Category Archives: people

Two Worlds

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The General Assembly is spending this week on its annual spring break, a few days to relax, unwind and reload. And to do a little campaigning or campaign planning perhaps.

They’re back in the real world this week.  For those who haven’t seen their other world, the differences are hard to understand.

When a member of the Missouri General Assembly steps through an entrance of the Missouri Capitol, that person is stepping into a small, confined, hot world with little respite that tends to consume even the best of people for most of the first five months of the year before it spits them back out into the world from which they came.

And they’re glad to come back seven months later to step out of their comfortable home world through those doors and back into the collision of wills, the competition of ideas, and the fight over the words yes and no.

They move from a world of service to others into a world of demands from others. And the demands are unrelenting, sometimes with consequences implied if the demands are not met.

They might be active at home on issues of poverty, food shortages, spouse and child abuse, veterans needs, church work, homelessness, and other social issues that can’t afford high-powered influence in the hot little world that is the Missouri Capitol. And as they deal in the capitol with pressures from those that can afford to apply them, it might be hard to think of their gentler work at home.

Imagine lives lived in fifteen-minute segments, each segment featuring someone who wants something, or a world of one or two-hour meetings to listen to proposals pleasing to those in the Capitol hallways, and days of increasingly long sessions arguing about the propriety of answering demands and which ones to answer.

Imagine all of this far from the comfort of home, family, friends, and co-workers with whom they share their streets, or coffee, or church pews.

It is hard to remember in those eighteen weeks or so who is more important—the people they meet on the street back home or the people they meet in the hallways of the State Capitol.

Seldom is there time or opportunity to think about things in depth, to study issues in depth, to look for pitfalls in legislation in depth. The pressure to take what they are given, often not knowing all that is within the proposition, is enormous. Sometimes the pressure squeezes out reason, leads to action counter to what is best to those back home, and demands action without burden of thought.

This is the world of unrelenting movement, of unrelenting asks and demands, a world far detached from the freedoms enjoyed where they live.

Furthermore, it’s more than consuming. It’s addictive.

Plaques on the office wall from those whose bidding they have done. Checks in the campaign account to encourage or reward a vote.  Intense seeming friendships today that disappear when the last vote is cast that can benefit a person, a group, a cause.

This is the other world of the people we send to represent us in Jefferson City. As individuals, they return home the same people.  As a group, however, in the capitol they become “government,” an enemy to many.

Is there is a way to improve this system?

Ideally, yes.  Sometimes it’s a matter of those sent to Jefferson City to show courage in the face of pressures, to question more closely the things asked of them. But sometimes it’s the case of those who vote to send others to represent them in this small stone world we call the Missouri Capitol meeting a citizen’s responsibility to pay attention to issues that are not always “my backyard” issues.

Government does not take place only in the Capitols of our country.  Its roots are in the home towns of those who are sent forth. And the folks at home need to care, to pay attention, and to hold accountable those who are to speak for them in that hot little world.

 

Outgrowing Ourselves

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Picked up a copy of The Pathway the other day to read while I was having lunch at Chez Monet, which has moved back into the capitol basement to run the cafeteria.  The newspaper is a publication of the Missouri Baptist Convention.

The lead story told me that a bill in the state senate “threatens the First Amendment rights of Missouri Christians.”  Since I consider myself one of those, I thought I should learn about this threat to me.

The bill is the Missouri Non-Discrimination Act. It would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. “It masquerades as equal treatment for all, but it results in unequal treatment for people of faith like Colorado baker Jack Philips and Washington florist Baronelle Stutzman, Christians in business who seek to live out their faith in the marketplace.”

The article is critical of MONA and its federal counterpart, the Federal Equality Act, by extending prohibitions against discrimination in hiring or lodging based on race, national origin, and age.

The publication complains the bill would “penalize and discriminate against everyday Missourians for their beliefs about marriage and biological sex.”

This is a ticklish area because there are those who suggest non-Christians are behind such words. Then there are Christians who believe they MUST be behind those words.

The conflict results in some proclaiming that others can’t be Christians if they don’t support this kind of language. Or that some can’t be Christians if they DO support it.

And then there are some who question the Christianity of those who would argue about that.

—which bring us to a fundamental question of whether Christianity is an inclusive faith or an exclusive faith, a Big Church Faith or a Little Church Faith.

The article says, “MONA’s implications threaten our core convictions based on Scripture about our Creator God…..”

I confess that I sometimes wonder how to balance an omnipotent Creator God with a God who seems to make a mistake in creating someone who is gay or someone who does not identify with their birth gender.  Isn’t an omnipotent God immune from making such mistakes?

Or are we really all God’s children?  How can all of us be God’s children if some of us are gay and gay people are to be treated differently by Christians because it turns out not all of us are God’s children after all, or so they suggest.

