Category Archives: Politics

Tread Carefully

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The Missouri General Assembly convenes in a special session in a few days to consider a significant cut in the state’s income tax and other issues.

The past and the present and two seemingly unrelated situations suggest this is a time to tread carefully—-although, this being an election year, politics could take a higher priority than should be taken in considering the tax cut.

Let’s set aside politics for a few minutes and raise some concerns based on years of watching state tax policy be shaped.

Days after Governor Parson announced he was calling the legislature back to cut the income tax, President Biden announced his program to eliminate a lot of college student loan debt.  The two issues, seemingly wide apart, actually are related in this context. It will take some time to explain.

We begin with the Hancock Amendment. In 1980, Springfield burglary alarm salesman—later Congressman—Mel Hancock seized on a tax limitation movement sweeping the country and got voters to approve a change to the state constitution that tied state government income to economic growth.  If the state’s tax collections exceeded the calculated amount, the state had to send refund checks to income taxpayers.

Some of the Hancock Amendment was modeled on Michigan’s Headlee Amendment adopted two years earlier. But the timing of Hancock could not have been worse.  While Michigan’s amendment was passed during good economic times, Missouri’s Hancock Amendment went into effect during a severe economic recession considered to be the worst since World War II.

Missouri therefore established a limit that had a low bar. There are those who think the state has suffered significantly because of that.

Except for one year the Hancock Amendment has worked well.  Too well, some think, because it has encouraged state policy makers to underfund some vital state programs already hampered by Hancock’s low fiscal bar.

In 1998, the state revenues exceeded the Hancock limit, forcing the Revenue Department to issue about one-billion dollars in refund checks (averaging about forty dollars per household).

The legislature decided it did not want to repeat that. So it decided to cut taxes to keep from hitting the Hancock limit again.  Not a bad idea, except that when the national and state economies took a dive, financing of state institutions and services was severely lowered.  Had the refund program remained in effect, the economic downturn would have meant no refunds but institutions and services would have been hurt far less because the tax base would have stabilized funding.

The MOST (Missouri Science and Technology) Policy Initiative, a fiscal think tank, has recorded twenty tax cuts from 1993-2013.  The result is that Missouri is almost four-billion dollars under the revenue limit set by Hancock, according to the latest annual study done by the state auditor.

Missouri is unable to do a lot of things it could be doing because the legislature eroded the state tax base instead of issuing checks.

Now the legislature will consider an even deeper tax cut.

Nobody likes to pay taxes. But there has been cultivated in our state and nation a culture that seems to think the benefits of government—education, public safety, infrastructure, care for the sick and elderly and indigent, and other parts of our lives we take for granted—should be free.  Or, to the way of thinking of some people who don’t need those things, eliminated.

How does the Biden program to forgive billions of dollars in student loans provide a cautionary element to consideration of the Parson tax cut?

When I was in college in the previous century, I knew many people who worked their way through school. Some could do it with part-time jobs on campus or in the community. I had one friend who worked for a semester and then took classes for a semester.  I have one friend who  financed his college education by selling thousands of dollars worth of Bibles and other religious books during the summer.

But the expense of a college education today makes that kind of self-financing impossible, or almost impossible.  And here is a major reason why.

Back when my generation and the generation after us, probably, could work our way through school, the state provided for a substantial cost of higher education.  Today, the percentage is much lower.

Last year, one of Missouri’s most distinguished attorneys—who also was appointed by Governor Parson to the Coordinating Board for Higher Education—W. Dudley McCarter, noted in The Columbia Missourian, “After striving to attain this goal over the past 10 years, the state of Missouri has now succeeded in becoming the state that is at the very bottom in funding for higher education. No, it is not Mississippi, Arkansas or Alabama — it is Missouri. Over the last 10 years, state funding for higher education has increased nationwide at an average of 12.40% with some states increasing funding by over 40%. In Missouri, however, funding has decreased during that same period by 13.70% — the only state that had reduced funding. When adjusted for inflation, the decrease is actually over 26%. The national average for funding is $304 per student, with some states providing over $700 per student. In Missouri, the funding is less than $200 per student.”

The downward trend has been going on far longer than that. The internet site Ballotpedia has noted that state appropriations per full-time student dropped by 26.1% in the first decade of this century, about twice the national average.

A study done a few years ago for Missouri State University showed that, nationally, student higher education tuitions made up 30.8% of higher education revenues in 1993. By 2018, tuition was financing 46.6% of higher education costs—and the costs were higher. It was during that time that student borrowing ballooned to offset declining percentages of state and federal higher education support.

The Biden student loan forgiveness program deals with those who have debts already. It does nothing to prevent current or future students from incurring crippling student debts, because government has reduced its support for higher education.  And now, the legislature is being asked to reduce state revenues even more.

We lack the expertise to get too far into the weeds of economic nuance.  But reducing the state’s ability to meet its fiscal responsibilities in the future, whether it’s in higher education or numerous other fields is a long-term issue that must be approached with great caution.

Things are flush right now, thanks partly to inflation and the massive injection of federal Covid relief funds in the last few years.  But Missouri still is far short of its own limit on the state tax burden and still far short in funding numerous human-service needs.

