Failure to Heed the Discourse of the Poor

FAILURE TO HEED THE DISCOURSE OF THE POOR
by Frank Newton, Boiling Springs, North Carolina, USA
Sat. June 12th, 2021 

There is a great division among the people in my country on how the law and the prophets apply to the people who rioted after the killing of George Floyd.  That division will be my topic.

Introduction

Perhaps very few people nowadays understand the sting which Napoleon intended when he described the English as "a nation of shopkeepers."  I incline to think that Napoleon simply meant that "No matter what YOU say, all THEY ever say is 'Keep your paws off the merchandise'."

Keeping your paws off the merchandise is an important part of the law.  But it is not a good summary of the law.

It is an important part of the law.  Keep your paws off the merchandise is a corollary of Thou shalt not steal, the commandment which appears in Exodus 20:15 and Deuteronomy 5:19, among the ten commandments: called the seventh commandment by some Christians, but the eighth commandment by others.  From Thou shalt not steal, it follows that Thou shalt not set fire to the shop and store of any shopkeeper.  Also it follows, thou shalt not urinate upon the merchandise of any shopkeeper, nor permit thy children to toy with the merchandise, nor do any thing which shall cause the shopkeeper's merchandise to lose value.

But it is not a good summary of the law (Keep your paws off the merchandise).  The summary of the law is in Matthew 22:37-40.  Jesus is speaking; replying to a question in verse 36.  In the King James Version:

36  Master, which is the great commandment?  37  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  38  This is the first and great commandment.  39  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  40  On these two command­ments hang all the law and the prophets.

 Here we will appeal to the second branch of the summary of the law: Love your neighbor as yourself.  In another part of the Gospels, Jesus was asked, Who is my neighbor? and Jesus replied with the parable of the good Samaritan.  The burden of that parable is this: your neighbor is anyone you pass by who is bleeding.

Application of the Law and the Prophets to the Rioting

The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." But the Constitution and its amendments do not address the question of what the enforcers of the law should do, if some of the people assembled are peaceable, but others are not.

A grievance for a long time unredressed is a thorn in the side of the republic.  In other words, a grievance for a long time unredressed ensures that a portion of those who assemble to petition will not be peaceable.

Redress seems to mean, literally, to bind up a wound the second time, when the first binding of the wound did not prevent infection.  But sometimes the English language imitates the French; sometimes the prefix re- in French has lost all semblance of meaning; therefore, redress might possibly also apply to binding up a wound for the first time.

Here is the burden of my appeal.  The citizen of your nation who assembles peaceably with others to petition for the redress of grievances is your neighbor.  But the citizen of your nation who joins the same assemblage but riots -- he is no longer peaceable -- is also your neighbor. 

In both cases (with your fellow-citizen who assembles peaceably and your fellow-citizen in the same assemblage who riots) you must determine if your fellow-citizen is bleeding.

Here is where the sin of failing to heed the discourse of the poor enters into the picture.

Is failing to heed the discourse of the poor a sin in the eyes of the Bible and in the eyes of Jesus?

I am not able to answer that question satisfactorily.  But I take my cue from Matthew 25:45, which is the less well-known of Jesus' two conclusions to the parable of God dividing the sheep from the goats:  "Then shall he [the King of Heaven] answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."  (It is less well-known because it includes the word "not" -- unlike Jesus' first conclusion in verse 40.)

I conclude from that -- If a human being fails to heed the discourse of the poor, then in the end time, it will be as if that person had not heeded the discourse of God.

The Discourse of the Poor

Do you say to me, that the poor have no discourse but to riot?  I would point you to Joel 2:29.  What difficult words that verse contains, after it has been translated into English!  But here it is in the King James Version, with the better-known verse that precedes it:

28  And it shall come to pass afterwards, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:  29  And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.

"Upon the servants and upon the handmaids" means "upon the servants, male and female."  But do not be distracted: this Bible verse does not deserve reproach as a reference to inequality.  It is not a reference to inequality; it is a reference to equality.  Being interpreted by a follower of Jesus, it means: "In truth, I will pour out my spirit upon the least of your brothers and sisters."  It means, that the poor will prophesy.  It means that the poor already have prophesied: just as the verse before it means that the people of more wealth and assets, male and female, will prophesy, and have already prophesied. 

This is to say: the poor have already prophesied, but you ignored them.

How can this be shown to be true?  I tell you: Amos was a herdman.  A shepherd, I say.  Has anyone heard of a rich shepherd?  If not, then Amos was poor.

Amos prophesied in chapter 2, verse 10 "For they know not to do right, saith the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces."

Yes indeed, there are two A's in palaces!  And the palaces tell you: It is a prophecy against the rich.  Not a prophecy of prediction: but a prophecy of criticism.

Besides that, is it not written by Paul Simon, that the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls?

But you ask why is the argument so slender, at this juncture?  Because I have searched on the internet for "prophets among the poor", and I came up with nothing.  Truly, I put quotation marks around it.

Does the failed search for "prophets among the poor" on the internet mean that there are no prophets among the poor in the United States of America?  It does not mean so.  It means perhaps that no one has taken the trouble to name the prophets among the poor.  Who has searched out the prophets among the poor?  More importantly: who will search them out?

The merchandise of the shopkeepers was destroyed, because the people failed to heed the discourse of the poor.

Changing the Way You Think About Policemen

I tell you, the crusade against child abuse has led in some cases to parent abuse.

But let me ask you: how do you feel about child abuse?  Do you believe that there are a few parents who are cruel and hateful to their own children?  Or do you believe that there are no parents at all who are cruel and hateful to their own children?  Do you believe that there are a few parents who need to be restrained by their fellow-citizens from hurting their own children?

Now riddle me this: do you believe that there are a few police officers who are bad apples?  In other words, do you believe that there are a few police officers who are cruel and hateful to the citizens of their own country?  Or do you believe that there are no police officers at all who are cruel and hateful to the citizens of their own country?  Do you believe that there are a few police officers who need to be restrained by their fellow-citizens from committing injustices against the citizens of their own country?

The discourse of the poor suggests to me that there are a few police officers who are cruel and hateful to the citizens of their own country.  I pay attention to the discourse of the poor.  How will those few police officers be retrained?  By punishment.  But how will they be punished? 

A prophet is only one citizen.  It is not possible for one citizen alone to determine punishments.

But the thing is just only this: no punishment at all for bad apples is not appropriate.  Although the discourse of the poor is hard for a single citizen to find on the internet, it has been written, & it can be found on the internet by a more thoroughgoing effort than this prophet has made, & it will apply to the punishment of bad apples, & and it must not be ignored.