I gave you only part of the sentence a minute ago.  The full sentence says, “MONA’s implications threaten our core convictions based on Scripture about our Creator God, family, marriage, sexuality, community, decency and religious liberty.”

Is it possible for a family with a gay child to really be a Christian family?  Can a gay or transgender person practice Freedom of Religion or does their gender identity impair their ability to be followers of the Christ?  Are they, at best, second-class Christians if they are Christians at all?

There have been times in our history when good Christian black and white people could not marry and even to be seen together was risky because others subscribed to “convictions based on Scripture.”  It offended Christian decency and was some kind of an insult to a community (small “c”).

Maybe there’s something wrong with me when the simple words of a hymn many of us sang as children keeps going through my head.

“Praise Him, praise Him, all ye little children, God is Love, God is love; Praise him praise Him all ye little children, God is love, God is love.”

When the Disciples rebuked Jesus for touching infants that had been brought to him, he told them, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of God.”

He also told the disciples, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Given a chance to follow their natural impulses, children of all races, creeds, and nationalities will play together without judgment.  One might grow to be gay. Another might grow up to be transgender.  But that makes no difference when they are children involved in the innocence of play.

It’s too bad that we have to grow up and require laws that make us play nice together—or to separate us on the basis of some exclusive righteousnss or other.

Sometimes I think we are born as children of God.

And then we outgrow it.

What to do with him

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It surely has occurred to many people watching investigations from Georgia to Washington and New York that criminal charges against former President Donald Trump are growing more possible.

There is no joy in writing that sentence or in contemplating the issue we address today.  But the issue cannot be ignored.

What is to be done if a president or a former president is charged and convicted of serious crimes?

Based on almost daily reports that a new rock is turned over and something disappointing crawls out from under it, there is no avoiding the possibility that the former leader of the free world, as we like to think of our president, could be found guilty of an offense that could mean imprisonment.

We have witnessed first-hand several public officials at the state level being sent to prison. It hasn’t been that hard to watch it happen without concern for or about them.

But if it’s a former President of the United States?

The mental image of a man whose dark suit and red or blue tie are so familiar trading those clothes for an orange jumpsuit is jarring.

If the betrayal of public trust is so severe that not even a Gerald Ford/Richard Nixon-type presidential pardon can be contemplated, where does he go?  Does he become part of the general population, even if it’s a so-called “country club prison” some think disgraced public officials occupy?

Inmates do have rights within a prison. They aren’t left in a bleak cell 24 hours a day. But what kind of cell should an ex-president occupy? A cell/suite?  Or the same kind of cell occupied by the state official doing time for campaign embezzlement?

Would he take his meals in the same room with the other inmates and at the same time—even if surrounded by guards because someone might want to become infamous by doing him (possibly fatal) harm?

Should restrictive house arrest be off the table?  Depending on the severity of the offense(s), should any be proven, should the ex-president be allowed to stay at Mar-a-Lago? Being punished by staying in the big house and not being allowed to play golf has a ludicrous aspect to it.

Should an ex-president be given a job in a prison?  Kitchen work.  Janitorial work.  Tending to the prison garden.  Mopping bathroom floors.  Working in a prison industry (making furniture for example).  Should he be allowed to attend a class and earn an associate college degree?

We know, of course, that if things get this far, thousands and perhaps millions of people will feel that the justice system is more rigged than they think the most recent presidential election was.  How should justice be meted out in the face of that kind of conspiratorial thinking that could produce widespread civil unrest?

With courage, we think.  Our court system knows it must operate despite any mob behavior.

None of this is something any of us wants to think about.

But we should.

Just in case.

 

The Pariah and the Statesman

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The Hill, a Washington D. C. political newsletter, put out a story last Sunday that, “Republicans are struggling to coalesce around a single alternative candidate to former Gov. Eric Greitens in Missouri’s open Senate race, elevating worries that they’ll be saddled with a baggage-laden candidate in a contest that should be a slam dunk.”

We recall, we hope correctly, that when Greitens ran for Governor in 2016, a lot of Republicans were concerned and some questioned whether he fit the definition of “Republican.”  At the time, we wrote that if Eric Greitens wanted to call himself a Republican, he was within all of his rights to do so.

The party is correct in worrying that his regrettable time as governor and the reasons for his departure might not be enough to dissuade his dedicated populist supporters from supporting him in 2022. Whether those supporters find any value in Josh Hawley’s endorsement of Vicky Hartzler or Ted Cruz’s endorsement of Eric Schmitt is something we won’t hazard to guess.