It is politically popular in an election year to cut taxes. The public seldom recognizes the long-term penalties that might result.  Tomorrow’s college graduates might be among those paying a high price for today’s popular tax cut and incurring new student debt burdens.  And if a recession hits next year, as some economists keep predicting, some unfortunate results of this year’s tax cut could become painfully clear.

Governor Parson has taken a wise step in meeting with members of both parties to explain why he thinks a tax cut is appropriate today. We suspect he had an easier sell with member of his own party than he did with the other side. We expect some passionate discussion of this issue during the special session.

We also expect a cut will be enacted.  We hope, however, that we do not have a repeat of the unfortunate post-refund tax cuts of decades ago. We must be careful as we consider what we might do to ourselves, our children, and our friends.  Tread carefully.

Unprecedented

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“Unprecedented” is a word frequently heard these days in our national political discussions.  We thought it might be interesting to see what other times “unprecedented” has been applied to our Presidents.   “Unpresidented,” if you will, although it isn’t a real word.

It was unprecedented when the nation selected its first President who was not a member of an organized political party.  He also was the first President unanimously elected, a truly unprecedented feat: George Washington.

The idea that a President would never veto a bill while in office was unprecedented when John Adams did, or didn’t, do it. Adams had a lot of “not” precedents: the first President who did not own slaves; the first President who was a lawyer; the first President to lose a re-election bid and the first President who did not attend the inauguration of his successor.

Thomas Jefferson’s defeat of an incumbent President (Adams) was unprecedented. (So was the method of his election.  In those days the President and Vice-President each accumulated electoral votes.  Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, each got 73 electoral votes. Incumbent John Adams had 65 but his running mate, Charles Pinkney, only had 64.  The House of Representatives cast 36 ballots before Jefferson won 10 of the 16 state ballots. Burr had four and Maryland and Vermont delegations tied within the delegation.  All of this was unprecedented, too, of course.)

James Madison took the unprecedented step of asking Congress for a declaration of war.

The election of Senator James Monroe to the presidency was unprecedented.

John Quincy Adams’ election was unprecedented because he was the first President who lost the popular vote.  (None of the candidates got a majority of the electoral vote, throwing the election into the House of Representatives under the 12th Amendment. Thirteen state delegations favored Adams, seven favored Andrew Jackson and four favored William H. Crawford.)

Andrew Jackson’s administration was the first administration to pay off the entire national debt.

Martin Van Buren’s presidency was unprecedented because he was the first President who was born an American citizen (all of his predecessors had been born as British subjects).

The death of William Henry Harrisons while in office was unprecedented.

The House of Representatives took an unprecedented vote to impeach President John Tyler.  It failed.

James K. Polk took the unprecedented step of refusing to seek a second term.

Zachary Taylor had never held a public office before becoming President, an unprecedented event.

Millard Fillmore took the unprecedented step of installing a kitchen stove in the White House.

His successor, Franklin Pierce, took the unprecedented step of installing central heating in the White House.

James Buchanan was our first bachelor president. Historians debate whether he was gay.

No president had been murdered until John Wilkes Booth took the unprecedented step with Abraham Lincoln, who is the only president to hold a United States patent.

The House of Representatives held a successful unprecedented impeachment vote against Andrew Johnson.  The Senate held an unprecedented trial and failed to convict him.

U. S.  Grant vetoed more than fifty bills, an unprecedented number.

It was unprecedented in modern election history when Rutherford B. Hayes won the electoral vote but not the popular vote.

James Garfield was an unprecedented President because he was left-handed or ambidextrous.

Chester Arthur took the unprecedented step of having an elevator installed in the White House.

Grover Cleveland set several precedents—the first President married in the White House; the first to have a child while President, and the first President to veto more than 100 bills.

Benjamin Harrison set a precedent by being the first President to have his voice recorded.

William McKinley was the first president to ride in an automobile.

Teddy Roosevelt set a precedent by becoming the first president to ride an airplane. (He got aboard a Wright Brothers airplane piloted by Arch Hoxsey and flew for about four minutes at Kinloch Field in St. Louis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaFulqGGkwk). He also took an unprecedented trip on a submarine.

The first president to throw out the first ceremonial pitch of the baseball season: William Howard Taft.

The first president to hold regular news briefings was Woodrow Wilson. He also took the unprecedented stop of appointing a Jew to the U.S. Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis.

Warren G. Harding learned of his election in an unprecedented way—he heard about it on the radio.

In 1927 the Lakota Sioux tribe took the unprecedented step of adopting a U.S. President as a member of the Lakota nation. Calvin Coolidge.

Herbert Hoover took the unprecedented step of having a telephone installed on his desk.

Franklin D. Roosevelt set a precedent by serving more than two terms. Among his other precedents—the first to fly across the Atlantic and the first to establish 100 days as the first benchmark for accomplishments in office.

The Secret Service set a precedent when it made Harry Truman the first President to have a code name (General). Television set a precedent by televising his 1949 inauguration.

