Sister Letetra's Plea for Change

 At the age 29, Jacob Blake was shot by Kenosha police who were arresting him in connection with a domestic dispute.

Now he is paralyzed.

Of the seven shots fired at Jacob, four struck his back, as he was opening the driver’s door of his vehicle.

The shots ripped into his flesh as three of Jacob’s sons were sitting in the back seat.

In the aftermath, in the after-wrath, two days later, among the many words spoken surrounding this incident, were these, spoken at a news conference . . . the message of Letetra Widman, Jacob’s sister:

 

“I am my brother’s keeper, 

and when you say the name . . . Jacob Blake,

make sure you say father

make sure you say cousin

make sure you say son

make sure you say uncle,

but most importantly, make sure you say:

human.

Human life—let it marinate in your mouth, in your minds

a human life just like just like every single one of y’all . . .

and everywhere.

We’re human, and his life matters!

So many people have reached out to me,

telling me that they’re sorry that this happened to my family.

Well, don’t be sorry, ‘cause this has been happening

to my family for a long time . . . longer than I can account for.

It happened to Emmitt Till; Emmett Till is my family . . .

for Orlando, Mike Brown, Sandra . . .

this has been happening to my family,

and I’ve shed tears for every single one of these people that it’s happened to.

I’m not sad. I don’t want your pity. I want change.”

 

Letetra’s call for change is now added to the mounting groundswell of demand for justice in the treatment of minorities in this country, especially in matters of law enforcement.

In these United States, 

we have Constitutionally- mandated principles that prescribe how justice is to be administered by courts of law, and by officers of the law. 

We have legislated laws and judicial precedents that prescribe legal procedures for arrest of suspected criminals and offenders.

For too long . . . since the days of their emancipation from slavery, black citizens have endured constant neglect of our lawful procedures of arrest.

In recent months, especially since the slaying of George Floyd, our national attention has been directed by active citizens on systemic neglect of legal procedures.

As everybody knows, the passion and frequency of organized protest has intensified steadily. Now we have another national incident in this continuing string of bungled, shot-up, seriously injurious, improperly violent arrests.

And it is true in this case and in many recent law enforcement mishaps. . . that violent, law-defying, depraved extremists of both antifa and bugaloo ilks have taken it upon themselves to jump on board the protest bandwagon and divert it, by their own violence and destruction, toward their own anarchic purposes.

There are extremists on both sides whose intention is to ignite a civil war between Left and Right in this nation.

We, the law-abiding citizens of these United States, must not let them.

Republicans—God bless ‘em, I am one of them—are too damn focused on their own comfort and privilege to allow their own eyes to see the weightier matters of the law. 

Neglect not, brothers and sisters, the weightier matters of the Law: 

Justice, and Mercy and Faithfulness.

We need to work together toward the “change” of which Jacob’s sister, Letetra, speaks.

But even more potent than her well-chosen words are those words found in the counsel of Jesus. They go way back . . .

“. . . for I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me in; naked, and you clothed me. I was in prison, and you came to me.”

And those who heard these words said . . . say what? when did we do all that stuff ?

“. . . whenever you did it to them, you did it to me!”

So all ye comfortable goody-two-shoes g.o.p. types out there, don’t forget to heed all the words of the ancient Book.

Quit obsessing about peace and safety. If you get too bent out of shape about peace and safety, sudden destruction will come upon you.

Don’t allow the fringified crazies that you’re so obsessed with blow this whole democratic-republican experiment all to hell!

Listen to the voice of one crying in the flyover wilderness, concerning yet another illegally-shot-up arrest:

“I don’t want your pity. I want change.” 

King of Soul

Big Floyd's Houston Launch

Fountain of Praise Church gathered in Houston today to send George  home to Jesus, because it was through this city—Third Ward and Cumi Homes and Jack Bates high school that George Floyd lived his formative years.
Here are a few thoughts and words brought forth along the way during his memorial service; these remembrances and truths become a small part of  the legacy of George Floyd. In today’s memorial service,  many like-minded Christian believers—inspired by these words, songs, praises— renew their resolve to partner with God in redeeming the world.
From Pastor Remus Wright:
“. . . when this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. . .”
Big Floyd is now re-united with his Creator, Savior.

George Floyd changed the world.
 “Let justice flow down like the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
A warrior mindset in the mind of murderous cop killed George, when the officer’s mind should have rightfully been to perform his duty of protecting the people in that Minneapolis neighborhood where George was smothered, in eight minutes and forty-six seconds, under the knee of a bad cop.
But now, in the wake of his death, we wirtness and hear the worldwide celebration of George Floyd’s life.
“What good can come out of Nazareth?. . . What good can come out of Third Ward Houston?” someone said at the funeral today. . .
His little brother said George is going to change the world.
Yes, that has already happened, and continues to unfold and proliferate in an incredibly big way that nobody could have ever predicted.
The mayor of Houston pointed out that what men meant for evil God has used for good.
His family and friends said . . .



Big George was everybody’s shelter, a ghetto angel, gentle giant.
All students and graduates of Jack Bates high school love, admire and fondly remember Big George, a great athlete and friend.
Cyril spoke for all the Christian believers present  when he said To God be the Glory for Big Floyd’s incredible life.
God took a rejected stone and made it the cornerstone of a worldwide movement.
We need to be partnering with God to redeem the world.
George’s daughter said “My daddy changed the world.”
We see that happening now.

One person expressed this hope: Racism did not start in our lifetime, but racism can end in our lifetime.
That's what I call faith like a mustard seed.
“All things happen for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.”
Nakita Foxx and Houston Ensemble sang: “We offer Praise.”
Rev. Al Sharpton urged all believers to put on the armor of God to fight against principalities and powers in high places. . . to resist wickedness in high places.
We still have a lot of work to do to get this racist mess straightened out.

Seismic reformational life-changing work has been launched in the wake of big George’s life, in the name of Jesus Christ.
Make straight a way in the wilderness— a path of righteousness for our Lord.



Many thanks to TVstation  KHOU-11 of Houston, broadcasting this memorial send-off so that we could experience its power and historic thrust in other parts of the USA and the world.

Glass half-Full

Freedom rings from our Mountainside

Yesterday, about a thousand—I guess—people gathered here in our Appalachian town to march, cheer, listen, and show solidarity with black citizens of our United States of America.
Our positively excited assemblage of people reminded me of the good ole days. Back in the ’60’s-70’s when I was an LSU student we would conduct such gatherings to express public dissent against unjust killing and mistreatment of humans.

Our march yesterday in the bright June sunshine was organized and led by Raheim Andrews, a home boy who graduated from the same high school as my three offspring.