But in getting desperate in keeping him from getting the nomination, the party seems to be acting in a way in Missouri that it refuses to act nationally.  Eric Greitens might be an albatross around the GOP neck. But so is Donald Trump.  Both came along about the same time and in many ways appealed to the same base of voters.  Those voters might be unappreciative of the party’s falling out of bed with either man.  What those voters might do is beyond the capabilities of our crystal ball.  But if Trump endorses Greitens—well, that seems from this lofty position to be a genuine Republican muddle.

The Hill reported that a leaked poll by “an unknown group” shows Greitens leads a Democrat in early general election sentiments, narrowly.  The fact that the Democrat candidates’ name recognition in the general public mind is nowhere near the name ID of Eric Greitens is gratifying to Greitens fans but a concern to his critics.  If relative unknowns are that close, without campaign advertising that brings them more to the fore and attacks Greitens’ past behaviors that diminish him, there is legitimate Republican concern that the voters could put that seat in the D column again.

Frankly, the world will not come to an end either way.  What’s distressing is that so much of our national politics is seen through the lens of power rather than with a vision of service.

Greitens advantage is the same one that Trump had in the 2016 primaries. His core of true believers (somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, say polls) will stick with him while his several opponents will split the majority of anti-Greitens votes and leave him the last person standing.  Trump won a lot of delegates in 2016 by getting 35% of the primary votes while six or seven or eight candidates divided the other 65%.

But nobody is bailing out of the Republican senatorial primary.  They’re all waiting for Trump’s expensive imported loafer to drop.  Then they have a new problem.  If it drops Greitens’ way, do they attack him because he has Trump’s endorsement? Or will the egos and ambitions of others let them step aside, leaving, say, Hartzler and Schmitt to carry on the fight?

The Hill says those concerned might not get much help from “Washington power players.”  The National Republican Senatorial Committee says it’s not going to play favorites. And so far the Senate Leadership Fund, closely tied to Mitch McConnell, has shown no enthusiasm to dive in, either.

Greitens seems not to care. His campaign manager has referred to “false narratives peddled by DC swamp creatures.”

That’s speaking the language a lot of Trump/Greitens loyalists understand.

Another influential voice that is speaking up is former Senator John Danforth, who is suggesting that a center-right independent candidate could save the day. Danforth has all but promised some big checks to support the person filling that bill.

But a sad question that speaks to the sadness of our political times hangs over such a hope. Have our politics reached such a low that John Danforth’s opinion doesn’t count for much?

Once a man whose integrity was a standard for political office-seekers to follow (although some on both sides of the aisle have never forgiven him for supporting Clarence Thomas’ Supreme County nomination), what influence does he have over what his party has become?

Danforth vs. Greitens/Trump.

Does hope still flicker?

 

The sphere of her usefulness

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We were reading Tessa Weinberg’s Missouri Independent article a few weeks ago about the eleven women members of the Missouri Senate who have put together a children’s book that tells the stories of the 36 women who have served and are serving in the Senate.  We thought, “I need get some copies of that book for my granddaughters.”

And then I’m going around office-to-office and have the authors sign them.  .

I have known all 36 of those women senators which says (a) I’m an old guy, or (b) women were late in arriving in the Senate. Actually, there is no “or” about it.  Both observations are true.

A few days ago, while looking for something else, I came across this article from the St. Louis Daily Evening Herald Newspaper and Commercial Advertiser of June 10, 1836.

EMIGRATION OF THE RIGHT SORT

The predominance of the female over the male sex, in the ancient commonwealth of Massachusetts, is very great. In some towns, according to the last census, the proportion is more than two to one, and the excess in the whole state is more than 14,000. Of course, there must of necessity be 14,000 old maids in Massachusetts, over and above the number that goes to offset the old bachelors, (the fools) which may perhaps account for half as many more. Twenty thousand old maids in the single commonwealth of Massachusetts! Now although we have no antipathy to an old maid (we have to an old bachelor though) having always found that much abused class sensible, good-natured, and conversible, yet it must be admitted that in this position, the woman can never manifest the higher qualities of her nature. It is as a wife, a mother, at the head of a family, presiding over the destinies of an infant and miniature commonwealth, that the woman shines forth in all the loveliness of those moral excellences of which she is capable.

Without this, the sphere of her usefulness is greatly circumscribed, and although we may confidently expect that she will not do much harm, neither can she do much good.  We are therefore glad to learn that a company of “industrious, capable and intelligent” young women are about to start from Northampton, Mass., for the valley of the West.  They are needed as school teachers, to fulfill the various mechanical employments which are the province of their sex, and above all, they are needed as the sweeteners of the toil and hardships of our young men who now, in great numbers, are laboring in unblessed loneliness over the vast domains of the west. These young women come out under the protection of a gentleman, and we do not hesitate, in the name of all that is pure and lovely, to promise them a hearty welcome from all classes of our fellow citizens.

