Category Archives: America

America, Documenting America

On Confederate Civil War Monuments

3 Comments
After I published "Documenting America: Lessons From the United States' Historical Documents", I also published a home school edition of it.
After I published “Documenting America: Lessons From the United States’ Historical Documents”, I also published a home school edition of it.

The book I’m currently writing, Documenting America: Civil War Edition, is currently sitting on a chair in our kitchen, waiting for me to get back to it. I finished it about ten days ago, and I’m letting it sit a while, giving me space and perspective, before I start the editing process. I anticipate the editing will take two or three weeks. Then publishing tasks can begin.

Meanwhile, the Civil War is back in the news. Several Civil War monuments are being removed in the City of New Orleans. These are monuments to Confederate leaders, such as Robert E. Lee, Confederate General. This follows several other places where similar monuments have been removed.

I have mixed feelings about this. Since the reason the states that formed the CSA withdrew (i.e. seceded) from the USA was because they wanted to preserve slavery, those monuments are in essence to those who wanted to preserve slavery. Those descended from slaves naturally are appalled that, in the 21st Century, we are still honoring those who enslaved their ancestors. Those who weren’t descended from slaves, but who align with those who brought pressure for abolition, are also appalled. I think I understand their concerns.

On the other hand, some say those monuments don’t mean the same today as they did when they were first erected. Now, they are simply recognition of those who loved their country, even if their views of what that country did were misguided. They say: Would you also removed monuments to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both slave owners from the south? They have a good point. Washington and Jefferson didn’t take part in rebellion. Oh, wait, they did: rebellion against England. But, that was a good rebellion, working for a government that would protect the natural rights of man, a.k.a. God-given rights. So that’s different.

It won't belong before I start work on the cover for this next "Documenting America" book. I hope to get a good photo from a nearby Civil War battle field.
It won’t belong before I start work on the cover for this next “Documenting America” book. I hope to get a good photo from a nearby Civil War battle field.

I have a different view of it. Those monuments have become history books in their own right. By destroying the monuments, we are destroying history books, and trying to expunge history. Is this a good thing?

At one time I thought, “History is history. It is what it is: just a bunch of facts, and dates, and actions by people that happened, and are passed down to those who didn’t experience them.” Then I started writing about history. And I read much by others, both history books and how-to-write-history books. And I learned that how a historical event is treated in a book depends on how the writer does his research and puts the book together. Facts are facts, but you can ignore some and over emphasize others. You can twist some into your opinion mold and make them say something different than what another writer will say about the same fact.

So history isn’t really history. All history is interpretation of what happened in the past. Sometimes it comes with an agenda. Sometimes it comes with a preconceived notion that the historian has been able to make sure you see in the work, causing you to think “Oh, sure, it’s obvious that’s how it was.” However, if you read a book by Historian A instead of Historian B, you would get a completely different picture. I wish it wasn’t so. I wish history was history. But, alas, it’s not.

Back to the Confederate monuments. They represent a dark time in our history, a time when a few white people thought they had the right to enslave a bunch of black people, and to go fetch more black people through an illegal trade. The monuments were meant to honor that dark time. Now we know better. Why not use that to our advantage, keep the distasteful monuments, and use them for a different purpose?

Imagine this, with the monuments still standing. You’re in New Orleans, with your young children or grandchildren. You come across the monument of Robert E. Lee. Your child asks, “Who’s that man up on that horse?” What a great teaching moment that is. “He’s a man who thought it was okay to enslave people simply because they were of a different race. He might have been a good man at heart, but his actions were to perpetuate a way of life that had one race the masters and one race the slaves. This monument was once put up to honor him, but now we know it’s here to help us to never forget just how evil that practice was.”

Now THAT would be a great moment. That would be a great monument. Turn its purpose on its head and make it mean the exact opposite of what it was intended for 140 years ago, or whenever it was erected. How much better that would be than removing it.

The old cliché goes, those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it. Well, those who expunge history won’t learn from it. As a result, we may not learn the evils of slavery as we should. Slavery won’t return, I don’t think, but what other evil practice may happen as a result of us not having that history before us, right in our face, forcing us to confront that dark past?