With urging from Raheim, and a little divine help urged by Reggie Hunt, we gathered peacefully and joyfully to emphasize the truth that Black Lives do indeed Matter.
. . . especially the lives of now-deceased citizens George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, whose names will go down in American history.
Toussaint Romain, deputy general counsel at Appalachian State served as keynote speaker, passionately linking our collective message with the legacy of Dr. King:

“I have a Dream!. . .”
“From every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

That  freedom ringing from the mountainside includes our local voices reverberating beneath our Boone mountain, Howard’s Knob, in the background. . .



Here's a personal aside: to hear my musical portrayal of Dr. King’s mountain inspiration, listen at:
      Mountaintop
      http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/Mountaintop.mp3

Keynote speaker Romain strongly emphasized that this movement is all about fixing a broken justice system, not just disciplining a few bad cops.
Boone Police were very friendly and helpful in their conducting the crowd along King Street.
Alex Fuller and Montana Mills, local young people, also spoke to encourage us that racial justice can be achieved when folks are willing to come together and work toward fixing our broken justice system.

For a more thorough coverage of our march from ASU to the Watauga County courthouse, go here:
https://www.wataugademocrat.com/raheim-andrews-speaks-at-justice-walk-in-boone-6-7-2020/youtube_0b1d1df3-96ce-5c8d-8124-f031daabc32e.html

King of Soul 

Death to Derek

I have been a Christian since 1978; that was the year that I fully realized the moral limits of my own judgements about this life and what is important, or not.
Since that time, I have read the Bible and learned some truth about our human condition, and how we can justifiably deal with our own failures, and the failures of others.
I say failures because I think it is a more appropriate term than the old over-utilized “sin” words that we Christians generally employ in referring to such acts as hurting other people, or stealing from them, or killing them.
Throughout the world, a truth is generally accepted that killing a person is wrong, and should not be done. In fact, murder cannot generally be tolerated if a just society is to be maintained by any people group.

As I get older, I can see more clearly the purpose of law in the societies of men. Law is generally a good thing, insofar as it enables men and women to live together in community or in society without tearing each other apart.
When l became a Christian those many years ago, I learned from the New Testament scriptures about a divine gift which we call grace.
In cases of human sin-guilt, or crime-guilt, grace means the offender receives a sentence of some earthly punishment such as prison, instead of the ultimate sentence of death.
We Christians have generally separated ourselves from the older root of our faith—the Judaic one that was so dependent on law for administering justice in cases of man v. man, such as . . . let’s say, murder.
With the advent of Jesus, and his ultimately sacrificial death—in spite of his innocence—a new way of judgement was brought forth in the annals of civilization: grace.
His ultimate sacrifice ushered in a new age in which grace is often recommended instead of strict judgment; this application of grace in some legal matters may take up some of the slack of human society-building, instead of enforcing a constant insistence on the  strict application of law.
Within that “Law,” brought forth by Moses many centuries ago, is a prescription of how to deal with murder. Recorded long ago in Exodus 21:12, it reads like this:

“He that strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.”

In my churchified associations with people since I joined the ranks of Christianity, we have generally emphasized this grace of which I speak. Insofar as we are all sinners—we all screw up in some way or another (do you know anyone who doesn’t?)—we Christians lean heavily on that grace of God to get us off the hook when we screw up.
Personally, I have greatly appreciated that divine grace when dealing with the consequences of my own sinful shortcomings.
Furthermore, I advocate the application of grace toward any person whose response to their own sinfulness includes sincere repentance.

Recently however, a certain heinous offense against our civil law has risen to the forefront of our collective American consciousness. As a people who strive collectively and nationally toward a just society, we would do wrong to excuse Derek Chauvin’s apparent murder—should he be found guilty of same—of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Now I am realizing the practical value of the death penalty in human law. In this case, a merciful sentence would not be appropriate; nor would it prove beneficial in the restoration of our national law and order.

In this present homicidal offense against God and a man, I believe the application of the death penalty to that offending cop’s life would be a necessary element in dispelling our present disruption of law and order in this country.
Therefore I urge the District  Attorney in Minneapolis to bring a charge of murder, in the first degree, against Derek Chauvin, in the killing of George Floyd.
Such justice is the only thing that could even come close to setting things right in this country again.
I just don’t see any other way that the shock and disgrace of this murderous act can truly be dispensed with.
If and when he is found guilty in a court of Law, Derek Chauvin ought to be executed.

Glass half-Full

Dr. King remembered

I was a white boy growing up in the deep south.
In my life, 1951 . . .  a vivid memory stands out: the remembrance of this brave man:


. . . his life, his work, his service to mankind, his leadership in the perilous project of fulfilling our Creator's call to 

. . . bring good news to the afflicted, . . . to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to prisoners . . . (Isaiah 61:1)

In my lifetime, I can think of no other American who demonstrated greater courage than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He persisted tirelessly in the sacred call to blaze a trail of opportunity for oppressed people. He persevered in the face of certain death, as he fully understood the vengeful opposition of other men--white and black--who  ultimately took him down.

The name assigned to him at birth, King, was appropriate, as he went on to conduct the life of a true leader, a born leader, an orator, an organizer who truly fulfilled  the declaration of our nation's founding principles:

We find 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.

In my lifetime, I can recall no other person who more deserves annual remembrance during a national holiday. Although he had his faults, his own sins as we all do,  he was a man of whom this world was not worthy.  In this world, he helped God and fellowman to "make a way where there is no way." He blazed a trail toward that "equal" status mentioned by Mr. Jefferson and the Continental Congress when they composed our Declaration back in 1776.

I am looking forward to meeting Dr. King in heaven, or whatever you call it. Many years ago, I wrote this song about him and an ancient leader named Moses:

Mountaintop

Never Again

From chapter 8 of Glass half-Full, we find Hilda, a restaurant-owner, telling some friends about an experience she had in Germany.

"Hitler and his thugs tried to take advantage of the situation; they launched a coup d'etat, called a putsch in German. But it failed, and they ended up getting arrested. The event has been named the beer hall putsch of 1923. Well, I was reading about these police officers who were killed by the Nazis that night. And I was reading in my guide book some information about the incident. I kept hearing this beautiful music, really spirited music. We walked in the direction of the music. We turned a corner...and there they were, five musicians playing five instruments: clarinet, violin, accordion, cello, a drummer. I could tell they were Jewish right away. I considered their courage: to stand there at the Odeonsplatz where the Nazis had made their first move to try and take over the world, and declare, with their music, that Jewish people, along with their music, were alive and well in the 21st century. They inspired me. We must have listened to them for an hour...the Bridge Ensemble."

This excerpt from my 2007 novel describes an event in the life of a fictional character named Hilda. While writing the book, I chose the occurrence to make a point about what happens in the history of our human race when hate-based groups take up arms against other people.

However, the event described here, although presented as a fictional event in a story, is in reality something that actually happened.