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There are a lot of things to read into this article. Dismissing it as “quaint” might not be fair, though.  It’s part of our history, an understanding of the role of women in society—which was largely and quietly accepted on both sides of the gender line—an appreciation of a sort of the contribution women even in those un-emancipated times played in the home and the community—a comment on the loneliness of life on the frontier (1836 was the year that the Platte Purchase added the northwest corner to our state), and other issues.

It also is a commentary on the Missouri pioneer editor, a more colorful purveyor of that profession than we seem to have today.  I think many of these guys just had more fun in those days, whether it was in the gentle writing of this story or the more partisan pronouncements that were not uncommon in the columns of the time.

A little less than ninety years later, a woman’s place was in the House (of Representatives) in Missouri, and fifty years after that the Senate became a woman’s place, too.

These eleven senators did something important in putting together this book that the menfolk in the Senate might want to learn from.  These eleven women recognized they could do something good by forgetting about party politics, getting together over food and drink, and accomplishing something useful not for themselves but for those whose futures are far from determined.

Would that more people could do that in these times when fighting seems more important than accomplishing, when concerns about power supplant commitments to service. .

We hope that not too many years in the future a woman—perhaps one of these eleven or a young woman who reads their book—manifests “the higher qualities of her nature” by occupying the governor’s office.

As the title of the book says, “You can, too.”

YAKYAKYAKYAKYAK

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It is Valentine’s Day.  And there’s not much love in the Missouri Senate.

I recently listened to the killing filibuster in the Senate on the confirmation of the state health director’s appointment. Afterwards I spent a couple of more rewarding hours watching some paint dry.

That was nothing, however, compared to the long-running tantrum that was started last week by a minority of the majority party who objected to a proposed congressional district map. It is still ongoing as this new week begins.

I am afraid that by the time it ends, three species will have gone extinct and become fossils.

I was reminded of an article in the Boonville Missouri Register of July 16, 1840 about a speech given in Jefferson City by A. G. Minor, a Whig—the newspaper leaned Democratic:

“He opened his speech with a flowery declamation…He then went on for quantity…It was one of those stereotyped editions of Whig oratory you may hear any time and place where a number of Whigs are congregated together…Thus he trudged along through a two hours and a half speech, and left us as wise as we were when we commenced.”

Been there.  Know that, from many hours listening to filibusters in the State Senate. I always started legislative sessions with a new Filibuster Book, something to read while somebody exhausted themselves saying nothing worth remembering for hours on end—-which is okay as a tactic but makes one desperate for a newly-painted wall for sanity maintenance.  Unless the one enduring the display has a good book.  One way or another, I was determined to survive these events MORE than as wise as I was at the start.

Old-time speech-making was often colorful—and lengthy.  Two-hour speeches from the stump were not rare.  Two-hour sermons weren’t either. We have become significantly more sophisticated now.  Our televangelists can take only about 18 minutes to convince us we’re all going to Hell although we might face better alternatives if we help them for their next executive jet.

We have examples of those sometimes more eloquent expositions because newspapers sometimes printed speeches in their entirety or printed lengthy excerpts. Representative John E. Pitt of Platte County introduced legislation in January1859 to print 100 handbills announcing the celebration of the Battle of New Orleans on January 8.  He told his colleagues:

Gentlemen keep continually talking about economy. I, myself, do not believe in tying the public purse with cobweb strings, but when retrenchment comes in contact with patriotism, it assumes the form of “smallness.”

Such economy is like that of an old skinflint, who had a pair of boots made for his little boy, without soles, that they might last longer. (Laughter.)

I reverence “the day we celebrate.” It is fraught with reminiscences the most cheering; it brings to mind one of the grandest events ever recorded in letters of living fire upon the walls of the temple of time by the god of war!

On such occasions we should rise above party lines and political distinctions.

 I never fought under the banner of “old Hickory,” but, “by the eternal” I wish I had. (Laughter and applause.) If the old war-horse was here now he would not know his own children from the side of Joseph’s coat of many colors—Whigs, Know-Nothings, Democrats, hard, soft, boiled, scrambled and fried Lincolnites, Douglasites, and blather-skites!

I belong to no party; I am free, unbridled, in the political pasture. Like a bob-tailed bull in fly time, I charge around in the high grass and fight my own flies. (Great laughter.)

Gentlemen, let us show our liberality on patriotic occasions. Why, some men have no more patriotism than you could stuff through the eye of a knitting needle. Let us not squeeze five cents till the eagle on it squeals like a locomotive or an old maid. Let us print the bills and inform the public that we are as full of patriotism as are the Illinois swamps of tad poles.

