Many people in this world who walk around thinking they are free, yes, even empowered, are actually the ones who are sitting in jail, the ones who are on death row, the ones who are enslaved. It is very easy to identify those who are really imprisoned from those who are not.
The more that one does not believe the truth, whether in religious or secular matters, the more one is actually in jail, on death row and enslaved.
There are those who tell lies and bear false witness, and those who believe and/or obey the lies and false witness. They are equally in jail, on death row and enslaved. Equally, there are those who don't lie but refuse to believe the truth. Unfortunately they too are equally in jail, on death row and enslaved. This applies to both God's truth and day to day worldly matters. I will give you simple examples so that you understand.
Suppose that there is a well known food toxin, something like salmonella, and there are three categories of people who react to that knowledge. Those who tell lies say it is not harmful, and thus no safe food handling measures must be taken. Those who believe and obey the lies therefore pass on the effect of that lie by not handling food safely and cleanly that others consume. Those who know salmonella is dangerous but refuse to think that it can happen to them allow this to continue and thus put themselves and others at risk.
All three of those types of people are in "jail" because they are imprisoned by erroneous actions (or refusals to do good) and thus limit their options for dealing with the situation. It is an apt criminal parallel because their refusals, whichever of the three types, endanger not only themselves but others, via their distortion of truth, denial of truth, or refusal to serve the truth! They are on "death row" because, just to stick with the example, there is a risk to life and health that they are refusing to deal with and thus it will eventually catch up with them, and in the case of a pandemic (just to use the example let's pretend a salmonella pandemic is possible), they and everyone else sit on death row, awaiting that pandemic. They are also enslaved because they are in service to the lie, rather than freed by the truth. The truth expands legitimate options and actions, while lies only cut one down to the chains of the lie's one option, which is inaction on behalf of one's self or others and, if one is part of the lying and enabling, "spreading the chains" for others to wear.
Here is the problem. I had given you just one example, an analogy, (since most do not actually dispute the problem of salmonella in theory, but MANY willfully do not follow hygiene and other protective practices on behalf of others). Put aside the analogy, now, and think of how MANY LIES every single person on earth is now subjected to collectively, in total, on a daily basis. One cannot even tell the originating liar from the enabling liar or the victim of lying because the entire fabric of truth in society and individual honor, morality and conduct has broken down and become in service to power, ego and money drivers. Children are on the third generation of being raised by more fiction than truth, in the home, in schools, on the street and via media "entertainment." Remember, it's not just an outright lie that is the problem, but withholding of actual quality education of truth and discernment that is the almost larger problem.
Back to the salmonella example. How can a child believe or not believe the risk and also the safety precautions if they have not the background education? Think of the list of things that a child must understand in order to do something like wash their hands and be careful not to eat tainted food. They have to understand what "dirt" (germs) is, they have to understand how dirt gets on or in them, they have to understand what being sick or well is, they have to understand that it is not something to immobilize them with fear about but that they can be safe, they have to understand how to clean with soap and water, and they have to understand timing (washing before one gets dirty is not helpful, for example).
So imagine a child that is told, and believes, that salmonella is dangerous and they need to avoid bad food plus wash their hands and for the sake of making a silly extreme point to illuminate what I mean, assume the child's been raised in isolation, not having any education nor have parents raised them with the list of necessary knowledge given above. What is a child to do with hearing "salmonella is dangerous?" Think someone named "Sally Nelly" is dangerous? Think that the salmon fish is dangerous? If the child does not understand you are speaking of dirt/germs, what they are, where it comes from, how it gets to them, how to solve the problem, and when/how to wash, they cannot do anything meaningful with a truth spoken to them at all!
That, friends, is the problem. We have a world that starts children out with cartoons and video games, and nothing about reality of life, and by reality I don't mean code words for the bad parts of life, but I mean all the goodness of how life actually exists. When you do not raise your children, and when you gain money or power through lack of service to truth, you not only enslave yourself and others, especially children, but you are all in jail and you are all on death row.
Even if you do not promote all that is so misleading in our culture, by taking up airspace with crap you are crowding out the opportunities and the motivation for people, especially young people, to learn what is really important and to be liberated by the genuine freedom of truth.
Here's another example. Suppose that a certain local political seat is always filled by people who meet in secret and decide who that candidate will be and fix the election so their person always win. Do those hypocrites go home and tell their children that they can "dream big" and maybe be President one day? They smirk as teachers, both enablers and well meaning ones, teach kids in school about the political process and try to "inspire" the kids, yet they know full well if one of those kids grows up and tries to run for office they are not on the preordained predetermined "win" list. The same with being famous, being made a "star," of "making a difference in the world." If young people don't even know the facts of the world, and how it operates, and how to choose from truthful options and choices in action, how can they "dream big" when they don't really understand the choices and the realities? Society pushes the predetermined winners, pretending it can happen to "anyone." Then for the one it happens to, fine, (except when they find out they now have obligations to the rainmakers), but what about the ninety-nine others out of a hundred who wasted their time, talents, their heart, and their love, to pursuing a dream that was never actually an option to them? If they knew the truth they could have actually done something else, far more satisfying.
Many people in society push "follow your dreams" and "give it your all," knowing that they will "award" that prize to one or two of their predetermined chosen, while letting those who believe this at large wither on the vine. Meanwhile people could have been doing what they have always done, which is to grow up in a truthful and well educated (though not of course pure or unblemished) society where they can always be aiming themselves at valid and authentic targets, instead of manipulated illusionary crap. Crap that enriches the bank accounts and egos of those who are on top of the total life lie pyramids.
Friends, and I call you that, even toward those who have persecuted me, stop thinking that I'm the one being controlled, limited, manipulated and in "jail." It is you all who are in that place, you all who are in jail, on death row, and enslaved. The more you believe the lying crap that is out there everywhere, the more you will lose your pursuit of genuine happiness in life, the more your life is likely to be foreshortened (and those you care about) and the more you have to consider that you may be on the path to eternal death, first as the living social slaves that you are, and after death, to the place where disbelievers and those who did not honestly serve God, in eternal exile from goodness and in torment. I really don't wish that on anyone, but I'm cheering both Darwin and God onward on this one, if you keep asking for it, that's what you are going to keep getting in life and in death.
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
understanding spiritual warfare
I understand that many passages in scriptures have the power of sounding like a succinct rallying call, one that "cuts to the chase" and inspires people. However, you have to be very cautious about any particular scripture passage being your "motto," your "vow" (remember, Jesus most strongly warned against making any vows before God, ANY, no matter how worthy appearing) or having a passage be like your Cliff Notes (study summary) that gives you a "bottom line" for your spiritual life. The reason I am writing this is that I know many are fascinated with much of what Paul wrote, particularly Ephesians 6:10-18. (I'm not going to type it out because if you look it up yourself you really should read the whole short chapter 6 to have it in context).
Here's the problem. Whenever someone extracts one saying from the Bible, one is in danger of doing a transplant from the common understanding of the Bible authors and participants to the people of the time (which is what God intended) to reworking those quotes into a modern context.
First, a silly example for a smile. Suppose the Bible wrote about whales traveling in pods and how important it is to be like whales and travel in pods. Some modern people might think, "Whoa! The Bible is saying to always carry your IPods!" Yeah, I'm being silly but I want you to right up front understand what I mean about transplanting a valid scripture, but said in a certain understanding (that all observant Jews who were the early Christians, especially Paul, well understood about God and human life) into a modern cultural set of blinders that has trimmed away much of the richness of understanding of what they wrote about and lived within.
OK, so here is the problem with passages like Ephesians 6:10-18 taken out of context. Paul is writing about the need to "arm" one's self in spiritual combat, against the dark forces that rule earth. He is of course entirely correct. However, people of his time (and your own Christian and Jewish ancestors, and the Muslims too) would have understood this the way it was intended, and not the way moderns would view it. You see, moderns want "bad guys," especially "bad guy aliens" or "good guy superheroes." So many moderns see Eph 6:10-18 as validation that evil spirits walk the earth and manipulate people. Often moderns then view this as permission to shun or harm those they think are "on the other side." I mean, war has two sides, right? Combat is "against" someone, right?
OK, now, slam on the brakes. Who wrote this scripture? Where was the war at? How did Paul "know" there's a battle with dark spirits on one side against the good guys?
Well, here's the bombshell of understanding you have all forgotten. Paul was on "both sides." Paul was a Jew, a highly observant Jew, but he was also a Roman citizen. Ta da! When you forget that you have total misunderstanding of what Paul means as combat. Romans had enslaved the Jews. Paul "belonged" to both sides, as he was both a highly religious Jew (the slave) and a highly placed and favored Roman citizen being prepared for high secular office (the slave owner).
Remember, Jesus was crucified because he would not lead an armed rebellion (using his miracles as firepower) on behalf of the Jews against the Romans. Jesus was not crucified because he did not "wrestle....against principalities,...rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places..." This is why Paul emphasizes WE WRESTLE NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD (Eph 6:12).
PAUL IS POUNDING IT INTO PEOPLE'S HEADS THAT NO FLESH AND BLOOD IS "THE ENEMY" BECAUSE DUE TO THAT ERROR JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED.
Notice too that when he writes about battling principalities, powers, rules of darkness and spiritual darkness and spiritual wickedness, he is speaking of battling SIN and FAITHLESSNESS. He is not speaking of battling either evil "spirits" in the way that people think of them today NOR is he speaking of declaring a group of people (like Romans, the hot enemy at the time) as being either demonic or flesh and blood enemies. No one is more qualified to role model and speak of that than PAUL, who was both well placed Roman citizen AND Jewish/now Christian oppressed.
Paul did not stop being Roman and renounce it for Christianity. Duh, read the scripture, as he invoked his Roman rights to trial throughout his ministry and died in Rome (via the means of death given to Romans, the sword, not crucifixion, like Peter suffered.) Paul did not say, "Hey, crucify me just like the Lord was." He took advantage of being Roman elite right to the end and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, because he stayed alive longer to get the Gospel spread through his Evangelizing without being hypocritical.
So people well understood Paul's words in Ephesians and elsewhere as the battle being against the dark forces of SINS and UNBELIEF, not against evil "spirits" the way moderns think of them, or one group of humans against the other. Paul was against the bad spirituality (to use the modern terms) that is festering and spread in high places and principalities (places of authority, both secular and religious) via sin, hypocrisy and disbelief. Paul did not go to Rome to fight "against" them in "combat" to "defeat them." Paul went, like Peter, to Rome to defeat spiritual darkness (paganism and corruption) and CONVERT THEM. Spiritual combat aims at conversion, NOT fighting imaginary sources of power. No imagination is needed about the source of darkness if you read the scriptures and I don't mean just Satan. So I now need to explain the second part of this confusion, and let's use another example.
Let's use HIV/Aids disease as an example. No, I'm not causing grief by using this example but rather it is a perfect example to study. Sometime in the past century, scientists have a good idea but of course will never know exactly, the virus jumped from simian species like chimps onto a single human being. It then modified and changed as it adjusted to being in a human body and became the disease we are all too familiar with today.
So my first point is that Adam and Eve were the origin of the first sin, which was disobedience to God per temptation by Satan. Adam and Eve were tempted to "know as much as God," so to speak, so they ate the apple so they could know what evil was like. (There was nothing in the apple by the way. It was the sheer act of disobedience to the all good and loving God that opened their eyes to evil. I mean, if they had kicked God in the shins they would have also gotten the same info, the same 411, about good and evil because just being mean and disobedient to God is the initiation into sin and evil).
Now, once HIV/Aids jumped the one time to a human, it does not need to rejump from ape to human with each person who is infected, I mean, duh, right? Same with the flu or common cold. It does not need to be reinvented each time someone gets sick with cold or flu, right? Likewise is spiritual darkness. Satan only had to tempt Eve and her take it to Adam, and Satan can sit back in his lawn chair and watch. So when Satan is "at work" or there is spiritual darkness, it is not Satan running around reinventing temptation with each generation of each human being. Like Aids, it is out there and people spread it through contact with each other.
To misunderstand Ephesians 6 is like what happened with demonizing specific groups who suffer from HIV/Aids. Every type of person gets HIV/Aids, yet certain groups (like gay men) became demonized as the "causes." When one views Ephesians 6 in the wrong way, one is tempted to do likewise, to nominate yourself as the "clean" and "clear" "spirit warrior," and to thus thrust on the "other side" the "dark principalities" role and that is totally false to what Paul said AND LIVED.
Paul, following in Jesus' path, was condemning the unseen darkness of sin, disbelief, hypocrisy, spiritual slavery and corruption, while at the same time dampening down the tendencies to want flesh and blood warfare which he (as a persecutor) had also succumbed to, which is to kill the "enemy" in bodily form.
So Paul's inspiring words must be correctly understood as being against the dark invisible powers of sin, hypocrisy, corruption and disbelief, and not against invisible cartoon absurd imaginary "spirits" like so many modern dopes believe.
How to understand spiritual combat? Read about sin in the Bible. Start with these passages BY PAUL in 2 Timothy.
2:3 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
2:5 And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.
2:9 Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil-doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound. (Paul is saying he is treated like a bad guy, even put into prison, but despite what is done to him God's truth cannot be imprisoned).
2:15 Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
2:16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.
2:24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient.
2:25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
2:26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
I put 2:26 in bold italics because that's the heart of it. Satan has set the original snare and that is the combat, to EVADE THAT SNARE. Satan has no need to run around inventing new snares and sending evil spirits to go after each person in each generation, duh. That is the combat, to recover themselves (pull themselves out of the snare that, like slavery, humans are born into through sin and continual temptation.)
3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
3:15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
(Notice that Paul is referring to scriptures still being needed, and that is OLD TESTAMENT scriptures, as New Testament didn't exist yet as Paul wrote this).
3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
3:17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
What is the remedy, the "armor," the "combat" that Paul orders, to deal with the worsening evil of humans over time (3:13)? Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament for wisdom, and as the training path toward perfected humans into obedient goodness to God. PAUL ENDORSES NO OTHER APPROACH OR WAY.
4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine.
You have to read page after page after page of what Paul truly instructs before one can enjoy, be inspired by, understand, and "follow" the much loved punch lines of Eph 6:10-18.
Here is further reading to understand the dark power is sin and disobedience, not imaginary sci fi aliens or evil spirits etc.
Separates from God Isa 59:2
Its wages: death Rom 6:23
Begets moral cowardice Josh 7:11-13
Hardens the heart Heb 3:13
Is very destructive Ps 34:21
Caused Israel's downfall 2 Chr 28:22-23
Causes misery Job 15:20
Brings reproach Prov 14:34
Enslaves the will 2 Tim 3:13
Excludes from heaven 1 Cor 6:9, 10
The forgiven warned "not to continue in sin" John 5:14, John 8:11, Rom 6:12
All have sinned Rom 3:23
All have gone astray Isa 53:6
To claim sinlessness is to lie Prov 20:9, 1 John 1:8-10
Jesus alone without sin 1 Pet 2:21-22
Through Satan's deception and subtlety Gen 3:1-13, 2 Cor 11:3
In the heart Matt 15:18, 19
Through lust of flesh James 1:13-15
Against the Holy Ghost Matt 12:31-32
Is destructive Prov 11:3
Is inexcusable John 15:22
Man obdurate in sin Amos 4:6-11
Here's the problem. Whenever someone extracts one saying from the Bible, one is in danger of doing a transplant from the common understanding of the Bible authors and participants to the people of the time (which is what God intended) to reworking those quotes into a modern context.