Frank Newton

Agents Provocateurs

AGENTS PROVOCATEURS
Mon. Jan. 4th, 2021

 

It's French.

It means someone who uses spy techniques and terrorist techniques, but mainly deception with malice aforethought, to make the opposite political party look like they are traitors.

I love the French language, so I'm happy to use this technical term.  I'm happy to get into a discussion with anybody about how I pronounce it, how the French pronounce it, et cetera.  But let me be brief.  The French don't pronounce agent provocateur to where it sounds the way the word amateur sounds in English.  But if you want to pronounce the term agent provocateur so that the -teur at the end of it sounds like the -teur at the end of amateur, I'm not going to fuss at you, and I'm not going to laugh.  To refer to the Bible, I'm trying not to sit in the seat of the mockers.

But let me push my attention to the main point.  The main point is that it is a sin to be an agent provocateur.

In Dante's long poem L'Inferno (Hell), he described a series of circles of Hell, which amounts to a classification of sins by levels of heinousness.  Whether Dante was closely following the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church -- of which he was, I think, a baptized and confirmed member -- I cannot say.

But what I do want to say, is that in my opinion, Dante's classification of sins is incomplete.  Agents provocateurs need to be included in any and every classification of sins.

The main thing people need to talk about is which circle of Hell being an agent provocateur should go in, and whether it is one of those sins which should also be against the law, in a modern nation.  Relevant to the question of making it illegal, is the question of how difficult it would be to prove an accusation.

In my opinion, being an agent provocateur is a very grievous sin.  But, also, in my opinion, being an agent provocateur is a highly unpatriotic act.  When you use deception to make the opposite political party look like traitors, you are inflicting a terrible wound on your own country.  Hitler conspired to hire an agent provocateur to burn down the Reichstag in 1933, and in Hitler's case, the wound he inflicted on his country Germany resulted in the deaths of millions of Germans, and millions of innocent people.  The correct choice between Fascists and Communists is neither.

Frank Newton

The Mask and the Corona Virus and the Art of Publicity

THE MASK AND THE CORONA VIRUS AND THE ART OF PUBLICITY
Wed. Nov. 4th, 2020; posted Sat. Nov. 7th, 2020

I try to wear the mask while I am out in public during the corona virus. 

Our nation, and maybe other nations too, had a short time in March to get out the word about wearing masks, and it did not go well.

When you need to instruct the people on what they should do when trouble arises, you have a limited amount of time to instruct them.  If you attain wisdom on what words you should have used to instruct the people after the window of opportunity has closed, the people will reject your revised improved version of what you should have said.  They will say: You completely botched the job when you tried to instruct me the first time.  I will pay attention to YOU no longer.

That is why I respect the art of publicity.

Sometimes, when people think about the art of publicity, their mind goes to damage control.  Damage control is the technique of defending the honor of an organization or group after they have made a serious mistake.

Damage control is an important part of publicity.  But it is not the only part, and it is by no means the crown jewel of publicity.  To my way of thinking, damage control is the dunghole of publicity.  To me the crown jewel of publicity, the part I admire the most (when it works smoothly which is not always) is the work of making instructions understandable and palatable to the people who need to hear them.

That part of publicity is unnecessary in dictatorships.  Do what I say or I kill you.  That's how they do it in dictatorships.  But in democracies, making instructions understandable and palatable to people is very beneficial to society.

There are two parts to instructing the people.  The first part is figuring out what the people need to be reminded of, and what they need to hear possibly for the first time.  The second part is making it palatable.  The first part is like figuring out what active ingredients should go into the pill.  The second part (in a democracy), is like figuring out what to add to the active ingredients to make people willing to swallow the pill.

I cannot do the second part.  I can only do the first part.  Here is my sketch of what the first part (the active ingredients of the instruction) SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

(a) You wear a mask in public during the corona virus to protect other people.  Other people wear a mask in public during the corona virus to protect you.

(b) You obey orders from military officers to avoid being shot.  No one will shoot you if you disobey orders from public health officers, such as the order to wear a mask in public during this virus, but it is still unpatriotic to disobey them.

I have no idea how to make this message palatable.  But your publicity people, if you hire good ones, can transform these active ingredients into a message which will be the corona virus equivalent of ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.

The Centers for Disease Control deserve to have good publicists.

Frank Newton

The Myrrh Verse: an Essay on the Romans and the Jews

 

THE MYRRH VERSE: AN ESSAY ON THE ROMANS AND THE JEWS
Monday, Nov. 2nd, 2020

I have been thinking about the Old Testament.

The myrrh verse of the Epiphany carol We Three Kings of Orient Are (with words by John Henry Hopkins, Jr.) begins like this:

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom.

I studied the golden age of Latin literature in college.  I can report this: it is a record of the last century of the Roman Republic and the foundation of the Roman Empire -- which was a century of gathering gloom.  A long, long series of civil wars and massacres eventually caused the Romans to despair of and give up on their Republic, whose Senate and vetoes and division of powers were incorporated into our constitution.  The Emperor Augustus commanded the empire when Jesus was born.  He made some effort to do what was right.  But he was succeeded by the Emperor Tiberius, who ruled the empire when Jesus was crucified.  The scandalous details of Tiberius's adult life reported by the historian Suetonius -- Wikipedia calls Suetonius a "sensationalist" -- will not be repeated here.

The Roman poet Virgil glorified Emperor Augustus in an epic poem: the son of my boss said reading it was like chewing on iron filings.  At the end of the epic, the new king kills the old king in hand-to-hand combat in the shadowy story of the founding of Rome -- "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" as the British rock band The Who so memorably put it (though they were not talking about Aeneas).

In Fayetteville, I plucked from the trash can at the library, and took home with me, The History of the Former Han Dynasty (an ancient Chinese history book) in the English translation.  There, my practical Chinese boss (different boss) decided the library did not need such a gloomy book.  I was grossed out to discover that ancient Chinese history was as devious as Roman history.  In short, the ancients produced great philosophers and poets, but only in the pauses between their multitudinous spasms of violence and wickedness.