I don’t believe in doing things by halves. Permit me, Mr. Speaker, to make a poetical quotation from one of our noblest authors. “I love to see the grass among the red May roses, I love to see an old gray horse, for when he goes, he goeses.” (Convulsive laughter.)

The comments were reported in the Weekly California News, published in Moniteau County, on January 29, 1859.

John Brooks Henderson, seeking to be a state representative in his first try for public office, remarked at a July 4th event in Pike County in 1847:

Though all former governments have fallen and yielded to the corroding influences of time, and shared the fate of all other human concerns, yet there are principles, firm as the unchangeable rocks of Adamant, upon which the fabric of government will stand, until human affairs shall have ceased and Heaven’s Messiah shall fill the throne of peace. These principles are founded upon the equality of mankind, upon truth, reason and justice; and the government whose foundations rest upon these, and whose strength is dependent upon the free will of a virtuous people, will only fail when time shall grow hoary with age, and nature herself shall decay.

In the days long before audio and video recordings, the only way people could learn what was said in those patriotic speeches was to read them in newspapers such as the Democratic Banner, published in the Pike County seat of Louisiana, in this case, on August 16, 1847.

Henderson, by the way, became a Union Army officer whose troops “conquered” Callaway County early in the Civil War. Later, as a U.S. Senator, he was one of those who voted against impeaching President Andrew Johnson, a courageous step that cost him his senatorship.

One more example of rhetoric of the 19th century that puts speakers of today to shame.  Walter B. Stevens, in his Centennial History of Missouri (The Center State), published in 1921, tells of an Ozarks preacher of the early 1800s who might have offered this prayer over a young man bitten by a rattlesnake:

We thank Thee, Almighty God, for Thy watchful care over us and for Thy goodness and tender mercy, and especially we thank Thee for rattlesnakes. Thou hast sent one to bite John Weaver. We pray Thee to send one to bite Jim, one to bite Henry, one to bite Sam, one to bite Bill; and we pray Thee to send the biggest kind of a rattlesnake to bite the old man, for nothing but rattlesnakes will ever bring the Weaver family to repentance. There are others in Missouri just as bad as the Weavers. We pray Thee to stir up Missouri, and, if nothing else will bring the people to repentance, we pray Thee to shower down more rattlesnakes. Amen!

We say “might have offered” because the story might be apocryphal.  But it’s too good a story to go untold to future generations.

This prayer offers something to all of us who are tired of the obviating, posturing, and prevaricating in our political discourse.  For those who do not consider being inspiring, humorous, and uplifting while they fill the air, instead, with boring verbosity, “we pray thee to shower down more rattlesnakes.”

Christian Values

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Governor Parson is catching a lot of flak for his reaction to the Senate’s rejection last week of Don Kauerauf, Parson’s nominee for director of the Department of Health and Senior Services.

Part of Governor Parson’s statement that blasted Senate critics for “feeding misinformation, repeating lies, and disgracing 35 years of public health experience is not what it means to be conservative” seems to have escaped the attention it might have received because he went on to praise Kauerauf for opposing COVID masking and vaccine mandates and being pro-life, qualities Parson referred to as “shared…Christian values.” He suggested he would not appoint someone who did not share those values.

He also mentioned other values:  devoted public service, “honor, integrity, and order.”

It’s the use of the phrase “Christian values” that has triggered controversy, though.  “Does the next director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services need to be a Christian?” asked the Post-Dispatch last week.

Beyond the political implication in the statement and the political reaction to it, there are faith issues that deserve examination—and the issue of how religion and politics can be a divisive mix.

I have often said that nothing screws up faith more than religion.

Faith is a basic quality with which all of us are born.  We don’t know it at the time but when we are old enough to comprehend the basic facts of our first out-of-womb existence, we recognize how essential faith is to our lives.  We are born innately trusting that someone will love us, that someone will feed us, that someone will keep us warm, that someone will care for us until we can learn—step by step—to care for ourselves, that someone will protect us, that someone will give us a chance to achieve life, liberty, and give us a chance to pursue happiness.

Religion is an interpretation of standards that affect all of those things. Religions take different approaches to them.  Some are strict in their standards and demands of loyalty. Others are more giving in letting a person interpret values as their own mind leads them to do.

I have a feeling it would be interesting to have a discussion of Christian values with the governor.  From my standpoint, I have to ask if he thinks it is a Christian value that one person goes unmasked although they might expose another to a dangerous virus?  Is it a Christian value to forego vaccines that might lead to a longer and more abundant life?

These are not questions of criticism. They are questions that call for an exploration of faith—which is more basic than religion.

Years ago, in the early days of the discussion at the Missouri Capitol after Roe v. Wade, a state representative asked during a hearing at which a strong pro-life person had testified, “When does ensoulment take place?”   At what point, the questioner wanted to know of the witness, did a cluster of fertilized cells gain a soul?