First, a silly example for a smile. Suppose the Bible wrote about whales traveling in pods and how important it is to be like whales and travel in pods. Some modern people might think, "Whoa! The Bible is saying to always carry your IPods!" Yeah, I'm being silly but I want you to right up front understand what I mean about transplanting a valid scripture, but said in a certain understanding (that all observant Jews who were the early Christians, especially Paul, well understood about God and human life) into a modern cultural set of blinders that has trimmed away much of the richness of understanding of what they wrote about and lived within.
OK, so here is the problem with passages like Ephesians 6:10-18 taken out of context. Paul is writing about the need to "arm" one's self in spiritual combat, against the dark forces that rule earth. He is of course entirely correct. However, people of his time (and your own Christian and Jewish ancestors, and the Muslims too) would have understood this the way it was intended, and not the way moderns would view it. You see, moderns want "bad guys," especially "bad guy aliens" or "good guy superheroes." So many moderns see Eph 6:10-18 as validation that evil spirits walk the earth and manipulate people. Often moderns then view this as permission to shun or harm those they think are "on the other side." I mean, war has two sides, right? Combat is "against" someone, right?
OK, now, slam on the brakes. Who wrote this scripture? Where was the war at? How did Paul "know" there's a battle with dark spirits on one side against the good guys?
Well, here's the bombshell of understanding you have all forgotten. Paul was on "both sides." Paul was a Jew, a highly observant Jew, but he was also a Roman citizen. Ta da! When you forget that you have total misunderstanding of what Paul means as combat. Romans had enslaved the Jews. Paul "belonged" to both sides, as he was both a highly religious Jew (the slave) and a highly placed and favored Roman citizen being prepared for high secular office (the slave owner).
Remember, Jesus was crucified because he would not lead an armed rebellion (using his miracles as firepower) on behalf of the Jews against the Romans. Jesus was not crucified because he did not "wrestle....against principalities,...rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places..." This is why Paul emphasizes WE WRESTLE NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD (Eph 6:12).
PAUL IS POUNDING IT INTO PEOPLE'S HEADS THAT NO FLESH AND BLOOD IS "THE ENEMY" BECAUSE DUE TO THAT ERROR JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED.
Notice too that when he writes about battling principalities, powers, rules of darkness and spiritual darkness and spiritual wickedness, he is speaking of battling SIN and FAITHLESSNESS. He is not speaking of battling either evil "spirits" in the way that people think of them today NOR is he speaking of declaring a group of people (like Romans, the hot enemy at the time) as being either demonic or flesh and blood enemies. No one is more qualified to role model and speak of that than PAUL, who was both well placed Roman citizen AND Jewish/now Christian oppressed.
Paul did not stop being Roman and renounce it for Christianity. Duh, read the scripture, as he invoked his Roman rights to trial throughout his ministry and died in Rome (via the means of death given to Romans, the sword, not crucifixion, like Peter suffered.) Paul did not say, "Hey, crucify me just like the Lord was." He took advantage of being Roman elite right to the end and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, because he stayed alive longer to get the Gospel spread through his Evangelizing without being hypocritical.
So people well understood Paul's words in Ephesians and elsewhere as the battle being against the dark forces of SINS and UNBELIEF, not against evil "spirits" the way moderns think of them, or one group of humans against the other. Paul was against the bad spirituality (to use the modern terms) that is festering and spread in high places and principalities (places of authority, both secular and religious) via sin, hypocrisy and disbelief. Paul did not go to Rome to fight "against" them in "combat" to "defeat them." Paul went, like Peter, to Rome to defeat spiritual darkness (paganism and corruption) and CONVERT THEM. Spiritual combat aims at conversion, NOT fighting imaginary sources of power. No imagination is needed about the source of darkness if you read the scriptures and I don't mean just Satan. So I now need to explain the second part of this confusion, and let's use another example.
Let's use HIV/Aids disease as an example. No, I'm not causing grief by using this example but rather it is a perfect example to study. Sometime in the past century, scientists have a good idea but of course will never know exactly, the virus jumped from simian species like chimps onto a single human being. It then modified and changed as it adjusted to being in a human body and became the disease we are all too familiar with today.
So my first point is that Adam and Eve were the origin of the first sin, which was disobedience to God per temptation by Satan. Adam and Eve were tempted to "know as much as God," so to speak, so they ate the apple so they could know what evil was like. (There was nothing in the apple by the way. It was the sheer act of disobedience to the all good and loving God that opened their eyes to evil. I mean, if they had kicked God in the shins they would have also gotten the same info, the same 411, about good and evil because just being mean and disobedient to God is the initiation into sin and evil).
Now, once HIV/Aids jumped the one time to a human, it does not need to rejump from ape to human with each person who is infected, I mean, duh, right? Same with the flu or common cold. It does not need to be reinvented each time someone gets sick with cold or flu, right? Likewise is spiritual darkness. Satan only had to tempt Eve and her take it to Adam, and Satan can sit back in his lawn chair and watch. So when Satan is "at work" or there is spiritual darkness, it is not Satan running around reinventing temptation with each generation of each human being. Like Aids, it is out there and people spread it through contact with each other.
To misunderstand Ephesians 6 is like what happened with demonizing specific groups who suffer from HIV/Aids. Every type of person gets HIV/Aids, yet certain groups (like gay men) became demonized as the "causes." When one views Ephesians 6 in the wrong way, one is tempted to do likewise, to nominate yourself as the "clean" and "clear" "spirit warrior," and to thus thrust on the "other side" the "dark principalities" role and that is totally false to what Paul said AND LIVED.
Paul, following in Jesus' path, was condemning the unseen darkness of sin, disbelief, hypocrisy, spiritual slavery and corruption, while at the same time dampening down the tendencies to want flesh and blood warfare which he (as a persecutor) had also succumbed to, which is to kill the "enemy" in bodily form.
So Paul's inspiring words must be correctly understood as being against the dark invisible powers of sin, hypocrisy, corruption and disbelief, and not against invisible cartoon absurd imaginary "spirits" like so many modern dopes believe.
How to understand spiritual combat? Read about sin in the Bible. Start with these passages BY PAUL in 2 Timothy.
2:3 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
2:5 And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.
2:9 Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil-doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound. (Paul is saying he is treated like a bad guy, even put into prison, but despite what is done to him God's truth cannot be imprisoned).
2:15 Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
2:16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.
2:24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient.
2:25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
2:26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
I put 2:26 in bold italics because that's the heart of it. Satan has set the original snare and that is the combat, to EVADE THAT SNARE. Satan has no need to run around inventing new snares and sending evil spirits to go after each person in each generation, duh. That is the combat, to recover themselves (pull themselves out of the snare that, like slavery, humans are born into through sin and continual temptation.)
3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
3:15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
(Notice that Paul is referring to scriptures still being needed, and that is OLD TESTAMENT scriptures, as New Testament didn't exist yet as Paul wrote this).
3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
3:17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
What is the remedy, the "armor," the "combat" that Paul orders, to deal with the worsening evil of humans over time (3:13)? Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament for wisdom, and as the training path toward perfected humans into obedient goodness to God. PAUL ENDORSES NO OTHER APPROACH OR WAY.
4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine.
You have to read page after page after page of what Paul truly instructs before one can enjoy, be inspired by, understand, and "follow" the much loved punch lines of Eph 6:10-18.
Here is further reading to understand the dark power is sin and disobedience, not imaginary sci fi aliens or evil spirits etc.
Separates from God Isa 59:2
Its wages: death Rom 6:23
Begets moral cowardice Josh 7:11-13
Hardens the heart Heb 3:13
Is very destructive Ps 34:21
Caused Israel's downfall 2 Chr 28:22-23
Causes misery Job 15:20
Brings reproach Prov 14:34
Enslaves the will 2 Tim 3:13
Excludes from heaven 1 Cor 6:9, 10
The forgiven warned "not to continue in sin" John 5:14, John 8:11, Rom 6:12
All have sinned Rom 3:23
All have gone astray Isa 53:6
To claim sinlessness is to lie Prov 20:9, 1 John 1:8-10
Jesus alone without sin 1 Pet 2:21-22
Through Satan's deception and subtlety Gen 3:1-13, 2 Cor 11:3
In the heart Matt 15:18, 19
Through lust of flesh James 1:13-15
Against the Holy Ghost Matt 12:31-32
Is destructive Prov 11:3
Is inexcusable John 15:22
Man obdurate in sin Amos 4:6-11
Monday, January 4, 2010
Urgent case study: rights definitions
I'm signed on and writing this before doing anything else because I just heard something on a talk show that helped me to realize a huge confusion that I can clear up right here and now. Hi young people, because this is especially for you, you'll see why in a moment. The previous two generations have become so mentally illiterate and sloppy that they no longer understand the definitions of the words they use in everyday speech but, most alarmingly, in politics and the search for social justice. It is no wonder that people are arguing over the correct way to solve huge problems because not only are they not discussing the same thing, defined the same way, they don't even understand what they are arguing for, on behalf of.
The first word I want to clarify, since that is what the talk show mentioned, is "rights." The talk show hosts played a sound byte from a politician where the politician claimed that they (politicians) "create" or "give" rights to people. No, that is incorrect, and the talk show hosts were quick to point this out. Yet I know that many of you would think that rights are created. They are not created; rights are in existence, continual existence. It is the depriving of rights that is the problem in society, so that is the first part of what I want to explain.
Every human being, just by virtue of existing, has certain absolute rights. They are not "rights" conferred by other human beings. To calm those social justice people (and believe me, I am on your side, I am coaching you though in a grave error) let me start with an obvious example. When you are born, no one had to give you a piece of paper saying you had the right to breathe the air. I mean, duh. If someone smothers you, though, they have deprived you of your rights. Do you understand that? When a human being is born they have rights already in existence, the complete set of rights all humans need and are born into, not given to them. Now you can understand the wording of the Founding Fathers better, where they recognize these inherent pre-existing eternal rights, not confer them. Believers understand that these rights are given by God when humans were created in the first place. Ethical non-believers understand that even if they deny a God, those rights are already in place, and don't have to be spelled out by a set of human beings, because it it "natural law" (believers use that term too), or "the right thing to do," or the "ethics of human rights" or other God-neutral but ethic phrases and philosophies. Both believers and non-believers who are ethical understand that genuine rights are eternal, inborn, and already in existence.
That is the first part of what the past two generations have warped and misunderstood. They have taken the eternal and inborn existence of rights and forgotten what that really means. When did this happen? Pretty much in the 1960's when people started saying "I want my rights." Yes, they were correct to perceive that those who suffered injustice were being deprived of rights. But "rights" became shorthand for remedies. Rights are not remedies. Rights cannot be created. They are already in existence. Rights exist and every thinking human, whether a believer or not, needs to protect the language in order to maintain clarity that all people have certainty of the rights that are inborn of being human.
So whether you believe in God or not you must understand that in the USA the Founding Fathers recognized that certain rights are in pre-existence. Go back to the example of the baby being born having the right to breathe air, even though no one wrote a piece of paper saying that that this baby has a license or permit under the law to breathe air upon birth. Anyone who is not insane or an idiot understands that. Thus it is really easy to understand that the right to be alive (including being able to breathe) is automatic upon coming alive (being born), duh. If someone takes a pillow and smothers the baby on birth, two things have happened. The baby's right to life was violated and so the baby was, to use the correct language "deprived of his or her rights." So you have "rights" and their opposite, which is not the "lack of rights" but the "deprivation of rights." And here is where it had become naturally confusing: not only was the smothered baby deprived of his or her rights (to life), but a civil crime was committed, assault, battery and murder. This is where the thinking became blurry during the 1960's and got worse and worse until now when it seems no one understands simple basic concepts and definitions anymore.
Just a pause, this is not going to turn into an abortion argument, so put that aside and let us work together for clarity about human rights. I am using the baby, full term, born in a wanted situation (presumably) for its universal ease in understanding, not for agenda. Keep that in mind when I start to also discuss in this case study civil (racial) deprivation of rights.
The Founding Fathers recognized every human being already has three basic "rights:" life (the right to be alive and not to have life truncated, such as in the smothering), liberty (the right to be free and not in bondage to another human being) and the pursuit of happiness (the right to lead one's life in search of sustaining and satisfaction). If you think about this, this is such a profound insight. In a pithy way the Founding Fathers summarized, using three simple words and phrases, these universal God given (or natural law/ethics) rights and pre-exist.
So you say, well, why was slavery and so forth legal when one has the right to liberty? Now you are getting it. Notice to ask me that question you said slavery was "legal?" It was not, correctly speaking, a right; many laws and social customs are violation of and deprivation of inherent rights. The civil rights movement started out using the verbiage correctly, but society started eroding their understanding of the fact that it happens every day throughout human society, this problem:
1. All humans have inherent rights not created by humans but eternal and already in place.
2. Some humans deprive other human beings of those rights.
3. Some deprivation of rights are actually legal under human made laws, but they are always wrong as they are deprivation of rights.
4. Human rights must always trump laws that deprive of human rights, but in reality we see that often the opposite takes place.
5. Rights cannot be created; rights already exist. What humans can do is restore those who have been deprived of their rights to no longer be deprived.
So now let me tackle the second core area of confusion about rights and the law. We now understand that rights already exist, totally without human creation or control. We also recognize that the problem is humans who deprive other humans of their rights. Thus slavery, while legal, was not "a right," (even if in the lingo people used that word) but slavery was, instead, a legal but unrighteous deprivation of human rights. Remember there is worldwide slavery still going on, both of servitude and sexual, and thus we must urgently understand that there is no "right," either legal or for "free market" reasons, for slavery in any form at all. Period. When slaves are freed they have not "gained" a right; their inherent rights have been restored.
So the second area of confusion exists around the terms "entitlement" and "reparation." Let's roll up sleeves and clear that up so we can actually get something done in this world before it is too late.
Remember that no one has a right to tax; taxing is a law, a mechanism, not a right. An entitlement is an expenditure of money gained by taxes, but it is a specific form of expenditure as a group is designated by "title" to receive funds. Thus that group is "entitled" because the name of the group segregates them from others so they receive special tax money. Let's use an obvious example.
The baby has been born and was not smothered, and so mother and father now have a person with a new title in their family "a child." Under USA tax law anyone who has the title "child" is entitled to being a tax deduction on the government tax forms. The baby was born with rights, but not with an entitlement. Entitlements are political, social, monarch or other human based decisions to confer or not, and has nothing to do with "rights." Too many people, both conservatives and liberals, think that they have a "right" to "entitlements." They may have a legal right, but we are speaking of human rights here. Human rights have become blurred by those who most advocate them by mixing them up with the concept of legal remedies and legal rights such as entitlements. Humans pass and enact entitlements for their own perceived fairness or merit agendas; humans do not create "rights" because human rights already exist.