It happened to me. I was "Hilda." My son and I were in Munich in 2002 when the music reached my ears while I was reading a plaque about the four German policemen who had been killed during the first Nazi uprising in 1923.

It was a meaningful event in my life, so I made the experience part of a long story story that I later published in 2007. Glass half-Full is a novel about some characters in the Washington DC area; they're pretty good people, but some bad things happen to them.

Bad things happen. 

When bad things happen on a large scale, nations go to war against each other and all hell breaks loose for a while. When all hell breaks loose on a major scale--a continental level of magnitude and intensity--that is called "World War."

We of mankind have had two of them. We hope that we never have another. Don't we?

In both world wars, our nation, the United States of America, intervened on behalf of our Allies. In both wars, our presence and strength in the fray made a big difference, and we were victorious in both holocausts.

Holocausts is a word I use in the context of that last sentence, meaning  life sacrifices, by fire: lives being snuffed out by fire, or by other destructive means. In our post-World War II experience, the Holocaust generally refers to the mass-murder of six million Jewish Europeans under the murderous regime of the Nazis, led by the demonic Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler.

Never again should there be a holocaust of such immensity. Our nation and our armed forces were a large part of extinguishing the fire of persecution that snuffed out the lives of millions of defenseless, innocent persons before and during the Second World War.

Now, when people refer to the proposition of making America "great again," this is--or should be--the meaning of the phrase, Make America Great Again.

That we have been, in times past, the defender of innocent people who are being slaughtered on a massive scale by hate-filled groups,--this is what made America great during World War II. And this is what, generally, does make America great in any present or future time. 

Great, yes, because we have--on a massive scale-- the resources and the collective will to serve as defenders of defenseless or innocent people anywhere in the world. 

Not because we appoint ourselves aggressors to impose our so-called American way of life on any other nation or people-group in this world. This is where we crossed the line, in my opinion, in Vietnam. What began as a war to defend the free people of South Vietnam against aggressive Viet Minh insurgents, degenerated instead, to become a war of aggression in which we raised a lot more hell and bloodletting than we could legitimately justify; in a quasi-primitive nation that had not yet progressed to a phase of development in which they could truly understand the difference between these two words: communism and capitalism.

And may that never happen again.

A year or two ago, I also wrote a sociological novel pertaining to our Vietnam ordeal, King of Soul.

Let us Americans never be the aggressors. We are defenders. What makes our nation great, if anything, is simply the massive scale of defense we are able to muster on behalf of free and innocent people, whether it's in Europe, Rwanda, the Middle East, or anywhere, including at home. May our great strength never corrupt us.

We are defenders not only in the military applications. We are-and should always be--defenders of the defenseless in matters of law. We are, according to our original founding codes, advocates for justice in all of our institutions: courts of law, legislative bodies, government agencies, immigration agencies, overseas aid, and administrative law from welfare to wall street. That is what makes America great. 

May we never stray from the preservation and extension of truth, justice, and yes, the American way.

And may we always be defenders of same.

Glass half-Full

Change Is Gonna Come

Some wise person said a fish wouldn’t know (s)he was out of water until it actually happened. When the angler yanked the critter up the into air, the fish would immediately know that something had gone terribly wrong.

I think our situation in modern life is a little bit like that. In our present media-engulfed life, we humans are so totally immersed in electronic media that we would feel disoriented and panicky if we were suddenly jerked out of it—like a fish out of water.

Some might even suffer withdrawals.

Nowadays some social critics among us complain about the dumming-down effects of twitter and facebook, and all that other blahblah googlifief also-ran flimflam that’s floating around in the datafied air of 2018.

Back in the day, during the adolescent phases of my baby boomer generation, people romanticized about the fact that we were the first generation to get raised up with a tv in the living room and therefore a boob-tube mindset. Whoopdee doo that we had pop-culture and instant gratification on the brain instead of the traditional 1-2-3 and a-b-c worldview of previous generations. No wonder we fantasized that we could change the world. We were walking around in the first-ever TV-generated dream world.

Actually, some of us did change the world. Those guys who were mastering their calculus and fortran instead of doping up—they managed to hatch out a totally electronic data tsunami that has since commandeered our attention and maximized our compulsive fascination with constant entertainment distractions and rampant twitt-faced narcissism.

Along with some real information, of course. There's always both bad and good in any changes that are gonna come.

A  generation before us in the timeline, it was another set of emergent media wonders that were transforming the world of the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. Our parents’ generation also grew up with a revolutionary media box in the living room and the dashboard—radio. They had Roosevelt’s fireside chats, Glenn Miller, Amos n’ Andy,  and Orson Wells’ terribly realistic radio depiction of us being invaded by extraterrestrial aliens.

But radio was no TV. Radio was about hearing. TV was like a whole new, artificial world of hearing AND seeing.

The rate of change, accelerating in the TV age, has exponentially accelerated and intensified with the coming of the electr(on)ic internet, 21st-century version.

A few years ago, I undertook a writing project to express some of the angst of the boomer generation that I grew up in.

Because I had graduated from high school and then entered college in 1969, my novel, King of Soul,  turned out to be mainly about the elephant-in-the-room issue of my g -generation's historical  era—the Vietnam war.

But that war was far from being the only issue that we Americans had to deal with.

In struggling to depict—and even to somehow reconcile—the great divide between them that went and us who did not go to Vietnam, I embarked on a research project to learn how the Vietnam war had started and how it escalated to become such an overarching generational crisis. My g-generation was torn apart because of what all took place over there as a result of our tragic illusion.  We thought we could, with our high-tech way of doing things, show a country of undeveloped farmers how to expel the communists.

We learned a very hard lesson. It was tragic, what happened. 

While the world had worked a certain way during the Big War, when we ran the Nazis back into their holes, something had sure as hell changed by the 1960’s.

The old tactics of massive military push against jungle guerrillas did not work.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the kids didn’t wanna have to go over there and do Lyndon’s dirty work.

The anti-war movement’s seemingly sudden organizational strength in 1967 was no mere happenstance. Those activists who devised a widespread effective resistance against the war had learned the hard facts of life from a previous protest movement—the Civil Rights movement.

It took a while for the anti-war movement to get its act together. But when they finally did, it was because of a hard lesson that had been learned by black folks down in dixie.

In the Freedom Summer of 1964, a widespread collection of honky activist youth suddenly showed up down in the Segregated South to help the black folk get organized for voting and organizing real societal change. There in the historical shadow of the old defeated, slave-slappin’ South, wide-eyed yankee students got a fierce reality check. Their rose-colored glasses were left broken on the blood-stained grounds of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, when they saw what violence and oppression the racist Establishment was inflicting on people of color.

Right here in Amerika, it was. Land of the free? and home of the brave!