Whatever the answer was—and I don’t know if there even was an answer—it was not significant enough to stay in my memory.  But it is an essential question in the pro-life/pro-choice debate. And what does that mean if there is a miscarriage?

The discussion of the governor’s statement led me to wander through various internet sites a few days ago.  Here are some Christian values they listed:

Honesty. Humility. Justice. Generosity. Service. Wisdom. Nurture. Endurance (or Perseverance). Love. Thankfulness. Loyalty. Modesty. Courage. Responsibility. Compassion. Respect. Self-control. Creativity. Suffering. Morality. Protection. Hope. Peace.

The Bible is not always a fail-safe guide. Paul told the Christians at Ephesus, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church…Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands.”

But he also wrote to Christians in what is now Turkey (then Galatia), “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

It is a mistake to think, however, that Christian values are those only of Christians.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan received a report in 2006 from the Alliance of Civilizations that examined “basic values common to all religions.”  He told an audience in Ankara, Turkey that “an embrace of differences—differences in opinion, in culture, in belief, in way of life—have long been a driving force of human progress.”

“Thus it was that, during Europe’s ‘Dark Ages,’ the Iberian Peninsula flourished through the interaction of Muslim, Christian and Jewish traditions. Later, the Ottoman Empire prospered not simply because of it sarmies, but because it was also an empire of ideas, in which Muslim art and technology wer enriched by Jewish and Christian contributions.

“Regrettably, several centuries later, our own globalized era is marked by rising intolerance, extremism and violence against the other. Closer proximity and improved communications have often led not to mutual understanding and friendship, but to tension and mutual distrust…

“Today, at the very time when international migration has brought unprecedented numbers of people of different creed or culture to live as fellow-citizens, the misconceptions and stereotypes underlying the idea of a “clash of civilizations” have come to be more and more widely shared.  Some groups seem eager to foment a new war of religion, this time on a global scale -– and the insensitivity, or even cavalier disregard, of others towards their beliefs or sacred symbols makes it easier for them to do so.

“Demonization of the ‘other’ has proved the path of least resistance, when a healthy dose of introspection would better serve us all…In the twenty-first century, we remain hostage to our sense of grievances, and to feelings of entitlement.  Our narratives have become our prison, paralysing discourse and hindering understanding.  Thus, many people throughout the world, particularly in the Muslim world, see the West as a threat to their beliefs and values, their economic interests, their political aspirations.  Evidence to the contrary is simply disregarded or rejected as incredible.  Likewise, many in the West dismiss Islam as a religion of extremism and violence, despite a history of relations between the two in which commerce, cooperation and cultural exchange have played at least as important a part as conflict.

“It is vital that we overcome these resentments, and establish relations of trust between communities.  We must start by reaffirming -– and demonstrating -– that the problem is not the Koran, nor the Torah or the Bible.  Indeed, I have often said the problem is never the faith -– it is the faithful, and how they behave towards each other.

“We must stress the basic values that are common to all religions:  compassion; solidarity; respect for the human person; the Golden Rule of “do as you would be done by”.  At the same time, we need to get away from stereotypes, generalizations and preconceptions, and take care not to let crimes committed by individuals or small groups dictate our image of an entire people, an entire region, or an entire religion.”

We have no doubt the governor is a man of faith. He also is a man of politics.  His statement points to the dangers of putting faith and politics too close to one another.

The universal qualities of faith should be used in setting public policy that apply to all equally. Putting religion into the statutes or the Constitution is dangerous because it makes us unequal,  hostages “to our sense of grievances, and to feelings of entitlement.”  Our laws become “our prison, paralyzing discourse and hindering understanding.” And they diminish equality under those laws.

As we ponder the governor’s statement, we see it as a type of awkward shorthand that is too common in our political world today. We think he wants someone with the qualities of faith and the understanding of his contemporary politics.

For many, it is an uncomfortable and unwelcome mix. And it should generate discussion that goes beyond the person who made the statement and includes and challenges us all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If It Were Only This Easy

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Filing-for-office season is approaching.  Many who would like to serve, and would be good public servants, will never seek an elective office because of the sacrifices they and their families might have to make, and the pressures to do and say things they are told they must say—rather than be true to their own character.

Or they might be like Robert Cutler.

From the Jefferson City Daily Tribune, December 4, 1909

Robert Cutler is the name a man gave who called at the governor’s office Friday afternoon and asked for a commission to represent Missouri in the United States Senate. He said he was elected last January unanimously, but had since been busily engaged on his Webster county, Missouri, farm near the town of Seymour, that he did not have time to look after his duties in Washington.  The governor was out when he called and he left saying that he would probably return tomorrow.

