merely wanted the same rights as their English Christian brethren. In fact, not once in the Declaration’s long list of grievances against the King is religion or the established church mentioned. Religion was not among the reasons that they rose up in rebellion. In fact, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, our Bill of Rights, were added after the Constitution was drafted, some thirteen years after the Declaration, in order to persuade reluctant states to ratify.

And don’t forget that in the beginning of our republic, the Bill of Rights applied to the Federal Government only, which incidentally, was the reason the Danbury Baptists wrote their letter to Thomas Jefferson, who used the phrase “separation of church and state” in his answer. That phrase does not appear in the Constitution.

            America has always been a Christian nation and in the future is likely to become even more Christian. What religion are the millions of Mexicans immigrants legal and illegal bringing with them?

           

Separation of Church and State

            Secular fundamentalists, secular humanists, moral relativists, and cultural nihilists often rail against an imaginary theocratic threat from sincere Christians, who they say want to impose their beliefs on everyone. First, as to the imposition of beliefs: everyone who petitions the legislature to pass laws about anything is trying to impose his beliefs on all citizens. At this point in the nation’s history, many people struggle under imposed beliefs that violate their religious faith, and also under imposed beliefs about taxes, environmentalism, marriage, and sexuality.

These secular impositions arise also from religious impulses. For many on the left and too many on the right, politics is religion. The left’s religious and political orientation – their compulsion to control every aspect of everyone’s life – is pure New England Calvinism. It’s not surprising that today’s main center of political thought control, that is,  of modern liberalism, is in the North East, the original home of American Calvinism.

            But back to separation: church/state entanglement rarely harms the state, as Barry Lynn and his followers believe, but it does harm the Church. In fact, the current ObamaCare attempt to force the Catholic Church against its fundamental beliefs to provide contraceptive services in Her Catholic hospitals, schools, and universities, is an example of church/state entanglement that harms the Church, and this has happened because for years Catholic Charities, Catholic Hospitals, and Catholic schools and universities have had financial arrangements with the government. Against warnings from traditional Catholics (like me), Church leaders have continued to take government money to fund Church sponsored charitable and educational activities. No wonder Obama, Sibelius, Pelosi, and their statist minions think ObamaCare has the right to tell the Church to go against Her teachings. Haven’t Church leaders for a long time been very willing to fill their coffers with government largesse?

Here I remind the Church’s shepherds of Rerum Novarum: On the Condition of the Working Classes, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical concerning wealth, property, and the treatment of workers. Among other things, Pope Leo condemns socialism and unequivocally reiterates man’s God-given right to keep as private property the fruits of his own labor. The socialist confiscation of private wealth in this nation, especially since the Great Society, violates Church teaching, but against the teaching of Pope Leo XIII Church leaders have too often been willing to take taxpayer money for charitable and educational purposes. No wonder this administration sees nothing wrong with the contraception requirement.

            Very few institutions can resist the temptation to benefit from taxpayer money even though the penalties for not following government policies are well known. For example, if schools refuse to comply with the provisions of Title IX – part of the law that mandates equal support for women’s athletics – they can lose all their funding. For reasons related to Title IX and other Federal mandates, two schools, Grove City and Hillsdale, have refused to take any government money at all and have thus been free to establish their own policies. Catholic institutions should have followed their examples a long time ago.

            In another area, the matter of religious practice in public schools: trying to find non-sectarian, widely accepted prayers or meditative practices, Christians have had their religious customs watered down. Note to these Christians: watering down your beliefs in order to satisfy the masses violates Christ’s admonition about lukewarmness (Revelation 3:15-16).              

Separation of church and state serves the Church very well. Religious people should quit complaining about prayer in the public schools or in other government supported fora. If they want their children to say discursive Christian prayers aloud in school, they should send them to private Christian schools or home school. If people’s faith is important, they will find ways to fund private education, which is usually better than public.