It’s something to think about.

America, miscellaneous, Politics

Patriotism vs Nationalism

Leave a comment

I’m going to write and post this, but it will be far from complete, and I’ll have to follow-up with supplemental posts in due course. I write this during the wave of very vocal public opinion after San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem during a preseason game a week or two ago. Public opinion seems to be against what Kaepernick did, but you can hear voices on the opposite side, ranging from “no big deal” to “he did the right thing.”

For a while now I’ve thought about this. By that I mean long, long before Kaepernick decided to exercise his First Amendment rights with apparent disregard for what impression it would make and effects it could have. Or perhaps he did think them through, though some of his comments since then make me think he didn’t. I’m thinking back to the flap when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama didn’t wear a U.S. flag lapel pin. There was some outrage at the time, but it all blew over; most people won’t remember it without prompting.

My thoughts at the time were that I wasn’t particularly concerned with outward gestures that people define as patriotism. I’m concerned with actual acts of patriotism. I’m concerned with people living their lives as a patriots, not mindlessly participating in rote ceremonies that have become mostly without meaning.

Don’t get me wrong: I always respect our flag, and think about what it stands for every time I’m involved in a ceremony. Heck, I remember a time at URI, gotta be 44 years ago at least, because I  was living on campus. It was a very cold winter day. I was dressed in my surplus U.S. Navy bridge coat, the one I had my brother get when Cranston High School East declared them surplus, having bought true warm-up jackets for the football team. It was a heavy, heavy coat, but it sure kept me warm. It was late in the day and I was heading across the quadrangle, in the direction away from the dorms (so maybe I was going to an evening class or exam). Wherever the flag pole was on the quad (seems like maybe it was a flagpole close to Bliss Hall), they were striking the colors for the evening. I don’t remember who was doing it; I don’t think it was a formal ceremony, just someone taking the flag down. I stopped, took off my red and black hunter’s hat, and stood at attention with my hand over my heart, until the flag was down and folded and being carried away to overnight storage. I doubt too many people ever did that in the URI quad.

So the flag is important to me, and that wasn’t a meaningless gesture on my part. But, I have to say, that respect for the flag is not patriotism. It’s nationalism. What’s the difference, you wonder? My desk dictionary has a slight variation in the definition of the two. Patriotism is listed as a synonym for nationalism, but not the other way around. Nationalism includes this alternate definition: excessive, narrow, or jingoistic patriotism. Oh, that’s not nice. The definition it give for patriotism is: love and loyal or zealous support of one’s own country. Yeah, I like that.

So is standing for and singing the national anthem, with your hand over your heart—or if you can’t sing just being quiet and respectful—an act of patriotism, or of nationalism? If it’s done for show, or because you’re supposed to do it, or merely because people are expecting you to do it, then it’s at best nationalism, and at worse mindlessness. The best you can say about it is it can be an example to others, and perhaps encourage others to learn to respect and love their country.

So what is patriotism? In a previous post I mentioned that my dad was a patriot, and I gave reasons why I thought he was. However, I’m going to hold off on completing these thoughts. I want to take time to properly develop them. Perhaps it will be my next post, or even one or two after that.

America, Writing

The Flattery Continues

Leave a comment

Well, that short piece (real short piece, had to be under 50 words) I wrote back in 2004 for American Profile magazine continues to have legs. I wrote about this before. Yesterday, on a whim I decided to check for it again, so I searched for the phrases “ethics before law” and “law before gain”.

On the former I got over 4,500 Google hits. However, these reduced to just three pages upon clicking through them. The latter had 567 hits, which reduced to seven unique ones upon clicking through. A good number of these were to my quote, or rather to my quote unattributed.

One of those is a discussion on a Yahoo message board (second reply, discussed more several posts down, and the bad language is not my fault). Interesting that this was quoted in a discussion on Islam and whether Moslems can be good citizens.

So the flattery continues, sort of. I seem to have crafted a good phrase. I thought it was good at the time of writing; the legs prove it is.

Now, to be a successful, published writer, I just have to duplicate the quality of this a few tens of thousands of times. Piece of cake.