The Old Testament partakes in the gloom of ancient history.  To me, the second most appalling story in the Old Testament is the story in the Second Book of Kings chapter 10 in which the evil usurper Jehu has the sons of the previous King Ahab put to death and their heads brought to him in baskets.  The Bible feebly tries to justify Jehu, but you can't.  You might as well try to justify Hitler.  The bishop and missionary Ulfilas or Wulfila, who brought  Christianity to his people the Goths, translated the Bible into the Gothic language before 400 A.D., except for the books of Kings, which a Greek historian says Ulfilas refrained from translating into Gothic "so as not to excite the warlike spirit of his people."  Joseph Wright, the modern grammarian of the Gothic language, tells the story of Ulfilas's reluctance to translate the two books of Kings into Gothic on page 196 of his Gothic grammar, but then he immediately poohpoohs the story, claiming it was dreamed up by the medieval Greek historian.  Stuff and nonsense!  Bishop Ulfilas was a Goth and a Christian, and he knew exactly what he was doing.  The Greek historian has to be right about this detail.  I wouldn't translate the books of Kings into Gothic either!  As the men on television said about the basketball referees, "good call!"  I grew up in a family hearing stories about my grandfather an Episcopal clergyman that bore a striking resemblance to Little Socrates' story about Bishop Ulfilas (the historian Little Socrates is not to be confused with Big Socrates, the teacher of Plato).  The stories about my grandfather were funny and we laughed, but they were true stories.

Back to the Old Testament.  To me, the most appalling story in the Old Testament -- the only story that exceeds the story of King Jehu in violence and wickedness -- is the story of the killing of all the men, women, and children of Jericho which is described in the book of Joshua chapter 6, after Joshua's trumpeters caused the walls of the city to fall down.  Joshua was following the commandment which Moses gave in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 20, beginning at the 15th verse.  That is the Jewish equivalent of the verse of the Koran which the Muslims call the sword verse. -- Again, it is no accident that this commandment of Moses was not included in the ten commandments.  Listen, and look: Deuteronomy chapter 20 is by no means a commandment from Mount Sinai.  In commanding the massacre at Jericho, Joshua misheard and misspoke the word of the Lord.  The Bible is not inerrant.  But as far as I have been able to determine, I am the only liberal Christian who believes that the killing of all the men, women, and children of Jericho is actual history, which really took place exactly as the Bible describes it.

The massacre at Jericho is horribly mirrored by the massacre at My Lai, as reported by the magazine Newsweek in its report on the congressional inquiry into My Lai.  " 'And babies?' The congressman asked.  'And babies,' the witness replied."  The idea that civilians should not hear about the horrors of war is not true!!

The Old Testament is a dive into the deepest waters of our gene pool. -- The song "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" (with words by Elliot Lurie) describes the beautiful barmaid who fell in love with a sailor: "When he told his sailor stories, She could feel the ocean fall and rise, She saw its ragin' glory." -- In my poem "After the Massacre" I wrote "There is a monster at the bottom of your heart: Something about your attitude towards weak people, victims, losers. Your assignment is to clear the waters of your heart So you can see the monster."  There is a raging sea inside of our gene pool, and in the heart inside us which the Bible says God looks into!

The Old Testament describes these things, while not neglecting the little things.  Twice Abraham passed off Sarah as his sister, when traveling through God-forsaken lands.  Goofy gosh, Father Abraham!

But the song "Brandy" reminds me of another poem.  In "Noah an' Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith" Don Marquis envisions a debate in heaven between the three sailors (the rock band Steely Dan would have called them the major dudes of the seafaring world).  Jonah silences the other two, saying:

"But this here is my challenge fer saints and fer sinners,
Which one of ye has v'yaged in a varmint's inners?"

The Old Testament is like a long, long ride inside of a whale.  (The King James Version says "a great fish" -- I choose to use the word whale in its most unscientific sense.)

The blood of cavemen runs in our veins.  The Christian saying "Guard your heart" is absolutely correct.  We need to see our gene pool for what it really is.  And after we have seen it, we need to go back to the Sermon on the Mount with our whole hearts.

There are great and beautiful things in the Old Testament.  I will never forget hearing a conservative Christian that I know reading aloud the second half of the last chapter of the book of Proverbs, about the wise and diligent wife.  That Bible passage withstands scrutiny, and is to be ranked with the story of how Abraham's unnamed servant found a wife for Isaac in Genesis chapter 24; with the Book of Job; with the Songs of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah; and with the 130th Psalm, From the depths I cried to you, O Lord; and the other pearls of great price.

The end of today's part of my prophecy.

As for Me and Mine, We Will Serve the LORD: an Interpretation of White Flight

 

AS FOR ME AND MINE, WE WILL SERVE THE LORD: AN INTERPRETATION OF WHITE FLIGHT

Written Fri. Aug. 28th, 2020; posted Fri. Oct. 2nd, 2020

 

"Tout par l'intestin, et l'intestin partout" -- not a French saying.

I looked up the Bible verse which says "As for me and mine, we will serve the LORD."  It is a part of Joshua 24:15.  But I did not remember the context correctly.  I thought it was a template or a permission for the man in a household to make religious decisions for his family.  But it is spoken by Joshua, who was both the war chief and the peace chief of the Israelites.  So it is actually a template or a permission for the king or ruler to make religious decisions for the whole nation.

So, as best I can figure, I will not be working from sources in this essay -- instead, I will be writing from the gut.

To reiterate, my gut told me that the Bible verse in question was a template or a permission for the man in a household to make religious decisions for his family.  But then, my gut suggested to me a new understanding of this Bible verse: that the verse in question was a template or a permission for the man in a house to make decisions for his family concerning who and what was a clear and present danger to the family.

What is that to you, or how does it concern anyone other than me?  Let me try to explain.

Before I looked up Joshua 24:15, I decided that everybody in the United States had made up their mind about Black riots and protests many years before the death of George Floyd.  But I could not understand the conservative white point of view.  Today, I decided to read the Wikipedia article "Watts riots."  I thought maybe it might help me understand, if all of the American people had in fact made up their minds about Black riots and protests years before the death of George Floyd, and no one had bothered to tell me the results of the collective making up of people's minds.

So I read the Wikipedia article about the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965, and I was im­pressed by the methodical way in which the article discussed the subject.  It was like an historian's account of a war.  It covered (1) the causes of the riots, (2) the course of the riots, and (3) the results of the riots.  Under results, it mentioned white flight.  If you are a lot younger than I am, I don't know if you know that term.  It is my generation's abbreviation for "white people moving to a place where they do not live next to black people."

I had not thought about white flight in a while.  It is just one of those things that is in the consciousness of Americans my age, even if we quit talking about it a while back.  I tried to think about white flight in a new way.  This is what I came up with.