Chas. H. Thompson, the governor’s private secretary, questioned the caller about his business and his supposed election to the United States Senate from Missouri. He said Col. Phelps would identify him as would also Judge J. McD. Trimble of Kansas City.

Cutler is about 65 years old, bewhiskered like a Kansas Populist, but very gentle in his demeanor. He said the United States Senate had not yet organized and consequently had been doing nothing since his election, so he thought he could put in his time more profitably farming than in loafing about Washington.  The man is a total stranger here.

–Colonel Phelps was William Phelps, considered the most powerful lobbyist of his time. He later was a member of the State Senate that he had once spent years manipulating.

—Governor Hadley’s staff in 1909 numbered five: Thompson, Pardon Attorney Frank Blake, Stenographer Mary Lee, Clerk Sam Haley, and Janitor T. B. Carter. The current Official Manual shows 28 people working for Governor Parson.

—There are no follow-up stories indicating “Senator” Cutler ever went back to the governor’s office.  We have found one reference indicating he died in December, 1916.

We think someone so practical that he would rather spend his time “profitably farming than in loafing about Washington” would have a certain attractiveness to voters looking at the current campaigners for Roy Blunt’s seat.

The Casinos in Our Pockets

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We lived in an “appointment” world in 1993, when the first Missouri laws governing casino gambling were written.  Voters had approved riverboat gambling, as it was called then, in 1992. The first casinos on boats would open in the spring of 1994.

Many of us still got our national news with the 5:30 network newscasts on television and our local news at 6 and 10 p.m. when those laws were written.

If we wanted to buy new clothes, we went to a clothing store during the hours it was open.  We went to grocery stores during their open hours to get our food.

We knew when each day we could go to the mailbox to get letters from friends and relatives.

And by the end of the year we knew that if we wanted to gamble we would have to go to the riverboat at a certain time to be admitted.

The Station Casino-St. Charles and the President Casino on the moored Admiral riverboat opened May 27, 1994. Gamblers could board the boat in St. Charles from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. for a two-hour cruise (for which they paid three to five dollars, depending on the day). If they missed the cruise time, they had to wait for the boat to come back so we could pay to get aboard for the next trip.

The President never cruised. It was permanently moored near the Gateway Arch because the old aluminum Admiral had no engines. Gamblers would pay two dollars during the week and five dollars on weekends and could board every two hours from 10 a.m. to midnight.

But the world was changing and the change accelerated each year. “Appointment living” was beginning to diminish although many of us did not realize it at the time.

There were some hints, however.

The Pew Research Center reported in 1994 that the percentage of Americans getting news from the internet at least once a week had more than tripled since 1991, going from 11-million to 36-million news users.

The number of hosts on the internet tripled from January, 1994 to January, 1996, the year something called a “browser” was created—Netscape, the same year that the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda passed a Free Trade and Processing Act allowing licenses to be given to companies wanting to allow internet users to gamble. By the end of the year there were fifteen gambling websites. The next year there were 200 and by 1998, a study was published showing online gaming revenues had topped $830-million. Modern online gambling in this country dates from November 22, 2010 when the New Jersey Senate passed a bill allowing certain forms of online gambling.

It was about that time that the casino industry was starting to see an erosion in patronage. In Missouri, casino admissions reached almost 54.3-million in FY 2005 then declined for three years before climbing back to almost equal 2005’s number. Admissions began annual declines after FY 2011.  In FY 2019 (the last full year before the pandemic crippled casino business), casino admissions had declined by 49%.

Various reasons for the decline can be suggested but the end result seems to be the same—people just don’t go to where casinos are.

So the casinos have to go where the people are.

The situation is not unique to the casino industry. It is part of our changing lifestyles and those changes have become more obvious with the COVID-19 Pandemic that has forced casino closures for in-person business and quarantines for many who would patronize them.

We no longer live in an “appointment” world.  We can buy clothing at any time of the day off the internet.  We can use the internet to get our groceries delivered.  We can order deliveries to our homes from our favorite restaurants.  The same with our pharmaceuticals. Telemedicine is eliminating some office and hospital trips.

Casino betting can happen 24 hours a day because, as one source has observed, “everyone has a casino in their pocket.”  Casinos are looking for new products that can be offered through the ubiquity of the internet that we call up on our ubiquitous cell phones.  First is sports wagering. But later, Missouri legislators are likely to be asked to let table game betting to take place remotely.

Those who find gambling a reprehensible sin will find nothing redeeming about gambling on the internet.  But thousands of other Missourians will welcome the opportunities—as they welcome opportunities to grocery shop from home.

In a world where less and less of life is lived by appointment, the gaming industry knows it must change. And it is, as it should.