Catholics and other Christians inclined to feed at the government trough should remember what Ben Franklin said: “If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

           

People want kings to look after them

People Want Kings to Take Care of Them

            No book illuminates political human nature better than the Bible and 1 Samuel 8 offers a timeless example. In the time of the Judges Samuel appointed his sons Joel and Abiah judges in Beersheba. But his sons “…walked not in his ways but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.”(3) Because of the corruption of Joel and Abiah, the elders of Israel asked Samuel to end rule by judges and to give them a king. Feeling rejected Samuel prayed to the Lord. The Lord assured Samuel that the elders were not rejecting him but were rejecting the Lord, who then revealed to him the things a king would do, which Samuel passed on to the elders:  

“And he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some will run before his chariots.”(11) Sons will be conscripted into the king’s army.

            “And he will appoint him (himself) captains over thousands … and make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.”(12) He will build a powerful imperial army.

            “And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries (concubines?), and to be cooks, and to be bakers.”(13) Daughters will also be drafted into his service.

            “And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.”(14)

“And he will take the tenth of your seed, and your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.”(15) In order to satisfy his imperial needs he will impose confiscatory taxes upon everything you produce.   

 “And ye shall cry out in that day because your king which ye have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.”(18) Looking to a king for salvation instead of to the Lord, Israel must suffer the king’s depredations.  

After Samuel told the people what the king would do and what they would suffer, they “… refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us.”(19) They rejected the Lord and chose a king, substituting an earthly father for their heavenly father.  

So the people got their kings, and the kings did as Samuel predicted, especially Solomon, who multiplied horses, wives, and gold. After Solomon the Kingdom split, to be followed by the Babylonian Captivity.  

What does all this say about human nature? In all eras, complex political systems notwithstanding, kings (we call them Presidents) behave like Samuel’s kings. But people still want kings, in reality powerful earthly fathers, to protect them, to give them bread and circuses, and to bring about earthly salvation. Because Presidents are the American versions of kings, Americans look to Presidents for salvation. During every election cycle citizens search the political landscape for a new savior. King makers then give them two choices, usually Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. When the new king inevitably fails, citizens look back nostalgically to the mythical great kings of old (who also failed): Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt (FDR), Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan. Unfortunately, each new king is like the old and does as Samuel predicts in 1 Samuel 8.

During the past two Presidential election cycles one of the potential kings declared himself the king of change. After four disastrous years, I hope no one is holding his breath. As the psalmist says, “Put not your trust in princes….” (Psalm 116)

Cultural Illiteracy and Linguistic Dumbing Down

Cultural Illiteracy and Linguistic Dumbing Down

            Recently an academic luminary from an elite university suggested that the American classic Huckleberry Finn be changed to eliminate offensive language, specifically a well known and hateful word, (changing it to “slave” as in “Slave Jim”). This peculiar sensitivity makes me wonder if the professor reads anything other than the unreadable, politically correct writing that now masquerades as scholarship in the English departments of most American universities.

I recently read Thomas Wolfe’s great American novel Look Homeward Angel, which contains offensive words like those in Huckleberry Finn.  Has the politically correct professor read Look Homeward, Angel? If he has, does he think the offensive language should be changed?

            Ernest Hemingway writes that Huckleberry Finn is the first authentic American novel because Mark Twain writes in the American vernacular, which often contains offensive words. Before Mark Twain American writers followed the belletristic style (after belle lettres) favored by anglophile critics. Great writer that he was Mark Twain broke new ground with Huckleberry Finn, the best anti slavery novel in American literature, but which is now distorted by half educated, politically correct English professors.

            I also wonder, has the professor read any American literature written by distinguished black writers? Richard Wright’s Native Son, for example, has as its main character the tragic Bigger Thomas. Any guesses as to why Wright chose the name “Bigger”? Will the professor bowdlerize Native Son to make it more acceptable to the sensitivity crowd? How about Wright’s autobiographical Black Boy?