What if Joshua 24:15 was a template or a permission for the man in a house to make decisions for his family concerning who and what was a clear and present danger to the family?  Well, that would mean that the white flight (which certainly took place) was the man's decision.

But was it really?  My gut says: No.  I am guessing that white flight was what the woman of the household wanted.

Here is the scenario which I reconstruct, and I speculate that this is how it was:  After the Watts riots, the white Angeleña wife said to her white Angeleño husband, Honey, I'm scared of the blacks next door and the blacks on the next block over.

So the man moved his family to the suburbs.

As for me and mine, we will move to the suburbs.

But riddle me this: who actually made the decision for their family concerning who and what was a clear and present danger to the family?  Was it the wife, or the husband? 

Frank Newton 

Global Warming and Other Things

 

GLOBAL WARMING AND OTHER THINGS

Thurs. Oct. 1st, 2020

 

1. Democrats are right about global warming.  Democrats may be wrong about other things, but they are not wrong about global warming.

2. Atheists are right about global warming.  Atheists may be wrong about other things, but they are not wrong about global warming.

3. Your ideology is not a package deal.  Neither is mine.

4. When John Lennon said (in his song "Revolution") "You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow," I interpret that to mean ""Agreement on every issue with any one opinion leader is not the correct course of action for you (or anybody else)."   God wants us to agree with one group of people about one issue, and a different group of people about another issue.

Frank Newton

Not All Policemen Are Good Guys

NOT ALL POLICEMEN ARE GOOD GUYS

Mon. July 27th, 2020

My own group, the white men, is one of the hardest groups for me to understand.  Sometimes it is easier to ask the white women.  They have a certain patience with me, sometimes.

Okay, you're a white person of one sex or another.  A policeman kills a white child.  You point to the story and you say, see, they kill us too.  But you don't seem to be angry about it.  What is going on?  Why are you not angry at the policeman?  Do you believe that nobody's lives matter?

Footnote. 

If we are discussing policemen as bad apples, we need to call them by their old name, policeMEN, not by their new name, police OFFICERS.  This is not a police OFFICER problem.  This is a policeMAN problem.  If we don't use the older term, we are messing up the accurate transmission of information to the next generation.  Political correctness be damned for the duration of this discussion!

Frank Newton

The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Israelites

THE PARABLE OF THE WISE AND FOOLISH ISRAELITES

Sun. 7-12-2020

By Frank Newton -- Boiling Springs, North Carolina 

 

In the days of Moses, a plague struck the pigs¹ of the Israelites, and their pigs started dying.   Some of the Israelites ate the meat of the pigs who had died of the plague, because they had no other meat.  But some of the Israelites who ate the meat of the plagued pigs died.  So Moses (who was the chief health officer of his people) decreed that the Israelites should stop eating pigs.

 

The next thing that happened was the Israelites split into two groups.  One group was of the opinion that the decree of Moses concerning the pigs was wise, and they obeyed it.  The other group (who followed a false prophet named the Jackal) was of the opinion that Moses was an idiot, and they kept on eating pigs. 

 

Some of the ones who continued eating pigs died, but others of them lived to a ripe old age.  Statistically speaking, though, the Israelites who thought that Moses was wise, and obeyed him, had better health outcomes.

 

One Israelite had just bought one hundred pigs from a passing Midianite, before Moses announced his decree.  This Israelite was very unhappy about Moses' decree, because he had invested a chunk of his substance in the pigs.

 

[At this point, the two manuscripts of the Parable diverge.  Here, we will translate each manuscript separately.]

 

Manuscript Alpha says:

 

He went to Moses and protested, but Moses told him to kill all his pigs.

 

Manuscript Omega says:

 

He went to Moses and protested, so Moses advised him to sell the pigs to the Egyptians.  Everybody was happy except the Egyptians.

 

[From this point on, "Alpha" and "Omega" have the same wording.]

 

In the fullness of time, after a lot of people and a lot of pigs had died, the plague died down.  And when Moses was well stricken in years, he died.  Also, one by one all the people who had strong opinions about whether Moses was a wise man or an idiot died.  After that, some Israelites were ready to forget the whole thing, but the people who took an interest in dead people decided that Moses was a wise man, and they confirmed his decree.  So even unto this day, the Israelites will not eat pigs.

 

¹ An earlier translation calls them "the hogs." Some experts believe that, in the days of King James, this word was pronounced "hawgs."

Confederate Statues

CONFEDERATE STATUES

By Frank Newton / July 9th, 2020

They fought for the right to secede from the United States.  They were right.  They fought to defend slavery.  They were wrong.  Dealing with slavery is part of the problem.  Another part of the problem is that you have to admit that the South had a right to secede from the United States.  It really wasn't about preserving the Union.  It really was about slavery.  Warriors who say that it is dangerous for the United States of America to become smaller are wrong.

On Rioting; On the Abuse of Detainees' Rights; On the Duty of Citizens

ON RIOTING; ON THE ABUSE OF DETAINEES' RIGHTS; ON THE DUTY OF CITIZENS

By Frank Newton, Boiling Springs, North Carolina

=> REVISED VERSION <=

Mon. June 15th, 2020

1. Preamble

We are trapped in a sequence of recurring tragedies.  The people cry out for justice.

Since the murder of George Floyd, Americans have gone into the streets in numbers to show their anger, and to petition for redress of grievances.

The citizens of other nations have protested, too: because they hold the United States of America to a higher standard.

During or after the American Revolution, people called Thomas Paine a pamphleteer, a writer of pamphlets.  I am trying to be a pamphleteer on the internet.  This is my pamphlet.

2. On Rioting

Do you believe Von Clausewitz's saying: [because men have found it is difficult for their country to obtain what they feel is its due] "War is a continuation of diplomacy by other means"?

Here is what I believe: Rioting is a continuation of political discourse by other means.

Destruction of property is a wicked thing.  But war is destruction of property.  But men say: "War is a continuation of diplomacy by other means."

In the United States, riots arise because of the failure of political discourse.  Failures of political discourse in turn arise because of the failure of the non-poor to listen to the discourse of the poor.

There are those who say: We have no choice but to listen to the discourse of the rich.  We might listen to the discourse of the middle class.  But there is no need for us to heed the discourse of the poor.

God gave you these riots because of your hardness of heart.

There is no law and order without justice.

3. On the Abuse of Detainees' Rights

It is unacceptable for a police officer to put his knee on the neck of a detainee. 

4. Among the Things I Am Sick and Tired Of

I am sick and tired of people complaining about outside agitators.  If grievances exist, it does not matter if the protests are led by outsiders.  Address the grievances.  Stop whining about who leads the protests.