America, miscellaneous

A Broken Society

Leave a comment

Several things have hit me lately that demonstrate just how broken our society is. I’m not thinking about politics, and whether or not it’s better that a Democrat or Republican won the presidency earlier this month. I’m not thinking about the economy and the Panic of 2008, although clearly if a depression hits us we will potentially see much more brokenness than we do now.

No, I’m thinking of the brokenness of individual lives.

Two events are giving rise to this. On November 7, in Oklahoma City, Jeremy Moore was murdered by gunshot. I can’t remember if I met Jeremy or not. He was our son-in-law’s roommate for some of his college time, and was in his and our daughter’s wedding party. So I know I saw Jeremy, but may never have met him. Why was he murdered? The circumstances were he was delivering pizza as a second job, trying to support his girlfriend and their nine-day old child, having just bought a house and about to make their first payment. He took a delivery to a certain apartment complex. The apartment turned out to be empty, and someone(s) was waiting in the shadows and gunned him down. Police don’t know the reason; possibly robbery, though everyone knows (or should know) delivery men carry almost no money; possibly gang related—not that Jeremy was in a gang, but that he was the random target of someone who had to kill someone as a gang initiation; possibly simple depravity, someone out for kicks. My son-in-law blogged about it a couple of times here.

The other event was learning yesterday that a young couple in our church in Bentonville are getting a divorce. This couple was one that got the “cart before the horse” in terms of intimacy, but yet had married, had two children, and had become fairly regular attenders at church, even linking in with a life group, and having loving, supportive parents from at least one side. I know the pressure on young couples is great these days, and the chances of failure of any marriage is around 50 percent, but this was one couple which, despite a start with questionable circumstances, I really thought was going to make it.

One young widow and fatherless child due to a tragedy; two children in a broken home due to whatever the circumstances were, but also a tragedy. This is emblematic of the brokenness of our American society. I have heard, but have not verified, that statistics show children are least at risk when they grow up with a mother and a father in a loving home, not even necessarily a Christian home. This gives me pause to wonder: what is the church doing, and what am I doing, to interrupt this brokenness? Maybe my concern about politics—who gets elected, what policies they represent, how they will protect American sovereignty—is misplaced. As would be the church’s. Maybe I should just be thinking about what I and my church can do to help prevent tragedies such as these two.

Something to think about.

America

Forty-Five years ago yesterday: Kennedy Assassination

2 Comments

I meant to write this yesterday, but a day full of activity in advance of Thanksgiving, and all the company we will have, gave me no time at the computer.

John F Kennedy was assassinated 45 years ago yesterday, November 22, 1963. I was in 6th grade at the time, in Mrs. Fisk’s class in dear old Dutemple Elementary School. The first word that we heard was that the president had been shot. This came from a snotty girl in the class, and how she heard it I don’t know–obviously from some adults, probably the teacher. A few minutes later she came over to say the governor of Texas had shot the president. Before school was out at 3 PM Eastern Time, we had the correct news. I don’t remember a whole lot about my reaction. I was not very politically aware as a 6th grader, as neither of my parents were all that politically active or interested.

Put me in the camp of skeptics as far as the official version of the events goes: the Warren Commission conclusion that the president was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. I have read way too much about the evidence and actions of the various players, and believe that Kennedy was killed by some sort of conspiracy. The police work was so shoddy, and the forensics so botched–from the autopsy to the ballistics to the interrogations–that there is no way Oswald ever would have been convicted had he lived to face a trial. The doubt of his guilt is way beyond reasonable.

I don’t know that I want to get into my theory today. I may never post or publish it, save in papers in my file folders. I do want to mention one interesting family anecdote related to this. My late father-in-law, Wayne B. Cheney, was a paper gatherer, and an amateur photographer of some ability. He took many photos of local sports events in Fowler, Kansas before he moved to Amarillo in his latter days. In 1963 he was living in Longview, Texas (he was divorced from my mother-in-law), and had a lot of interests, had lots of contacts with people. He lived a quiet life, but not an isolated life.