Television set a precedent when it gave one of its Emmy Awards to President Eisenhower who was the first President to appear on color television.

First President who was a Catholic: John F. Kennedy. He also set a precedent by being the first former Boy Scout elected to the office.

The first President to be inaugurated on an airplane was Lyndon Johnson. He also set precedents by appointing the first African-American to the U.S. Supreme Court and appointing the first African-American to serve in a cabinet position

Richard Nixon set a precedent when he attended a National Football League game. Also: First President o resign.

First President never elected to the office or to the office of Vice-President: Gerald Ford.

Jimmy Carter broke precedent when he went by a nickname instead of the formal James E. Carter Jr.  As we write this, he moves into unprecedented territory by living longer than 97 years and being married for more than 75 of them.

Ronald Reagan set a precedent when he was re-elected, the first President re-elected older than 70 (73 at the time). He also set a precedent by nominating a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

George H. W. Bush set a precedent when he became the first President to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey.

First President who was a Rhodes Scholar, to have an official White House website, and to perform at a jazz festival (saxophone): Bill Clinton

First President to achieve a 90% approval rating in modern polling: George W. Bush.

America set a precedent by electing African-American Barack Obama, who was the first president born outside the 48 continental United States (Hawaii) and who was the first to endorse same-sex marriage.

First President with no prior public service experience, first to be impeached twice, first president to never see an approval rating above 50%, first president to refuse to publicly acknowledge re-election defeat: Donald Trump.

Joe Biden has set a precedent by being in office past his 77th birthday. He’s the first President to get more than 80-million votes.

First President to be indicted by a grand jury?  The first President to be brought to trial on criminal charges?  The first President to wear a prison uniform?  These are unprecedented possibilities that many hope never come to pass while many others hope come true.

That’s because we are living in unprecedented times.

 

Lyrics

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A couple of song lyrics have become  mental pests.

First, there’s a Faron Young country song from decades ago that I hear on some radio commercials these days: “I want to live fast, love hard, and die young, and leave a beautiful memory.”

Second, and even more relevant today is Kris Kristofferson’s claim that “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Young’s desire to leave a beautiful memory after a short life of self-centered existence strikes your loyal observer’s vestigial Puritan instincts as foolhardy.  The death of the young is never beautiful.  And the death of one whose short life focused on self-gratification seldom provokes a “beautiful memory,” at least not one that lasts very long.

The American poet John Greenleaf Whittier captured it well;

For all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these, “It might have been.”

Kristofferson’s song, BobbyMcGee, became a big hit for Janis Joplin but only after she died.  And its most famous lyric has never made any senste.

—because freedom is NOT just another word.  And freedom means there is EVERYTHING to lose.

Freedom is not sustainable individually, for individual freedom is irresponsible.  Freedom is at its most powerful within a community. And the community is most free when it recognizes the joint resonsbilities that go with its freedom.  The one who proclaims his freedom is more important than the freedom of those around him—whose only interest is to “live fast, love hard, and die young”—is a danger to others.

A society that refuses to accept the community responsibilities of shared freedom is a society ripe for falling into the hands of those who will reserve freedom to themselves and take it from those who have not met freedom’s responsibilities to protect it for all.

When community freedom is forsaken, despots rule.

And freedom becomes a beautiful memory.

 

Let us (not) pray

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In my church, and perhaps in yours, it is not unusual for the minister or a lay worship leader to begin a prayer with “Let us pray.”

Whose permission is this person seeking?

Actually, it would be more courteous to say, “Please let us pray.”

The prayers go ahead regardless of whether permission is granted, an example of “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission,” we suppose.

And then prayers are often concluded: “We pray in Jesus’ name….”

That’s okay within a group sharing common Christian beliefs. But is it appropriate in situations where there are people from different faith traditions who see other prophets and teachers as their life guides?

Wouldn’t a simple “Amen” without the preliminary phrase show respect for people of different approaches to God?

We once heard an invocation at an event attended by people of diverse religious backgrounds conclude with the words, “We pray in the name of the one we know best….”

I think of that phrase when I listen to the traditional prayer before NASCAR or INDYCAR races or other large public events and invariably hear the “Jesus” reference, and I think about those in the audience who might be Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu—-or any other non-Christian background.

Christianity teaches, among other things, loving one another. But if we are to carry out that mission, should we not pray to a universal god in those circumstances rather than to one defined by one of many religions represented within a large crowd?

This line of thinking was triggered recently by a podcast called, “Public Witness.”  It is produced by Brian Kaylor, the President of Word& Way, a longtime Baptist publication, and Beau Underwood, the former minister at the First Christian Church in Jefferson City—my church.  Their August 4, 2022 podcast considers the effort of the new President of the Australian Senate to stop the reading of the Lord’s Prayer before the beginning of each day’s session.

They quote President Sue Lines, who observes that the diversity of the Parliament has been praised for many years.  “If we are genuine about diversity of the Parliament we cannot continue to say a Christian prayer to open the day,” she said.