A wake-up call it was. Based on what them wide-eyed college kids from up Nawth encountered when they got down here, they got a severe reality check. Stopping the war in Vietnam  would be no walk in the park. There was bad shit going down right here in the good ole USA, just like in the rice paddies of Vietnam.

If the peaceniks wanted to get us out of Vietnam, they would have to get organized, and maybe even pick up some heavier-duty tactics . . . civil disobedience.

Meanwhile, there were a few blacks who were doing alright. Sam Cooke was one of them.

During the early 1960’s, Sam was a very successful singer-songwriter. Most of his tunes were soulishly romantic and swingy. He had a knack of finding the best in everything he wrote about. With an admirable optimism that shone forth in all his song-work, Sam managed somehow to spread good will and positive attitude everywhere he went, in spite of all the tough changes that were going down.

Some may have thought Sam to be an uncle tom, because he didn’t get angry.

But Sam Cooke—even though he celebrated optimism and good attitude—was no uncle tom.

He was not a “house nigga.”

Here’s a song that expresses Sam’s feeling about the societal changes that he felt needed to happen in the USA in the mid-1960’s.  After his death in 1964, this composition was released posthumously on the B-side of a single record called Shake, and also on an album by the same name.

Here’s the tune, A Change Is Gonna Come:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4

And here’s my version:

Sam's Change Is Gonna Come

As we geezers have seen in our lifetime, change did indeed come.

But some things will remain the same.

Here’s a truth that always remains: Change is gonna come, like it or not.

When it does, may the change be with you, and . . . may you be with the change, if it is good.

If it’s not good, go listen to some of Sam’s old hit songs and get an attitude adjustment. Maybe you can learn to deal with it as he did—with a good attitude.

King of Soul

What People Dotoeachother

Seems like folks these days are gettin all wound up about politics and stupid stuff like that. Democrats v. Republicans. Progressives v. Conservatives. Extremists v. Moderates, blah blah blah.
And to make it worse, with the intensifying effects of cellphones and pads and pods and whatnot and so-called social media blather, what we are barreling toward is a vast dumbing-down, barbarizing of all public discourse.
What was called debate in earlier times now has degenerated to knee-jerk bluster hubris yada yada blahblah hatred the-loudest-loudmouth-wins trouble. 
People take sides on every little controversy that rears its ugly little head in the public domain. Seems to me more like, as William Faulkner or William Shakespeare might have called it, sound and fury signifying nothing.
My studies of human history indicate some recurring characteristics of the tactics employed by extremist diehard yahoos: Such people want to push public discourse farther and farther toward extremist tactics so they can impose their great radical-fringe remedies on the rest of us who want only to live in peace and security with a little justice, mercy and neighborly good will toward our fellow-man thrown in.
I was born in the middle of the 20th-century, 1951. Looking back on all that happened during that century, I’ve noticed a few alarming things, such as:
The two worst 20th-century assholes who ever came along the pike and pretended to be great leaders—Hitler and Stalin—both of them manipulated evolving political institutions, and the idiot people within them— to make a grand bloody mess of their two nations and the whole damn world at large.
Both dictators, Hitler and Stalin, were idealogues. Historians call Hitler a Nazi, which is a type of Fascist. They call Stalin a Communist.
What’s more important, however, in the historical classification game is this:
Both Hitler and Stalin were mass-murderers. They did not do justice to the people they claimed to govern.


This factual identification is more important than the ideological label by which each of these two demagogues manipulated their bloody way into absolute power.
And they weren’t the only ones. In the 20th-century, there were others: Pol Pot, Idi Amin. Some would say Mao. And onn a small scale. . . Jim Jones, Charles Manson?
This scenario to which I make reference— this human behavior attribute of folks being swept up into murderous behavior by a maniacal leader driven by ideological or religious frenzy that results in mass murder—it could be right around a historical corner now.
If people do not allow the practice of mercy, decency, compassion, reason— and most of all forgiveness— to overpower imminent institutionalized manipulations of bloody power-mongers, then we’ll have another terrible round of mass murder on this planet.
Religion (old-school) and Ideology (new school) are both, when carried to extremes, cut from the same extremist cloth, and can drive people to endorse mass murder.
Don’t go there.
Ideology is a big circle. On one half of the circle is the arc of conservatism, which in its extremism leads to fascism; on the other half is the arc progressivism, which in its extremism leads to communism. They both start their movements at the top of the circle going in opposite directions. But at the bottom where they collide, we find extremism so lethal that it requires mass-murder as a so-called final solution.
You know what I’m talking about: “Somebody needs to kill them bastards!”
Religion, same thing. “Somebody needs to kill them _____” (fill in the blank)
Which is why we must harken to the greatest clarion call of all, the one spoken by the man from Galilee who stood on a mountainside and taught us:
“Whatever you would want done to you—do that for everybody else.”
This is the most important principle of all. Far greater  than communism or fascism, far more effectual than Democratic or Republican power-mongering, far more spiritually effective that the Church or the Caliphate.
Peace on this planet ultimately comes down to what people are willing to do--or refuse to do-- to each other in the name of _______.
You fill in the blank.
 
King of Soul

The Justice/Righteousness Struggle

Maybe it’s because I studied philosophy in college many years ago. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the deep south in the 1950’s-60’s. Maybe it’s because I was raised Catholic and then, at the age of 27 turned to the “born again” approach to spiritually.

Maybe it’s because I, like Jacob of old, have had to wrestle with God before I could let him into my way of thinking and doing. Maybe it’s because of Moses, or Paul, or Jesus himself that I had this wrestling session yesterday. For whatever reason, I spent yesterday, Sunday, wrestling with God.

Not literally, of course, but mentally, spiritually.

Let me try to explain this.

On Saturday evening, my wife and I shared an evening meal, and several hours,  with a small group of friends whom we have known and loved for a long time, since the early 1980’s. We are, as they say, Christians.

These are people with whom we have, on a regular basis, gathered, prayed, worked, laughed and cried, for most of our adult life. We have all raised our now-adult children together and released them into the great wild world.

My struggle yesterday was precipitated by an ethical dilemma. The problem was working through my mind all day because our host friend had shown us a video link. The half-hour online presentation introduced to us—and to the world, generally— a work of ministry that is being carried out by our hosts' son-in-law, whose life and struggle is being worked out in his chosen hometown, Ferguson, Missouri.

In the video, Jonathan “JT” Tremaine presents some historical information along with some gospel enlightenment, and he then goes on to explain his vision for justice that is linked to a Christian call to righteousness.

As I ruminated all yesterday (Sunday) on what Jonathan had said, and the images he displayed, I became perplexed while wondering about this thorny question:

Just what the hell is justice anyway?

Is it equality instead of inequality? Is it income redistribution? How does this monumental concept of justice really play out in history, American history?

For many blacks, that idea of "justice" is defined largely by what color of skin a cop sees on the face of some citizen that he is trying to protect, or . . . protect himself against.

