Author Archives: bpriddy

If one of your ancestors owned slaves—

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—should their name be erased from your family tree?

Should Jefferson City and Jefferson County change their names because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves?

Should towns named for the Five Civilized Tribes or their leaders change their names because the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War?

We began thinking of these questions a few days ago when we saw a Kansas City Star comment suggesting a fountain and a parkway named for J. C. Nichols be renamed because he was a racist whose real estate developments defined Kansas City’s history of racism that lingers in the minds of many citizens today, and upon hearing of a petition circulated by a University of Missouri student to remove a statue of slaveholder Thomas Jefferson from Francis Quadrangle (where the columns are in Columbia) and after seeing a news account that protestors in North Portland, Oregon had pulled down a statue of Jefferson at a high school named for him.

New to the discussion is that military bases should no longer be named for Confederate officers such as Braxton Bragg, John Bell Hood, Henry Benning Robert E. Lee, and others.

These are troubling issues and troubling questions in troubling times. Today, let’s consider Thomas Jefferson. The military bases will wait for a later posting.

Correcting the historical narrative is better than trying to erase it, for we learn nothing from erased history and we can learn everything from placing history’s people and events in context. Hasty action in emotional days might rob those in the future of needed guidance in shaping their eras.

University of Missouri Curators correctly decided to leave the Jefferson statue on Francis Quadrangle although the petitions had more than two-thousand signatures. University System President Mun Choi said, “We learn from history. We contextualize historical figures with complex legacies. We don’t remove history.”

To remove the statue of Jefferson because he owned slaves would also remove the statue of someone who was the main author of the Declaration of Independence, the creator of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, the founder of the University of Virginia (three things he wanted on his original tombstone that also is at the University of Missouri-Columbia), and the president whose administration added most of the land west of the Mississippi River that made us a nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Dr. Choi and the curators had it right.

Here’s a more intimate dimension to this issue:

Several years ago when I was a guest lecturer at Kent State University, I met a sharp, earnest African-American student, Shannon Lanier, and this then-girlfriend (now his wife, Chandra, and mother of their three children). He told me he was the sixth-great grandson of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, whom some identify as the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife. Martha Jefferson died at the age of 33 in 1782. Shannon already had co-authored a book about Jefferson’s black descendants. DNA studies indicate Tom and Sally had six children, four of them surviving to adulthood. Many white Jefferson descendants accept the Hemings descendants as part of the Jefferson heritage.

I wonder how those African-American Jefferson descendants would feel if they knew a proposal had been made at the University of Missouri to remove a statue of their most famous ancestor. Would the removal place them in the position of being branded as products of some kind of unforgivable Original Sin? Is their existence the result of some kind of unforgiveable disobedience of widely-accepted contemporary codes against sexual relations between different races (a code often ignored in plantation America, including here in Missouri)?

The censuring of Jefferson as a slave-owner could be seen as a disparagement of hundreds of his descendants, a continuation of the idea that any child born out of wedlock—let alone also born of an interracial relationship—should bear a mark of historic illegitimacy.

And what difference does it make in the long run? The importance of a life is not how it begins but how it is lived. That is why a rush to judgment in emotionally-charged times can be perilous.

As Shannon put it on CBS This Morning, on February 14, 2019, “Sometimes, I’m proud of his accomplishments and sometimes I hate him for not doing more…We can’t necessarily judge history with contemporary eyes but we can learn from history and the mistakes that our past leaders have made.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTC_UFAhrvA)

The PBS Newshour ran an extended piece that featured other descendants of Sally and Tom commenting on a Monticello exhibit about Sally. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gm3HtijrMQ)

The New York Times ran a Farah Stockman’s story on June 16, 2018 (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/jefferson-sally-hemings-descendants.html) about the feelings of Hemings descendants about the exhibit. One of those descendants, former employee of the National Archives in Washington, D. C., Julius “Calvin” Jefferson, took pride in his slave ancestors: “They were there at the beginning of the country. When you are of African descent, you are told that we had nothing to do with that. I’ve realized that members of my family had a lot to do with that. The contributions that the slave community did at this one plantation afforded Thomas Jefferson the leisure to be the genius that he became.”

Additionally, how, if we are to follow the wishes of those advocating removing monuments of racists and slave-holders, should we treat the thirty-nine men who signed the United States Constitution in 1787? Or the 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence? Some of them were slave-holders yet they gave us the Declaration that declared we were a nation on equal standing with other nations and asserted the immortal line we are fond of quoting today despite the times in which it originated—All men are created equal—and then produced a Constitution that, with its Bill of Rights, defines our country as the republic that it is.

There is danger in applying a moral standard of our time to punish our ancestors for the values they held in morally different societies. To brand them for being part of an acceptable culture that would not be acceptable today runs the risk of diminishing our opportunities to learn from them. Failing to remember our past with its disgraceful as well as its noble moments is to risk an ignorance that could produce regrettable repetitions.