So one must maintain clarity of thought and language, when one is debating or problem solving the giving of human laws/legal entitlements versus the problem of restoring deprived human rights. Too many well meaning people have ferocious arguments that are bull crap because they are not even speaking about either rights or entitlements/remedies/deprivation of rights (three different things). Do not "look" to law for "your rights," unless you mean "legal rights". In other words, no law states that a baby has the obvious human right to breathe the air. A law does say you can't smother a baby. If you look to human law for God given (natural, ethical) rights, you are lost from the very beginning, as human rights are in pre-existence, not conferred by law.
Human rights are like gold in a mine that is as yet undiscovered. The gold is already there and it's not there because some human "created gold" and then "injected it into a mountain," duh. Yet people can pass laws about who can own or explore the land. Those laws have nothing to do with the fact that the gold already exists, without the will or workings of mere human hands. Human rights exist and are eternal, no matter what a human being says or does. The problem is that many people deprive others of their human rights. It would be as if people told each other, "Well, the unmined gold in that mountain only exists if you have brown eyes, while if you have blue eyes that gold does not exist." We are not even speaking of the legality of pursuing the mining, we are speaking of a lack of reality of people who deprive others of their human rights, saying those human rights do not exist when they do, obviously, just as the gold exists whether you have brown eyes or blue.
This, young people, is one reason why faith in God gives, not takes away, strength, logic and clarity to human actions. Those who believe in God have a better comprehension of God given human rights. This is not because they necessarily "do better" or "behave better" or are "more moral" or "more ethical" than a well meaning atheist, for example. I'm not saying that at all. Rather, what I am saying is that non-believing human rights advocates live entirely within the framework of human created laws, and often they are caught and limited by the snares of human nature and laws. They say "you don't need to believe in God to be good," and that is true, but if they do not believe in God, then they believe only in the goodness of man, and that can only be understood, as a consequence, via deeds and laws. They inadvertently take their eyes off of the inherent truth of eternal inborn human rights (since they don't believe it is God given and inborn) and thus they think of rights as good behavior and laws. They put their own well meaning aim too low and too limited.
Like abortion, I am not making this about black/white slavery (notice I am speaking much of modern slavery, which is commercial/sexual and labor servitude) so do not try to discern agenda: I'm on everyone's side here. But I will now deliberately discuss the black/white slavery legacy in order to build upon the clarity of definitions by now tackling "remedy" and "reparations." I'm not using USA Native Americans in the case study because I need to keep this a global example.
First, to recap:
1. Human rights are inborn and pre-exist.
2. Human rights can be deprived, and often are, but are not created by humans.
3. Deprived human rights must be addressed and restored. In other words the depriving of rights must cease.
4. Entitlements are a special legal monetary consideration given to a designated group, which reflects the priorities of society.
5. Remedies are the means by which an injustice is corrected and rights restored, not "given."
Let's start with an easy example. Someone breaks into your house and steals your television. The police catch the person and give you back your television. The police "restore" your goods, your television, they do not need to write a law "giving you a right to own a television." You already had the right to the television.
Human rights are the same thing. The rights already exist, but some humans deprive others. Those humans need to be stopped from depriving others. When someone is stopped from depriving a person of their rights, all is automatically good again. The rights were always there, but someone blocked you from them. Now the rights are restored when the person stops depriving you of them.
But hold on, you say, damage is done when rights were deprived. I agree. But you must be clear in your mind what you are working on in a given moment: 1) restoring access to deprived rights and/or 2) compensating for the damage.
Let's say the thief smashed a window to get into your house to take the TV. If, in our silly but usefully clear example, TV represents a human right you already had, when the police remove the deprivation of your right as a problem (someone else had your TV) that concludes their role in this matter. Part of society must focus on ensuring that no one's rights are deprived. That is not the same as the part of society that now helps you to inventory the damage and get you back on your feet. The police do not fix your window, or give you money to have it fixed. They also do not take a window out of the thief's house and give it to you. Human rights campaigners must focus, like the TV recovering police, on removing obstacles to other people's access to their pre-existing human rights. Human rights should not at all complicate their essential first priority with issues of remedy and reparations, since those require human created processes, rules, law, procedures and logic. For example the homeowner may have an insurance policy and pursues remedy based not on human rights but the commercial agreement he or she has in place for insurance reimbursement.
Now, here's where we need to clear up the whole "slavery reparations" language. You might, being an attentive reader, now put two and two together and say, "Well, suppose the culture gives an entitlement that all people who had TV's stolen from them gets a $100 tax credit or payment to remedy that their rights were violated." Now you are talking! See? Now you are getting somewhere. You have separated the restoration of deprived human rights from the "picking up the mess left behind" process. That would be a logical use of the entitlement human made process, not right to address lingering damage from a now corrected deprivation of human rights. An entitlement is the creating of a group of people based on their title (titles such as senior citizens, social security recipients, children, people who had their TV's stolen) who now receive goods, services or usually monatary special consideration. Remember, a human baby has the pre-existing universal inborn right to be born and to breathe the air, a crime is committed (and that right was deprived) if the baby is smothered, but the decision to give a tax deduction to the successfully born baby is an entitlement based on the title "child."
Suppose someone tried to smother the baby in the hospital and while they did not succeed they did some real damage to the baby. This is now the area of remedy and it is entirely dealt with by human laws and processes. This is where morality must be one's compass and this is what the Bible means about being "righteous" and "just." Here's what I mean.
Righteousness and justice must be immediate and focused on the actual people involved in the problem. You go after the guy who stole the TV for remedy and damages, not anyone who ever stole a TV. You go after whoever tried to smother your baby (and perhaps the bad procedures of where this crime took place), but you don't sue every hospital and every person who ever wronged a child. In other words, remedy is targeted and immediate. Too many in society have drifted away from that understanding in their attempts to "recover" what is they are "entitled to." See? That's wrong language. No one is "entitled" to "remedy" unless an entitlement law exists that all people who had stolen TV sets (title) receive $100. Remedy is the attempt to provide justice and righteousness after a wrong has been committed, and there is a wide range of possible valid avenues for remedy, all based on human law, process and free will regarding goodness, charity and virtue.
Two people each had a TV stolen via smashed windows. One gets reimbursement from their insurance company. The other does not have insurance, but has a friend who owns a window business and the friend, through charity, rebuilds and replaces the window for free.
The term "reparations" is best understood as the financial punishment levied onto the combatant who is defeated in a war. So now, build on the foundation I have given to you about entitlements and remedy. If one country is attacked unjustly by another, yet defeats the aggressor at great cost, the aggrieved victorious country may well indeed impose reparations onto the aggressor losing nation. The most obvious example of that is World War I when huge, back breaking reparations were placed upon Germany, the aggressor and loser of the war. (And put aside all the nuance around who did what to whom and stick to the basic facts). In reparations you clobber the entire country because they are the unit by which the injustice occurred. So even the peace movement in the aggressor country would get clobbered by reparations, as no distinction is made. That's not entirely bad because we all understand enablers, whether willing or against their will. It's the theory that a country could not war if people such as farmers did not keep growing food and thus enable the war machine, even if the farmers themselves were against the war in the first place.
That is the slippery slope of reparations. They are strictly speaking logical but in reality there is a huge problem. The first problem is that it must be immediate. In other words, the second generation should not pay for the war of the first generation. The second problem is, as I stated, reparations are the largest and broadest of all entitlements. The title thus becomes "an entire country."
Those are the problems in logic and justice that even well meaning black/white slave reparations face, which is why it is a waste of time to discuss it, really. I am not at all marganizing what has been done, but I am trying to be your friend and your coach and teach you how to be alive and have your rights today. So bear with me as we use this sensitive subject in this case study.
You no doubt agree with me that reparations must be 1) immediate and 2) appropriately targeted. I bet you think I'm going to say it's "too late" for reparations, since legal slavery ended over one hundred years ago. Nope, I'm not going to say that. I'm going to help you get reparations. Here is what you need to do. You need to determine who took your TV or, rather, your ancestors' TV, and you have suffered as a result. Thus you need to research in Africa which tribes first captured your ancestors and name them as the first liable group for reparations. In general many Africans were captured and sold into slavery by rival African tribes. So you need to identify which ones were involved and proportion responsibility. Then you need to identify the European countries/monarchies that funded the slave capturing and transport. Your rights were first deprived by those who captured your ancestors, those who stole your TV, and by those who provided the capturing and transportation facilities. Your rights were then secondly in time sequence deprived by the slave owners who purchased and kept the slaves. Thus you must outline the shape of your "war reparations country" in order to appropriately target them. But in your case it is a virtual country, to use the computer term, who owe you reparations. Not to be political I will make up names, except for the USA.
Virtual reparations country: 30% the African tribes X, Y, Z who captured and sold slaves, 30% the European countries O, P, Q who seized slaves, provided men and ships to transport them, 40% the actual white people in the USA who sold, owned and profited from slaves.
You see the problem? Genuine reparations have one of two possiblities: 1) designate a country as being "guilty" such as was done in WWI or 2) identify those who actually conducted the wrong and apportion blame according to their actual participation.
So without taking sides, dear friends, I am simply teaching you the difference between genuine reparations and entitlements. A society could take the stance that every person who had an almost smothered child, or a stolen TV (and I'm not trivializing, but using the case study materials) gets an entitlement based on that title as a remedy. A society could try to designate that those who descended from an almost smothered child also receives an entitlement. The problem is that entitlement comes from your own participatory tax dollars, by definition. Reparations comes from "the other guy" the one who "actually did it." In order to do just reparations you have to research and apportion (wow, would that keep lawyers busy!) guilt and blame and then trace the descendants and apportion the cost of the reparations aka entitlement to them. You know that makes very little sense because the rule of reparations is that if done against a group you are indeed charging those who were innocent and against the war in the first place, and also their subsequent generations.
I don't want to get too far into transforming this into a slavery reparations case study since this is a case study about rights, and how rights are inborn and eternal, compared to human devices such as deprivation of rights, entitlements, remedy, crime and reparations.
But you see that many in public office, and privately, have their definitions all backwards and blurry and ultimately ineffective. As a result humans are farther from understanding their inherent God (or natural/ethical) given rights, rather than closer. So when I listen to political or legal debate I really find it so pointless because people are not even sure what they are arguing about factually and clearly, in truth. This is a problem of rights, entitlement and remedy policy in all parts of life in all societies and governments, where people have lost actual understanding of the ultimate motivation which is inborn rights of all humans and the removal of the means of depriving rights in the here and now. Without that first everything else is futile and even counterproductive fail. What good will it be if two hundred years from now people are arguing how to remedy the legacy of child sexual slavery and abuse, for example, if they allowed it to happen in the here and now? People, it's only one lived human life apiece, and one earth, and the consequences (and thus remedies) must happen in the here and now, based on universal recognition of authentic inborn human rights and removal of real deprivations of those human rights.
I hope that you have understood this and find it helpful.
The first word I want to clarify, since that is what the talk show mentioned, is "rights." The talk show hosts played a sound byte from a politician where the politician claimed that they (politicians) "create" or "give" rights to people. No, that is incorrect, and the talk show hosts were quick to point this out. Yet I know that many of you would think that rights are created. They are not created; rights are in existence, continual existence. It is the depriving of rights that is the problem in society, so that is the first part of what I want to explain.
Every human being, just by virtue of existing, has certain absolute rights. They are not "rights" conferred by other human beings. To calm those social justice people (and believe me, I am on your side, I am coaching you though in a grave error) let me start with an obvious example. When you are born, no one had to give you a piece of paper saying you had the right to breathe the air. I mean, duh. If someone smothers you, though, they have deprived you of your rights. Do you understand that? When a human being is born they have rights already in existence, the complete set of rights all humans need and are born into, not given to them. Now you can understand the wording of the Founding Fathers better, where they recognize these inherent pre-existing eternal rights, not confer them. Believers understand that these rights are given by God when humans were created in the first place. Ethical non-believers understand that even if they deny a God, those rights are already in place, and don't have to be spelled out by a set of human beings, because it it "natural law" (believers use that term too), or "the right thing to do," or the "ethics of human rights" or other God-neutral but ethic phrases and philosophies. Both believers and non-believers who are ethical understand that genuine rights are eternal, inborn, and already in existence.
That is the first part of what the past two generations have warped and misunderstood. They have taken the eternal and inborn existence of rights and forgotten what that really means. When did this happen? Pretty much in the 1960's when people started saying "I want my rights." Yes, they were correct to perceive that those who suffered injustice were being deprived of rights. But "rights" became shorthand for remedies. Rights are not remedies. Rights cannot be created. They are already in existence. Rights exist and every thinking human, whether a believer or not, needs to protect the language in order to maintain clarity that all people have certainty of the rights that are inborn of being human.
So whether you believe in God or not you must understand that in the USA the Founding Fathers recognized that certain rights are in pre-existence. Go back to the example of the baby being born having the right to breathe air, even though no one wrote a piece of paper saying that that this baby has a license or permit under the law to breathe air upon birth. Anyone who is not insane or an idiot understands that. Thus it is really easy to understand that the right to be alive (including being able to breathe) is automatic upon coming alive (being born), duh. If someone takes a pillow and smothers the baby on birth, two things have happened. The baby's right to life was violated and so the baby was, to use the correct language "deprived of his or her rights." So you have "rights" and their opposite, which is not the "lack of rights" but the "deprivation of rights." And here is where it had become naturally confusing: not only was the smothered baby deprived of his or her rights (to life), but a civil crime was committed, assault, battery and murder. This is where the thinking became blurry during the 1960's and got worse and worse until now when it seems no one understands simple basic concepts and definitions anymore.
Just a pause, this is not going to turn into an abortion argument, so put that aside and let us work together for clarity about human rights. I am using the baby, full term, born in a wanted situation (presumably) for its universal ease in understanding, not for agenda. Keep that in mind when I start to also discuss in this case study civil (racial) deprivation of rights.
The Founding Fathers recognized every human being already has three basic "rights:" life (the right to be alive and not to have life truncated, such as in the smothering), liberty (the right to be free and not in bondage to another human being) and the pursuit of happiness (the right to lead one's life in search of sustaining and satisfaction). If you think about this, this is such a profound insight. In a pithy way the Founding Fathers summarized, using three simple words and phrases, these universal God given (or natural law/ethics) rights and pre-exist.
So you say, well, why was slavery and so forth legal when one has the right to liberty? Now you are getting it. Notice to ask me that question you said slavery was "legal?" It was not, correctly speaking, a right; many laws and social customs are violation of and deprivation of inherent rights. The civil rights movement started out using the verbiage correctly, but society started eroding their understanding of the fact that it happens every day throughout human society, this problem:
1. All humans have inherent rights not created by humans but eternal and already in place.
2. Some humans deprive other human beings of those rights.
3. Some deprivation of rights are actually legal under human made laws, but they are always wrong as they are deprivation of rights.
4. Human rights must always trump laws that deprive of human rights, but in reality we see that often the opposite takes place.
5. Rights cannot be created; rights already exist. What humans can do is restore those who have been deprived of their rights to no longer be deprived.
So now let me tackle the second core area of confusion about rights and the law. We now understand that rights already exist, totally without human creation or control. We also recognize that the problem is humans who deprive other humans of their rights. Thus slavery, while legal, was not "a right," (even if in the lingo people used that word) but slavery was, instead, a legal but unrighteous deprivation of human rights. Remember there is worldwide slavery still going on, both of servitude and sexual, and thus we must urgently understand that there is no "right," either legal or for "free market" reasons, for slavery in any form at all. Period. When slaves are freed they have not "gained" a right; their inherent rights have been restored.