I mentioned he was a paper-gatherer. It fell to Lynda and me to go through those papers after he died, along with all the photographs. One 8×10 glossy photo was among the many in the boxes. It was of JFK and various people. I don’t have it in front of me, so I will summarize what Wayne wrote on it: In November 1968 [sic], when I lived in Longview, a friend asked me to take her to Houston for [I can’t remember the reason]. While there, president Kennedy was there, and I was able to get close enough to snap this picture. Obviously he got the year wrong, for Kennedy died in November 1963. But could this be true? It would have been like Wayne to have given someone a ride from Longview to Houston; he would have had his camera with him; raised in a Kansas Democrat farm family he would have wanted to see Kennedy. I don’t know any other time during his presidency that Kennedy was in Houston. So, assuming Wayne was writing the truth, that he actually took that photo (I still have to look for a negative among his papers/photos), this picture would have been shot Nov 21, 1963 during that fateful trip. What is amazing is how close he was able to get to the president.

I may hunt that photo up and enter the exact caption he wrote on it, but I don’t think I’ll post it, just in case Wayne really didn’t take it. He never mentioned it to me before he died.

Just an interesting anecdote. Then again, maybe I’ve got a semi-valuable gem in that box.

America, poetry

The People Have Spoken

2 Comments

The election on November 4 was a clear signal, I believe, from the American people. They don’t like the job the Bush administration has done, and John McCain was not seen as a better alternative. Hence Barak H. Obama is our president-elect. I hope he has a successful presidency, and that my fears of an 8-year economic slowdown/recession/depression about to take place as a follow-up to the Panic of 2008 (which I believe will happen regardless of who had been elected president) will not happen.

I notice the Democratic gains in the Senate were about in line with expectation, while the gains in the house were a bit below expectation. Still, the gains were clear. That is surprising given Congress’ low approval rating as determined by pollsters, but is further evidence of backlash against Bush.

While some non-professional pundits are saying this is the end of the Republican party, I think that death certificate is pre-mature.

The main negative I have heard in the last two days is that potential Republican hopefuls for 2012 are already making plans to head to Iowa. How sad we must be in a perpetual election cycle.

America, Writing

Everybody’s Busy

Leave a comment

American life is an incredible journey of rushing from one good activity to another. At least, that’s the whirlwind I’m in, and the one others are in based on my recent attempts at making contact. I suppose the greatness of America has something to do with it. We are blessed with incredible freedom and abundant wealth, both augmented by the world’s most advanced technology and relatively cheap transportation (even with gasoline at $3.559).

Because of that, we load up our lives running here and there: activities, trips, and travel–hopefully good things that will enhance our lives and the lives of those within our reach. That includes the whole world nowadays. So when a new, good activity comes up, it must be denied access to our schedule, or something else must give way, be it sleep or relaxation or whatever.

If an old friend from school days contacts you, offering re-acquaintance, what to drop to add that? If long lost relatives discover you, how do you work into the schedule time to build new relationships? If someone you mentored decades ago goes out of his way to find you and attempts correspondence, how will you respond? Interesting questions, for which I have no ready answer.

For me, what gives first is the mundane household chores: balancing the checkbook, paying the bills on time, planning next month’s finances, replacing a light bulb, replacing a broken lamp globe, sweeping the driveway, timely washing the dishes, filing the ridiculous number of papers all my activities seem to generate, etc. Next comes a shortening of quiet and devotional time, and leisure–avocations are not always leisure. Shortening may eventually become elimination.

For others, what gives might just be the new activity, for the comfort of current routine ultimately trumps change for most people.

America, Politics

Michelle says: It takes a family

6 Comments

Yes, that was the underlying message of Michelle Obama last night at the Democratic party’s convention, to the delegates, staff, media, nation, and world: It takes a family to raise a child, and that family consisting of both a father and mother, and if it happens, cooperating siblings, all working on their own initiative, all dedicated to the task at hand, working diligently, loving totally.

I thought the tribute she paid to her dad was touching, how he worked at a “filtration plant”–by which I assume she means a water treatment plant, and how he continued to do so even after he was physically diminished by disease. He altered his routine, taking longer to get ready for work, so that he could continue to support his family, which he saw as his duty, so that his wife could be a stay-at-home mom. Michelle praised he mother for that, and seemed to feel having that mom at home was important to her upbringing.