Thomas Jefferson, J. C. Nichols and all of those in our pasts whose flaws we recognize because of our contemporary values give us important context as we correct today’s shortcomings.

Tomorrow is more important than yesterday. But knowing about yesterday is vitally important in helping us shape that tomorrow. Ignorance of history is more dangerous than knowledge of it. Historic events and historical figures are products of their times. Placing people and events within the standards of their eras gives them a reality that we cannot ignore as we consider who we are today and who we will seem to be when we join them as history.

Our presence in these times is a history lesson for tomorrow whether we like it or not or whether those who come after like us or not.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham a few days ago on MSNBC discussed how he evaluates historical figures:

Was the person or the institution being memorialized ultimately devoted to the pursuit of a more perfect union or were they for ending the constitutional experiment altogether. And by that test, even the most flawed white Americans—Andrew Jackson, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, could be memorialized and understood as imperfect people who nevertheless were about defending a system that ultimately gave us the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that ultimately gave us the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Woman Suffrage. From Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall, the story of the country has been one of all-too-gradual liberation and we should build our monuments; we should focus our collective commemorative memory around those moments.

Taken as a whole, was Jefferson’s life a quest for that “more perfect union?” Yes, it was and is the reason his statues should remain in Columbia and elsewhere, a representation of a man who—as is true of all of us—is greater than his shortcomings.

Dr. Crane on History

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(Demonstrations in recent weeks have dramatized the effect the past has on the present. Our Wednesday posts for the next couple of weeks will address a couple of the issues that have spun off of those demonstrations. It’s appropriate, therefore, that we offer Dr. Crane’s thoughts on—)

THE PAST

A good deal of morbid nonsense has been said and written and thought about the Past.

The Past is irrevocable, we have been told in sermon and story—you cannot escape the past—the Past can never be changed—and so on, and so on—the whole trend of this thought being that the Past is a kind of Sherlock Holmes dogging our steps forever, a sinister nemesis waiting its chance to strike us down, the account-book of an angry God sure to confront us some day.

All of this is morbid, most of it is dramatic; the underlying sentiment of it is false, weakening, and septic.

As a matter of fact, our Past, as Maeterlinck* says, depends on our Present and changes with it.

What the Past is depends upon the way you are now using it. Its effect upon your destiny will be gauged by how you translate it into the Future.

If we brood over the Past, and weaken ourselves with vain regrets, with self-contempt and remorse, then it will poison and undo us.

But no matter what it contains of our sin or folly, we can, by a right use of it now, make it minister to our welfare.

First, we can learn wisdom from it. By it we can realize our faults to be corrected and our offenses to be atoned for. And with this wisdom we can go onto better things.

The only true repentance is so to use th Past as to enable us to build a better future. Weeping and wailing and brooding are the luxuries of morbidity.

The Past is beneath our feet. We can go down into it and wallow in impotent grief, or we can step upon it to higher things.

The great enemy of life is Despair. The great friend of life is Hope. Despair paralyzes, ruins. Hope energizes, “for we are saved by hope.”

Up! Face the future! Whatever the Past has been, let it nerve you to spend your remaining days unfaithfulness and loyalty to your better self!

So Tennyson, with clear insight, with sane instinct for moral truth, wrote:

“I hold it truth, with him (Goethe) who sings

To one clear harp in divers tones,

That men may rise in stepping stones

Of their dead selves to higher things.”

*Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1849) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911 in recognition of his “many-sided literary activities.”

           

Wrappers

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell issued a statement about ten days ago in which he said the NFL had been wrong in not listening to players’ protests against racism and police brutality. He said the NFL supports the Black Lives Matter movement now:

”Without Black players, there would be no National Football League. And the protests around the country are emblematic of the centuries of silence, inequality and oppression of Black players, coaches, fans and staff. We are listening. I am listening, and I will be reaching out to players who have raised their voices and others on how we can improve and go forward for a better and more united NFL family.”

Some have applauded the apparent awakening of the NFL to the issue. Some think the continued refusal of the league to re-sign Colin Kaepernick, who caused the initial stir by kneeling during the National Anthem, is a continuing sign the NFL is just talking a good game.

The proof of the league’s sincerity will be written in the future.

The message struck the President of the United States squarely in the knee, and the resulting jerk produced a Trumpian response that ignores the issue behind the message but helps stoke the fires of his loyal base. “Could it be even remotely possible that…he was intimating that it would be O. K. for the players to KNEEL, or not to stand, for the National Anthem, thereby disrespecting our Country and our Flag?”

I’m going to get in trouble from here to the end today.

I am one of those who loves our country and respects the flag that is its symbol for the good it has achieved as well as what our country can be. Should be. But that does not mean I should ignore the times when that flag has stood for regretful things or regretful things that linger.

I wonder if President Trump has ever visited an Indian reservation. I have. Some are better off than others and some are very poor, places where the ancestors of today’s inhabitants were forced to go so another race could appropriate their lands. I have, for example, stood at the edge of the ditch at Wounded Knee where so many were killed while the American Flag was flying overhead.