And how does justice relate to this “righteousness” thing that we so-called evangelicals like to claim for ourselves?

These are the two primary points—justice and righteousness—that JT raises in his podcast, and in his ministry in Ferguson, Missouri, which he calls “Meet me in Ferguson.”

For many people, especially honkies, neither of these issues is any big deal. Yet that unawareness—that insensitivity— is part of the problem.

The bottom line I’m working toward here is this. Both of these issues—justice and righteousness—are very important issues that we Americans must address if we are going to move forward in our great, historical experiment with democracy.

As the Hebrew prophet of old, Amos, presented a challenge to his people—and to all people throughout history. . .

“Let justice roll down like the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream!”

This is a message of many prophets of old, and many modern prophets as well, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks . . .

And Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

And Dr. Billy Graham.

Say what? Billy Graham? What's he got to do with social justice?

You probably didn’t know that back in the 1950’s, Billy Graham insisted that the ropes be removed—the ropes separating blacks and whites at his very own gospel crusades. And when racist ushers of that day refused to do it, Billy himself did remove the damned things. So that blacks and whites could, together, participate in the work of bringing in not only righteousness, but also justice.

And we are, y’all, still working on it.

Let Jonathan JT explain. This thing goes way back . . .

https://www.facebook.com/meetmeinferguson/videos/618272528508148/UzpfSTE3ODQxMTQ5ODg1Njc2NDoxODI4MzQ4NjE3MTk2MzY5/

I'll finish this struggle session with a song:

Mountaintop

Perfect Constitutional Ambiguity

Eleven score and nine years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this nation an original Constitution, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that people can govern themselves.

Now we are engaged in a great political debate, testing whether our nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met now on a great battlefield of that nation's politics, a battle-boulevard that stretches from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other.

We have come to this crossroads to dedicate a vacant seat to that great cause for which many of us have labored, and for which many of us have given our strength, our endurance, our political partisanship, our blood sweat and fears and in some cases our very lives.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this--that we should dedicate this vacant chair.

It is for us, the living, to be now dedicated to the task remaining before us--that from this honored dead Justice we take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of his jurisprudence--that we now highly resolve that this dead Justice shall not have served in vain, and that that timeless Constitution upon which our freedom and liberty has been laid shall not now itself be sacrificed upon the battlefield of partisanship, but that, accordingly, the President "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate," a Justice of the supreme Court, and that:

Our Constitution's prescribed procedure, set forth in perfect ambiguity so that neither one Branch of our government, the Executive, shall presume to dominate the other Branch, the Legislative, nor shall the Legislative obliterate the the Executive. . .

Therefore do we resolve that this embattled chair--our untimely and inconvenient ninth-chair vacancy--can, and should be, and will be, determined and thus fulfilled by us, the living, in this our 21st-century circumstance as it exists here and now, and still yet through the Constitutional protocol that was set before us, lo, these many scores of years ago. . . and furthermore that:

Our government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.



Glass half-Full

Free Kim Davis!

The legal issues surrounding Kim Davis' job duties should be worked out in courts of law. But there is no way this public servant should be confined to a jail cell.

Free Kim Davis!

Glass half-Full

I wanna know what happen to Freddie Gray

America needs to know.


Now I don't know but I been told

that we Americans got a right that we hold:

from unreasonable searches and seizures we are free,

'cause the 4th Amendment say that the way it should be.



Now we don't know what happen to Freddie Gray

but we know he didn't survive that day

when three cops from Baltimore PD

hauled him in on some charge that no one did see.



They said he had a switchblade that's illegal,

but State's attorney said he had a pocket knife, legal.

Without probable cause those cops hauled Freddie in,

but he didn't survive it; it seems like a sin.



Now I know its wrong that a riot later ensued

but that don't change the fact that Freddie was abused.

So I think it appropriate that somehow, some way:

the people of America need to know what happen to Freddie that day.



It was a medical examiner, you see,

who examined Freddie's fatal injury,

and called it not self-inflicted, but homicide.

So in a court of Law, the cops should be tried.



We need to know--it needs to be tried--

if Freddy's death was justified.

We need to know what happen to Freddie that day;

this can't be like Mike Brown's case where they never would say.



Glass half-Full

This just doesn't add up

Yeah, sure, Michael Brown broke a law.

Yeah, sure, he was resisting arrest;

yeah, sure, the officer of the law was doing his duty.

But in the end, a young man, unarmed, is dead
because he stole a pack of cigarillos and then walked impudently down the middle of the street.


Yeah, sure, Eric Garner broke a law.

Yeah, sure, he was resisting arrest;

yeah, sure, the officer of the law was doing his duty.

But in the end, a young man, unarmed, is dead

because he was selling cigarettes.


This just doesn't add up.

There is something wrong here.

And it appears to be, as we say in newspeak, systemic.

That is to say, there is something wrong with the system.


Yeah, sure, the Missouri grand jury that did not indict the officer

was a legally appointed body the purpose of which was to decide

whether there was a possibility that the arresting officer had violated the law

while attempting to protect himself and the public.


Yeah, sure, the New York grand jury that did not indict the officer

was a legally appointed body the purpose of which was to decide

whether there was a possibility that the arresting officer had violated the law

while attempting to protect himself and the public.


But we have two dead bodies because of damned minuscule cigarette violations. The deathful end doesn't justify the means. There's something wrong with this picture, and the public can smell it.


Why is the deadly outcome of these two cases so much bigger, and final, than the sum of their legal parts?

A young man commits a misdemeanor or two; then he's walking along and suddenly there's a cop in his face. That's to be expected; illegal actions have legal consequences. So the cop is doing his job. But hey, a few minutes later the petty criminal is dead.


Who issued the guilty verdict and death sentence? A court of law? A trial by jury? No. It doesn't add up.

There is something going on here, something being exposed, that needs to be dealt with.

Is it racism? True dat. Like sin, it is always there in us, sometimes under the surface, sometimes in full-blown atrocity. Wherever men go upon the earth, there is, was, will be tribe-against-tribe racism.

But racism is only part of this picture; the other part is a justice system with its priorities out of whack. That's what we the people are feeling now.

Why are so many people--black and white, conservative and liberal--disturbed about the fatal outcome of these incidents?

We have a serious disconnect between the street-imposed sentence (death) and the seriousness of the crime.

That "it doesn't add up" disconnect is wired into our media-driven minds. Although we do not know nearly as much as we think we do about news events, neither does a grand jury operating without cross-examination of witnesses.

In this fortnight's perceived events, it's almost as if the vast public outcry, as jerky and fickle and circumstantial as it is, produces a more appropriate assessment of the outcome than the traditional, evidence-based system for passing judgement.