5. Message

5a. What am I saying to arresting officers everywhere?

I am saying: courts and courtrooms exist for a reason.  Here is a quotation from the unchanging prolog of one of the Law and Order television shows:

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime [and arrest suspects], and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders."

The division of labor is that after investigation and bringing of criminal charges, the courts will organize the story of what happened into order, sequence, and context -- and from that judicially created account full of details, the citizens of the county and of the nation will draw their conclusions about whether justice has been served, and whether the guilty parties have been correctly identified.  The citizens then use their conclusions to determine who they will vote for in the next elections, based on how the candidates propose to make the system of justice more just.

The tragedy of President Kennedy's assassination is a textbook case of what can go wrong when the accused is killed before trial -- even if the accused is guilty!  As it seemed to me, the question was not so much, was Lee Harvey Oswald guilty?  The question was, who paid him to kill the President?  As far as we were able to grasp the situation, the answer to that question was unob­tainable after Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald.  From the investigation which did take place, one would have thought that Jack Ruby was mentally incompetent to tell investigators who paid him, or to help investigators understand what motivated him.  The upshot, as best I could understand. was that innocent men had their repu­tations attacked in the years that fol­lowed, because the courts had had no opportunity to put the story of what happened into order, sequence, and context for the people of the United States. It could not be done, because there is no trial of a dead defendant.

If the principle of keeping the accused alive until trial applies to the guilty accused person, it applies so much more strongly to the innocent accused person!

I am saying to the arresting police officer: Give the man you are arresting a chance to defend himself.  His chance to defend himself is in court.  Your job is to preserve his life until he has had that chance.

I am saying to the arresting police officer: In an arrest, you may only have a split second to determine whether to fire your gun.  Train yourself with dedication and resolve to use that split second as a person of good will would use it.

I have spoken of man this and man that, because when a police officer murders a person being arrested, it always seems to be a man murdering a man.  Murder is not abstract but concrete.  I have tried to fit my description to the facts of what happens in these abominable failures of justice.

5b. What am I saying to high-ranking police officials?

What am I saying to the police chiefs who are in charge of hiring rookie cops, or in charge of studying and acting on reports of questionable behavior of junior white police officers when they are arresting or detaining black people?

I am saying: do something about this intolerable and loathesome situation.

With the help of psychologists, figure out some way to weed out men who do not have what it takes to be on your force.  That is your work.  Keep working on it.  That is what we ask of you.

5c. What am I saying about the President of the United States?

It is beyond my power to enumerate this President's abuses.

But I will name his basic problem: he is no good at his job.  Like most other jobs in this and every country, his job requires honesty.  This President does not know how to be honest.  He is not dedicated to the proposition that honesty is the best policy.  He is also mean-spirited.  Being a spiteful man, it makes him angry if his subordinates win any praise, or any reputation for doing the right thing.

5d. What am I saying to young people, in justification of old people?

The difference in age between the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate-apparent for President is negligible.  They are both old men.  I heard a very serious young man recently criticize Candidate Biden severely.  That was after Candidate Biden -- in a speech lofty by comparison with anything that comes out of the mouth of the man in the White House -- quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. saying "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  To an old man like me, that rings as a hopeful statement!  But to a young man it said: "Justice is slow."  Alas!!  "Justice is slow" is not a good slogan for young people as of just now, when they are trying to survive the current arc of abuse of power and trust by the most abusive president in our lifetime.

But I am saying this: Not all old men are bad.  There are good old men, there are bad old men.  We are all a little bent over, and we may look much the same on the outside: That is because we have all absorbed a lifetime's worth of troubling but truthful news reports, which have reluctantly driven us to conclude that changing the wicked ways of the world is far, far harder than we ever thought it would be when we were your age.  If the wicked prosper: it is not because the good people aren't trying their best.

6. Remedies

We are thankful for parents who protect and feed their children and raise them well.  But we are not thankful for abusive parents.

We are thankful for police officers who protect citizens from lawlessness.  But we are not thankful for abusive police officers.

The United States has ways to punish abusive parents.  We need to find ways to punish abusive police officers.

7. On the Duty of Citizens

"Days of toil, and hours of ease" -- Cecil Frances Alexander, author of the words to the hymn "Jesus Calls Us O'er the Tumult."

Recently, I heard it stated on an American sports news channel that Americans at this moment have free time to consider the tragedy of George Floyd, because there are no sports competitions taking place on television for our people to watch, because of the corona virus.

Keep the people happy with pānem et circēnsēs, the poet said: bread and entertainments.  We have bread!  Now we even have toilet paper, thanks to the hard work and dedication of our workers, and the angel in the details of our distribution system!  But we are waiting for the entertainments to resume.

I am under the impression that Americans have the most leisure time of any nation in the world.  Not everyone around here has leisure time.  Some are working three jobs to make ends meet.  But, if you add up all the leisure time that is present in our country, it mounts up pretty high, I believe, compared to worldwide levels of leisure.

When the virus passes, and we return to sports competitions, Americans will still have a duty to think about civic issues over long spans of time.  That is the opposite of treating news stories like blips on the screen.

Our oppressions and prejudices are "in it for the long haul."  Our duty to think about civic issues has to be in it for the long haul, too.

In speaking of our duty to put on our best thinking caps when considering civic issues, I want to address my fellow Christians in particular.  We Christians have a saying and a belief, that the Devil seduces people.  It is a metaphor.  The metaphor means when the Devil is trying to test you, it is like you are the woman and the Devil is the man, and the Devil is trying to persuade you to have sex with him, even though you know in your heart that is a bad idea.

The metaphor of seducing is applied whenever we are being persuaded to do something we believe is wrong.  In fact: the metaphor of seducing is applied whenever we are being messaged by people we disagree with.

The fact of the matter, however, is that when people you disagree with are trying to send you a message, they are not always trying to seduce you.  Sometimes they are.  Sometimes they are not.

That is why God gave us free time.  As citizens of a republic, a portion of our leisure time should be dedicated to the purpose of trying to determine when people we disagree with are trying to seduce us, and when they are in fact men and women of good will, who are trying to persuade us that we were wrong about something we were taught to believe.  After all, being wrong happens to the best of people.

I repeat: God gave us free time in part so that we can distinguish times when people we disagree with have dishonest motives, from times when they are, in all honesty, trying to persuade us that we are on the wrong track, or have overextended our generalizations.  We must renounce enter­tainments for some amount of time every week, so that we can make a more detailed assessment of the motives of, and the evidence presented by, specific persons who are trying to persuade us to change our minds about something -- specific persons we judge to be among the more honorable section of the people who disagree with us.

