A Prayer for Election Day

Dear Father of All,

We thank Thee for the blessings of living in a land of liberty where are free to govern ourselves for the good of all.

We pray that we can elect honest and wise people to assist us in our self-governance, that the purpose of the Constitution may be established that man not be in bondage one to another.

We are grateful for the inspired Constitution to protect us in our rights to worship Thee and to join with others in free assembly of all varieties for doing good and for open discussion of ideas and petitions to our government.

We are grateful for the results of a tragic Civil War for a more perfect Union that allowed our forebearers to prohibit slavery and establish that all people of the United States share the same rights of equality and fair treatment regardless of their station and conditions of life.

It's Civil War of Minds and Hearts - With Some Unnecessary Pain, Suffering, and Death

Fortunately, there are no organized armies yet. There are shots being fired in mass shootings and attacks on unarmed People of Color, even when they peaceably assemble in church.

If you are a trump believer, all immigrants are brown and criminals. They "infest" and threaten "white culture." This is as if Jefferson Davis became President of the United States and spread the lies of slavery.

We need a new Lincoln. We need to stand for Union and Human Rights for all. We need to respect the dignity of People of Color who contribute wonderfully to this Great Nation. We need to denounce and fight every attempt to place the falsehood of "white culture" as the American Way.

Twelve Steps to Recovery from Racism

"Hi! I'm Grant! I'm a recovering racist."

"Hi, Grant!"

This came to me in the night with a lot of other dreams of really weird stuff, but this might just work!

The LDS Church has done really well in applying the 12-Step program for drug abuse and some sexual issues borrowed with acknowledgment of and slight modification from Alcoholics Anonymous or AA.

So how does is apply in our Racism Recovery program?

Hell to Pay

Sick to my stomach doesn't begin to express what I felt watching the links below. I suffered so you don't have to unless you want to.

The first is the President's melt-down, press conference of yesterday (Tuesday, August 15, 2017, a day that should live in infamy). I watched the whole thing. The first part was about infrastructure. At about 7 minutes, he opened it up for questions and he went way downhill from there.

NY Times Transcript and Video of trump's Press Conference

Then there was this from one of the organizers of the legally permitted march in Charlottesville (Yes, First Amendment protected). It's a selfie-video he did when he learned that there was a warrant out for his arrest. He claims to be a peaceful and law-abiding neo-nazi. [WARNING: rough language].

Harriet Tubman, My Long-time, Historical Friend

Harriet, upon obtaining Freedom

It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And Harriet Tubman will soon grace our twenty dollar bill. I rejoice as we've been friends for almost 50 years.

Scholastic Book Services was one of the great blessings of my childhood. My Mom loved reading and always scraped up some spare change to allow me one or two from the tantalizing list of books that my teachers at Thoreau Elementary gave me. In 1968, I believe in the Fifth Grade at 11 years of age, I chose a great one.

President Obama's Farewell Address

Yes, I liked the speech. It reaffirmed that the President's views of politics and the Constitution are very much like mine. I don't agree with him 100%, but it's in the nineties.

This is a great speech. This is the best President of my lifetime.

I provide here the full text of the speech as found on CNN. I provide no further commentary at this time, but I have highlighted the parts I like the best.

My 31st Anniversary with the Feds

Only today did I realize that my bureaucratically formulated service computation date falls on the same day as Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address! March 4! Lincoln's address was 150 years ago today! Glad to be working for the same government of, by, and for the people. (My actual first day was May 31, 1983).

We've got a long way to go, Mr. Lincoln. The peoples' power of self-government has been vastly eroded by corporate financial power that tends to write its own rules, regulations, and laws. There are many perverse philosophies abroad in the land to tear at the fabric of the Constitution. (Many funded by the corporate financial power). But you know all about that in your tight-rope walk at the most dangerous hour of our Constitutional survival. Your actions weren't perfect, but they accomplished great good in destroying the cancer of America and its Constitution - the right of property to own humans in bondage. Thank heavens that's gone!