So the second area of confusion exists around the terms "entitlement" and "reparation." Let's roll up sleeves and clear that up so we can actually get something done in this world before it is too late.
Remember that no one has a right to tax; taxing is a law, a mechanism, not a right. An entitlement is an expenditure of money gained by taxes, but it is a specific form of expenditure as a group is designated by "title" to receive funds. Thus that group is "entitled" because the name of the group segregates them from others so they receive special tax money. Let's use an obvious example.
The baby has been born and was not smothered, and so mother and father now have a person with a new title in their family "a child." Under USA tax law anyone who has the title "child" is entitled to being a tax deduction on the government tax forms. The baby was born with rights, but not with an entitlement. Entitlements are political, social, monarch or other human based decisions to confer or not, and has nothing to do with "rights." Too many people, both conservatives and liberals, think that they have a "right" to "entitlements." They may have a legal right, but we are speaking of human rights here. Human rights have become blurred by those who most advocate them by mixing them up with the concept of legal remedies and legal rights such as entitlements. Humans pass and enact entitlements for their own perceived fairness or merit agendas; humans do not create "rights" because human rights already exist.
So one must maintain clarity of thought and language, when one is debating or problem solving the giving of human laws/legal entitlements versus the problem of restoring deprived human rights. Too many well meaning people have ferocious arguments that are bull crap because they are not even speaking about either rights or entitlements/remedies/deprivation of rights (three different things). Do not "look" to law for "your rights," unless you mean "legal rights". In other words, no law states that a baby has the obvious human right to breathe the air. A law does say you can't smother a baby. If you look to human law for God given (natural, ethical) rights, you are lost from the very beginning, as human rights are in pre-existence, not conferred by law.
Human rights are like gold in a mine that is as yet undiscovered. The gold is already there and it's not there because some human "created gold" and then "injected it into a mountain," duh. Yet people can pass laws about who can own or explore the land. Those laws have nothing to do with the fact that the gold already exists, without the will or workings of mere human hands. Human rights exist and are eternal, no matter what a human being says or does. The problem is that many people deprive others of their human rights. It would be as if people told each other, "Well, the unmined gold in that mountain only exists if you have brown eyes, while if you have blue eyes that gold does not exist." We are not even speaking of the legality of pursuing the mining, we are speaking of a lack of reality of people who deprive others of their human rights, saying those human rights do not exist when they do, obviously, just as the gold exists whether you have brown eyes or blue.
This, young people, is one reason why faith in God gives, not takes away, strength, logic and clarity to human actions. Those who believe in God have a better comprehension of God given human rights. This is not because they necessarily "do better" or "behave better" or are "more moral" or "more ethical" than a well meaning atheist, for example. I'm not saying that at all. Rather, what I am saying is that non-believing human rights advocates live entirely within the framework of human created laws, and often they are caught and limited by the snares of human nature and laws. They say "you don't need to believe in God to be good," and that is true, but if they do not believe in God, then they believe only in the goodness of man, and that can only be understood, as a consequence, via deeds and laws. They inadvertently take their eyes off of the inherent truth of eternal inborn human rights (since they don't believe it is God given and inborn) and thus they think of rights as good behavior and laws. They put their own well meaning aim too low and too limited.
Like abortion, I am not making this about black/white slavery (notice I am speaking much of modern slavery, which is commercial/sexual and labor servitude) so do not try to discern agenda: I'm on everyone's side here. But I will now deliberately discuss the black/white slavery legacy in order to build upon the clarity of definitions by now tackling "remedy" and "reparations." I'm not using USA Native Americans in the case study because I need to keep this a global example.
First, to recap:
1. Human rights are inborn and pre-exist.
2. Human rights can be deprived, and often are, but are not created by humans.
3. Deprived human rights must be addressed and restored. In other words the depriving of rights must cease.
4. Entitlements are a special legal monetary consideration given to a designated group, which reflects the priorities of society.
5. Remedies are the means by which an injustice is corrected and rights restored, not "given."
Let's start with an easy example. Someone breaks into your house and steals your television. The police catch the person and give you back your television. The police "restore" your goods, your television, they do not need to write a law "giving you a right to own a television." You already had the right to the television.
Human rights are the same thing. The rights already exist, but some humans deprive others. Those humans need to be stopped from depriving others. When someone is stopped from depriving a person of their rights, all is automatically good again. The rights were always there, but someone blocked you from them. Now the rights are restored when the person stops depriving you of them.
But hold on, you say, damage is done when rights were deprived. I agree. But you must be clear in your mind what you are working on in a given moment: 1) restoring access to deprived rights and/or 2) compensating for the damage.
Let's say the thief smashed a window to get into your house to take the TV. If, in our silly but usefully clear example, TV represents a human right you already had, when the police remove the deprivation of your right as a problem (someone else had your TV) that concludes their role in this matter. Part of society must focus on ensuring that no one's rights are deprived. That is not the same as the part of society that now helps you to inventory the damage and get you back on your feet. The police do not fix your window, or give you money to have it fixed. They also do not take a window out of the thief's house and give it to you. Human rights campaigners must focus, like the TV recovering police, on removing obstacles to other people's access to their pre-existing human rights. Human rights should not at all complicate their essential first priority with issues of remedy and reparations, since those require human created processes, rules, law, procedures and logic. For example the homeowner may have an insurance policy and pursues remedy based not on human rights but the commercial agreement he or she has in place for insurance reimbursement.
Now, here's where we need to clear up the whole "slavery reparations" language. You might, being an attentive reader, now put two and two together and say, "Well, suppose the culture gives an entitlement that all people who had TV's stolen from them gets a $100 tax credit or payment to remedy that their rights were violated." Now you are talking! See? Now you are getting somewhere. You have separated the restoration of deprived human rights from the "picking up the mess left behind" process. That would be a logical use of the entitlement human made process, not right to address lingering damage from a now corrected deprivation of human rights. An entitlement is the creating of a group of people based on their title (titles such as senior citizens, social security recipients, children, people who had their TV's stolen) who now receive goods, services or usually monatary special consideration. Remember, a human baby has the pre-existing universal inborn right to be born and to breathe the air, a crime is committed (and that right was deprived) if the baby is smothered, but the decision to give a tax deduction to the successfully born baby is an entitlement based on the title "child."
Suppose someone tried to smother the baby in the hospital and while they did not succeed they did some real damage to the baby. This is now the area of remedy and it is entirely dealt with by human laws and processes. This is where morality must be one's compass and this is what the Bible means about being "righteous" and "just." Here's what I mean.
Righteousness and justice must be immediate and focused on the actual people involved in the problem. You go after the guy who stole the TV for remedy and damages, not anyone who ever stole a TV. You go after whoever tried to smother your baby (and perhaps the bad procedures of where this crime took place), but you don't sue every hospital and every person who ever wronged a child. In other words, remedy is targeted and immediate. Too many in society have drifted away from that understanding in their attempts to "recover" what is they are "entitled to." See? That's wrong language. No one is "entitled" to "remedy" unless an entitlement law exists that all people who had stolen TV sets (title) receive $100. Remedy is the attempt to provide justice and righteousness after a wrong has been committed, and there is a wide range of possible valid avenues for remedy, all based on human law, process and free will regarding goodness, charity and virtue.
Two people each had a TV stolen via smashed windows. One gets reimbursement from their insurance company. The other does not have insurance, but has a friend who owns a window business and the friend, through charity, rebuilds and replaces the window for free.
The term "reparations" is best understood as the financial punishment levied onto the combatant who is defeated in a war. So now, build on the foundation I have given to you about entitlements and remedy. If one country is attacked unjustly by another, yet defeats the aggressor at great cost, the aggrieved victorious country may well indeed impose reparations onto the aggressor losing nation. The most obvious example of that is World War I when huge, back breaking reparations were placed upon Germany, the aggressor and loser of the war. (And put aside all the nuance around who did what to whom and stick to the basic facts). In reparations you clobber the entire country because they are the unit by which the injustice occurred. So even the peace movement in the aggressor country would get clobbered by reparations, as no distinction is made. That's not entirely bad because we all understand enablers, whether willing or against their will. It's the theory that a country could not war if people such as farmers did not keep growing food and thus enable the war machine, even if the farmers themselves were against the war in the first place.
That is the slippery slope of reparations. They are strictly speaking logical but in reality there is a huge problem. The first problem is that it must be immediate. In other words, the second generation should not pay for the war of the first generation. The second problem is, as I stated, reparations are the largest and broadest of all entitlements. The title thus becomes "an entire country."
Those are the problems in logic and justice that even well meaning black/white slave reparations face, which is why it is a waste of time to discuss it, really. I am not at all marganizing what has been done, but I am trying to be your friend and your coach and teach you how to be alive and have your rights today. So bear with me as we use this sensitive subject in this case study.
You no doubt agree with me that reparations must be 1) immediate and 2) appropriately targeted. I bet you think I'm going to say it's "too late" for reparations, since legal slavery ended over one hundred years ago. Nope, I'm not going to say that. I'm going to help you get reparations. Here is what you need to do. You need to determine who took your TV or, rather, your ancestors' TV, and you have suffered as a result. Thus you need to research in Africa which tribes first captured your ancestors and name them as the first liable group for reparations. In general many Africans were captured and sold into slavery by rival African tribes. So you need to identify which ones were involved and proportion responsibility. Then you need to identify the European countries/monarchies that funded the slave capturing and transport. Your rights were first deprived by those who captured your ancestors, those who stole your TV, and by those who provided the capturing and transportation facilities. Your rights were then secondly in time sequence deprived by the slave owners who purchased and kept the slaves. Thus you must outline the shape of your "war reparations country" in order to appropriately target them. But in your case it is a virtual country, to use the computer term, who owe you reparations. Not to be political I will make up names, except for the USA.
Virtual reparations country: 30% the African tribes X, Y, Z who captured and sold slaves, 30% the European countries O, P, Q who seized slaves, provided men and ships to transport them, 40% the actual white people in the USA who sold, owned and profited from slaves.
You see the problem? Genuine reparations have one of two possiblities: 1) designate a country as being "guilty" such as was done in WWI or 2) identify those who actually conducted the wrong and apportion blame according to their actual participation.
So without taking sides, dear friends, I am simply teaching you the difference between genuine reparations and entitlements. A society could take the stance that every person who had an almost smothered child, or a stolen TV (and I'm not trivializing, but using the case study materials) gets an entitlement based on that title as a remedy. A society could try to designate that those who descended from an almost smothered child also receives an entitlement. The problem is that entitlement comes from your own participatory tax dollars, by definition. Reparations comes from "the other guy" the one who "actually did it." In order to do just reparations you have to research and apportion (wow, would that keep lawyers busy!) guilt and blame and then trace the descendants and apportion the cost of the reparations aka entitlement to them. You know that makes very little sense because the rule of reparations is that if done against a group you are indeed charging those who were innocent and against the war in the first place, and also their subsequent generations.
I don't want to get too far into transforming this into a slavery reparations case study since this is a case study about rights, and how rights are inborn and eternal, compared to human devices such as deprivation of rights, entitlements, remedy, crime and reparations.
But you see that many in public office, and privately, have their definitions all backwards and blurry and ultimately ineffective. As a result humans are farther from understanding their inherent God (or natural/ethical) given rights, rather than closer. So when I listen to political or legal debate I really find it so pointless because people are not even sure what they are arguing about factually and clearly, in truth. This is a problem of rights, entitlement and remedy policy in all parts of life in all societies and governments, where people have lost actual understanding of the ultimate motivation which is inborn rights of all humans and the removal of the means of depriving rights in the here and now. Without that first everything else is futile and even counterproductive fail. What good will it be if two hundred years from now people are arguing how to remedy the legacy of child sexual slavery and abuse, for example, if they allowed it to happen in the here and now? People, it's only one lived human life apiece, and one earth, and the consequences (and thus remedies) must happen in the here and now, based on universal recognition of authentic inborn human rights and removal of real deprivations of those human rights.
I hope that you have understood this and find it helpful.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Bible reading: Genesis 37:23-27
When Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of the long tunic he had on.
They seized him and threw him into the cistern, which was empty and dry.
Then they sat down to eat.
Looking up, they saw a caravan of Ismaelites coming from Galaad, their camals laden with gum, balm, and myrrh, with which they were on their way down to Egypt.
Then Juda said to his brothers, "What is gained by killing our brother and concealing his blood?
Let us sell him to the Ismaelites..."
They seized him and threw him into the cistern, which was empty and dry.
Then they sat down to eat.
Looking up, they saw a caravan of Ismaelites coming from Galaad, their camals laden with gum, balm, and myrrh, with which they were on their way down to Egypt.
Then Juda said to his brothers, "What is gained by killing our brother and concealing his blood?
Let us sell him to the Ismaelites..."
Friday, March 6, 2009
Exercise examples and more context information
Based on what I wrote, imagine this.
1. You turn on "past TV" and watch the earliest of human development, where they first organized into groups and then at some point used weapons to war against other groups, for whatever reasons. You watch day after day of one group overpowering the other group and slaughtering everyone in the group, including, in fact, especially the infants. So one group would war and wipe out the other group: not armies but tribal family and clan based units. The whole objective of each conflict is to kill all of the others, probably because they competed for the same food. You watch day after day of these events over a period of thousands of years.
And then one day you notice one group declares war on another group, but instead of slaughtering them all, this winning group decides to keep the other group alive and force them to work for them. You applaud... and then you just realize that you've applauded the development of slavery.
2. You oppose inoculations against disease because you think something about them "causes" other ills, such as autism, or that they are a privacy imposition.
You turn on "past TV" and watch day after day of people walking around with even one disease, let's say smallpox because it is so visible. You can watch as it actually happened millions of individuals suffer from and die from the selected case study disease. So you can "be there" in true "reality TV" as every family loses at least one child, maybe more, to rampant disease, and entire families are wiped out. Like true "reality TV" you feel their pain and you say, "If only something could have been done." Your heart is wrung after watching let's say the hundredth episode of "past TV" of a smallpox infected person suffering and dying. You then flip the channels and listen in as generations of scientists wonder what caused the disease and work to develop cures, some of them primitive and totally wrong, while, as intellectual knowledge grows, others start to understand and work on cures. They start to develop inoculations. You applaud them. Huh?
With these examples of "past TV" you can structure your own logical imaginings of the day to day, like watching paint dry or a faucet dripping, of how humans really lived, and how they reached the conclusions and outcomes that they did. It puts your modern opinions within their proper context of what factually actually happened.
Think of any of the social, environment, moral or business issues we face today, and imagine what "past TV" would show you about those day to day experiences, and how humans without drama lived and adapted. Adaptation is different from evolution or enlightenment by the way. Humans adapt their behavior according to real circumstances, and that can occur within a moment in the blink of an eye or over generations.
Some terminology and concepts:
Quick adaptation is, for example, you change a driving habit instantly when you find one day you have an accident due to it (you may stop texting while driving after an accident). Slow adaptation is a group of people learn to grow different crops for food when the weather changes and they no longer have enough rain for what they used to grow.