There are times when listening to what the other side has to say is not the same as being tempted by the Devil.  Finding those times among the hours of our life is part of our duty as citizens.

8. On the Wretched State of the American Dream

"I have a dream" -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I will not cease from mental fight" -- William Blake

What has happened to the American dream?  What has happened to Dr. King's dream?  Illegal drugs done screwed with the American dream.  Illegal drugs have sabotaged Dr. King's dream.  That is just one of the troubling but truthful news reports my generation has received!

Illegal drugs have turned every economic class in our nation against every other.  The rich believe the mess we are in with illegal drugs is because of the bad example set by the middle class and the poor.  The middle class believe the mess we are in with illegal drugs is because of the bad example set by the rich and the poor.   The poor believe the mess we are in with illegal drugs is because of the bad example set by the rich and the middle class.  In truth: every eco­nomic class has sinned.  There is no righteous economic class in this matter.

Our society has to have a set of discouragements in place to discourage people from wasting their own and other people's resources, and our precious time, on addicting ourselves to illegal drugs.  When our resources and our time are wasted: our dream is betrayed, and our strength as a nation is shrunken.

But the particular set of discouragements we have in place is not working.  We have to consider other discouragements.  In other words: we have to devote some of our precious leisure -- the time we would have devoted to entertainments -- to looking at the problem of illegal drugs from all angles, and considering creative ways to make our discouragements more effective.  That is the path we have to follow to rehabilitate the American dream, and reinvigorate the movement to break every yoke of oppression.

9. In Praise of Black Football Players

To use a baseball metaphor, black football players have stepped up to the plate in the current crisis.  They have a position of influence in the black community, and they are using it for the good of our country.

In earlier generations, the black clergy and religious leaders held a leading position in articulating the black response to crises and disasters in the American system and landscape.

Black clergy and religious leaders still have my ear; so do white clergy and religious leaders.  But the reality of our generation is that black football players, in our time, have the ear of a larger group of Americans than black religious leaders.

I am proud of Torrey Smith of the Carolina Panthers, my family's football team, who has made a valuable and timely contribution to the discussion about this crisis.  His interview with Jonas Shaffer of the Baltimore Sun (published June 5th) is here.

The football players who have spoken out have demonstrated that, after hours and hours of grueling practice to play their game competitively, they have dedicated some of their hours of ease to address civic issues.

I am praying for our country.

DISCLOSURE: I am a white man.

Songwriters' Workshop at Gardner-Webb

SONGWRITERS' WORKSHOP AT GARDNER-WEBB

Posted Sat. Jan. 5th, 2019 -- Happening Sat. Jan. 12th

Songwriters' workshop at Gardner-Webb University next Saturday Jan. 12th!  Steve Simpson, Glenn Selby, and Fiona McAllister will be there.  So will Kevin Bridges.  Will you?  For details from Gardner-Webb's News Center, see http://www.gardner-webb.edu/newscenter/gwu-distinguished-artist-series-hosts-event-for-aspiring-songwriters/ .  Jon J., will you be there?  Ezra, will you?  Kent B., will you?  Kendall and Henry (see The Shelby Star, Dec. 27th, 2018, page 1), will you?  Open microphone people, will you be there?  Darin and Brooke, will y'all be there?

Earl Scruggs wants you all to be there!

Frank Newton

While My Guitar Gently Weeps and the Smallpox Blankets

WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS AND THE SMALLPOX BLANKETS

Sat. Jan. 5th, 2019

Today I heard the Beatles' recording of George Harrison's song While My Guitar Gently Weeps on the radio.  I am grateful to my favorite radio station, 957theride.com for playing this great classic of rock and roll, at a time when I needed something to distract me from the ridiculous sore throat which has dogged me all fall and into January, and to distract me from the ridiculous mistakes I have made.

And I'm grateful as always to Wikipedia for their wonderful article about the song.  (Quotations below from the Wikipedia article reflect the state of the article as of the date I'm writing this, Sat. January 5th, 2019.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While_My_Guitar_Gently_Weeps shows that over time various groups of people have agreed with me that Harrison's song is one of the greatest which rock and roll has to offer (see the footnote at the end).  And the article is a wonderful summary of the work of many musical critics who have tried to put into words how the song came into existence, and what makes it so great.

Wikipedia quotes a critic who wrote that one more recent recording of the song by another musician recaptures the grandeur of the Beatles' recording of the song.

And I, as a child of the sixties, feel that grandeur is an appropriate word to use.

Just as various memorable people of the Elizabethan era have been described as having given of their best to glorify the reign of their Queen Elizabeth I, so it seems to me that the Beatles, especially in their later period from 1966 to 1970, may be said to have glorified the reign of Queen Elizabeth II -- not by praising her, but by using the gifts which God had given them to their utmost ability: by pushing the talents given to them as far as they would go.

In this essay I will try to meditate on two themes that appear in Harrison's words.  One theme is what Wikipedia calls "the world's unrealised potential for universal love" --

            I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping,

            While my guitar gently weeps.

The other theme is the theme of manipulation:

            I don't know why-y you were diverted, you were perverted too.

            I don't know why-y you were inverted, no one alerted you.

The Wikipedia article places more emphasis on the failure of universal love than on the theme of manipulation, and this essay will move in the same direction as the Wikipedia article.  Wikipedia quotes a theologian, Dale Allison, who wrote about Harrison's song.  Using double quotation marks for my quotation from Wikipedia, and single quotation marks for one of Wikipedia's quotations from Dale Allison, we arrive at this quote:

"Allison writes that the lyrics represent the 'antithesis of spiritual triumphalism', in which Harrison 'mourns because love has not conquered all'."

And here we turn aside to a brief unpacking of Allison's reference to spiritual triumphalism.  It is a clear reference to the words and music of certain hymns.  After the fall of the Roman Empire, Venantius Fortunatus wrote in his Easter hymn "Welcome, Happy Morning!", as translated by the Victorian John Ellerton, "Hell today is vanquished, heav'n is won today"; and in his Victorian hymn "Crown Him with Many Crowns," Matthew Bridges wrote "Hark how the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own."  These are examples of the tendency of Christians to write and speak, in a spirit of longing, as if future consummations have already arrived.  And the Victorian music which very properly belongs with these two hymns is well-described as triumphalist!  I love to sing them.  But they do not present a well-rounded picture of our world, and that is what While My Guitar Gently Weeps seems to me to correct.