The Uncivil Cold War

A friend suggested (a few days before Furguson which I will not further address) that we have been in a Cold Civil War since 1865. What with Jim Crow, KKK, Separate but not really Equal, outright Segregation, and redlining neighborhoods, religious bans on black participation and mixed race marriage, unnecessary voter elegibility crack-downs, and the current conservative push to refuse economic help to the needy because they are either undeserving black criminals or welfare queens (thank you, Ronald Reagan), it seemed like an accurate assessment.

Unfortunately, the term is not unique and is all over the internet including from Glenn Beck, of all people, who cries crocodile tears for his part in tearing the country apart like some TV Evangelist caught with a woman or young boy. I'm not buying it from Glenn. And of course, he continues to stir the pot by predicting that somebody is going to go crazy and start something to turn us all into Civil War warriors and blow this country apart.

White War

Oh yeah, baby! The confederacy rises again as predicted!

Talk from an elected Congressman of the republican party, just revealed the whole game!

Black History Month

One example of 19th Century African-American Christianity

Before you start, I've heard the whine before, "When are we going to have White History Month?" It is true we don't have White History Month, the principal reason being that we already have twelve.

Case in point: I'm reading a great book, Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith's Ohio Revelations, by Mark Lyman Staker. The author is not some radical, black-panther type, just a historian working for the LDS Church.

Seven Score and Ten Years Ago

"¡Muerte a los Tejanos!"

My favorite thing about Kit Carson. That was the battle cry of the New Mexican Volunteer Regiment he organized in the Civil War. Let us remember there were Spanish-speaking people in the American Southwest long before there were any African-American or European "Texans." Like 200 years or so. The Tejano guys came by invitation of a new Mexican Republic and then they proceeded to break all the rules, most egregiously, slavery. One of the first things the Republic of Mexico did was free the slaves. The Texans were a bit more difficult to convince.

Enforce the Law to Change the Law

President Grant - NOT the one I was named for
(That was Heber J.)

Now we compare President Obama to the troubled President, but great Civil War Hero, Ulysses S. Grant. Arguably, Grant was the man who saved the Union by the shedding of blood to free the Slaves, along with Lincoln who shed his own blood in that cause (the myth of the 'lost cause' be danged!). But that's not what we're going for here.

We are all becoming unglued because the government is collecting mega-data on our Verizon cell phone calls. I don't think they are actually reading our Facebook postings over our shoulders to watch our cat videos. But it's the cable news crisis du jour forgetting that we already knew about it all as part of the national security laws including the deceptively-named "Patriot Act." It even connects directly to the big NSA facility under construction right here in Utah where the data will be stored on big flash drives and analyzed by security techno-guys and gals graduating from their moms' basements and much video game training (OK, mostly guys).

Messing with Texas

My daughter just went to a conference to San Antonio. I suggested to her that she mess with Texas a little if she got a tour at the Alamo. The ideas were to ask about the Slaves and what was the Mexican government's view of Slavery? Or at least to ask where the basement was.

She reported after the trip that she did not do the messing I was attempting to encourage. Instead, she brought me something from the gift shop:

Likening Freemen and Kingmen unto US

The doctrinal and missionary chapters of the Book of Alma in the Book of Mormon are just great! But I have to admit I just don't have the same love for the war chapters. I'm not a big war guy anyway. And I've seen a lot of interpretations "likening the war scriptures unto us" especially for the defense of the youth of Zion which isn't so bad. And occasionally, usually someone like Anonymous D, will point out that in the war chapters the good guys always stand for defensive, never aggressive war - and only when God approves. I get really annoyed, though, at the use of those scriptures to promote political ideologies, particularly from the far right (Skousen's Freeman Institute comes to mind).

So I thought I would do a little "likening" of my own. Please do not consider this as pure doctrine. It's just some of my own little thoughts that may offend some. But if the right wing can do it, so can I.

My text is Alma 51:2-8 with slight "likening." You can compare the original here.

2 Nevertheless, they did not long maintain an entire peace in the land, for there began to be a contention among the people concerning President Obama; for behold, there were a part of the people who desired that a few particular points of the Obamacare and Stimulus laws should be altered or repealed in their entirety.