            But cultural abuse of great literature goes beyond the elimination of so called offensive language in American classics and extends beyond the university. These days one can find Shakespeare’s plays written in contemporary English because, according to the dumber downers, Shakespeare’s syntax, word selection, and blank verse are hard for youngsters to understand. Funny, during my school days teachers and students read the plays together, and my teachers did a good job teaching students how to read and understand Elizabethan English. Furthermore, we memorized famous passages like Marc Antony’s funeral oration in Julius Caesar (“Friends, Romans, countrymen…”) and Macbeth’s reaction to Lady Macbeth’s death (“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day…” etc.). 

            Then we have the egregious abuses of English as represented in dumbed down English translations of the Bible. Of all the English translations of the Bible, none approaches the Authorized Version (The King James Version) for the beauty of its poetry and its timeless ability to remain in one’s consciousness. When I was a child learning the Bible in my Methodist Sunday school and church liturgy, the King James Bible was the Bible I heard and I still remember its marvelous verses: “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” now dumbed down to “Let the children come to me” or “How can this be since I know not a man” now rendered as the incredibly clumsy “How can this be since I have not had relations with a man?” or “Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder,” which is now the wretchedly inclusive “Whom God has joined together human beings cannot separate.”

            The worst English Biblical translations occur in my Catholic Church in the tone deaf New American Bible, which, among other atrocities, renders St. Paul’s “I have fought to good fight” to the embarrassingly inaccurate “I have competed well.” Hearing that at Mass is like hearing long fingernails scrape across a chalkboard. And speaking of the Mass, the dumber downers have worked overtime there. Before Vatican II Catholics all over the world heard the beautiful Latin Tridentine or Pius V Mass at worship. Now they celebrate in the vernacular with hootenanny hymns and mistranslations of Pope Paul VI’s Novus Ordo Mass.

            Dumber downer translators and their advocates defend the new translations because the older ones are hard to understand. In other words people are too stupid or too unteachable to learn. Isn’t it interesting that illiterate slaves, who were forbidden by law to learn to read, listened to the King James Bible and not only understood but also created spirituals that demonstrated that understanding, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” for example?

            Fortunately for Catholics Pope Benedict XVI has made it possible for all priests to now say the Pius V Mass in Latin and the Church has also corrected the mistranslations of the Novus Ordo Mass. Can we hope that someday an educational reformer and cultural restorationist like Benedict will emerge for the whole society to restore beauty and taste to language, literature, architecture, and manners, and where bowdlerizers will be too embarrassed to advocate on behalf of their culturally illiterate and nihilistic ideas? That’s a most needed educational reform and one for which we must most devoutly pray.

Everyone must bring his book

It’s “Everyone must bring his book” not “Everyone must bring their book” because “everyone” is singular and “their” is plural. The rule: a pronoun must agree with its antecedent. Since “everyone” is the antecedent, the pronoun must be singular. Grammatical symmetry dictates this English usage rule. So, why do so many misuse the pronoun “their”? First, probably from ignorance, which is no crime. Unless someone (such as this writer) has a special interest in English usage, he probably will not concern himself with usage minutiae. Next, “everyone” as a singular pronoun seems counter-intuitive to some English speakers, so they intentionally and unashamedly violate the rule. Then we have the politically correct reason: using masculine nouns and pronouns to refer to both men and women is sexist.  

The last reason for misusing “their” demonstrates continuing feminist insistence on political correctness (pc). Other pc examples include tone deaf words like “chairperson” and “foreperson.” One can envision the eventual replacement of “human being” with “huperson being” because “man” is obviously the source of evil in the modern world. “Man” and “mankind” have always been used to designate both men and women, but to the pc crowd these designations are sexist.

            In a radio PSA about children and homework, the President of the Tennessee Education Association (the TEA, which is the Tennessee branch of the NEA) tells “a parent” about the importance of helping “their child with their homework.” Now, if the august TEA President is unaware of English usage rules, here is the correction: “It is important that a parent help his child with his homework.” If, on the other hand, pc is her problem – the TEA President is female – but she still wants to demonstrate knowledge of basic English usage (which she should, after all she is a teacher), she can say, “It is important that parents help their children with their homework.” That construction maintains grammatical symmetry, plural pronouns (their) with plural noun antecedents (parents, children), while avoiding use of the dreaded generic male nouns and pronouns.