Evolution differs because that would mean the people who used to eat the original food die out and only ones who can eat the new food survive and reproduce, so it is a biological outcome to a long time "opportunity" (an advantage or disadvantage that one's body must respond to through survival or not). So a bad opportunity (not enough rain to grow your crops) for evolution arises and one way that would be "solved" if adaptation is not used (because humans are too primitive) is that they stay in place and everyone dies out except the few people who can eat the local shrubbery. Evolution takes place biologically, while adaptation is mental. Humans adapt to the loss of rain and their original crop that they depend on by growing a new crop that is drought resistant or moving to a place where their original food can be found. Primitive humans and animals have evolution "imposed" on them when they lack the ability to act through adaptation. Thus they evolve by dying out until only the population that has the minority ability to eat what is available survives and passes on those genes.
Enlightenment is not "answers to problems" such as what to eat. Enlightenment is having the proper spiritual context for the ongoing human condition. For example, Jesus pointed out to the disciples that the lilies are the most beautiful of beings all on their own, without human adornment, and that the sparrows can find their own food. Jesus is enlightening the disciples about how much God proportionately loves humans for if he bestows the love of beauty and the finding of food on the humblest of creatures, how much more so does he love humans who are conscious and who know him? Jesus does not give a textbook exposition of the genetics of lily colors and spots or pointers on where the sparrows can find even more food. Thus moderns must stop thinking that "enlightenment" is "problem solving." It is not. Lack of that understanding is part of the "aliens with answer" and "psychics tell you what will happen" dead end trap of much modern thinking.
The human problem solving tools are:
1) Adaptation (change behavior)
2) Evolution (have circumstances of life and death imposed on you).
Enlightenment is not a problem solving tool.
So, by the way, go back to the modern person who opposes inoculations based on let's say an autism fear. I am not telling that person to stop being cautious or even to change their belief. What I am showing them is that they need to understand the other position fully. They need to understand the full context of consequences of no inoculation or spotty inoculation since it is not an "individual" decision. Past TV shows that it's called "public health" for a reason: disease management is not an "individual choice" or "individual risk" by its nature, even though free society to some extent respects individual non-compliance. What I am saying is that those who support more research or who have fears about inoculations, in that example, need to understand the context of risk profile and history for all, not just themselves, that they are making their assumed argument. If people truly understand their own history and the facts they find themselves cheering the very developments that they may later question, whether the questioning is legitimate or magical thinking.
Part of problem solving, via adaptation, is having the facts. Suppose the texting driver has an accident because she was distracted while texting and looked away from the road and crashed. She would reasonably stop texting. However, suppose her accident was caused because her tire exploded? Adaptation would then shift to ensuring that future tires are safe and properly pressurized, while not texting is a secondary adaptation because if she was not texting maybe she'd have a split second advantage as she fought to control the now out of control car. Improper adaptation would be to continue to have unsafe tires and to text, but to put a bigger bumper on the car. See, this is why people must have clear thinking about past and present reality, and primary and secondary causes and effects. This, actually, used to be taught in school :-) That's why I'm teaching you the terminologies and principles as they used to be taught in your average every day educational system to the young.
1. You turn on "past TV" and watch the earliest of human development, where they first organized into groups and then at some point used weapons to war against other groups, for whatever reasons. You watch day after day of one group overpowering the other group and slaughtering everyone in the group, including, in fact, especially the infants. So one group would war and wipe out the other group: not armies but tribal family and clan based units. The whole objective of each conflict is to kill all of the others, probably because they competed for the same food. You watch day after day of these events over a period of thousands of years.
And then one day you notice one group declares war on another group, but instead of slaughtering them all, this winning group decides to keep the other group alive and force them to work for them. You applaud... and then you just realize that you've applauded the development of slavery.
2. You oppose inoculations against disease because you think something about them "causes" other ills, such as autism, or that they are a privacy imposition.
You turn on "past TV" and watch day after day of people walking around with even one disease, let's say smallpox because it is so visible. You can watch as it actually happened millions of individuals suffer from and die from the selected case study disease. So you can "be there" in true "reality TV" as every family loses at least one child, maybe more, to rampant disease, and entire families are wiped out. Like true "reality TV" you feel their pain and you say, "If only something could have been done." Your heart is wrung after watching let's say the hundredth episode of "past TV" of a smallpox infected person suffering and dying. You then flip the channels and listen in as generations of scientists wonder what caused the disease and work to develop cures, some of them primitive and totally wrong, while, as intellectual knowledge grows, others start to understand and work on cures. They start to develop inoculations. You applaud them. Huh?
With these examples of "past TV" you can structure your own logical imaginings of the day to day, like watching paint dry or a faucet dripping, of how humans really lived, and how they reached the conclusions and outcomes that they did. It puts your modern opinions within their proper context of what factually actually happened.
Think of any of the social, environment, moral or business issues we face today, and imagine what "past TV" would show you about those day to day experiences, and how humans without drama lived and adapted. Adaptation is different from evolution or enlightenment by the way. Humans adapt their behavior according to real circumstances, and that can occur within a moment in the blink of an eye or over generations.
Some terminology and concepts:
Quick adaptation is, for example, you change a driving habit instantly when you find one day you have an accident due to it (you may stop texting while driving after an accident). Slow adaptation is a group of people learn to grow different crops for food when the weather changes and they no longer have enough rain for what they used to grow.
Evolution differs because that would mean the people who used to eat the original food die out and only ones who can eat the new food survive and reproduce, so it is a biological outcome to a long time "opportunity" (an advantage or disadvantage that one's body must respond to through survival or not). So a bad opportunity (not enough rain to grow your crops) for evolution arises and one way that would be "solved" if adaptation is not used (because humans are too primitive) is that they stay in place and everyone dies out except the few people who can eat the local shrubbery. Evolution takes place biologically, while adaptation is mental. Humans adapt to the loss of rain and their original crop that they depend on by growing a new crop that is drought resistant or moving to a place where their original food can be found. Primitive humans and animals have evolution "imposed" on them when they lack the ability to act through adaptation. Thus they evolve by dying out until only the population that has the minority ability to eat what is available survives and passes on those genes.
Enlightenment is not "answers to problems" such as what to eat. Enlightenment is having the proper spiritual context for the ongoing human condition. For example, Jesus pointed out to the disciples that the lilies are the most beautiful of beings all on their own, without human adornment, and that the sparrows can find their own food. Jesus is enlightening the disciples about how much God proportionately loves humans for if he bestows the love of beauty and the finding of food on the humblest of creatures, how much more so does he love humans who are conscious and who know him? Jesus does not give a textbook exposition of the genetics of lily colors and spots or pointers on where the sparrows can find even more food. Thus moderns must stop thinking that "enlightenment" is "problem solving." It is not. Lack of that understanding is part of the "aliens with answer" and "psychics tell you what will happen" dead end trap of much modern thinking.
The human problem solving tools are:
1) Adaptation (change behavior)
2) Evolution (have circumstances of life and death imposed on you).
Enlightenment is not a problem solving tool.
So, by the way, go back to the modern person who opposes inoculations based on let's say an autism fear. I am not telling that person to stop being cautious or even to change their belief. What I am showing them is that they need to understand the other position fully. They need to understand the full context of consequences of no inoculation or spotty inoculation since it is not an "individual" decision. Past TV shows that it's called "public health" for a reason: disease management is not an "individual choice" or "individual risk" by its nature, even though free society to some extent respects individual non-compliance. What I am saying is that those who support more research or who have fears about inoculations, in that example, need to understand the context of risk profile and history for all, not just themselves, that they are making their assumed argument. If people truly understand their own history and the facts they find themselves cheering the very developments that they may later question, whether the questioning is legitimate or magical thinking.
Part of problem solving, via adaptation, is having the facts. Suppose the texting driver has an accident because she was distracted while texting and looked away from the road and crashed. She would reasonably stop texting. However, suppose her accident was caused because her tire exploded? Adaptation would then shift to ensuring that future tires are safe and properly pressurized, while not texting is a secondary adaptation because if she was not texting maybe she'd have a split second advantage as she fought to control the now out of control car. Improper adaptation would be to continue to have unsafe tires and to text, but to put a bigger bumper on the car. See, this is why people must have clear thinking about past and present reality, and primary and secondary causes and effects. This, actually, used to be taught in school :-) That's why I'm teaching you the terminologies and principles as they used to be taught in your average every day educational system to the young.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Grant's insistence on black prisoner release
Regular readers know that I am a deep admirer of not only President Lincoln but also Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant who also became President. Read about this exchange of letters between Grant of the North and Lee of the South. This was in 1864 when there was some political interaction regarding possibilities of peace between Lincoln and the Confederacy, but they fell through due to the South's insistence on retaining slaves. Meanwhile on the battlefield there were also negotiations:
The Confederate answer came from General Lee a few weeks later. He proposed to Grant an exchange of prisoners captured by each side in a Union attack and Confederate counterattack ten miles southeast of Richmond on September 28-30. Several black regiments participated, and some of their men were captured. Grant agreed to the exchange so long as the black soldiers were included. But Lee replied that "Negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subject of exchange and were not included in my proposition." That was unfortunate, responded Grant, because the U.S. "Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers." Lee's refusal to honor this obligation therefore "induces me to decline making the exchanges you ask." (p. 248).
From "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" by James M. McPherson, The Penguin Press, 2008.
The Confederate answer came from General Lee a few weeks later. He proposed to Grant an exchange of prisoners captured by each side in a Union attack and Confederate counterattack ten miles southeast of Richmond on September 28-30. Several black regiments participated, and some of their men were captured. Grant agreed to the exchange so long as the black soldiers were included. But Lee replied that "Negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subject of exchange and were not included in my proposition." That was unfortunate, responded Grant, because the U.S. "Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers." Lee's refusal to honor this obligation therefore "induces me to decline making the exchanges you ask." (p. 248).
From "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" by James M. McPherson, The Penguin Press, 2008.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
"The female of the species..."
I have never underestimated the potential for cruelty from women, and how easily it evolves from the bullies in school. Here is an inevitable example.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/women-the-new-pimps-in-human-trafficking-trade-20090212-85zr.html
Women the new pimps in human trafficking trade
Yuko Narushima
February 13, 2009
Page 1 of 2 Single Page View
WOMEN are emerging as the pimps of the global trade in humans with a third of countries reporting more female traffickers than male, a United Nations study shows.
The first international report into the scope of human trafficking, published yesterday, found a disproportionate number of female perpetrators, more than in any other crime, selling other women into slavery in countries including Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/women-the-new-pimps-in-human-trafficking-trade-20090212-85zr.html
Women the new pimps in human trafficking trade
Yuko Narushima
February 13, 2009
Page 1 of 2 Single Page View
WOMEN are emerging as the pimps of the global trade in humans with a third of countries reporting more female traffickers than male, a United Nations study shows.
The first international report into the scope of human trafficking, published yesterday, found a disproportionate number of female perpetrators, more than in any other crime, selling other women into slavery in countries including Australia.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Case study: Lincoln using logic
I have been sharing with readers tips on how to use reasoning and logic to carefully explore even (and I'd say even especially) those things that seem simple and obvious. Read this famous example of how Lincoln described the problem of slavery, and developed principles through which to reason and deduce the available options and implied consequences:
If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I may seize the nearest stick and kill it. [Slavery in itself.]
But if I found that snake in bed with my children that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. [Slavery in the South.]
Much more, if I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn oath not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. [Slavery in the South as seen from the North.]
But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide. [Slavery in the territories.]
Lincoln was very careful in framing these parallels (delivered to a Connecticut audience early in 1860). He does not speak of Southerners as belonging to different states, but as "neighbors" with whom one has a solemn agreement. Nor does he palliate the evil of slavery-it is a snake no matter where one finds it, and it endangers the Southerners' children. But in denouncing the evil, in trying to contain it, in hoping for new agreements, Lincoln will not divide the "one people" that declared itself united in the Declaration... (Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, page 138-9).
Now, notice that being rationale and thoughtful about the layers of consequence of action did not stop Lincoln from taking the fateful and correct step of eradicating slavery. So one should not fear that being honest about the layers of implication and potential consequences of a monumental problem or decision will lead to inaction. Lincoln followed the steps of his logic, thoughtfully escalating, and it was the South who repeatedly refused to use a similar process of accommodation. Thus Lincoln concluded that the South had removed itself from the protection and rights of the Union, and thus was no longer the neighbor with whom he had a solemn oath (the third analogy) and realized that war would be necessary, and there would be the damage (the high price of war) of analogy two, which is to remove the snake of slavery that is already in bed with the children (as Lincoln continued to insist and explain that it was one nation, one set of children, not the "north" and the "south.")
Think about Iraq. When the decision was made to invade and occupy Iraq, you can see reading this excerpt from Lincoln's thought process how inadequate the thought process was regarding Iraq and the implications of various sets of actions. For example, one of my biggest criticisms of the Iraq strategy was the incomprehensible dismantling of the Iraqi army, rather than turning them into the service of the country without Hussein. Lincoln was very diligent and rationale in "enemy identification," which was slavery itself, not the people. The USA spoke the game of liberating the people, but they had obviously assigned "snake" categories to groups of people and institutions without any genuine reasoning and thoughtfulness. Thus to conclude that the army was part of the problem rather than solution, once the head of the snake was cut off, was a dire and stupid error.
Diplomats and other government officials can benefit greatly from the study of Lincoln, as you can see in this example, and use what they read to illuminate a more mature and well informed steps of progress in international relationships and in the necessary conflicts when they do arise.
If Lincoln, for all the evil of slavery and all the provocation he was subjected to when trying to reason with the South, can and did retain his view of them, ultimately, still being Americans, still being neighbors, still being children with his children, then we all would do well to do likewise in world affairs and diplomacy.
Friday, January 23, 2009
More about freed slaves burying Union dead
Here is more about the photograph of the freed slaves disinterring and reburying with dignity the remains of the Union soldiers.
First, here is the background of the battle depicted in the picture. This is from the book “A. Lincoln: A Biography” by Ronald C. White, Jr:
Lincoln could see the cost of the battle in the streets of Washington as the wounded arrived throughout the day and night. Attorney General Edward Bates wrote in his diary on May 15, 1864, “For the last 8 or 10 days, the most terrible battles of the war have occurred in Virginia. The carnage has been unexampled.” After so much bloodshed, questions began to rise about the price of victory. Grant and Meade had suffered [my emphasis in bold letters here:] SIXTY THOUSAND CASUALTIES IN ONE MONTH OF FIGHTING, almost the size of Lee’s entire army. [My comment: again, compare that the USA has lost three to four thousand troops in all of Iraq and Afghanistan; the Union army lost sixty thousand in one month in the war against slavery].
The carnage increased as Grant attacked the crossroads called Cold Harbor at the beginning of June. Lee, for whom Grant had increasing respect, was turning this war into a war of attrition, and so Grant decided to mount a massive assault. On the morning of June 3, 1864, hundreds of troops pinned their names and addresses to their uniforms in a premonition of what lay ahead. In the next hours, Union soldiers charged forward and were met by a withering hail of bullets. Grant lost 7,000 men, while Lee, fighting from trenches, suffered 1,500 casualties. At the end of the day Grant stopped the attack, admitting defeat. The Union army learned that day what European armies would learn a half a century later in World War I: the deadly horrors of trench warfare. General George Mead wrote to his wife, “I think Grant has had his eyes opened, and is willing to admit now that Virginia and Lee’s army is not Tennessee and Bragg’s army.”