Missouri’s casino gambling laws must change, too.  Laws written and fees created in the days of physical customer presence in casinos need to be changed to account for virtual presence.  State services relying on gambling fees and taxes will be increasingly diminished as appointment gambling diminishes.  Casinos, profiting from laws of the 1990s appointment culture, resist modernization of the law. It is understandable that they do.

What is not understandable is why the Missouri General Assembly would not want to protect the state’s interests by bringing our laws from the appointment era into the virtual, but very real, era.

 

A Black Life That Mattered

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It’s not the only one, of course, but this story is an example of how traditionally told history ignores the importance of some people and why there is nothing wrong with broadening our understanding of the past and re-orienting our view of it.

There is nothing to fear from a more holistic understanding of our history.

This is the story of a black life that mattered.  Except it HASN’T mattered until recently.

While Cole County was celebrating its bicentennial in 2020-2021, your persistent researcher started trying to learn about Stephen Cole, the “pioneer and Indian fighter” for whom the county was named (supposedly).  A couple of 1823 newspaper articles about Cole County recounted that it really was named for Stephen’s brother, William Temple Cole, who was killed in a central Missouri Indian ambush a decade before the county was organized.

The traditional telling of the story of the settlement of Cooper County has Temple’s widow, Hannah and their nine children, joined by Stephen, his wife and their five children, in a pirogue (a hollowed out log) paddling across the icy Missouri River from Howard County to the area that’s now Boonville in February 1810.  They supposedly arrived on the south shore of the river but all of their supplies were still on the north side and they couldn’t get back to them for several days.

Hannah is memorialized as the first white woman to settle in Cooper County (meaning, we presume, the first non-Indian).  There’s a statue of her in Boonville.  A big rock in a cemetery along Highway 5 about 13 miles south of town marks the approximate location of her burial.

It’s a nice story.  Except that the usual telling of it has Hannah as a widow seven months before she became one.

And it ignores the fact that she was not the first white woman to settle that area.  She was ONE of the first two.  Stephen’s wife, Phoebe, disappears from the narrative. It’s almost as if she’s never left that pirogue.

But it’s likely there was a THIRD woman in that not-so-little boat.

Her name was Lucy.

She doesn’t show up in the traditional narrative until Hannah’s death many years later when she’s mentioned. It’s likely she’s not mentioned along with the other family members because she wasn’t family.

Our traditional story-telling doesn’t spend any time talking about chairs and cooking pots and beds—–the property settlers took with them. Lucy was Hannah’s property, her slave.

She apparently had been with Hannah since Hannah and Temple were married.  She probably helped with the birth of the nine children.  She came west from Virginia to Kentucky, to the wilds of Missouri, and then across the river that day (whenever it was) and helped with the settlement work on that river bluff.  And she remained with Hannah until the end of Hannah’s life.

Supposedly she’s buried in the same cemetery as Hannah, perhaps at the foot of Hannah’s grave.

If Hannah was the first white woman to settle south of the river and west of Montgomery County, then Lucy had to have been the first African-American settler of a county that was 36% enslaved at the start of the Civil War. But that’s not recognized in the usual story of Cooper County or of the city of Boonville.

She was every bit the “pioneer” as Hannah (and Phoebe).  She faced the same dangers the Cole family faced, especially during the years when Indians were marauding in the area during the War of 1812. But she never drew a breath of free air.  We don’t know when she was born, or where.  We don’t know when she died, or where. Maybe she’s buried near Hannah. Maybe not.

Cooper County makes a big deal of Hannah.  But in a county where six percent of the population today is black, there’s no recognition of Lucy.  No statue.  No gravestone in the cemetery south of town.

It’s this kind of cultural oversight that some folks think needs to end. That wish, however, has been coopted by what has happened to phrases such as “The 1619 project” and “Critical Race Theory” that call on us to recognize this nation was more than what has been in the standard national narrative. They have become politicized phrases to be attacked vehemently.

We should not fear the challenge that 1619 and CRT give us to see our history more broadly because understanding the history of people whose origins are not rooted in northern Europe lessens their marginalization, recognizes their humanity, and makes all of us more American.

And Lucy?

Last September, we told her story to the Cooper County Historical Society.  Afterwards, one of the descendants of Hannah Cole got up and promised that there would be a proper stone for her installed at the cemetery before the next reunion of the Cole family in Boonville next summer.

Lucy’s life mattered in the early part of our state history but her story is an example of some of the shortcomings in the telling of that history.  Her life matters today. To all of us.

Perhaps if as much energy could be expended to end the shortcomings of our traditional history-telling as is spent attacking those who say it’s about time we told it more holistically, all of us would be richer people and we would live in a greater nation.