Oh surely we do not know the facts of the case as well as the grand jury. But we do know this: two young, unarmed men who had not been sentenced to death are now dead. That's the bottom line.

It doesn't add up. The system, with or without grand jury, needs somehow to be fixed, so that the punitive sentence accurately reflects the seriousness of crime.

As if that could happen.

I don't know though. . . maybe it's always been this way. Maybe there is, in truth, no justice in this world.

And so folks yearn for something better. . . the Last Judgement of a Righteous God?

I'm not excusing injustice.

Just sayin'. That Last Judgement may be the only justice some of us will ever see.


Glass half-Full

Opportunity Lost in Ferguson

Officer Wilson will have no opportunity to be publicly exonerated.

I have been thinking about him, and the man he shot. Like many Americans, I have been wondering what exactly did happen on that fateful August night when Officer Wilson, in the line of dangerous duty, killed Mike Brown with a gun.

Based on media-driven hearsay, it sounds to me like the young policeman would have had a pretty solid defense of his actions while attempting to enforce the law. I think, as most other white folk probably do, he would have been found not guilty in a court of law.

But who am I to say? Nobody. I'm a thousand miles away, a merely curious news-seeker with no access to the facts.

Since there will be no trial, and hence no public discovery of what actually happened between Officer Wilson and Mike Brown, we will never know.

Now this tragic death becomes an open wound in our national conscience; it will not heal.

There will be no sworn testimony from Officer Wilson, nor from any witness, no questioning from a defense attorney, no cross-examination from a prosecutor.

As citizens in a nation of laws, we will never know what evidence and testimony might have been called forth in our Officer's defense in a court of law.

But we need to know. As a nation at black and white crossroads, we do need to know what happened.

As a result of our failure to follow through with due process, the severe wound that has been opened up on our national corpus will not heal; it will fester until it boils up with infections of chronic misinformation, severe political manipulation, unresolved grief and destructive rage.

We have lost an opportunity. The United States of America will have no close-up examination of what routinely happens between a black shoplifter and a white cop on a dark night in a city that keeps no secrets.

The sad consequence of no indictment in Missouri is that police work in our cities will become more difficult, more dangerous, not less.

And Officer Wilson will have no opportunity for public exoneration from his hastily fatal decision on that dark Missouri night.

Show me some due process, and this could turn out differently for our people.



Smoke

"Death of a King", Tavis' book

If ever a man lived who actually wrestled the demons of his era, Dr. Martin Luther King was that man.

Tavis Smiley makes that point absolutely clear in his new book Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year.

Dr. King's steadfast espousal of non-violence, having been firmly founded in his biblical faith, was a burden he bore with dignity his entire working life. What Dietrich Bonhoeffer had earlier called "the cost of discipleship" is a very high price for any Christian disciple to pay, especially one who accepts a mission on the front lines of a never-ending battle. The battle that Dr. King chose to fight--for dignity and wellness among his people, and indeed, among all people--was but one 1950's-'60's phase of very long war struggle against injustice and poverty. It is a righteous war that has extended back into the times of Old Testament prophets such as Amos, Moses and Isaiah.

While reading Tavis' account of Dr. King's last 365 days, I am convinced that the man stood forthrightly in the line of prophetic anointing that stretched back to those prophets of long ago, especially Amos, and including the Messiah himself, Jesus.

There are some among my Christian brethren who question Dr. King's authenticity in the high calling of the Christian gospel. Their objections gather around accusations that he was a troublemaker, an upstart, an adulterous sinner, all of which is probably true.

But this Christian agrees with Dr. King, and with our greatest Book, which teaches that we are all sinners.

We are all sinners on this bus, whether it's a bus to Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta, Washington, wherever. A bus to hell itself can be turned around by the power of a man's faith.

In the unique case of Dr. King--that one man's exemplary faith,even sin-tainted as it was-- was a rock upon which millions have clung for stability since those heady, raucous days of the 1960's.

Including the honky who writes this review.

In fact (and Tavis' book makes this absolutely clear) Dr. King's unyielding stand on Christian non-violence is the main attribute of that leader's fortitude that set him apart from most of his comrades during those cataclysmic days of 1967-68.

The preacher's insistence on non-violent civil disobedience instead of violent confrontation compelled him along a lonely course of isolation, with periods of self-doubt and blatant rejection on all fronts friend and foe.

Those other luminaries who labored with Dr. King during that time--Stokely, Rap, Adam Clayton, and many others, including men in his own SCLC camp, Jesse, Ralph, Stanley--those other movers and shakers, who marked Martin as an Uncle Tom whose relevance was being eclipsed by bloodier strategies-- wanted to leave the preacher in the dust.

Which he ultimately was, as we all will be, in the dust.

I haven't even finished reading Tavis' book yet. But I just had to let you know. . . there was a man--he lived during my lifetime-- whose

"radical love ethos at the heart of Christianity--is not to change with the times but, through the force of his constant conviction, to change the times."

Thank you, Dr. King. Your life has been, always will be, an inspiration to me. I look forward to hearing directly from you when we are all together as God's children, black and white, in that place he has prepared for us.

And also, from this white boy to you, Tavis Smiley: thank you for this timely illumination of Dr. King's work among us. In spite of all the turbid waters that have passed beneath the bridges of our times, we are still a divided nation. We could stand to revisit the vision of peace that was manifested, not so long ago, in the life and work of this one man's faithful legacy.

my song about him: Mountaintop

Glass half-Full

Time for Jihad?

Jihad is not one of the five pillars upon which the faith of Islam is founded.

If we, the Christians of this world, are to morally oppose Muslim terrorists, we should not do it on a platform of condemning Islam as a whole. Such a judgment upon Mohammed's people would be downright impracticable and unworkable. We may classify them as heretics; some of us may identify Mohammed as a false prophet.

But hey, the Muslims of the world are not going to go away on the basis of our opposing their extremist elements. In the last fourteen centuries millions of the Islamic faithful have followed the teachings of Mohammed, and millions of them still are following him through the Quran and hadith traditions.

And that is worth something, because it is reality. Islam represents a long-lived institutional presence in our world. Such longevity has earned the people of the Quran an historical legitimacy.

Mohammed founded his worldwide religion based on five religious disciplines, or "pillars," as the Muslims call them: belief in one God, prayer five times a day, giving to the poor, fasting and spiritual discipline during Ramadan, and the hajj journey to Mecca.

Jihad is not one of the five pillars of Islamic faith.

World history proves that Islam is no fly-by-night cult; the opinions of mankind render it a legitimate force to be reckoned with.

On one hand, the "force" characteristic of Islamic expansion is the problem, and we need to deal with it. If Islam is a religion of the sword, which depends on forced conversion of people with whom it crosses paths , we do have a large fundamental problem with it.