The relationship between Michelle and her brother (didn’t catch his name) also seemed important, based on their dovetailing testimonies. She influenced him to stay with coaching, and he influenced her to pursue public service as opposed to a Big Law partnership. Any parent would be proud to have such children, and feel that they had done something right in their raising.

Look at what was absent in Michelle’s speech concerning the influences in her life: neighbors, neighborhood, extended family, government programs. She mentioned her neighborhood, the south side of Chicago, but did so in almost derogatory language. You got the sense that the neighborhood would have pulled her down if the family hadn’t propelled her up. It appears, from Michelle’s words, that the government had no influence at all, either positive or negative.

A last impression I got was the positive influence Michelle has on her husband and children. As stable and positive as her raising was, Barack’s was turbulent: absent father, mother who seemed unstable, frequent moves, raised by a racist grandmother, experimentation with mind-altering drugs. Maybe Michelle helped her husband settle down and end the wild days of his youth. She is likely having that same influence on their daughters.

So, thank you Michelle, for that positive message, exactly what this nation needs to hear today, and echoing that of Bob Dole in 1996: To raise a child, it doesn’t take a village; it takes a family.

By the way, Michelle, have you discussed this with Senator Clinton?

America

Musing on America

Leave a comment

Seventeen years ago I was on my last overseas trip (the ones to Mexico in 1996 and Canada in 1997 not counting as overseas). I spent about 30 hours in the Bahrain airport, writing for my visa into post-war Kuwait to come through. It finally did, and I arrived in Kuwait July 4, 1991, where I joined my wife. She had been there about six weeks as a Red Cross nurse, and was about to leave for home. We overlapped three days, I think.

At that time I had spent five of the previous nine years living out of the country: from 1981-83 in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and then from 1988 to 1990 in Kuwait. I remember my first flight back into America, in September 1981, when I came to fetch the family and bring them to Saudi for our life there. Charles was 2 years 8 months old, and Sara a mere 5 months. I flew on Pan Am, which to me was a symbol of America. Upon touch down at JFK airport, many on the plane broke out in cheers and clapping. Home again, to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Several times since then Lynda and I have commented on how reckless and foolish we were, as young parents, to take our children to the Persian Gulf region while the Iran-Iraq war was on. We saw few effects of it while in Saudi, but it was still on when we began expatriate life in Kuwait years later. Several times we saw smoking ships being brought to land somewhere to the south, close enough to see what it was but far enough away to not know what type of ship, or if they were putting into a Kuwaiti or Saudi port. I suspect the Saudi ports were over the horizon, and that they must have been foreign vessels–probably Iraqi–putting into Kuwait ports for repairs. My first month in Kuwait four terrorist bombs were set off, though always in a place that seemed to be to damage a business, not kill people.

In those five years, I had six homecomings to America, plus the one in the trip after the war, so seven overall. I’ve been to Canada twice, and Mexico once, so in all I have returned to America ten times in my life. Each time was an exhilarating feeling. Home again, to a nation where peace prevails and sanity rules. Home again, to where economic opportunity is bounded only by the effort you put in and the amount the government takes out. Home again, to safety and security. Usually to cheers, always to relief.

The world has changed in those years since the long trips for oversees residency, not for business or tourism. I had the opportunity to be in about twenty-five or thirty other countries. I love this country most of all. Yet, as I’ve said in an editorial, I see the United States as a fragile experiment, a mere 232 years after declaring independence, 217 after finding a workable form of government. We have outlasted some nations, but many others through history lasted longer. The experiment is still fragile. Forces foreign and domestic want to change us from being the nation we were formed to be. I won’t list the changes, and not all readers would agree with the specifics.

Has America passed its zenith? Are we now on the decline? This would take many posts to write about, which I won’t do at this time–too much writing to do otherwise. If we have passed our zenith, I hope it is momentary, and that another score of years will find us on the ascendancy again. As I said in the closing line of a tribute poem to Ronald Reagan, “Long live your shining city on a hill.”