The fact that Lines is an atheist is sure to trigger some jerking knees.  In their Facebook note about the podcast (these guys are young and well-connected to modern communication systems), Brian and Beau argue that Christians should give Lines the benefit of the doubt because “the tradition both violates church-state separation and hollows out the meaning of the words Jesus taught his followers to pray.”

Remember, one of these guys is a Baptist and the other is with the Christian Church/Disciple of Christ, a denomination that tried to be Baptists in its early history but found the Baptists (and the Presbyterians) too, well, conservative.

Their podcast notes the usual reactions to such suggestions. One MP, Bob Katter, claims Lines’s suggestion is proof that Christians are being persecuted.”

Katter obviously has a jerky knee. Unfortunately, a lot of people do.

Christians are not being persecuted by such suggestions as offered by Lines. Actually, she is suggesting Christians be more Christian by loving or respecting others who reach God by a different road.

The Bible justifies all kinds of behaviors if one wants to cherry-pick verses.  But we are going to do that here a little bit.

The Golden Rule is stated in different ways throughout the Old and New Testaments. Jesus, speaking in the sixth chapter of Luke puts it this way: “As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”

Paul’s letter to the Philippians urges them, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others.”

In First Peter we find: “Have unity of mind, sympathy, brother love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.”

We won’t drag this out more on quotes.

But we do urge you to read and listen to Brian and Beau’s A Public Witness because they approach social/religious issues in a thoughtful way (this time it is thinking about faith and government) at a time when many become unnecessarily defensive and alarmist, behaviors that can become destructive of the commandment Jesus gave to the disciples at the Last Supper to “love one another as I have loved you.”

There are those today who find it more personally and politically popular to anoint themselves as victims of religious persecution at a time when the answer to their concerns lies in them being more Christian.

We pray, in the name of the one we know best, that they might discover that answer.

(You can find Brian and Beau’s podcast at https://wordandway.org/, specifically at: https://wordandway.org/2022/08/04/lords-prayer-down-under/

Unfinished

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Eric Greitens has lost his Senate bid and a lot of Republicans are reported to be glad that his populist appeal finally has worn out. His opponents and news reports, and his own commercials, made it clear there was not a “new” Greitens who had changed from the scandal-plagued collapse of his career as governor and rising Republican star.

Is he finished politically now?  Will we never see his name on a ballot again?  Will we never again see a Greitens with a gun political commercial?

In politics it is advisable to use the word “never” with care.  Case in point: November 7, 1962.

Richard Nixon, who lost the 1960 presidential race to John Kennedy, challenged incumbent California Governor Pat Brown’s re-election two years later. He had lost the day before. And on November 7, in a press conference, Nixon blamed the press for his defeat and declared that reporters would miss him because, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”   The general consensus among the political punditry was that Nixon’s political career was over. We know how that turned out.

That brings us to another story—

Lucy Mercer Ruthefurd, the mistress of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, told her friend, artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff in 1943 that she should paint a portrait of her lover because, “He has such a remarkable face. There is no painting of him that gives his true expression.”

It was not until April, 1945 that Ruthefurd was able to arrange a two-day sitting by the President for his portrait.

About noon on April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt sat for the official portrait. As Shoumatoff was working her watercolor and Roosevelt was having lunch, he complained, “I have a terrific pain I the back of my head,” and slumped in his chair, unconscious. He died that afternoon from a stroke.

Shoumatoff never finished that portrait.

The political portrait of Eric Greitens remains incomplete after this defeat. He’s only 48.  Nixon was 49 when he held his “last” press conference.

For now, however, “never” might be too soon for Eric Greitens to think he has a political future in Missouri.

Notes From a Quiet Street

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It’s baseball season.  And baseball is a great radio sport.

As Jack Buck put it when he was inducted ins the Radiio Hall of Fame in 1995:

“Turn the radio on. You’ll hear a friend. You will enjoy; you will learn; you will imagine; you will improve.

“Turn the radio on, at home, in your car, in prison, on the beach, in a nursing home.  You will not be alone; you will not be lonely.

“Newspapers fold. Magazines come and go. Television self-destructs.

“Radio remains the trusted common denominator in this nation.”

Or as others have said, in various forms: “Theatre is life; film is art; television is furniture; radio is imagination.”

Perfect for baseball.

-0-

I Read.  I write.  I am an author.  A library tells me much about a town and its people.  I’ve been on various local and regional library boards for 14 years and counting. That’s why this sign was interesting:

Of course, I saw this sign on the internet.

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We keep hearing critics of the January 6 Committee refer to it as a Kangaroo Court.  Do they consider another form of investigation a Kangaroo Grand Jury?

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Your faithful correspondent has, for the last two cars he has bought, suggested, “This might be the last entirely gas-powered car I’ll buy.”  But we’re getting closer to where that statement will true. When grandchildren live in Colorado, a car that gets 250  miles before needing a charge doesn’t make the navel tingle.

But this one does. It’s the Mercedes EQ/XX, still in prototype stage. Mercedeces ranks its range at 747 miles. Might have to mortgage the house, twice, but when it goes into production, it might not be too hard to tell the grandchildren their inheritance is greatly diminished.  It even has solar panels on the roof to power some of the little things inside.