I can understand how the American Flag has a different meaning to those who live in those places.

I wonder if President Trump has ever thought about doing something to improve lives in ghettos and barrios or would visit one, mentally capable of understanding what he was seeing and what he was being told and then had the capacity to do something other than tweet about the experience.

I can understand how the American Flag lacks the meaning in those places that the President demands for it from his comfortable office.

I wonder if President Trump has ever visited the remains of an internment camp into which Japanese-Americans were herded a few years before he was born because they were considered security risks although their families might have been Americans for generations. I have.

I can understand why some descendants of those internees can see the American Flag differently from the President’s view that he seems to think is the only acceptable view.

It is easy for those whose lives have not included oppression or social uncertainty to wrap ourselves in a national symbol and feel warm and comfortable in it. But the flag is more than a wrapper. The problem with wrapping oneself in a flag of self-righteousness is that the wrapper can obscure one’s view of the real world around them.

The flag is my symbol, not just his. And I will decide what it symbolizes to me at any particular time. He will not dictate to me what the American Flag can mean and how I may legally express that meaning.

Among other things, the American Flag stands for moving beyond the status quo. The American Flag symbolizes a people always reaching for more, moving for more, developing more, creating more. The flag symbolizes a nation that would not be confined to thirteen states on the Atlantic coast. It symbolizes a nation that would not tolerate state-sponsored religion. It symbolizes a nation that, in time, would not tolerate a system of buying and selling people. It symbolizes a nation that demanded equality with other nations and got it. It symbolizes a people always asking, as Carl Sandburg put it, “Where to, what next?”

It symbolizes a nation with flaws and scars—and the best it can become despite them.

But moving beyond the status quo also means extending opportunity beyond the privileged. Moving beyond the status quo implies a public responsibility to one another so that allmight seek life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without fear.

Going beyond the status quo requires those who are comfortable with it to recognize enforcing the status quo stifles the very values the wrappers claim to cherish and leads to resentment and challenge.

Do not tell me, Mr. President, that I may not take a knee in a country that speaks of hope for better days but is seen by many as doing little to bring them to those people. Do not tell me, Mr. President, that your ideas of freedom are the only ideas I am allowed to have. Do not tell me it is un-American to kneel during the National Anthem, or to refuse to say “Under God” as part of the Pledge of Allegiance, or in some other way indicate that I believe the American Flag represents still unfulfilled goals that we should never rest in reaching for.

I am an American and I will decide the meaning of our national symbols, not you. My respect for them is based on what they mean we can be. And what we can be is surely better than what we are.

I want to make America great. And that is why I will kneel if I choose to do so. And if I remain standing with my hand over my heart, it is because I choose to believe in what must be, not what is.

I will choose how I interpret the flag. I will not wrap myself in it and proclaim that only I am righteous enough to interpret its meaning. I will not wrap myself in it and demean those who see it through different eyes. That, frankly, is un-American.

A flag cannot be inspirational and aspirational if it is wrapped. It can only be those things if it is free to blow with the winds of change.

There is a strong breeze blowing in our land today. This is a time to let the flag fly so all may see it in their own ways and be guided by it to better tomorrows.

Flag day and Dr. Crane

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Flag Day was yesterday. It commemorates the day the Continental Congress adopted the design of the American flag in 1777, two years to the day after the Congress created the “American Continental Army.” President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation in 1916 designating June 14 as Flag Day. National Flag Day came along by Congressional Act in 1949. A year after Wilson’s proclamation, we were at war and forces were being gathered to go to Europe. Dr. Frank Crane wrote about the symbolism of our flag for the YMCA publication, Association Men in the June, 1917 edition. There are many today who will find his writing overblown and unrelated to the real world. But in some of the things he writes, we find statements that would support some of the things many of us are hoping will happen and that many in our streets today are demanding TO happen. Now.)

THE FLAG

When you see the Stars and Stripes displayed, son, stand up and take off your hat!

Somebody may titter. It is in our English blood to deride all expression of noble sentiment. You may blaspheme in the street and stagger drunken in public places, and the bystanders will not pay much attention to you; but if you should get down on your knees in the street and pray to Almighty God, or if you should stand bareheaded while a company of old soldiers march by with their fag to the breeze, some people will think you are showing off.

But don’t you mind! When Old Glory comes along, salute, and let them think what they please! When you hear the band play The Star Spangled Banner, while you are in a restaurant or hotel dining-room, get up, even if you rise alone; stand there, and don’t be ashamed of it, either!

For of all the signs and symbols since the world began there is never another so full of meaning as the flag of this country.

That piece of red, white and blue bunting means five thousand years of struggle upward. It is the full-blown flower of ages of fighting for liberty. It is the century plant of human hope in bloom.

It means the answered prayer of generations of slaves, of the helots of Greece, of the human chattels of Rome, of the vassals of feudalism, of the serfs of Russia, of the blacks of America, of all who, whipped and cursed, have crawled from the cradle to the grave through all time.