The public began to turn against Grant, but Lincoln did not. The president told Noah Brooks, “I wish when you write and speak to people you would do all you can to correct the impression that the war in Virginia will end right off victoriously.” He continued, “To me the most trying thing in al this war is that people are too sanguine; they expect too much at once.” Lincoln, who would not make predictions, told Brooks, “As God is my judge, I shall be satisfied if we are over with the fight in Virginia within a year” (p. 632).
So I went back to the bookstore today after lunch and bought the book where I had seen this tremendously moving photograph that I described in the previous day’s blogging. The book is “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief” by James M. McPherson. Here is the caption to the two photographs that I described:
The grim harvest of war is illustrated by these two photographs. The one on the left was taken at Gettysburg on July 5, 1863, two days after the battle, showing the bloated corpses of Union soldiers killed there. The other photograph depicts freed slaves after the war disinterring the remains of Union soldiers who had been killed at Cold Harbor, Virginia, for the reburial in the national military cemetery established there. Those killed at Gettysburg were also reinterred in one of the first such cemeteries, where on November 19, 1863, Lincoln consecrated “these honored dead” and resolved that they “shall not have died in vain.” Seventy-two national cemeteries were ultimately created as the final resting places for Union soldiers who died in the Civil War-and also for later veterans of the U.S. armed forces. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (photographs located between pages 174-175).
Thus by cross referencing two books I found a description of the dreadful battle and Union soldiers toll with the photograph of the freed slaves disinterring the Union bodies and taking them to the new national cemeteries for honorable burial.
The photograph shows four freed slaves in the background digging with shovels into the ground to unearth the bodies. In the foreground a freed slave is crouched next to a simple stretcher upon which they have been piling the remains of the Union soldiers. There are five skulls visible among a pile of their bones and uniforms, and a leg with a boot dangles over the side. It is a remarkable and unforgettable photograph, one of the many treasures of the Library of Congress.
So there are two things we can think about. One is that in Washington, as President Obama was inaugurated, we all thought of how Washington was built by slaves. But we should also remember that Abraham Lincoln saw a constant inflow of the dead and wounded Union soldiers on that very same ground, who had fought and died to free the slaves. In one Virginia battle the dead Union soldiers were piled five deep.
I am making much of this point because young Afro-Americans have grown up only knowing one side of the equation, those who considered them less than human, less than objects and chattel. However, I believe that the self esteem of young Afro-Americans would have been raised if they understood the magnitude of the other side, which is that there were 600,000 Union casualties, dead and wounded, as the Union soldiers fought for the freedom of the slaves. To feel that no one but Abraham Lincoln cared about your ancestors is to forget that hundreds of thousands of people cared with their lives.
So my second thing that you can think about is that those who live near or pass by Cold Harbor, Virginia can stop and contemplate a real moment of history and Afro-American pride. That is in knowing that the Union soldiers who died by the thousand were not left to rot on the battlefield, but were disinterred by the freed slaves and buried in places of honor established by Lincoln and the government. That is something I’d want to tell my children about, and I guess I am now.
While researching this item I came across this passage from the book “Tried by War:”
When the news of Richmond’s fall reached the North, wild celebrations broke out. Lincoln felt the same way, but his response was more restrained. He met with Grant in Petersburg on April 3 and discussed the pursuit of Lee, which would bring him to bay at Appomattox six days later. Meanwhile Lincoln returned to Adm. David D. Porter’s flagship USS Malvern, anchored in the James River, and told Porter: “Thank God I have lived to see this! It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone. I want to see Richmond.”
Porter was dubious about taking the president to see the still-burning enemy capital two days after it fell. But Lincoln insisted, so they went. With an escort of just ten sailors, he walked the streets while thousands of freed slaves crowded to see the Moses they believed had led them to freedom. “I know that I am free,” shouted one woman, “for I have seen father Abraham and felt him.” To one black man who fell on his knees before him, an embarrassed Lincoln said: “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.” The president was profoundly moved by these encounters (p. 261).
By the way, notice that this reference to who and who is not God is on page 261. I’ve written before about how the media is infested with Antichrist obsessed people with weak mental and moral capabilities, who manipulate significant text in even textbooks to occur on what they consider a mystical number of the Antichrist and the beast, 126, 261 and 621. You can read more about this subliminal pushing of occult Antichrist agenda by following the labels I include on this post. It has ruined my enjoyment of media, such as books, for many years now. If I were Afro-American I would also be embarrassed and enraged to be pawns in these dispensationalist and cultists’ manipulation, by the way. It’s quite an insult to be used that way when Afro-Americans have traditionally been the most faithful to pure Christianity and their God. Lincoln would be mortified that his words and deeds have been exploited by those who manipulate for occult purposes.
I have in front of me the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which I have quoted from before. I will close this blogging with the first note that he wrote to Robert E. Lee after the fall of Richmond. In a future blog posting I might group all the correspondence together so you can read and enjoy it as I have. I include it because General Grant was quite stoic about the incredible loss of life, and it is here as he urges Lee to surrender (which Lee rejects) that Grant refers to the carnage.
Headquarters Armies of the U.S., 5 P.M., April 7, 1865
General R. E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.
The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that position of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
U.S. GRANT,
Lieut.-General
First, here is the background of the battle depicted in the picture. This is from the book “A. Lincoln: A Biography” by Ronald C. White, Jr:
Lincoln could see the cost of the battle in the streets of Washington as the wounded arrived throughout the day and night. Attorney General Edward Bates wrote in his diary on May 15, 1864, “For the last 8 or 10 days, the most terrible battles of the war have occurred in Virginia. The carnage has been unexampled.” After so much bloodshed, questions began to rise about the price of victory. Grant and Meade had suffered [my emphasis in bold letters here:] SIXTY THOUSAND CASUALTIES IN ONE MONTH OF FIGHTING, almost the size of Lee’s entire army. [My comment: again, compare that the USA has lost three to four thousand troops in all of Iraq and Afghanistan; the Union army lost sixty thousand in one month in the war against slavery].
The carnage increased as Grant attacked the crossroads called Cold Harbor at the beginning of June. Lee, for whom Grant had increasing respect, was turning this war into a war of attrition, and so Grant decided to mount a massive assault. On the morning of June 3, 1864, hundreds of troops pinned their names and addresses to their uniforms in a premonition of what lay ahead. In the next hours, Union soldiers charged forward and were met by a withering hail of bullets. Grant lost 7,000 men, while Lee, fighting from trenches, suffered 1,500 casualties. At the end of the day Grant stopped the attack, admitting defeat. The Union army learned that day what European armies would learn a half a century later in World War I: the deadly horrors of trench warfare. General George Mead wrote to his wife, “I think Grant has had his eyes opened, and is willing to admit now that Virginia and Lee’s army is not Tennessee and Bragg’s army.”
The public began to turn against Grant, but Lincoln did not. The president told Noah Brooks, “I wish when you write and speak to people you would do all you can to correct the impression that the war in Virginia will end right off victoriously.” He continued, “To me the most trying thing in al this war is that people are too sanguine; they expect too much at once.” Lincoln, who would not make predictions, told Brooks, “As God is my judge, I shall be satisfied if we are over with the fight in Virginia within a year” (p. 632).
So I went back to the bookstore today after lunch and bought the book where I had seen this tremendously moving photograph that I described in the previous day’s blogging. The book is “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief” by James M. McPherson. Here is the caption to the two photographs that I described:
The grim harvest of war is illustrated by these two photographs. The one on the left was taken at Gettysburg on July 5, 1863, two days after the battle, showing the bloated corpses of Union soldiers killed there. The other photograph depicts freed slaves after the war disinterring the remains of Union soldiers who had been killed at Cold Harbor, Virginia, for the reburial in the national military cemetery established there. Those killed at Gettysburg were also reinterred in one of the first such cemeteries, where on November 19, 1863, Lincoln consecrated “these honored dead” and resolved that they “shall not have died in vain.” Seventy-two national cemeteries were ultimately created as the final resting places for Union soldiers who died in the Civil War-and also for later veterans of the U.S. armed forces. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (photographs located between pages 174-175).
Thus by cross referencing two books I found a description of the dreadful battle and Union soldiers toll with the photograph of the freed slaves disinterring the Union bodies and taking them to the new national cemeteries for honorable burial.
The photograph shows four freed slaves in the background digging with shovels into the ground to unearth the bodies. In the foreground a freed slave is crouched next to a simple stretcher upon which they have been piling the remains of the Union soldiers. There are five skulls visible among a pile of their bones and uniforms, and a leg with a boot dangles over the side. It is a remarkable and unforgettable photograph, one of the many treasures of the Library of Congress.
So there are two things we can think about. One is that in Washington, as President Obama was inaugurated, we all thought of how Washington was built by slaves. But we should also remember that Abraham Lincoln saw a constant inflow of the dead and wounded Union soldiers on that very same ground, who had fought and died to free the slaves. In one Virginia battle the dead Union soldiers were piled five deep.
I am making much of this point because young Afro-Americans have grown up only knowing one side of the equation, those who considered them less than human, less than objects and chattel. However, I believe that the self esteem of young Afro-Americans would have been raised if they understood the magnitude of the other side, which is that there were 600,000 Union casualties, dead and wounded, as the Union soldiers fought for the freedom of the slaves. To feel that no one but Abraham Lincoln cared about your ancestors is to forget that hundreds of thousands of people cared with their lives.
So my second thing that you can think about is that those who live near or pass by Cold Harbor, Virginia can stop and contemplate a real moment of history and Afro-American pride. That is in knowing that the Union soldiers who died by the thousand were not left to rot on the battlefield, but were disinterred by the freed slaves and buried in places of honor established by Lincoln and the government. That is something I’d want to tell my children about, and I guess I am now.
http://www.cem.va.gov/CEM/cems/nchp/coldharbor.asp
While researching this item I came across this passage from the book “Tried by War:”
When the news of Richmond’s fall reached the North, wild celebrations broke out. Lincoln felt the same way, but his response was more restrained. He met with Grant in Petersburg on April 3 and discussed the pursuit of Lee, which would bring him to bay at Appomattox six days later. Meanwhile Lincoln returned to Adm. David D. Porter’s flagship USS Malvern, anchored in the James River, and told Porter: “Thank God I have lived to see this! It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone. I want to see Richmond.”
Porter was dubious about taking the president to see the still-burning enemy capital two days after it fell. But Lincoln insisted, so they went. With an escort of just ten sailors, he walked the streets while thousands of freed slaves crowded to see the Moses they believed had led them to freedom. “I know that I am free,” shouted one woman, “for I have seen father Abraham and felt him.” To one black man who fell on his knees before him, an embarrassed Lincoln said: “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.” The president was profoundly moved by these encounters (p. 261).
By the way, notice that this reference to who and who is not God is on page 261. I’ve written before about how the media is infested with Antichrist obsessed people with weak mental and moral capabilities, who manipulate significant text in even textbooks to occur on what they consider a mystical number of the Antichrist and the beast, 126, 261 and 621. You can read more about this subliminal pushing of occult Antichrist agenda by following the labels I include on this post. It has ruined my enjoyment of media, such as books, for many years now. If I were Afro-American I would also be embarrassed and enraged to be pawns in these dispensationalist and cultists’ manipulation, by the way. It’s quite an insult to be used that way when Afro-Americans have traditionally been the most faithful to pure Christianity and their God. Lincoln would be mortified that his words and deeds have been exploited by those who manipulate for occult purposes.
I have in front of me the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which I have quoted from before. I will close this blogging with the first note that he wrote to Robert E. Lee after the fall of Richmond. In a future blog posting I might group all the correspondence together so you can read and enjoy it as I have. I include it because General Grant was quite stoic about the incredible loss of life, and it is here as he urges Lee to surrender (which Lee rejects) that Grant refers to the carnage.
Headquarters Armies of the U.S., 5 P.M., April 7, 1865
General R. E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.
The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that position of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
U.S. GRANT,
Lieut.-General
Another thought on the race meditation
When I was growing up in the radical 1960's, there was one aspect of the most radical of the black power views that disturbed and saddened me. This was their lack of respect for the armed forces of America based on their feeling disenfranchised, which they were indeed, due to racism.
So their feeling of alienation from the American armed forces was quite understandable and not what bothered me (though I felt it to be counterproductive at the time, though that too was some of the Vietnam era zeitgeist).
What bothered me is that there is no heritage among Afro-Americans of honoring the Union war dead.
Here are the casualties of Union soldiers who fought to eliminate slavery:
364,511 Dead
281,881 Wounded
646,392 Total
I was always saddened that Afro-Americans did not, to my knowledge, develop a custom of honoring the Union dead, even if they were doing so to make a pointed commentary toward contemporary Armed forces who were discriminatory.
Honestly, if over three hundred thousand people died freeing my ancestors from slavery, I think I'd visit a few graves and lay a few wreaths, if for no other reason than to teach my children the sacrifice that was made for them by people over a hundred years ago AND as a counterpoint to modern day racism and indifference.
If, for example, someone provoked me with displaying the Confederate flag (as a provocative and not a cultural act) I'd go and lay more wreaths and flowers on the Union graves, forgotten and overgrown, in response. I think that, by the way, resonates with Afro-Americans whose own cemeteries have a sad history of neglect and disrespect by white communities. Likewise I often feel that Afro-Americans have forgotten the Union dead.
It's a subject that is near to my heart because, as I said, not only do I find slavery to be abhorrent, but also my father's family had a Civil War veteran reside with them in their family country hotel in the latter years of his life, so it is not a matter of abstract history to me. I like to think that my grandmother cooked him some great meals and that his beer was free.
When there were over six hundred thousand casualties (wounds were no light matter then, as they are not today in Iraq, for example), it is not giving one's children a full and accurate picture to make it like no one cared about slaves "back then." Over six hundred thousand (again, compare that to our Iraq conflict) showed how much they cared by dying or being dreadfully wounded. I'd like to see their memory and sacrifice recalled by more people today, if you know what I mean.
So their feeling of alienation from the American armed forces was quite understandable and not what bothered me (though I felt it to be counterproductive at the time, though that too was some of the Vietnam era zeitgeist).
What bothered me is that there is no heritage among Afro-Americans of honoring the Union war dead.
Here are the casualties of Union soldiers who fought to eliminate slavery:
364,511 Dead
281,881 Wounded
646,392 Total
I was always saddened that Afro-Americans did not, to my knowledge, develop a custom of honoring the Union dead, even if they were doing so to make a pointed commentary toward contemporary Armed forces who were discriminatory.
Honestly, if over three hundred thousand people died freeing my ancestors from slavery, I think I'd visit a few graves and lay a few wreaths, if for no other reason than to teach my children the sacrifice that was made for them by people over a hundred years ago AND as a counterpoint to modern day racism and indifference.