Now we turn to the grim subject of the smallpox blankets.  This is a disaster of American history, a terrifying moral failure of my white American people.  The smallpox disease came to North America with the Europeans.  When children of some of the white people died of smallpox, their doctors told the grieving parents to dispose of the blankets with which they had tried to keep the children warm before they died, because the blankets were contaminated with the disease, and certain men offered to dispose of the blankets for the parents.  This was done and the certain men -- I have done no research on their names, occupations, backgrounds, conditions, or anything about them -- gave the blankets to Native Americans, and the disease germs which were in the blankets gave smallpox to the Native Americans, and large numbers of Native Americans, adults and children, died of the smallpox because of  this miserable failure of compassion which asks the question "Why did the heavens not darken?"

The question right now before me is, do you want to approach the disaster of the smallpox blankets as an example of manipulation -- people tricking an ethnic group with whom they had no sympathy -- or do you want to approach this disaster as an example of the failure of universal love?

- - -

My answer is, the root of the evil is not in the manipulation, not in the treachery implicated in withholding the life-threatening facts about the history of the blankets -- the root of the evil is in the monstrous failure of universal love.

- - -

It is also a monstrous failure of supervision!  The grieving parents, and white society in general in this earlier American century of which I speak, failed to control the behavior of the men who stepped forward to dispose of the blankets.  White society may have tried to extract certain promises from the men who stepped forward, but if that was tried, there was no mechanism to insure that the promises were carried out -- no mechanism to control the behavior of the givers and receivers and re-givers of the disease-infected goods.  The poisonous blankets would have passed from people with more moral qualms to people with fewer moral qualms, and from them to people with even fewer moral qualms, or else to people totally lacking in supervisory gifts.

Love is not supposed to die after the first outward ripple.  And intelligent supervision -- which includes governmental controls designed and instituted to thwart wickedness -- at its best, is the servant of love.

Harrison put these two themes, manipulation and the failure of universal love, into the words of his song, which he wrote along with its musical spine.  (Others contributed to the instrument­ation.)  Of these, the greater is the failure of universal love.

"I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping" -- it refers to the good deeds which will proceed in the future from the person being looked at.  But from every one of us, there are also evil deeds to come in future.  To me, Harrison's guitar Lucy says, Moses gave you this law, because of your hardness of heart.

Rules for the disposal of contaminated blankets are necessary.

Frank Newton

- - -

Footnote.  Touchingly, the Wikipedia article refers to the praise the Rolling Stones gave to this great song by one of the Beatles: "In their written tributes to Harrison following his death in November 2001, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards each expressed their admiration for the song."

Jesus' Closest Approach to Santa Claus

JESUS' CLOSEST APPROACH TO SANTA CLAUS

Tues. Dec. 18th, 2018

Jesus' closest approach to Santa Claus is in Luke 11:13.  Here is the context in the King James Version:

Luke 11:11  If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if [he ask] a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?  12  Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  13  If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more shall [your] heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

Verse 13 begins with the word If.  But the line of Jesus' argument implies that the answer is yes. Therefore we can leave out the word "if"; and changing "ye" to you all, we can derive:

            You all then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children.

That's where Santa Claus comes in.  My wife has set up a sign in the living room of our house that says:

Four Stages of Life

1. You really believe in Santa

2. You really don't believe in Santa

3. You think you're Santa

4. You look like Santa

The first stage is childhood; the second stage is teenage; the last stage is old age; but the third stage is parenthood.

Jesus said "You know how to give good gifts to your children" (even though you are evil).  In the third stage, You think you're Santa, because you know how to give gifts to your children; and Santa Claus presides over the gift-giving at Christmas time, because according to his story, Santa Claus is the supervisor of the toymakers and the deliverer of the toys to children.

The custom of giving gifts to children at Christmas time is a good custom. It is a custom which began in what the ancestors called Christendom, that is, the continents and regions where Christianity is or was the dominant faith.  Of course!  Because Christendom was where Christmas was first celebrated.  From Christians, the custom spread naturally to atheists, since many Christians have atheist children (whom I -- I walk by faith -- will see in heaven).

It will always be a good custom -- in other words, if Christians abandon this custom, and it is continued only by atheists, Muslims, Jews, and people of other faiths, it will still be a good custom!

But in Luke 11:13, Jesus, by implication, gives his followers permission to give their children presents.  It is the closest the Bible comes to referring to Santa Claus.

Frank Newton

The Laughing Blue Collar Worker: A Dream Quest for America

THE LAUGHING BLUE COLLAR WORKER: A DREAM QUEST FOR AMERICA

Written Tues. Dec. 4th, 2018; posted Sat. Dec. 8th, 2018

The Laughing Cavalier, a painting painted by Frans Hals in the 1620's, looks like this (if it works right on my blog):

Cavalier (from the Italian word for "knight") basically means a gentleman, or perhaps an army officer. 

My vision for America is of a laughing blue collar worker.  It is derived in part from a shirt advertisement by the Williamson-Dickie Mfg. Company (Dickies), which looks like this (copied from https://www.dickies.com/shirts/relaxed-fit-short-sleeve-chambray-shirt/WS509.html):

My vision here is not that blue collar workers are somehow the knights of America.  That is too romantic for me, or perhaps too obscure.  The vision is simply of American blue collar workers who are confident in the American economy.  That's a throwback vision or dream.

The term "dream quest" is used by anthropologists to describe a traditional Native American custom, of a youth who goes searching for a vision on reaching the age of puberty. 

The Native American custom is based, as it seems to me, on a simple but reasonable premise:

If you want to have a dream, you need to ask for one.

That is -- you need to ask your God, or my God, or higher powers, or whatever spirit is consid­ered most awesome and powerful in your world, even if it means calling upon the average wisdom of the average person (the original and etymological meaning of "common sense").

If we ask, stubbornly and repeatedly, for a vision of a confident blue collar worker, that will provide our best chance at obtaining such a vision.

I mentioned the word throwback, and you may be thinking, despite my remarks, that I am being too romantic.  But one of the things that modern people fairly consistently fail to take into account, is that the idea of change includes the idea of changing back.  "Them days is gone forever" is true about some things -- especially, at a certain point, the youthfulness of any given generation -- but it is not true about all things.  To grab an easy example, farming has made hunting less central to the human way of life; but nothing so far (in the last ten thousand years, that is) has made hunting disappear.