            How did it suddenly become necessary to abolish the use of generic male nouns and pronouns to stand for both men and women? Major blame falls upon the late Kate Swift who wrote The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing, which the feminist community quickly embraced, and with which cowardly men have refused to argue. Many men, especially politicians, mainstream news anchors, corporate CEO’s, and academics, would rather walk barefoot across burning coals than risk being called sexist, racist, homophobic, or the epithet du jour.

The worst result of linguistic political correctness has been upon church hymns and English translations of Sacred Scripture. Recent English translations with “inclusive language” have removed much of the poetry from the Inspired Word.

            And by the way, feminists invented the sexist language notion. The use of generic “man” for men and women did not result from some male conspiracy to exclude women but from the etymology of “man.” According to Jacques Barzun, “the Sanskrit root ‘manu’ denotes nothing but the human being and does so par excellence since it is cognate with the word for ‘I think.’” “Woman,” says Barzun “is etymologically the ‘wife human being.’”

            Fortunately, most men and women react negatively to pc “inclusive language” when it goes too far, as most attacks on cultural tradition always do. For example, most people completely reject sex neutral references to God because in that context inclusive language is like fingernails on a chalkboard; only pc people dislike referring to God as “Him.”

I doubt that in public discourse we will ever have to endure such constructions as “Founding Persons” for Founding Fathers or “Forepeople” for Forefathers, but readers should not be surprised if such constructions sneak into their children’s schoolbooks. Pc cultural nihilism usually rules there.

           

           

           

             

           

Guns will not go away

Guns Will Not Go Away

The current gun control debate reminds me of the Nicholas Cage film Lord of War, which accurately and effectively demonstrates, even though it’s fiction, that it’s not only America but the whole world that is armed. The difference is that in America citizens have a legal, that is, a constitutional right to be armed. At the beginning of the film, Cage’s character, an international arms dealer, states that there is an AK 47, the Kalashnikov, for every twelve people in the world. As a weapons dealer his goal is to arm the other eleven.  

            The AK 47, semi automatic knock offs of which are everywhere, was invented by a Russian sergeant (he was later made a general in the Soviet Army) and is one of the most ubiquitous and most reliable weapons of its type in the world. The Chinese company Norenco manufactures versions of the AK as well as other pistols and rifles, which are sold everywhere. The rifle shoots 7.62x39 bullets, which are available worldwide, but probably in short supply here since the Sandy Hook massacre.

            Recent history shows that the election of liberal Democrats, mass shootings, such as the Gabby Gifford incident in Arizona, the Aurora, Colorado theater massacre, or the Sandy Hook shootings, and also inevitable hysterical and uninformed liberal gun control campaigns are good for gun and ammunition sales. For example, when Bill Clinton became President in 1993, 7.62x39 semi automatic rifles as well as 7.62x39 cartridges sold rapidly because gun owners feared that Democratic gun grabbers would enact confiscatory gun controls. There followed the semi automatic assault rifle law, a failed attempt to limit magazine size (to ten rounds) and assault weapons sales. Chinese gun makers quickly got around that law by merely making a few cosmetic changes to AK-47 style semi automatic rifles; moreover, thousands of large capacity magazines remained available.

            Later on gun and ammunition sales returned to normal and did not change until the election of Barack Obama, another liberal Democrat who gun owners feared would push for new restrictions on gun ownership, hence ammunition and gun sales exploded and the prices of both rose dramatically.

            This history shows that Americans are not fearful of each other but of government restrictions on gun rights. The rush to buy guns and ammunition after Mr. Obama was elected was not a fearful, hysterical exercise, but a rational decision based on the anti self-defense history of liberal members of the President’s Democratic Party.