On the other hand, if the coercion we presently see from ISIS and other murderous groups is not rooted in authentic Islam itself but rather in extremists' distortion of that faith, we cannot reasonably classify all Muslims as jihadists.

So which is it? Which "hand" is it? I believe we need to give mainstream Muslims the benefit of the doubt, because we inhabit the same world they do. Blessed are the peacemakers. But the ISIS murderers--they are a different animal. They are the Nazis of our age.

We will soon have to deal with them in the same way our grandparents had to deal with the Nazis three quarters of a century ago. Because the world did not effectively oppose the rise of Hitler and his Nazi criminals in a timely way, their Third Reich thuggery corrupted the entire machinery of Germany's government and military. Then it took the greatest generation of our Western civilization to put a stop to their fiercely organized bloodletting. But it was not easy. Millions gave their lives in the process of ridding the world of the Nazi pestilence.

This cannot be allowed to happen to the Islamic countries in our day and time. We must make peace with Islam, if that is possible. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Accordingly, we must insist that Muslim leaders clean house, and rid their ranks of those murderers who execute innocent men/women without rule of law and without justice.

This dire situation is nothing new. About ninety years ago, Adolf Hitler named his contention with the world "Mein Kamph," which means "my struggle." He spent the rest of his destructively misguided life trying to convince the German people that "his" struggle was the same as their struggle to become a great people. It wasn't. As it later turned out, the German people had better things to do than fight the feuhrer's maniacal battles for him. What a price the Germans and the world at large had to pay in time and precious lives, to learn that hard lesson.

Likewise, the Muslim faithful of our present world have better things to do--like governing their own people--than fighting the bloody battles laid out for them by ISIS, Al Nusra, Hamas, Hezbollah and others of their ilk.

Fourteen hundred years ago, Mohammed established his legacy among the Arabs by accepting the role of spiritual prophet. But he went further than that. He also took on political and military roles. Perhaps his taking on such forceful responsibilities, and their subsequent precedents after his death, is why the coercive power of the sword has become an oft-used weapon of Muslim hegemony.

This swordish attribute of Islamic power is not a religious tactic to which Christians readily acknowledge legitimacy. Except that: our own history of violence, forced persecution and war are, like it or not, an undeniable stain on the Christian heritage.

Even so, that was not Jesus' precedent. All the subsequent killing, maiming, forced converting in the name of God under Christendom was what we did, not Jesus. Jesus' ultimate purpose was to atone for those sins that infect every one of us, and to affirm his salvatory work through resurrection after crucifixion. There is no historical evidence that Jesus took up the sword.

As for Mohammed, he affirmed his work through writing the Quran, but also by taking up the sword in the interests of redistributing wealth and establishing justice among his Arab people. He did take up the lethal weapon of military power in order to accomplish that. The principles of Islam governance are human principles.

The principles of Christian resurrection, however, are advocated by a people who hope to transcend this world, and possibly transform it in the process. Because this world is at war with itself, always will be . . . until Christ returns.

You think me naive to write such a thing? Two thousand years of Christianity attest that I am not alone in this belief. As for you followers of Mohammed, may Allah be with you. We'll see how far that gets you on judgment day.

Smoke

Don't go ballistic like Cain did

I'm a meat-eater, but that's neither here nor there. Some people are not, and that's just fine. You do your thing and I'll do mine. People are different; each person has his/her own preferences. This diversity makes human life much more interesting and dramatic than it would be if we were all the same.

In that ancient great Book--the one that is holy and cherished by millions while it is disdained by others--a story is told about two brothers of long ago, Cain and Abel. Cain was growing crops in the ground; Abel was raising flocks of sheep.

Back in those days, men had not yet figured out how cool they were, so they looked to the supernatural realm for inspiration and faith. Many men and women of antiquity believed in offering a portion of their increase to God. It wasn't like today, when folks don't pay attention to such things because they are, you know, on their own.

One day, these two brothers were offering their sacrifices to God, but, as it turned out, with differing results.The book of Genesis reports that God had regard for Abel's sacrifice, but not for Cain's, whatever that means. The common interpretation of this is that God rejected Cain's offering, but received Abel's. If God did indeed reject Cain's sacrifice, the Bible provides no explanation of God's preference in this incident.

In Christian tradition, writ large and writ small, this event has been for a long time a matter of some study and speculation. Some have inferred that God was indicating a preference for meat instead of veggie or grain produce, or simply an acknowledgement that meat has more protein value as food for us humans. Or maybe God's apparent distinction was based not on the foods being offered, but on some difference between the two brothers themselves. Perhaps Cain had offered low quality goods, while Abel had reserved his best for God. Or it could be that Cain just had a bad attitude. We don't know.

What we can see in this story is that God's acknowledgement of one brother's offering was not the same as his regard for the other. That's about it.

Those of us who believe in God, and in the Mosaic revelation about God's attributes, can derive with surety only one lesson from this demonstrative story about God's preference: whatever God does, he does. Or, to put it the other way, whatever he doesn't do, he doesn't do. There is no need for him to justify his acceptances to us. Who are we to question the One who created all things?

And we have to live with that.

Christians and others who value the Genesis revelation have this awareness of the Almighty's sovereignty, which is absolute because God is the Creator who set all things in motion. Our conception if God is fundamentally different from our view of humans, whom we know to be fickle, inconsistent, generally unpredictable, contentious, and sometimes murderous.

The reality of God's sovereign will was not a lesson that Cain was ready to accept. He got upset about God's apparent rejection of his offering. So Cain killed his brother.

Is God guilty of some injustice here? Is God unjust because he did not receive both sacrifices as equal?

No.

Equality, as venerable as it is, is a human notion. According to our Declaration of American Independence, the God who created Nature also created men and women, and created them all equal. This means that we, as men and women who need to govern ourselves, must form institutions that regard all persons as equal if we want to work together toward societal justice.

Let's accept the human idea that all persons should be equal in the eyes of human law.

But we are individuals; that is important. Furthermore, equality of individual persons is a valuable truth for prioritizing our behaviors and institutions.

Once a baby is born, the wonderful dynamic of that person's unique circumstances--nature and nurture and all that--determines what that person is, who they become, and how the work of their hands and mind is received by others, or for that matter, by God.

But this does not mean everyone's input and output will be equal. In that sense, we are not equals. This inequality affords us a thoroughly fascinating human race, with a beneficial diversity of inputs and outputs, and hence a vast range of incomes and outcomes.

Let us make judicial provisions for equality of opportunity for each person. But equality of income and outcome is ultimately a matter that is determined by each person's use of the resources available to him/her.

If you have something to offer to God, or to the world, do not go ballistic if it is ignored or overlooked. Just find the lesson in that rejection; then go back and try again. You will have better results than if you, like Cain, get mad and kill someone.