To narrow the picture down some, the vision is of and for someone who says, "I don't particu­larly want to become more educated than my parents were.  I would like to be able to get a job that will put food on the table for an average-sized modern family, after schooling which lasts no longer than a human childhood and adolescence, with some free years at the beginning of my childhood to play, the way children in other countries and in my country traditionally have done.  And I need my job to be an activity which does not destroy the environment for my children and my children's children."

The vision is of gainful employment and a living wage for people who don't want to become highly educated, such as was open to our ancestors.

When we consider this vision, we need to recall that the authors of the Declaration of Independence did not first conduct a study to determine if life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was a workable and attainable goal.  Instead, they first articulated their vision and declared it as their goal, and then they fought for it.

I'm not asking for a rebellion, because the success of the American Revolution was a freak accident.  Most rebellions end like the rebellion in Spain, with all the rebels being killed.  But I am asking for a re-visioning..

Blue collar work involves growing things and making things.  The question is not whether we can re-involve human beings in these activities with wages adequate to support a family.  The questions is how.

People who have studied our nation's youth report that they need to become more resilient.  That means our youth need to become better at problem-solving, and more able to bounce back after setbacks -- more able to recalibrate and re-channel and re-try their dreams, instead of setting fire to what they have already attempted and giving up on the idea of having any dreams or visions whatso­ever.

In a nutshell, resilience is a fancy word for toughness.  What observers of our nation's youth are calling for is a national or international re-toughening -- a re-toughening without loss of mental fitness.

In the past couple of paragraphs, I have used several words with the prefix re-.  This basic­ally implies that we need, as a nation or as a species, to go back and do some things again which we have already done, or do some things which our ancestors used to do, perhaps inclu­ding some things that we thought we would never have to do again (like twisting off the heads of chickens).  Also, this re-toughening includes a re-toughening of our system of education.

I will try to add one last picture -- Norman Rockwell's painting Free Speech in his Four Freedoms series of paintings:

It's not a picture of me.  I'm an intellectual.  But it's a picture of someone that I want to be on the same team with, in terms of us having the same vision for our country and for the human beings in our world.

It's almost like looking at the jungle construction workers in India and Southeast Asia and say­ing, "Putting those elephants to work is not a bad idea, as long as we don't forget to ask 'What would Jesus do?' from time to time."  And then be honest about the answer, and try to do some­thing to make what Jesus would do happen.

Rockwell's painting is an extremely simple but effective picture of a blue collar worker standing up and speaking in a gathering of mostly white collar workers, who are paying attention to what he has to say.  This is a romantic painting, but it is not more romantic than the Declaration of Independence.  The website of the Norman Rockwell Museum (currently https://www.nrm.org/2012/01/norman-rockwells-four-freedoms/) says about the inspiration for the painting:

" . . . Rockwell wanted to do more for the war effort and decided he would illustrate Roosevelt’s four freedoms. Finding new ideas for paintings never came easily, but this was a greater challenge.  . . .  While mulling it over, Rockwell, by chance, attended a town meeting where one man rose among his neighbors and voiced an unpopular view. That night Rockwell awoke with the realization that he could paint the freedoms best from the perspective of his own hometown experiences using everyday, simple scenes such as his own town meeting."

Another website I looked at a while back (I have lost the reference) stated that the man  Rock­well saw standing up and speaking at a town meeting did not persuade the other people at the meeting, but was listened to with respect.  That may be, but it's still a useful painting.

In a poem, William Blake said "I will not cease from Mental Fight."  The American Revolution effectively began with the mental work of writing the Declaration of Independence.  All success­ful fighting begins in the mind.  We have pictured the first step in what is needed to revive the fortunes of blue collar work as a vision quest.

Closing

Three factors remain to be raised.  Firstly, the Declaration of Independence ends with the signers' pledge, "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."  The reference to our Fortunes was not empty.  The signers were wealthy in their day.  That is not to say that there were no wealthy people among the Loyalists.  But the vision we envision cannot succeed, unless a fair share of the rich people of today sign onto it.

Secondly, the signers were unhampered by a dreadful encumbrance which drags upon us: the encumbrance of addiction to illegal drugs.  In our country today, this addiction is endemic to all social classes: to the rich, to the middle class, and to the poor; and each of these three classes blames the curse of this addiction upon the bad example of the other two.  Today, addiction to illegal drugs is a major source of strife between the social classes.  If the vision is to succeed, a sufficient number of people of every social class must renounce this addiction.

It is not impossible.  The founders of our country were faced with demons of their own.  In the case of the demon of slavery, they managed to postpone the reckoning until a lifetime after their struggle was won -- an extremely powerful strategic move.  The contribution of Virginia leaders to American independence is well known.

Thirdly and lastly, the vision depends for success on an accommodation of feelings with a fourth class not yet mentioned, though routinely included among the poor, namely, the class of people who have no job at all, no prospects of one, and sometimes no desire for one.  What seems neces­sary to me is an accommo­dation based upon Jesus' approach to the poor in Matthew 25:37-40:

37  Then the righteous will answer Him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed [you]?  Or thirsty, and give [you] drink?  38  When did we see you a stranger, and give [you] shelter?  Or without clothing, and clothed [you]?  39  Or when did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?  40  And the King will answer and say to them, In truth I tell you, Inasmuch as you all have done to one of the least of these my brothers, you all have done unto me.

Jesus is describing charity.  The insight of modern city-dwellers is that the government can help very efficiently with charity.  Welfare is charity; charity is love; love is what Jesus asks.  On this matter of efficiency, country-dwellers need to trust city-dwellers.  The least of these our brothers are not the working poor -- they are the people on the dole.  The issue here is for the working poor not to be consumed with envy for, or anger with, those on the dole.  The working poor are not the proletariat in the Latin meaning, which means those whose only contribution to the state is making babies.  The people on the dole are the proletariat in the Latin sense.  The eagle defecates in many different ways.  If you are eager to hold down a job without umpteen extra helpings of education, then you need to reach peace of mind and charity (an attitude of love and acceptance) with the fact that some people in your country, as well as in every other country, do not want to hold down a job, or are unfitted even for the jobs that require the least amount of education.  They may lack your physical strength.  Goal-oriented behavior may be beyond their reach.  Jesus' saying The poor you have always with you, is a saying about those on the dole, and the saying is addressed to the working poor. -- That is the accommodation needed to make this vision work.

You can call the ideas expressed in this essay simplistic, but to paraphrase what I've already written, then you would have to call the Declaration of Independence simplistic.

Frank Newton