Your flag stands for humanity, for an equal opportunity to all the sons of men. Of course, we haven’t arrived yet at that goal; there are many injustices yet among us, many senseless and cruel customs of the past still clinging to us, but the only hope of righting the wrongs of men lies in the feeling produced in our bosoms by the sight of that flag.

It stands for no race. It is not like an Austrian, Turkish or German flag. It stands for men, men of any blood who will come and live with us under its protection. It is the only banner that means mankind.

It stands for a great nation on earth free from the curse and burden of militarism and devoted to the arts of peace.

It means the richest, happiest, youngest people on the globe.

Other flags mean a glorious past, this flag a glorious future. It is not so much the flag of our fathers as it is the flag of our children, and of all children’s children yet unborn. It is the flag of tomorrow. It is the signal of the “Good Time Coming.” It is not the flag of your king, it is the flag of yourself and of all your neighbors.

It has a power concealed in its folds and scatters abroad an influence from its flutterings. That power and influence mean that in due time, slowly and by force of law, yet surely as the footsteps of God, the last ancient fraud shall be smitten, the last unearned privilege removed, the last irregularity set right, the last man shall have a place to work and a living wage, the last woman shall have all her rights of person and of citizenship, and the last and least of children shall be sheltered and trained and equipped by the sovereign State, and so have their right to live.

Don’t be ashamed when your
throat chokes and the tears come, as you see it flying from the mast of a ship
in the Bay of Gibraltar or the port of Singapore. You will never have a
worthier emotion.

That flag is the cream of all religions, the concentrated essence of the best impulses of the human race; reverence it as you would the signature of the Deity.

By hundreds and by thousands, the wretched victims of old-world caste are streaming westward, seeking here the thing that flag stands for—opportunity.

It stands for the quick against the dead, the youth of the world against its senility.

 

Crisis Buffet

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We are trying to think of a time when a Missouri governor has had as many major issues to deal with at one time as Governor Parson has on his plate now.

We can’t think of one.

In addition to the normal burden of duties governors have, there has been added to this one’s plate the state’s response to a worldwide pandemic, the related collapse of the state’s economy and its hundreds of large and small widespread ripples to which state government is either a party or to which it must respond, civil unrest that must be dealt with on a daily—or nightly—basis at a time when the responsibility of government to restore or maintain order is under intense scrutiny, and questions about the role of government in correcting the social and political ills that are behind the disorder. So far the governor has not had to deal with major natural disasters—a devastating tornado or a historic flood for examples.

Plus—it’s a campaign year. Additionally, the instability of national leadership, legislative action to overturn the will of the people on the so-called “Clean Missouri” initiate of 2016, and the August ballot issue to expand Medicaid and the state funding responsibilities that will go with it constitute a salad bar of issues to go with the buffet of crises facing a governor who has been given an average-sized plate.

Governor Henry Caulfield in late 1931 once ordered an immediate 26% cut in the state budget to deal with the depression’s major impact on state finances when retail sales were down by half and unemployment was rising toward a 1932 level of thirty-eight percent. His successor, Guy B. Park in 1933 faced a state treasury holding only $15,000 with a $300,000 payroll to meet. Central Missouri Trust Company loaned the state enough money to pay its bills and to match available federal funds for depression relief until a special legislative session could enact new revenue measures—a gross receipts tax that was later replaced with the state’s first sales tax.

A plethora of problems faced Republican Governor Forrest Donnell in 1941, the first being the refusal of the Democrat-dominated legislature to certify his election at the start of the year and, as the year wound down, putting Missouri on a war footing.

Governor Warren Hearnes faced civil unrest during the Civil Rights era and in the wake of the murder of Martin Luther King, calling out the National Guard at times to maintain order.

Other governors have dealt with killer heat waves or 500-year floods. But the Parson administration will be remembered for 2020, a year in which crisis after crisis came to Missouri.

We have watched his almost-daily briefings and have watched as he and administration members and private organizations have scrambled and worked to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and its myriad effects. The civil unrest in the streets will remain as extreme civil discomfort long after the streets are clear and a record is yet to be written on whether Missouri—and the nation—at last really will do something about that discomfort after decades of talk but insufficient progress being made to limit chances for the streets to blaze again.

The economy will come back although it might take years. Missouri and the country had finally put the 2008 recession far back in its rear view mirror when all of this hit but that experience should remind us that a quick fix to today’s economic ills can best be hoped for but not counted on.

A couple of times we have seen Governor Parson show some irritation with a reporter or a published story during his briefing, a circumstance that might best have been handled with a phone call rather than a public criticism. But we’re willing to cut him a little slack, given the pressures he feels, the burden he carries, and the daily stress of a job that has become far more than any governor we know about. The passage of time will evaluate whether his leadership in this unprecedented time is, or was, effective and long-lasting.

Missouri has seldom needed as steady a hand on the tiller as we need one now. Missourians viewing today’s challenges and responses through their personal partisan lenses might differ on how this governor is doing in the moment. But he is Theodore Roosevelt’s man in the arena.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Who among us would want to be carrying the burden of office that this governor is carrying? Who among us would want to be in the arena he is in?