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We have heard our most recent ex-president say at least a couple of times, including last week, that he wanted to give himself the Medal of Honor but Congress wouldn’t let him do it.

Should he ever read one of these postings (and there are some serious suspicions in this lofty place that he reads much of anything), here is how the Medal of Honor is awarded.

The main way is through nomination and approval through the military chain of command.  The second is a nomination by a member of Congress who is usually acting on a constituent’s request.  The medal is general presented by the President, in the name of Congress.

A year ago about now, I was honored to work with some veterans and with Gold Star Families to put up a monument to those families that have lost loved ones during wartime. I cherish the opportunity to have been part of that effort.

The ex-president’s remark is an insult to those who deservedly have received Medal of Honor—-or to the families of those who did not live to know they would receive it. Actually, it is an insult to anyone who has ever worn our country’s uniforms.

In fact the first time he joked about that was at an AMVETS meeting a couple of years ago and he embroidered his poorly-read remarks by kidding Woody Williams about them.

Woody Williams died a few weeks ago. He was the last surviving WWII Medal of Honor winner.  It was his foundation that supported last year’s efforts to put up the Gold Star Families Memorial Monument near the Missouri Capitol.

Our ex-president might have thought he was being funny. I am ashamed of those who laughed or applauded.

-0-

And finally, another observation about baseball:

You faithful observer has seen a new book that says “Bull Durham” is the greatest sports movie ever made. It is difficult from this recliner chair next to the TV remote to disagree.  Part of one of Hollywood’s greatest movie scripts is when Crash explains to Nuke how to use all of the great baseball clichés.

We suggest, however, that there are two baseball clichés that need to be thrown on the ash heap of baseball cliché history.

After watching  the Kansas City Royals and the St. Louis Cardinals leave some of their players behind, including some of the bigger names of both teams, when they went to Canada recently because they had not been vaccinated, we suggest these two clichés be discarded:

Take one for the Team.

There is no “I” in Team.

Maybe the Royals and the Cardinals need something we find supporting our high school sports.

Booster Clubs.

 

Two Popes and Christian Nationalism 

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A movement called “Christian Nationalism” is called “a fundamental threat to Democracy” in a new book, The Flag and the Cross by Phillip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry.  When Gorski was interviewed by Sarah Jones for the online British newspaper, The Independent, about the book defining Christian Nationalists as people who “often have a completely incorrect understanding of American history.”  She asked, “Can you talk about what myths tend to be attractive to them and why?”

Gorski responded, “Because it puts people like them at the center of the American story and it puts the American story at the center of the cosmic drama. White Christians like us are the real Americans, and America is the exceptional nation, the chosen nation that is playing a special role in the battle between good and evil…I would add to this that if you think in terms of this narrative, if you’re a white Christian, it doesn’t matter when you showed up in the United States; you have a kind of a birthright. You belong. You were always here, in a sense…You’re part of the founding group.

“I always find this kind of ironic when you think about the folks who get sort of exercised about discussions of race and reject “The 1619 Project.”  Why do they get so exercised about this? In part because it threatens their central place in the story and makes clear that in some sense you’re really talking about who got here first.”

Perry continues, “There is this huge identify-based motivation to believe these myths about America’s past that are factually incorrect oftentimes…A lot of people in these communities are socialized into believing it because there is an entire Christian nationalism industrial complex that is built to continue to perpetuate those myths.”

He says the goal of that “complex” is to “either provide religious leaders with that kind of ammunition or to provide religious consumers, people in the pews, with information about America’s Christian past that may or may not be factually correct. It is designed…to center white Christian Americans within that story and to tell them that this nation was founded on Christian values for Christian people…And, of course, they get to decide what that means.”

(You can read the entire interview at: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/white-christian-nationalism-is-a-threat-to-democracy.html)

This movement has been a thousand years in the making. And, to the considerable discomfort (I hope) of those who promote a distortion of our history by claiming our country was founded as a Christian nation, we’re going to tell you about the ancient roots of this misguided movement. In doing so, we hope some readers will ask if the “Christian nation” of the early settlers is the kind of Christianity we should practice today, or honor in our politics and policy-making.

The beginning of the “White Christian America” myth is based on a corruption of the Great Command in the Biblical book of Matthew in which Jesus told his disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

Pope Urban II was the first to twist this command into what became known as the “Doctrine of Discovery.”  Urban led the Roman Church from 1088 until he died in 1099. He is credited with triggering the First Crusade by declaring war on all non-Chistian nations and promising absolution to those who fought to take Spain and the Holy Land back from the Muslims. For about four centuries, this doctrine was considered authorization by European kings to “discover” new lands and if they were considered non-Christian, to claim them

The real Doctrine of Discovery that shaped our nation and much of our national self-image came from the Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex of 1452 by Pope Nicholas V that extended Urban’s idea to sanction war against non-Christians throughout the world. It also sanctioned conquest of those nations.

The Boston-based Upstander Project (which says, “An upstander is a person who takes action in defense of those who are targeted for systemic or individual harm or injustice. An upstander is the opposite of a bystander.”) says these decrees are based on two assertions:

“First, Christians were the only civilized peoples and thus, they had the right to treat non-Christians as uncivilized and subhuman who had no rights to any land or nation.