If, for example, someone provoked me with displaying the Confederate flag (as a provocative and not a cultural act) I'd go and lay more wreaths and flowers on the Union graves, forgotten and overgrown, in response. I think that, by the way, resonates with Afro-Americans whose own cemeteries have a sad history of neglect and disrespect by white communities. Likewise I often feel that Afro-Americans have forgotten the Union dead.
It's a subject that is near to my heart because, as I said, not only do I find slavery to be abhorrent, but also my father's family had a Civil War veteran reside with them in their family country hotel in the latter years of his life, so it is not a matter of abstract history to me. I like to think that my grandmother cooked him some great meals and that his beer was free.
When there were over six hundred thousand casualties (wounds were no light matter then, as they are not today in Iraq, for example), it is not giving one's children a full and accurate picture to make it like no one cared about slaves "back then." Over six hundred thousand (again, compare that to our Iraq conflict) showed how much they cared by dying or being dreadfully wounded. I'd like to see their memory and sacrifice recalled by more people today, if you know what I mean.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
A photographic meditation on race
I went to a bookstore this evening just to get out of the apartment and do some browsing. I noticed a book about Abraham Lincoln and picked it up to flip through it. I don't want to mention the book nor did I buy it, not because it's not a great book, but because I don't want to distract from the core of what I am going to describe to you.
I flipped to the pictures section and was totally moved and stopped in my tracks by a black and white pair of photographs from the Civil War. One is well known and I had seen before, and the other I did not know had left a photographic record.
On the left side was a photograph of the carnage of the Battle of Gettysburg, showing the bodies of Union soldiers two days after the battle, lying densely through a field. That is the picture that I had seen before, among others, recording the terrible sights of the battle dead. The caption explained that eventually people could be found to bury the dead in the battlefield where their bodies lay.
On the right side was a photograph of the bodies being dug up again so they could be moved and interred into the national cemeteries that Lincoln designated. Who was doing the work of digging up the Union soldiers who had died battling slavery? Freed slaves.
I could not easily stop gazing with wonder on that picture. Would you not have liked to have been able to ask the freed slaves how they felt, unearthing the Union soldiers who had died to free them, putting their bodies on the carts, and moving them to honorable cemeteries?
Much has been made of how the White House and the Capitol were built with slave labor, and that is important to realize and to never forget.
But I have also blogged that one must never forget the dignity of the slaves themselves and how they lived and dealt with those times. They were not unaware children who were being exploited and fought over; they were adults with educations and awareness of the nuance of what was occurring. And so less than one hundred years after slave labor built Washington, newly freed slaves dug up the mortal remains of the Union soldiers who had died to free them, and respectfully moved them, as best as could be done in those times, to the cemeteries of honor that Lincoln had designated.
I mention this so that in particular Afro-Americans have an understanding that the contemporaries of their time, the slaves who witnessed the Civil War, worked to honor in their time those who had paid the ultimate price, the fallen Union soldiers. I think that this is something to be very proud of, and so I thought to mention it as a meditation tonight on race relationships. Many today think, understandably, that there is a notion of reparations and atonement for slavery and I'm not here to argue that one way or the other. However, one must have an understanding that slaves knew that Union soldiers were fighting for them, and freed slaves honored the fallen Union soldiers by doing what is admittedly one of the most difficult of charities, which is to unearth their decomposing bodies and transport them to respectful national cemeteries. That is a profound dignity that I think most people do not realize took place at that very time, and I'm so glad that I saw the photograph tonight to share it with you and my thoughts.
It also is an example of what I was speaking about before, which is how does one capture a past historic experience in the view of the contemporaries, those actual participants alive at the time? What a value a single photograph can provide in that regard!
I flipped to the pictures section and was totally moved and stopped in my tracks by a black and white pair of photographs from the Civil War. One is well known and I had seen before, and the other I did not know had left a photographic record.
On the left side was a photograph of the carnage of the Battle of Gettysburg, showing the bodies of Union soldiers two days after the battle, lying densely through a field. That is the picture that I had seen before, among others, recording the terrible sights of the battle dead. The caption explained that eventually people could be found to bury the dead in the battlefield where their bodies lay.
On the right side was a photograph of the bodies being dug up again so they could be moved and interred into the national cemeteries that Lincoln designated. Who was doing the work of digging up the Union soldiers who had died battling slavery? Freed slaves.
I could not easily stop gazing with wonder on that picture. Would you not have liked to have been able to ask the freed slaves how they felt, unearthing the Union soldiers who had died to free them, putting their bodies on the carts, and moving them to honorable cemeteries?
Much has been made of how the White House and the Capitol were built with slave labor, and that is important to realize and to never forget.
But I have also blogged that one must never forget the dignity of the slaves themselves and how they lived and dealt with those times. They were not unaware children who were being exploited and fought over; they were adults with educations and awareness of the nuance of what was occurring. And so less than one hundred years after slave labor built Washington, newly freed slaves dug up the mortal remains of the Union soldiers who had died to free them, and respectfully moved them, as best as could be done in those times, to the cemeteries of honor that Lincoln had designated.
I mention this so that in particular Afro-Americans have an understanding that the contemporaries of their time, the slaves who witnessed the Civil War, worked to honor in their time those who had paid the ultimate price, the fallen Union soldiers. I think that this is something to be very proud of, and so I thought to mention it as a meditation tonight on race relationships. Many today think, understandably, that there is a notion of reparations and atonement for slavery and I'm not here to argue that one way or the other. However, one must have an understanding that slaves knew that Union soldiers were fighting for them, and freed slaves honored the fallen Union soldiers by doing what is admittedly one of the most difficult of charities, which is to unearth their decomposing bodies and transport them to respectful national cemeteries. That is a profound dignity that I think most people do not realize took place at that very time, and I'm so glad that I saw the photograph tonight to share it with you and my thoughts.
It also is an example of what I was speaking about before, which is how does one capture a past historic experience in the view of the contemporaries, those actual participants alive at the time? What a value a single photograph can provide in that regard!
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Incredibly stupid teacher lesson re: "slavery"
Apparently some idiotic school teacher thought that she (I think it's a she, I've not read the newspaper yet about it) could "teach her class" "about slavery" by tying up two of the children and placing them under a desk. Parents are outraged and the kids are traumatized (what a surprise). That was not a lesson about slavery, that was lesson about bondage, ignorance and humiliation.
My point is not to bash the moron more than she is already getting, rightfully, but to use this as a case study. Regular readers know that I always try to watch for useful news and social issues to use accordingly as case studies.
When a modern tries to interpret history they have a problem with understanding facts. Moderns seem to think that history is about "feelings." So this moron tried to "help" "explain slavery" by making two children feel bad, and thus conveyed nothing about the facts of slavery, facts which all of their own make one feel "very bad and sad."
Here is what I would have done. I would have had a class exercise that illustrated the facts of slavery, and then asked the kids how that made them feel.
Using a pile of coins, such as pennies, have several children "earn" one penny each time they walked across the room and back, carrying a heavy book. So a child who walks five times across the room with a heavy book earns five pennies. However, under slavery, the five pennies are taken from the child who carried the book and given to a child who remained seated in the front row of the class.
That would illustrate slavery to a perfect "T" without traumatizing.
Teachers, parents and other "educators." You do not need to be Hollywood or Bollywood drama queens to "explain history" to children, and in fact, you do violence to the facts of history and end up blurring the child's understanding of history, rather than illuminate it, if you are only projecting your "feelings." Simple present the facts using simple tools and devices, like the book and pennies. Stop trying to brainwash children into feeling "outrage" and "hurt" when they will comprehend history like slavery perfectly clearly by being given fact based examples and using simple and clean exercises based on facts.
The facts of history speak for themselves and children have, on the whole, very compassionate and easily violated senses of 'fairness,' so they would understand working hard for pennies and then it all being given to someone else, the "owner" very easily.
My point is not to bash the moron more than she is already getting, rightfully, but to use this as a case study. Regular readers know that I always try to watch for useful news and social issues to use accordingly as case studies.
When a modern tries to interpret history they have a problem with understanding facts. Moderns seem to think that history is about "feelings." So this moron tried to "help" "explain slavery" by making two children feel bad, and thus conveyed nothing about the facts of slavery, facts which all of their own make one feel "very bad and sad."
Here is what I would have done. I would have had a class exercise that illustrated the facts of slavery, and then asked the kids how that made them feel.
Using a pile of coins, such as pennies, have several children "earn" one penny each time they walked across the room and back, carrying a heavy book. So a child who walks five times across the room with a heavy book earns five pennies. However, under slavery, the five pennies are taken from the child who carried the book and given to a child who remained seated in the front row of the class.
That would illustrate slavery to a perfect "T" without traumatizing.
Teachers, parents and other "educators." You do not need to be Hollywood or Bollywood drama queens to "explain history" to children, and in fact, you do violence to the facts of history and end up blurring the child's understanding of history, rather than illuminate it, if you are only projecting your "feelings." Simple present the facts using simple tools and devices, like the book and pennies. Stop trying to brainwash children into feeling "outrage" and "hurt" when they will comprehend history like slavery perfectly clearly by being given fact based examples and using simple and clean exercises based on facts.
The facts of history speak for themselves and children have, on the whole, very compassionate and easily violated senses of 'fairness,' so they would understand working hard for pennies and then it all being given to someone else, the "owner" very easily.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Lessons from history (4 of series)
Today I want to focus on teaching those of you who have not heard about it another form of oppression/slavery that many of you may not have learned about in school. It had a crucial input into the birth of the United States and much of our psyche regarding freedom. "Back when I was in school" this was a huge topic in history and social studies class. One cannot really understand the foundation of the United States, nor can one truly be informed on the subject of slavery, if one does not understand being "pressed" or impressment.
To put it simply, being pressed means being grabbed off of the street or out of your home, place of business, farm, bar-wherever you may be-by a gang who drags you away and forces you to serve in the British Navy. I am not exaggerating at all. If a town heard of a press gang coming they fled for their lives. Women were left wondering where their sons or husbands went, as they would vanish into thin air, as the men were found and dragged off to serve. Press gangs carried clubs and chains.
Pressing became a government policy under Queen Elizabeth I. (They don't show that tacky side of her in the romanticized modern movies, do they).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment
snip
It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to the time of King Glaude I. The Royal Navy impressed many British merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other nations.
snip
The first act legalizing this practice was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in 1563 and was known as "an act touching politick considerations for the maintenance of the navy". It was renewed many times until 1631. In the Vagabonds Act 1597, several lists of persons were subject to impressment for service in the fleet. The Recruiting Act 1703 was an act passed "for the increase of seamen and better encouragement of navigation, and the protection of the Coal Trade".
Some apologists try to characterize pressing as being focused on those who were already able bodies seamen. However, that is not true (though clearly experience was preferred), as the very act is called "vagabond," which is an oppressive elitist name used by the upper class to describe ruffians who seemed to have no fixed abode (such as the poor).
There is a notorious event of impressment in America, before the American War of Revolution, and this was therefore a topic that future Americans, as British subjects, were very familiar with and suffered from and resented deeply. Pressing was another reason for the American Revolution and one of the two direct reasons for the little remembered but very important War of 1812 (America had to fight Britain again, from 1812-5. It was during that war that the White House was burned during the office of President Madison). Here is a description of the pre-Revolutionary War use of impressment in America:
snip
As a result of the doubt over the legality of impressment in American waters, parliament passed a new law in 1746, stating that impressment was forbidden in the West Indies, but not in America, leading to a riot in Boston the following year, and continued with the colonies, particularly New England.
snip
One of the largest impressment operations occurred in the spring of 1757 in New York City, then still under British colonial rule. Three thousand British soldiers cordoned off the city, and plucked clean the taverns, and other sailors' gathering places. "All kinds of tradesmen and Negroes" were hauled in, nearly eight hundred in all. Four hundred of these were "retained in the service."
Notice that free Afro-Americans and slaves were pressed right along with the colonists. This is an example of how the press gangs would go systematically through an entire city and press whoever they desired.
So impressment was another example of where Americans became furious over the trampling of their rights. Remember, being pressed into the British Navy meant that you went to sea to serve for years, a virtual prisoner. This was fodder for declaring independence and fighting the War of Revolution. Since Afro-Americans, free or not, were pressed along with the whites, Afro-Americans understood that the War of Revolution was in their interest too.
The British learned from that and later during the War of 1812 in order to undermine American forces and economy, the British offered slaves pressment and other routes to escape slavery. This is well documented in the War of 1812 article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
This is important for you to understand because it shows how nations and cultures have been on the right side of being against slavery, and the wrong side of supporting slavery, for reasons other than ethics, justice and morality. The British continued to press their own citizens and foreigners, thus being one of the two triggers of the War of 1812, and so they continued to have a stance of social injustice, yet shrewdly realized that they could cause havoc in America by giving the slaves routes to escape.
So here is a description of impressment and its role in causing the War of 1812.
During the wars with France (1793 to 1815), the Royal Navy aggressively reclaimed British deserters on board ships of other nations, both by halting and searching merchant ships, and, in many cases, by searching American port cities. While non-British subjects weren't impressed, Britain didn't recognize naturalised American citizenship, and treated anyone born a British subject as still "British" — as a result, the Royal Navy impressed over 9,000 sailors who claimed to be American citizens. While not directly mentioned as a reason for the declaration of war in the War of 1812, impressment caused serious diplomatic tension, and helped to turn American public opinion against Britain.
In other words, even though America had been free of colonial rule by Britain for several decades, and Britain had conceded defeat, the British still considered any American abroad "fair game" since they did not recognize American citizenship! When it came to pressing the rules against pressing foreigners was interpreted by the British to not apply to Americans.
Another custom of the time to man the many war and trade ships required was to capture combatant or other ships and then force the entire crew to serve. So when a ship was captured, the ship was rapidly turned into a ship of the fleet, its treasure or goods seized, and often its homeland sailors forced to be prisoners or to serve in the army or navy.
Thus even though the Patriots had won America's freedom in the Revolutionary War, they had to fight what is often called the "second war of Revolution" because the British blockaded American ships, disrupting trade and impressed anyone they got their hands on that they thought could serve on their ships. This meant going into war, since that was the reason Britain was blockading and pressing Americans, to drain resources in order to fight Napoleon in France.
And so America declared war on Britain because Britain was, essentially, strangling essential American trade between America and Europe plus Britain refused to recognize American citizenship, as in refusing to obey Britain's own law against impressing foreigners. Thus Americans had to fight their revolution all over again from 1812-5, only three American Presidents after George Washington himself.
I hope that you have found this interesting. I wanted to teach this topic for a few reasons:
1) Students and Americans in general should understand that true freedom is rarely won and kept as the result of one war, one declaration. The birth of this country and its continuity was by no means as easy as I think many people who have not been exposed to this history believe.
2) Slavery, while the most egregious of all human rights violations, should be understood in the context of a time when very few people had real rights, and slavery of one form or another could fall on just about anyone, and may only have been one ocean voyage, or one day walking down the street of New York, away. Only the highest rank people were ransomed in capture; the rest were imprisoned or forced to serve in the military. With all due respect, I think many young Afro-Americans today think that society then was as simple as free/slave, have/have not. As I demonstrated above, anyone who was not an aristocrat could have risked, both in Britain and in colonial America, being swept from your starving family and forced to go to sea, just by being declared a "vagabond" or the "navy needs you" or "we don't recognize American citizenship." America, despite the horrible wound of slavery, still came into being as a shocking example of freedom and rights at a time when that concept was virtually unknown and unrecognized in the world.