Von Mises Institute Secessionist Theory

Discuss:

"With the orderly, legal secession of the southern states, the American genius for self-government reached its highest moral expression." Donald W. Livingston of the Ludvig von Mises Institute.

Discuss is what I did with my good Libertarian friend on Facebook. With his permission, I will post the discussion here. Any other comments are welcome (under the rules of posting down below).

Russell first recommended the article linked above in this way:

Very well written. Grant, I would like to read a rebuttal on your blog if you can find the time.

Me:

Yikes! My whole blog is a rebuttal to this convoluted argument about the power of states over people. Yes. That's the argument of States Rights. Just a smaller government rather than a big one. And if you've ever been to a City Council meeting, you can see first hand that the idea of "the smaller the government, the better" is a myth. It is still a "state" or "government" power. But can't argue you out of a deeply held belief system. The beauty of the Constitutional Union, in spite of its faults, and your article points out many, is that it allows the government of the people to protect the rights of individuals with the people's power united in a Constitutional system respecting basic human rights. Look, I know I can't convince you. And I don't think even Lincoln can, but here it is in a better summary than I could ever make:

Emancipation Day Sesquicentennial

Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee.

Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free!

January 1, 1863, 150 years ago, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect under the authority of President Lincoln and the difficult to define war power. See the movie Lincoln for his principled as well as down-and-dirty political fight to get the 13th Amendment removing a significant stain on our Founder's Constitution and fulfilling their ideals. At least Lincoln was able to fuse Jeffersonian principles of the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution for that "new birth of freedom."

The Founders & Sally Hemings

Chris Matthews is rude and talks over his guests. But then it's his show just like this is my blog (well, and Anonymous D's). I find him entertaining because sometimes he says the most unusual things plucked from outside of any box. The other day I was watching when he said something in a discussion of Republicans and women's issues about how the Founders probably weren't thinking of Sally Hemings.

Sally was a house slave of Thomas Jefferson. She was also the younger half-sister of Jefferson's deceased wife. There are no existing pictures of Sally, but reports say she was attractive. She was of 1/4 (or less) African descent and 3/4 (or more) of European ancestry. Her children were at most 1/8 African and most of them passed for "white" and entered the dominant society (generally outside of Virginia) when they were freed in Jefferson's will. A few of her grandsons fought for the North in the Civil War.

Racists Among Us

Yesterday, I had to leave work early and caught the most amazing dialogue on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation. The host, Neal Conan, was discussing Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation with guest Richard Striner of Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland.

I shared the transcript excerpt below with Anonymous D as I noticed the caller was from Howard City, Michigan (and I'm sure there are many fine people in Howard City):

I wondered if that was in your mission. I didn't catch the location until I found the transcript. But I heard yet another amazing thing on Public Radio yesterday. On a theme of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, a caller came on --- and maybe I'll just let you read it. The next caller is also interesting with a voice of such a refined Southern lady from Charleston, SC. 

Anonymous D responded:

Yeah Howard City was in my Mission, actually in one of my areas.  The racial history of Michigan is interesting, especially in light of this conversation.  Most African Americans in Michigan came north during the war to work factory jobs, vacated by whites who were off fighting in Europe or the South Pacific.  When the War was over, to my understanding, the whites came back to their jobs and the, by that time skilled, black laborers were left jobless in pre-civil-rights Michigan which wasn’t exactly a forgiving place.

I’m not going to comment on the rest of it other than to say: Ugly.

[Later] My observations of Michigan history are not scholarly but anecdotal-based on the comments of residents I talked to during my mission and after.  Interestingly the best popular history of Michigan was written by Bruce Catton of Civil War History fame, himself a Michigander.  Don’t be too hard on my adopted homeland. Michigan did sent many regiments to fight for the Union.

Now, for the ugliness:

The Founders Didn't Build That

The U.S. Capitol. Symbol of Democracy, Constitutional Government, and Freedom around the world. Built by Slave labor.

Yep. I ran across an interesting article published by the Architect of the Capitol. It analyzes the "contribution" of African-American Slaves in the construction of the U.S. Capitol and many other historic buildings in our nation's capital. The United States didn't actually own the Slaves, we only rented them from their owners. I'm so relieved.