Frankly, we think he is fighting the good fight. And we look forward to the day—as he undoubtedly does—when we can again live off a menu rather than deal with a crisis buffet.

Dr. Crane on Crisis

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(How many crises can we have at once? It seems as if the Four Horsemen are galloping through our land—Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. The economy has driven thousands to our food banks. A pandemic continues to spread in our world. There is disorder, death, and destruction in our streets. The headlines of yesterday’s crisis are pushed aside by the one of today. Dr. Frank Crane wrote of how each of us might deal with crisis in the January, 1920 issue of Hearst’s: A Magazine with a Mission. In a time of crisis, he said, it is Principles that will be to us—-)

AS ANCHOR TO THE SHIP

It is not what you can do ordinarily, but what you can do in a crisis, that counts. The crisis is the swift fire that tries men, as gold is tried, revealing the fine metal and the dross. You never know what is in a soul until you see it pass through a supreme moment.

That unmasks the hero, uncovers the god. He may have seemed a tramp, a shiftless loafer, a ne’er-do-well, but when the factory takes fire and all are paralyzed with fear, it is he that plunges into the burning building and rescues the boy at the cost of his own life.

She may have been a most drab and commonplace woman, ignorant and low, but when her hour strikes she moves towards it with the majesty of a queen, and cares for those stricken with the pest in fine carelessness for her own life.

The question is, what will you do in a pinch? Will you measure up? Or will you muff?

The fierce rays of responsibility all focused into one white hot moment have a curious effect on souls. One person will be melted to panic. Another will be steeled to unusual strength.

The merciless searchlight of danger moves over the city, lighting upon this one and that.

How will you act when it rests upon you?

What reserves of power have you? What hidden store of resources? Your final efficiency will depend upon this.

Does danger, responsibility, the sense of the fatefulness of the moment, key you up, cheer your brain to think quickly and accurately, and steady your hand to its highest skill?

All your life you are preparing for the crisis. When it comes you will see your naked soul as it is—clean and strong, or cringing and deformed. It is your Day of Judgment.

When it comes, a lot of things will not matter: your money, for one thing, and your station in life, for another. All that will matter will be, whether you are a man or a mouse.

In the crisis you suddenly become aware of the vital importance of principles. For it is these, the great, deep, subconscious convictions, the sleepers under the house of life, that decide whether you are to stand the storm or be swept away.

Your opinions may be upset, your power to think may be unloosed; but if your principles hold, you shall not fall.

Principles are to the soul what the great tap-root is to the tree, what the anchor and the cable arc to the ship, what the gold reserve is to the bank. Have you any?

Are there some things you believe in and will risk your life upon, things that lie too firmly imbedded in you for argument, too fundamental even to be taken up and examined?

Policy and cleverness, alertness and shiftiness arc very useful in everyday weather, but the man that has these only, and no fixed principles, “shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon that house.

“And it fell! And great was the fall thereof.”

Us vs. Us

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A fearful old man sat down at my computer yesterday and began to type.

The son of Kansas Baptist/Methodist Republicans—Landon, anybody-but-Roosevelt, Dewey, Eisenhower, Nixon Republicans—earlier in the year fearful of a spreading plague but now fearful of something more dangerous.

Fearful that he might soon see an American Tiananmen Square, the violent and deadly pro-democracy protests that are remembered because of the image of one man blocking a military tank on its way to put down the demonstrations.

Fearful that a desperate effort to project and protect personal power without limits, unchallenged by timid participants from his own party intimidated by his presence and his loud loyalist legion will leave a legacy of distrust in a system of government created long ago by men whose ideals ultimately far overshadowed their ideology.

Fearful of a force that sees a crisis as a political opportunity rather than as a cause demanding responsibility and as an opportunity for creating a united spirit to reach an inclusive goal.

Fearful of a climate being expanded that encourages citizens to feel they are victims of government rather than responsible participants in it.

The old man at the keyboard remembers other bad times and other missed opportunities to heal the national spirit, other days of burnings and of lootings, other days when the peaceful expression of grief and of hope growing from it was overshadowed by uncaring opportunistic violence that diverted actions and intentions to create a better community and a better nation to overshadowing relief that the burnings and lootings finally were over.

The old man, having seen many things in a long life, is fearful, fearful that the democratic republic that he and his Kansas Republican parents have loved and believed in has been pushed to the edge of its existence by repeated missed opportunities and now by leadership that cares about plagues and public tragedy and disruption only to the degree that it can turn them to perceived personal advantage.

The old man is fearful when those within a leader’s orbit lack the bravery to advocate compassion that transcends perpetuating personal political power and the will to work for reason in unreasonable times. He worries at the loss of common integrity and the lack of diverse voices demanding it from those in the most powerful positions, and the refusal of those in those positions to display it.