3) Studying the American Revolution, the years immediately after, and the War of 1812, one has a much clearer understanding of what difficult work it is to have genuine peace. All of the Founding Fathers deserve golden crowns for how they steered America between the continuing difficulty of Britain and France's wars, trying to be neutral and keep the peace, yet the war is often brought (repeatedly) to one's own doorstep. I can just imagine some people today, if they were "transported in time" back to the years before 1812 going "What! Another war! You warmongers!" Yet, remember, Britain blocked all of America's essential trade with Europe and also refused to recognize American citizenship and hence their rights as foreigners, causing impressment and other wrongs. Yes, the USA had to fight again for their own identity, for their freedom and their own declared rights, and their rights even under foreign law.
This is one of the important lessons to discern a "just war." A war when one's own sovereignty (the right to be an independent country) is threatened and denied, and one's citizens oppressed or murdered, is a just war. Other wars must be identified as what they are, which is maybe just, maybe not, since if they do not involve one's sovereignty, then it may be a war of convenience, a war of going after some resources, or that very slippery slope a "premptive war." Those are far more questionable.
So I think those who are concerned about issues of peace should study the Revolution and the War of 1812, as it provides good models for truly justifiable patriotic war. It then gives you firmer foundation to question wars that you think may not truly be about maintaining the freedom and dignity of America.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
To put it simply, being pressed means being grabbed off of the street or out of your home, place of business, farm, bar-wherever you may be-by a gang who drags you away and forces you to serve in the British Navy. I am not exaggerating at all. If a town heard of a press gang coming they fled for their lives. Women were left wondering where their sons or husbands went, as they would vanish into thin air, as the men were found and dragged off to serve. Press gangs carried clubs and chains.
Pressing became a government policy under Queen Elizabeth I. (They don't show that tacky side of her in the romanticized modern movies, do they).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment
snip
It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to the time of King Glaude I. The Royal Navy impressed many British merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other nations.
snip
The first act legalizing this practice was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in 1563 and was known as "an act touching politick considerations for the maintenance of the navy". It was renewed many times until 1631. In the Vagabonds Act 1597, several lists of persons were subject to impressment for service in the fleet. The Recruiting Act 1703 was an act passed "for the increase of seamen and better encouragement of navigation, and the protection of the Coal Trade".
Some apologists try to characterize pressing as being focused on those who were already able bodies seamen. However, that is not true (though clearly experience was preferred), as the very act is called "vagabond," which is an oppressive elitist name used by the upper class to describe ruffians who seemed to have no fixed abode (such as the poor).
There is a notorious event of impressment in America, before the American War of Revolution, and this was therefore a topic that future Americans, as British subjects, were very familiar with and suffered from and resented deeply. Pressing was another reason for the American Revolution and one of the two direct reasons for the little remembered but very important War of 1812 (America had to fight Britain again, from 1812-5. It was during that war that the White House was burned during the office of President Madison). Here is a description of the pre-Revolutionary War use of impressment in America:
snip
As a result of the doubt over the legality of impressment in American waters, parliament passed a new law in 1746, stating that impressment was forbidden in the West Indies, but not in America, leading to a riot in Boston the following year, and continued with the colonies, particularly New England.
snip
One of the largest impressment operations occurred in the spring of 1757 in New York City, then still under British colonial rule. Three thousand British soldiers cordoned off the city, and plucked clean the taverns, and other sailors' gathering places. "All kinds of tradesmen and Negroes" were hauled in, nearly eight hundred in all. Four hundred of these were "retained in the service."
Notice that free Afro-Americans and slaves were pressed right along with the colonists. This is an example of how the press gangs would go systematically through an entire city and press whoever they desired.
So impressment was another example of where Americans became furious over the trampling of their rights. Remember, being pressed into the British Navy meant that you went to sea to serve for years, a virtual prisoner. This was fodder for declaring independence and fighting the War of Revolution. Since Afro-Americans, free or not, were pressed along with the whites, Afro-Americans understood that the War of Revolution was in their interest too.
The British learned from that and later during the War of 1812 in order to undermine American forces and economy, the British offered slaves pressment and other routes to escape slavery. This is well documented in the War of 1812 article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
This is important for you to understand because it shows how nations and cultures have been on the right side of being against slavery, and the wrong side of supporting slavery, for reasons other than ethics, justice and morality. The British continued to press their own citizens and foreigners, thus being one of the two triggers of the War of 1812, and so they continued to have a stance of social injustice, yet shrewdly realized that they could cause havoc in America by giving the slaves routes to escape.
So here is a description of impressment and its role in causing the War of 1812.
During the wars with France (1793 to 1815), the Royal Navy aggressively reclaimed British deserters on board ships of other nations, both by halting and searching merchant ships, and, in many cases, by searching American port cities. While non-British subjects weren't impressed, Britain didn't recognize naturalised American citizenship, and treated anyone born a British subject as still "British" — as a result, the Royal Navy impressed over 9,000 sailors who claimed to be American citizens. While not directly mentioned as a reason for the declaration of war in the War of 1812, impressment caused serious diplomatic tension, and helped to turn American public opinion against Britain.
In other words, even though America had been free of colonial rule by Britain for several decades, and Britain had conceded defeat, the British still considered any American abroad "fair game" since they did not recognize American citizenship! When it came to pressing the rules against pressing foreigners was interpreted by the British to not apply to Americans.
Another custom of the time to man the many war and trade ships required was to capture combatant or other ships and then force the entire crew to serve. So when a ship was captured, the ship was rapidly turned into a ship of the fleet, its treasure or goods seized, and often its homeland sailors forced to be prisoners or to serve in the army or navy.
Thus even though the Patriots had won America's freedom in the Revolutionary War, they had to fight what is often called the "second war of Revolution" because the British blockaded American ships, disrupting trade and impressed anyone they got their hands on that they thought could serve on their ships. This meant going into war, since that was the reason Britain was blockading and pressing Americans, to drain resources in order to fight Napoleon in France.
And so America declared war on Britain because Britain was, essentially, strangling essential American trade between America and Europe plus Britain refused to recognize American citizenship, as in refusing to obey Britain's own law against impressing foreigners. Thus Americans had to fight their revolution all over again from 1812-5, only three American Presidents after George Washington himself.
I hope that you have found this interesting. I wanted to teach this topic for a few reasons:
1) Students and Americans in general should understand that true freedom is rarely won and kept as the result of one war, one declaration. The birth of this country and its continuity was by no means as easy as I think many people who have not been exposed to this history believe.
2) Slavery, while the most egregious of all human rights violations, should be understood in the context of a time when very few people had real rights, and slavery of one form or another could fall on just about anyone, and may only have been one ocean voyage, or one day walking down the street of New York, away. Only the highest rank people were ransomed in capture; the rest were imprisoned or forced to serve in the military. With all due respect, I think many young Afro-Americans today think that society then was as simple as free/slave, have/have not. As I demonstrated above, anyone who was not an aristocrat could have risked, both in Britain and in colonial America, being swept from your starving family and forced to go to sea, just by being declared a "vagabond" or the "navy needs you" or "we don't recognize American citizenship." America, despite the horrible wound of slavery, still came into being as a shocking example of freedom and rights at a time when that concept was virtually unknown and unrecognized in the world.
3) Studying the American Revolution, the years immediately after, and the War of 1812, one has a much clearer understanding of what difficult work it is to have genuine peace. All of the Founding Fathers deserve golden crowns for how they steered America between the continuing difficulty of Britain and France's wars, trying to be neutral and keep the peace, yet the war is often brought (repeatedly) to one's own doorstep. I can just imagine some people today, if they were "transported in time" back to the years before 1812 going "What! Another war! You warmongers!" Yet, remember, Britain blocked all of America's essential trade with Europe and also refused to recognize American citizenship and hence their rights as foreigners, causing impressment and other wrongs. Yes, the USA had to fight again for their own identity, for their freedom and their own declared rights, and their rights even under foreign law.
This is one of the important lessons to discern a "just war." A war when one's own sovereignty (the right to be an independent country) is threatened and denied, and one's citizens oppressed or murdered, is a just war. Other wars must be identified as what they are, which is maybe just, maybe not, since if they do not involve one's sovereignty, then it may be a war of convenience, a war of going after some resources, or that very slippery slope a "premptive war." Those are far more questionable.
So I think those who are concerned about issues of peace should study the Revolution and the War of 1812, as it provides good models for truly justifiable patriotic war. It then gives you firmer foundation to question wars that you think may not truly be about maintaining the freedom and dignity of America.
I hope that you have found this helpful.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Lessons from history (2 of a series)
Here is another great excerpt from the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. I’m piecing together several sections from the same event.
On the last of January, 1865, peace commissioners from the so-called Confederate States presented themselves on our lines around Petersburg, and were immediately conducted to my headquarters at City Point. They proved to be Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, Judge Campbell, Assistant-Secretary of War, and R. M. T. Hunter, formerly United States Senator and then a member of the Confederate Senate….
I was instructed to retain them at City Point, until the President, or some one whom he would designate, should come to meet them. They remained several days as guests on board the boat…
I had never met either of these gentlemen before the war, but knew them well by reputation and through their public services, and I had been a particular admirer of Mr. Stephens. I had always supposed that he was a very small man, but when I saw him in the dusk of the evening I was very much surprised to find so large a man as he seemed to be. When he got down on to the boat I found that he was wearing a coarse gray woolen overcoat, a manufacture that had been introduced into the South during the rebellion. The cloth was thicker than anything of the kind I had ever seen, even in Canada. The overcoat extended nearly to his feet, and was so large that it gave him the appearance of being an average-sized man. He took this off when he reached the cabin of the boat, and I was struck with the apparent change in size, in the coat and out of it…
Right here I might relate an anecdote of Mr. Lincoln. It was on the occasion of his visit to me just after he had talked with the peace commissioners at Hampton Roads. After a little conversation, he asked me if I had seen that overcoat of Stephen’s. I replied that I had.
“Well,” said he, “did you see him take it off?” I said yes.
“Well,” said he, “didn’t you think it was the biggest shuck and the littlest ear that ever you did see?”
Long afterwards I told this story to the Confederate General J. B. Gordon, at the time a member of the Senate. He repeated it to Stephens, and, as I heard afterwards, Stephens laughed immoderately at the simile of Mr. Lincoln.
[Here I will explain the simile, in case some of my readers are unfamiliar with the term. Lincoln was referring to the process of removing the husk from an ear of corn. The process of removing the husk is called shucking. So Lincoln was making a droll agricultural reference by comparing the giant coat that Stephens used, and when he removed it revealing his very small stature, with shucking the husk off from an ear of corn, to find a very small ear inside. It’s a great story, especially when one reads with what good humor Mr. Stephens took hearing about it. Also I am always thrilled to read a historic corn reference!
To keep continuity of that event, I had skipped over what Grant wrote about Lincoln’s reaction to the peace commission. Here it is, and very moving reading it most certainly is.]
After a few days, about the 2d of February, I received a dispatch from Washington, directing me to send the commissioners to Hampton Roads to meet the President and a member of the cabinet. Mr. Lincoln met them there and had an interview of short duration. It was not a great while after they met that the President visited me at City Point. He spoke of his having met the commissioners, and said he had told them that there would be no use in entering into any negotiations unless they would recognize, first: that the Union as a whole must be forever preserved, and second: that slavery must be abolished. If they were willing to concede these two points, then he was ready to enter into negotiations and was almost willing to hand them a blank sheet of paper with his signature attached for them to fill in the terms upon which they were willing to live with us in the Union and be one people. He always showed a generous and kindly spirit toward the Southern people, and I never heard him abuse an enemy. Some of the cruel things said about President Lincoln, particularly in the North, used to pierce him to the heart; but never in my presence did he evince a revengeful disposition-and I saw a great deal of him at City Point, for he seemed glad to get away from the cares and anxieties of the capital.
On the last of January, 1865, peace commissioners from the so-called Confederate States presented themselves on our lines around Petersburg, and were immediately conducted to my headquarters at City Point. They proved to be Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, Judge Campbell, Assistant-Secretary of War, and R. M. T. Hunter, formerly United States Senator and then a member of the Confederate Senate….
I was instructed to retain them at City Point, until the President, or some one whom he would designate, should come to meet them. They remained several days as guests on board the boat…
I had never met either of these gentlemen before the war, but knew them well by reputation and through their public services, and I had been a particular admirer of Mr. Stephens. I had always supposed that he was a very small man, but when I saw him in the dusk of the evening I was very much surprised to find so large a man as he seemed to be. When he got down on to the boat I found that he was wearing a coarse gray woolen overcoat, a manufacture that had been introduced into the South during the rebellion. The cloth was thicker than anything of the kind I had ever seen, even in Canada. The overcoat extended nearly to his feet, and was so large that it gave him the appearance of being an average-sized man. He took this off when he reached the cabin of the boat, and I was struck with the apparent change in size, in the coat and out of it…
Right here I might relate an anecdote of Mr. Lincoln. It was on the occasion of his visit to me just after he had talked with the peace commissioners at Hampton Roads. After a little conversation, he asked me if I had seen that overcoat of Stephen’s. I replied that I had.
“Well,” said he, “did you see him take it off?” I said yes.
“Well,” said he, “didn’t you think it was the biggest shuck and the littlest ear that ever you did see?”
Long afterwards I told this story to the Confederate General J. B. Gordon, at the time a member of the Senate. He repeated it to Stephens, and, as I heard afterwards, Stephens laughed immoderately at the simile of Mr. Lincoln.
[Here I will explain the simile, in case some of my readers are unfamiliar with the term. Lincoln was referring to the process of removing the husk from an ear of corn. The process of removing the husk is called shucking. So Lincoln was making a droll agricultural reference by comparing the giant coat that Stephens used, and when he removed it revealing his very small stature, with shucking the husk off from an ear of corn, to find a very small ear inside. It’s a great story, especially when one reads with what good humor Mr. Stephens took hearing about it. Also I am always thrilled to read a historic corn reference!
To keep continuity of that event, I had skipped over what Grant wrote about Lincoln’s reaction to the peace commission. Here it is, and very moving reading it most certainly is.]
After a few days, about the 2d of February, I received a dispatch from Washington, directing me to send the commissioners to Hampton Roads to meet the President and a member of the cabinet. Mr. Lincoln met them there and had an interview of short duration. It was not a great while after they met that the President visited me at City Point. He spoke of his having met the commissioners, and said he had told them that there would be no use in entering into any negotiations unless they would recognize, first: that the Union as a whole must be forever preserved, and second: that slavery must be abolished. If they were willing to concede these two points, then he was ready to enter into negotiations and was almost willing to hand them a blank sheet of paper with his signature attached for them to fill in the terms upon which they were willing to live with us in the Union and be one people. He always showed a generous and kindly spirit toward the Southern people, and I never heard him abuse an enemy. Some of the cruel things said about President Lincoln, particularly in the North, used to pierce him to the heart; but never in my presence did he evince a revengeful disposition-and I saw a great deal of him at City Point, for he seemed glad to get away from the cares and anxieties of the capital.
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