“Second, Christians had the God-given right to ‘capture, vanquish, and subdue the Saracens, pagans and other enemies of Christ,’ to ‘put them into perpetual slavery’ and ‘to take all their possessions and property.’”

Portugal, a rival of Spain’s in exploration at that time, protested Nicholas’ Bull that seemed to grant exclusivity to Spain because Portugal already had seized North Africa as early as 1415 and had explored coastal Africa all the way to India.  Pope Alexander, in 1493, issued a new Papal Bull forbidding Spain from establishing control over lands claimed by other “Christian lords,” effectively drawing a line between hemispheres.  That wasn’t good enough for King John II of Portugal, who negotiated with Columbus’s friends Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, to move the line further west with the Treaty of Tordesillas, clearing the way for the Portugese to claim Brazil.

Alexander’s division line wasn’t just in the Atlantic. It went all the way around the world. A later treaty between Spain and Portugal, The Treaty of Saragossa, gave Spain and Portugal the power to seize and control all non-Christian nations on the Earth just by stepping off a boat onto those lands.

Of course, other nations had other ideas—the French and the English in particular and in years to come, the English especially recognized no papal authority.  And this is where our country’s history begins to take shape.

The concepts of these papal statements influenced the sentiments of European settlement of what is now the United States and laid the groundwork for the erroneous attitude that Christianity should be the motivation behind public policy.

It is the Doctrine of Discovery that enabled European settlers to look upon well-organized Native American socieities as inferior because they were not “Christian” regardless of how those societies interpreted God or what they called God. Since they were inferior, they had no right to the lands they had inhabited for thousands of years if Christians wanted it.

It didn’t take long for the presumptuous, righteous, Europeans to push things too far.  King Phillip’s war broke out in New England in 1675 between the son of Massasoit—the friend of the Pilgrims—who resisted colonists’ grab of his land. The war lasted until 1678 when it ended with the Treaty of Casco Bay. But the settlers did not stop doing the things that led to the war. Another treaty in 1703 also was violated by the settlers.

And so it went, decade by decade, treaty by broken treaty, as the Christian Europeans seized the heathen lands they wanted.

The Louisiana Purchase represents the Doctrine of Discovery for we Missourians.  France had taken “ownership” of that territory from Spain and sold it to the United States. But Fance and Spain only “claimed” the land under the doctrine. They did not own it.  The United States really bought “preemptive rights” to obtain the land within that territy from the tribes, either by treaty or by conquest.

Missouri?  Harvard University’s first tenured professor of American Indian history, Phillip deLoria, told interviewer David Rubenstein in 2020 that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established requirements for western territories to become states: “Sixty-thousand free people. What that means is if you’re a territory and you want to become a state, youneed to get your Indian people out fo there so that you can bring in more settlers. What that leads to is either removal—making them leave the state—or moving them onto reservation territories where they’re contained and compressed.”  Missouri is a perfect example.*

Historian Greg Olson has written that it took 22 treaties with 13 Native American nations before the United States had clear title to all of the land in Missouri, a process that was finally concluded in 1837, sixteen years after we became a state, with the Platte Purchase that gave us our northwest corner. .

The national attitude was encapsulated in an 1823 U. S. Supreme Court unanimous ruling that the Age of Discovery had given the Christian nations of Europe “ultimate dominion” over all of North America, that Native Americans no longer had any right to “complete sovereignty, as independent nations” and were only entitled to occupy their lands. Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion said that when this country became an independent nation, it kept Britain’s right of discovery and gained Britain’s power of “dominion.”

The Doctrine of Discovery was carried out until European Christians’ North American empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific based on papal bulls declaring Christians are the only civilized peoples and therefore have a God-given right to “capture, vanquish, and subdue….enemies of Christ” and to put them into “perpetual slavery” and to “take all their possessions and property.”

The papal bulls of the Popes were Americanized in an editorial in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review editorial of July/August, 1845 calling for an end to opposition, especially from England and France, to the annexation of Texas.

” Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favor of now elevating this question of the reception of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past party dissensions, up to its proper level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is to be found, found abundantly, in the manner in which other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

(Emanuel Leutze, “Westward, the Course of Empire”)

It is disputed whether editor John O’Sullivan or staff member Jane Cazneau wrote that editorial.  The phrase showed up in a December issue of the New York Morning News, also edited by O’Sullivan, advocating American annexation of the Oregon Territory.

Mainfest Destiny, America’s version of Europe’s sanctified Christian Naionalism,  proclaimed it was ordained by God that this nation had a right to displace non-European residents so the “yearly multiplying millions” had land and livelihood of their own. It led to the Mexican War that added all or parts of Arizona, Californa, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming to our country’s map. With the addition of those new territories, the concept also raised the issue of expansion of slavery into these new areas, an issue that ultimately led to civil war.

Those are things the nationalists prefer we not know, teach, or learn because—going back to the top of this entry, Christians are the only civilized people and as such they can treat others “as uncivilized and subhuman” with no rights to any land or nation.