His mind is often drawn to a poem called “Talk” by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko from many years ago that ends:

How sharply our children will be ashamed

Taking at last their vengeance for these horrors

Remembering how in so strange a time

common integrity could look like courage.

Integrity. Courage. The old man seeks them from those reluctant or afraid to display them. And in times like these when integrity and courage are most needed, he is fearful.

Dr. Crane on Chaos and Confusion

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(After an awful weekend of disorder and disaster in a tragic time of worldwide sickness and death, we are absorbed in our own uncertainties. What can go wrong next? Where are we headed, personally, politiclaly, and nationally? Some of us watched Saturday for a few brief minutes a small rising symbol of hope and future adventure with the launch of the Dragon space capsule. But with night came more consuming gloom and despair that continued yesterday. The Young Men’s Christian Association national magazine, Association Men, in its October, 1923 issue published Dr. Frank Crane’s reflection on rising above despair, reflecting on a post-World War I world with words that fit our times.

He advised us to—-)

CAST YOUR ANCHOR and WAIT for DAYLIGHT

AFTER some fourteen days of violent driving to and fro before the wind, the ship upon which St. Paul was a passenger was found, by soundings, to be approaching an unknown shore. Then upon the advice of Paul the sailors cast anchor and waited for day.

The world today seems to be in a confusion resembling the case of the ship which held the apostle. Conditions are swirling. There is chaos in politics and confusion in men’s minds. Nature adds its touch of tragedy in the Japanese earthquake, one of the greatest natural disasters in history.

During the war America and the World in spite of the horrors of the time were elevated by a great moral purpose. The very seriousness of the threatened disaster aroused the idealism of the people. When the war was over America and the world had a great slump. Since then we have been wallowing in pessimism and petulance. The effort to make rational arrangement which would avert another such cataclysm by means of the League of Nations was defeated by partisanship. Since that time the forces of reaction have been strong and continuous.

France in the Ruhr and Italy with Greece look very much as though they were adopting the tactics of old Germany.

Rather universally the song of the birds has been succeeded by the croaking of frogs. The only way to get and maintain our poise is by grasping clearly the fundamentals of religious faith.

The very purpose of religion is to steady and sustain life. What the world needs is an intelligent faith. Let us think a bit about what this implies.

An intelligent faith is not a silly optimism. It does not consist of absurd denial of evil and pain. Any faith which ignores facts can hardly be called intelligent. An optimism that says all is good is false. The only true optimism is that which recognizes evil and at same time recognizes the responsibility for correcting evil. The right kind of optimist is one who tries to find the will of God and cooperate with it and who believes that that will is pure and perfect. And the law of God is growth. And there can be no growth that does not pass through imperfection to perfection. We are yet in the transition stage. We are co-workers with God with the great task before us of bringing order out of chaos. Optimism consists in believing we shall succeed and not in deluding ourselves that we have succeeded.

An intelligent faith faces the deeper facts. Pessimism sees only the superficial facts. There are many who say that faith is a delusion because they see evil rampant, but the man of faith looks deeper than this, knowing that the great facts of life and destiny are not upon the surface but hidden. That is why those who merely see the apparent facts are often discouraged and swept away into despair. But the mind of him who has faith in God is like the still deeps of the ocean, while the mind of the godless is like its storm-tossed surface.

Intelligent faith rests upon the great cosmic laws. These are the laws of righteousness and justice and of the fixed benevolent will of God. These are eternal. Vice, and violence, evil and despair flourish for a time but they are as the falling leaves. Goodness is the tree trunk that time nor seasons nor the defections of men cause to decay.

An intelligent faith is no blind belief in totems. It is not superstition. It has nothing to do with mysterious hocus pocus of any sort. It is based upon a knowledge of history, a knowledge of the human heart, and a knowledge of the great unfolding law of evolution in the world.

An intelligent faith is not a seed of fanaticism. It is courage. It makes a man keep on fighting when the battle goes against him. It is the strong conviction that no matter how dark the night the sun will rise in due season. It is the implicit belief in the truth that it always stops raining. It lends to a man something of the fixity of Nature herself because it is a belief in Nature’s law and in Nature’s god.

An intelligent faith does the constructive work of the world. It builds, it plants, it creates. It is the source of the best functions of human energy. It is the backbone of the mind. It not only keeps the mind strong but it keeps the body healthy, the eye clear and the soul undisturbed.

An intelligent faith begins with faith in oneself. That he is a child of God, that he has been put into this world for a purpose and cannot be removed from it until that purpose is fulfilled. It is a faith in one’s potential goodness because it is a faith in one’s sonship toward the Eternal.

An intelligent faith is a belief in men, in one’s neighbors in the world. Almost all the troubles that have arisen from human contact have been caused by the failure of faith. If men would only believe in each other, that all men are fair and all women good, the world might lift itself into the millennium. This would be no lifting of oneself by the boot straps, it would rather be lifting of oneself by allowing the greatest force in the universe to operate through him.

An intelligent faith is also one of the instincts. It is from the instincts a human being derives all his force. Faith is one of the latest products of evolution, an instinct developed by the long struggles of the race, the finest flower in God’s garden of Souls.