As for Cain's fate after his crime, God spared him the death sentence, and allowed him to wander away to the land of Nod, east of Eden, where he took a wife. Perhaps her feminine influence, coupled with the Lord's chastisement, mellowed him out a bit.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, soon to be published

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

Sandra Day O'Connor, former Justice of the US Supreme Court, told Terry Gross that her first job as a lawyer was taken without pay. Furthermore, Mrs. O'Connor had to occupy a desk in the secretary's office of that law firm, because she was a woman at the time. Still is, and a woman like no other.

Justice O'Connor, with admirable pioneering chutzpah, had blazed a trail, way back in the1960s and '50s, for women in the legal profession, as well as for all working women generally. She was the first female US Supreme Court Justice. Three more women have been set on the Court since her unprecedented appointment by President Reagan.

But for the cowgirl lawyer from Arizona, the chauvinist humiliation she had to endure along her career path was just an obstacle to be overcome; it came with that frontier territory. Hearing her accounts, it almost seems to have been no big deal. Her primary objective seems to have been, all along, justice for the people of the United States, and not necessarily blowing some loud feminist horn.

She is a great leader in our nation. Nevertheless, she is a humble woman--a wife and mother who happens to be an attorney. One key element of her personality--I think you will hear it in the interview--is humility. Humility can carry a person a long way in this life. Justice O'Connor, like Rosa Parks, had to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous sexist prejudice. But she remained constantly humble, and determined. She would not be denied her destiny. Humility enables a talented person to endure untold subtle and blatant persecutions, because passionate vision can trump all that difficulty. Sandra Day O'Connor's life is, in my view, a testimony to that principle.

Listening, via radio, to the testy interaction between Terry's edgy, progressive politicism and Sandra's prickly, accumulated wisdom is fascinating; it is an aural telescope into the generation gap of the edges, as well as the no-woman's-land between push-the-envelope liberalism and bootstraps conservatism.

I have admired both women for a long time, although for very different reasons. This interview was an amicable match between two titans of public disccourse. Check it out:

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/05/172982275/out-of-order-at-the-court-oconnor-on-being-the-first-female-justice

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

What about Drones?

President Obama's nomination of John Brennan for Secretary of Defense has prompted nationwide discussion on the use of unmanned aircraft, or "drones" for limited warfare, intelligence gathering, and surveillance.

The issues surrounding use of these machine should be examined by the American people. We need to deal with the moral and human rights questions that are now being brought forth from many concerned citizens and Congress. We should make ourselves aware of how these drones are used presently, and how further applications in law enforcement and defense will change the administration of justice both at home and abroad.

My impression as a citizen of the United States is that these devices are being used mostly in military strategies under the auspices of the Defense department, but that the CIA is refining their use for surveillance and intelligence gathering. It is plausible and (knowing how technology spreads) possible that domestic agencies such as FBI, Homeland Security, ATF, FEMA, etc are seeking legal authority for law enforcement intelligence gathering and surveillance on the home front.

Here are a few questions in my mind so far that need to be dealt with:

~ Can precise use of drones really minimize and reduce collateral damage and loss of innocent civilian life in warfare?

~ Are drone assassinations a more humane way to eliminate terrorists and criminals than traditional means?

~ Who makes the decision, and on what information basis, about who is to be targeted?

~ Will target selection by military personnel and law enforcement officials amount to elimination of due process of law for the person(s) targeted?

~ What are the long-range implications for constitutional rights, such as trial by jury, and the old principle of "innocent until proven guilty"?

These questions are what stuck in my mind after listening, this morning, to a very informative panel discussion on the Diane Rehm Show, National Public Radio. If you have an hour to explore this important topic, I recommend you listen to this analysis as presented by guest-host Tom Gjelten and other informed participants.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

The Two-edged Sword

In the annals of human history, the invention of the sword is surely a turning point; it's importance ranks right up at the top of the list, along with the first use of that most laudable invention of all, the wheel.

I suppose the first application of a sharpened implement was used by prehistoric humans for gathering and preparing food. But I'm sure it wasn't long before some irate or jealous neanderthal discovered its advantageous wielding for more nefarious purposes, such as murder or maiming.

If you're not into the neanderthal explanation, think of this bipolar principle of homo sapiens behavior in terms of Cain and Abel.

Love it or hate it, this sharp implement has been used for many millennia to advance the various purposes of our species, and its power has much to do with our ascendancy over the lesser species of the animal kingdom.

In human relations, the damned thing has been swung forever, by men, to inflict injury, pain, destruction, and death, on other men. On the other hand, the same weapon has long been applied by the nobler ones among us to defend the weak and the innocent against such atrocities, thus administering a thing that we call justice.

In the ascent of human ethics and society, "the sword" became, over time, something more than an implement or a weapon. It became an idea, a two-edged concept. On one edge of the sword is crime cruel atrocity; on the other is justice and defense.

Looking at history, we see undeniable evidence for the frequent use of both edges of "the sword", the good side and the bad.

It reflects the dual nature of Man. On one side we are rotten to the core; on the other we are redeemed, and noble.

The sword has been used for thousand of years to enforce and extend various religious movements and agendas.

Very controversial in the ancient history of the Middle East is the use of the sword by Joshua and his Israeli tribes to subdue the Canaanites, on behalf of J'…h. Several thousand years later, Mohammed swept across the middle east crescent with his band of conquering Muslims, asserting righteousness with the sword in the name of Allah.

That little skirmish is still at center of all our international politics here on planet earth.

Jewish tradition proclaims that Moses gave us Law, so that men could live with each other having at least some semblance of societal order; since that strategy wasn't exactly working out as planned, Mohammed came along thousands of years later, to enforce the correction needed to establish righteousness upon the earth.

Neither of these has worked as effectively, to quell the belligerent manipulations of mankind, as their founders might have intended.

In the midst of these two sword-swinging religious traditions, and between them historically, there came Jesus, who grew up in a town called Nazareth, which is somewhere between Damascus and Jerusalem. This Jesus, whom I regard as Messiah, and deliverer of mankind from its evil nature, did not wield the sword, as Joshua and Mohammed had done. Instead, he laid the weapon thing down and preached peace and forgiveness, which is considered foolish and naive in this present arrangement of the world. But in the kingdom of God, which is our fortunate destiny as earth-dwellers, his good news receives more favorable reception.

When his right-hand-man, Peter, drew the sword in retaliation against the oppressive, arrestive Roman sword, Jesus instructed Peter to put the thing away. Their were higher principles at work in those events than the impetuous power of the sword could impose.

This Jesus is the one about whom I wrote a song in 1979, when the Iranian revolutionaries took our embassy and hostages in Teheran. About ten years ago, some friends of mine gathered in our hometown, Boone, North Carolina, USA, to help me in recording it. I hope you have a few minutes to give it a listen and consider the message therein.

http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/wevegotasong.mp3

Glass half-Full