White Christian Nationalism is not new and it is not unique to our country, nor is it unique to Christians.  Its advocates prefer that neither our school children nor their parents know where it came from and what it has done here and in other parts of the world.

Sadly, there are too many Christians who think White Christian Nationalists will go away.  They won’t.  They’ve been here for more than four centuries and they’re louder than ever, it seems.

So we are presented with a choice: What would you rather be, a Christian living in a free country or someone living in a Christian country—where history tells us we might not be considered a citizen at all?

*David M. Rubenstein, The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Greg Olson, “White Man’s Paper Trail: Extinguishing Indigenous Land Claims in Missouri, Missouri Historical Review, July, 2021

The Fifth Amendment Debt 

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It is possible  Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, Alex Jones, Allen Weisselberg and two Trumps have no idea who John Lilburne was.  But they owe a large debt to this Englishman who died in 1657.

Trump aides, advisers, and defenders Stone, Flynn, Eastman, Jones and Weisselberg have “taken the Fifth” when summoned to testify on this or that issue involving our most recent former President.

Indeed, DJ Jr., the son of the aforesaid former president, reportedly has done it more than 500 times, as did Weisselberg, the former Trump organization chief financial officer, when summoned to talk about the elder Trump’s reputed manipulation of property values to get loans.

And so, for that matter, has the Big Guy himself. More than thirty years ago when he was carrying on with Marla Maples and his then-wife, Ivana, was divorcing him, DJT was asked about 100 questions about faithful marriage and reportedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment 97 times.  The questions came from his soon to be ex-wife’s lawyer who wanted him to explain his reported dalliances with other women.

But he must have had an epiphany sometime in the next twenty-or so years when he he told a crowd of followers during his campaign, “You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

How does John Lilburne enter this unsavory set of circumstances?

Isaac Amon’s article for The Journal of the Missouri Bar a while ago tell us that John Lilburne was an English pamphleteer who was arrested in 1637 for writing things the king and his Star Chamber Court did not like and he was badly punished for it.

The Star Chamber?

It was the court of inquisition in England that was above the common law and answered only to the King.  Those brought before it were ordered to take “the ex officio oath” that promised they would admit charges against them—-before knowing what the charges were.

John Lilburne was arrested in 1637 for printing and circulating unlicensed books. When he was taken before the Court of the Star Chamber and asked how he pleaded, Lilburne refused to respond until he knew the charges against him and argued that he was not bound to incriminate himself. He maintained the oath was “against the law of God and the law of the land.”  He also demanded the right to confront his accusers.

That defiance earned him a sentence in February of 1638 of a £500 fine, imprisonment at the Fleet Street Prison, and to be whipped and pilloried until he obeyed the court. In April he was taken from his cell, his hands were tied to the rear of an oxcart that pulled him through the streets, as he was flogged with a three-tailed whip before he was locked in a stooped position in the pillory.  Even then he spoke loudly against those who sought to silence him—until he was gagged. He was taken back to prison where, despite his situation, he was able to write a pamphlet describing the cruelty of his punishment and another encouraging a separation of the English government fronm the Church of England.

Eventually he was released but he continued to stand for his contention

Lilburne was called “Freeborn John” by his supporters for his contention that citizens have “freeborn rights” that include the right to hear charges against them, to face their accusers, and to refuse to say something that might incriminate themselves.

He was a soldier in the first English Civil War as a “Roundhead,” the Parliamentarians who fought against the Royalists to determine the type of government England would have and to seek religious feedom.  He left the army after rejecting the Presbyterian Solemn League and Covenant, an agreement in which the Scots agreed to help the Parliamentarians if England, Scotland, and Ireland would unite afterwards under a parliamentary-presbyterian system.

Lilburne maintained the covenant was, in effect, an agreement to preserve the religion of Scotland and was therefore a restriction on general freedom of religion. He had no problem with the Scots being Presbyterians but he wanted no part of an agreement that bound others to that faith.

In the end, the Civil Wars of England united England, Scotland and Ireland into the United Kingdom, ended the monopoly on worship and government control held by the Church of England, protected the reform movement in Scotland, and cleared the way for the Protestantism to become established in Ireland, leading to political control under the Anglican Church of Ireland, a situation that led to “The Troubles” or the Northern Ireland conflict, a thirty-year sectarian conflict between Protestant loyalists and Catholic nationalists from 1968-1998. That’s a discussion for another day, perhaps.

John Lilburne was imprisoned again in 1645 for criticizing members of Parliament for living well at a time when English soldiers were poorly treated. While in prison he penned An Agreement of the People for a Firm and Present Peace Upon Grounds of Common Right.

Lilburne’s political activism saw him in and out of prison and even banished from England for a time. In 1657, while visiting his wife (who was expecting their tenth child) on temporary release from prison, he died.

More than three centuries after his death, James Madison, who was influenced by Lilburne’s story, wrote as part of the Bill of Rights, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The Fifth Amendment and the other nine statements of OUR “freeborn rights” were adopted in 1791.