An intelligent faith is faith in God. That does not mean in some mysterious charm to avoid disaster, nor in some medieval monarch sitting on the throne of heaven, nor in some fantastic heathenish deity to be propitiated by sacrifice and incense, but it means faith in the Mighty Father who broods ever upon his world of men, bringing order out of confusion, goodness out of evil, and love and holiness out of mankind, even as He brings the white lily out of the muck, even as he conducts His own universe upon the vast dim voyage from chaos to the stars.

Let us cast our anchor of an intelligent faith in God and wait for day.

Us vs. It—part IX, prayer and politics.

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Last Sunday was Ascension Sunday in our faith tradition. Our minister remarked that he had seen a joke circulating on Facebook that when Jesus ascended into Heaven, he became the first person to work from home.

President Trump, just before the holiday weekend, ordered churches to open “right now” for face-to-face worship. As he has done in the past, he claimed exclusive power to override local and state orders for worship-in-place limits. The president who has proclaimed that it’s up to states and their governors to fight the Coronavirus, with his administration only as a backup, seemed to think on the issue of opening churches that governors and states (and mayors and cities) have no business standing in his way when it comes to letting congregations, uh, congregate.

As is often the case with this president, he was claiming a power he does not have and the motive behind a statement, a bluster, a tweet, a fabrication, a rant—whatever—is a matter of what benefits him.

It isn’t all that hard to see who President Trump really tried to please with his sudden “order.” Politico reported his bolt-from-the-blue announcement Friday was the result of “a sudden shift in support…among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign.” A couple of reputable religious polling organizations show a “staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics.” Both groups strongly supported Trump in 2016. The Public Religion Research Institute last month showed double-digit drops in favorability among mainline Protestants (down 18%), white Catholics (down 12%) and white evangelicals (down 11%).

Once again, it appears the president responded to his advisors who said, “You’ve got to do something!”

The PRRI cited above is run by Dr. Robert P. Jones, who has Baptist roots, a Master of Divinity degree from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar and who once was an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield. His 2016 book, The End of White Christian America is a thoughtful study of cultural changes underway in our country, the fears of some that are motivating some political considerations and actions, and an analysis of how the white Christian culture that has dominated the course of this nation can maintain significance in the face of ongoing and inevitable cultural change.

The President last Friday didn’t answer any questions that inevitably would have been asked about his ongoing claim that he has absolute power over such things as this.

One indisputable thing he did say in his Friday announcement is, “In America, we need more prayer, not less.” He’s correct, of course, although he might not like many of the prayers that are being offered. Plus, prayers don’t have to be said inside a religious building to be heard. This observer has heard prayers on street corners. In fact, he and his wife were once stopped on a street in Philadelphia—near the cemetery where Benjamin Franklin is buried—but a great big fella who grabbed my right hand and her left and offered up a mighty prayer for our well-being. Scared the living bejeezus out of us for a second or two. But on reflection, it was kind of nice.

We know the President will be deeply disappointed and maybe angry that our church is ignoring his pronouncement. We don’t plan to gather in our sanctuary at First Christian in Jefferson City until June 7. We hope he doesn’t become upset that Governor Parson did not force us to gather there last Sunday.

It often has been observed that a church is not a building. When a pastor says, “Good morning, church,” the pastor is not talking to a structure but to a flock.

Someone, we tuned in too late to hear who it was on the radio Sunday morning, suggested the President probably hasn’t read the Bible very much, particularly the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus suggests (as we in these times might interpret it) that it is not necessary to gather in groups under a roof to pray. In fact, it seemed to suggest just the opposite:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you..

Baptist minister Rod Kennedy, who is doing an interim ministry at the First Baptist Church in Ottawa, Kansas, responded to the President’s demand that churches open “right now” on his Facebook page:

President Trump,

On behalf of my Baptist congregation, I want to thank you for your concern for houses of worship. We respectfully decline your suggestion that we reopen. The Frist Amendment, religious freedom, separation of church and state,—all that constitutes our right to ignore you.

I’m not drinking bleach, taking suspected drugs, or buying your demagoguery. We will let you know when our church decides to reopen. After all, we are a free, independent Baptist congregation and government interference iirritates our Baptist gumption.

When churches do re-open we would be happy to see you in church every Sunday. It might help you find some divine wisdom.

If you want to help, wear a mask, stop being divisive, make sure voting will be easy in November, and stop mocking, threatening, and demeaning others. It’s not a religious practice.

Kennedy, who describes himself as a “Catholic Baptist,” retired after twelve years at the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio. He has no trouble pointing out the differences he has with the more fundamentalist members of the diverse denomination. He posted a couple of longer additional messages to the President and the responses illustrate the wide differences among Baptists—and among those of other denominations who call themselves Christian. See https://baptistnews.com/article/self-described-catholic-baptist-leaves-ohio-church-embarks-on-writing-career/#.Xsrq8mhKiUk if you want to know more about him and if you’re a Facebooker, you can go to his page or if you want to hear what he sounds like in the pulpit, go to the First Baptist Church webpage in Ottawa, Kansas.