In 1966, United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren specifically mentioned Lilburne in writing the majority opinion for Miranda v. Arizona that police must tell suspects that they have the freeborn right to remain silent in the face of accusations against them.

A few days ago we watched Michael Flynn refuse to answer questions from a Republican member of the January 6 Committee, saying only, “Take the Fifth, “Fifth,” and “The Fifth” in responding to three questions.

A man almost four centuries ago endured imprisonment, whipping, the pillory, and even banishment from his country to give him that right.

But here’s the deal: While it is easy to think those who “plead the Fifth” are therefore hiding their guilt, there is far more to the plea than that. This amendment stands between us and Lilburne’s Star Chamber Court. All of us—you, me, them—are not forced to say something that others might consider an admission of guilt before any charges are filed. This amendment keeps the government from considering you guilty unless you can prove yourself NOT guilty.  This amendment protects our sacred concept that a citizen, no matter how reprehensible we might consider their behavior, is innocent until proven guilty.

We doubt that Mr. Flynn or any of the others we mentioned at the beginning of this piece know about or care about what John Lilburne went through to protect them.

But all of us should care—-because we Americans all have freeborn rights.

(image credit: Library of Congress)

Recycle this sign?

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Saw this sign on the internet a few days ago:

There are many who harbor this sentiment as we go into the 2022 midterm elections and anticipate the heat and smoke of 2024.  Sad to say, too many of those we voters have put in positions of responsibility who are more interested in staying in positions of power have left too many voters feeling as this property owner felt six years ago.

The sign carries a message of hopelessness.  The present political climate encourages that feeling.

The sign is a message of self-pity at a time when self-pity cannot be allowed.

This sign could be seen, insead, a message of opportunity. A challenge.

The proper response lies within those who think a yard sign such as this is all they can do.

Because it isn’t

Channelled, controlled anger can be a powerful force.  Just make sure it’s directed at eliminating those who would leave us believing this sign is all we can do.  Just make sure the mind overrules the gut in considering the people who want our votes.

And maybe a scattered few will realize they are better than those who have created this climate and they will be replaced by those who represent our better selves.

Lightbulbs and voters have one big thing in common.  Both can be unscrewed.

 

Who is This Guy?

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A strong Republican citizen asked me the other day, “What do you know about John Wood?”  And at the end of our discussion, he made an interesting suggestion about him.

John Wood is running for Roy Blunt’s Senate seat as an Independent.  It’s far too late for him to file as a Republican but he’s the kind of moderate Republican that former Senator John Danforth has been hoping would give GOP voters an alternative to the crowd of candidates that Danforth considers so closely tied to ex-President Trump that the GOP could lose that seat in November.

My friend thinks Wood would pull votes away from candidates of both parties but would hurt the Republican nominee the most, especially if it’s Eric Greitens.

Here’s a thumbnail description of John Wood.

(This entire discussion becomes academic if he cannot gather 10-thousand signatures of Missouri voters and present them to the Secretary of State by the close of business on August 1.  Barely meeting the minimum might say something about his candidacy.  Getting thousands more than necessary might say something, too.)

He’s a 52-year old lawyer and is the latest product of the “Danforth incubator.”  John Danforth used his election as Missouri Attorney General in 1968 to begin cultivating bright and young Republican assistants whose success in statewide office broke the Democratic hold on Missouri politics and produced the Republican control.   Before he was a lawyer, he worked for Danforth.  He clerked for U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who had been an Assistant Attorney General under Danforth.  He also has worked at the United States Court of Appeals.

President George W. Bush appointed him the federal prosecutor for western Missouri in 2007. He served into 2009. After leaving that job he was chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.  When John Ashcroft was United States Attorney General, Wood was the deputy associate general counsel in that office. He also filled that job in the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget.

For a time he was the Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel for the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.  He joined the January 6th Committee as a senior investigator at the invitation of Representative Liz Cheney.

He calls himself “a lifelong Republican” who has told the Post-Dispatch he is not interested in being part of “a race to the bottom” and an effort “to see who can be the most divisive and the most extreme.”

He thinks Greitens will win the Republican primary on August 2 but he thinks he can win in November behind “a coalition of common-sense voters,” most particularly Republicans who won’t back Greitens as well as moderate and conservative Democrats—and independents, of course.

We won’t delve into his positions on issues in this entry except to say they are distinctly mainline Republican.  He has said he would support Mitch McConnell remaining leader of the party in the Senate and that he wants to be part of a “governing coalition,” an indication that he might work better across the aisle than many other Republicans (or Democrats) in Washington.

He says he’s not a spoiler, that he’s running to win.

Simply put, he’s a wild card in a race that needs one. He’ll have Danforth money and muscle behind him.  But it doesn’t take much searching to realize that John Danforth doesn’t set the philosophical tone for the party that he once did.

All of that might be true, maintains my friend. However—-

Is he really running to gain statewide name recognition so that he can challenge Josh Hawley in 2024?  After all, Danforth says supporting Hawley four years ago was the biggest political mistake he’s ever made.

Stay tuned.

(Photo Credit: Twitter)