Last Sunday morning, we went to the presidential webpage to check on President Trump’s schedule for Sunday, May 24:

President Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today and is expected to remain in the White House with the first family. With the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts, the president is likely to meet with national leaders and public officials regarding the needs of the coming week.

Mmmmm-hmm. Churches are essential but not so essential that he would do what he urged millions of Americans, particularly his faithful followers (read that any way you would prefer) to do—go to church even “with the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts.” Wonder why he didn’t tell Melania and Baron Sunday morning, “We’re going to church—right now!”  Instead he went out and he worshipped the putter and the driver.

Sometime when the man gets all worked up like this, we wish somebody would say, “Oh, go take a pill!” But—– hasn’t he already been doing that?

Us vs. It—part VIII, Laughter as medicine

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From time to time we’ll pass along observations from others that might provide some comfort, some encouragement, or even some black humor that can lift us a little bit. Today we’re going to focus on humor.

These are serious times, indeed, but the Seventeenth Chapter of the Old Testament book of Proverbs reminds us (verse 22): “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

First, this observation: This virus deserves a theme song. We have reached back many decades for a famous Peggy Lee song that we have re-titled:

An Anthem for Social Distancing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqNggIve40E

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Former Missourinet reporter Drew Vogel, who now is a nursing home administrator in Ohio, passed along a comment by one of his in-laws before barber and beauty shops were allowed to open in many places: With all the beauty shops closed for the duration, in a month or so we’ll start seeing the REAL color of people’s hair.

It’s not too late for a lot of folks.

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A protestor recently had a sign saying, “Every disaster movie starts with government ignoring a scientist.”

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We saw a tweet the other day from someone called, “Sir Michael:”

Quarantine Diary:

Day 1—I have stocked up on enough non-perishable supplies to last me for months, maybe years, so that I can remain in isolation as long as it takes to see out this pandemic.

Day 1+45 minutes—I am in the supermarket because I want a Twix.

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Another tweet, this one from “JR:”

Day 2 without sports:

Found a lady sitting on my couch yesterday. Apparently she’s my wife. She seems nice.

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Atlantic Magazine recently had an article about why it’s okay to laugh at coronavirus jokes. You can find it at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/humor-laughter-coronavirus-covid19/609184/

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Our dogs think we quit our jobs to spend more time with them. Our cats think we got fired for being the loser they always thought we were.

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The website Fatherly has “28 Coronavirus jokes to retrain your face how to smile.”

We’ll share three. If you think they are sufficiently funny, you can find the rest at https://www.fatherly.com/play/best-coronavirus-jokes/

  1. If there’s a baby boom nine months from now, what will happen in 2033? There will be a whole bunch of quaranteens.
  2. What’sthe difference between COVID-19 and Romeo and Juliet? One’s the coronavirus and the other is a Verona crisis.
  3. I’lltell you a coronavirus joke now, but you’ll have to wait two weeks to see if you got it.

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Email: 2020 is so weird that the Pentagon just confirmed UFOs exist and it’s barely news.

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A sign of the times: A high school classmate emailed me the other day, “Thirty years ago I was arrested for smoking weed while hanging out with friends. Yesterday I was arrested for hanging out with friends while smoking weed.”

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This is a bad time for introverts. They can’t wait for people to leave the house so they can be alone again.

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Another tweet: Pigeons probably think humans are extinct.

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Somebody told me the other day that newspapers can carry the virus. So I wash my newspaper each day in the kitchen sink while I sing two verses of “Happy Birthday.” Last Saturday’s paper should be dry enough tomorrow to read. If I can get the pages apart.

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Another tweet: This quarantine is really affecting the work force, especially the men. We’re losing $1 for every 79 cents that women are losing.

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I hope my barber shop reopens soon. I haven’t had a haircut since February. Hope the barber doesn’t charge by the pound.

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Some people post humorous comments, signs, or videos on the FACEBOOK pages or other social media pages. The Christian Science Monitor recently reported on a man who has a white board in his yard and he posts messages such as, “I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I’ll let you know.”

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And then there’s editorial cartoonist Gary Varvel of Creators.com, whose defiant cartoon surely will turn into a real product that a lot of us could wear.

In a few months, perhaps a new t-shirt will add “’20 CORONAVIRUS.”

And finally, for this entry, a comment from Max, another friend at the Y, who hopes the pandemic fades before warm weather brings out the ticks that carry Lyme Disease. If it doesn’t, he says, we’ll have Corona and Lyme.   Those of you more familiar with adult drinks than your obedient servant will appreciate the humor, I trust.

I used to say when something happened that would be memorable, if not historic, “That’s something to tell the grandchildren about.” Can’t do that now. The grandchildren are living it. So I’m changing the statement; “That’s something my grandchildren can tell their grandchildren.”

I wear a 2x, by the way.