By Edwin Cooney
Okay, here it is. I don’t like to even think about September 11th, 2001, let alone celebrate it. “Why?”You ask.
The answer is simple. It hurts too much. In fact, I don’t believe that it’s healthy for President Bush to think about it either. If you ask me, I believe the greatest tragedy of the Bush administration is that the President is both humiliated by and obsessed with, the September 11th, 2001 attack on our shores. Furthermore, it appears that practically all of the President’s foreign policy actions are linked to what occurred on the second Tuesday in September six years ago.
Hence, last Tuesday morning when I turned on my radio, I heard pretty much what I expected to hear. Everyone, including our most prominent local radio talk show host, was vividly recounting the events that occurred two thousand one-hundred and ninety-one days before and pleading with us to never forget. Not far down the radio dial, the angry and insistent voices of “lefty” and “righty” talk show hosts made compelling cases for both my dissatisfaction with as well as my support for our foreign policy response to 9/11.
To me, the 9/11 actions of Al Qaida were as “dastardly” as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on that December 7th Sunday back in 1941. Nothing the United States government has done or failed to do can possibly justify that murderous Al Qaida attack on us. It’s hard even to argue with President Bush’s determination to respond militarily against Al Qaida and Taliban base camps in Afghanistan.
It’s painful enough to think of the loss of innocent lives on that terrible day -- American and otherwise -- people who were working:
at the World Trade Center,
at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,
or those who may have been flying aboard United Flight #93, the Boeing 757 which exploded in a Pennsylvania farm field,
or aboard American Flight #11, the Boeing 767 which hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center,
or on United Airlines Flight #175, the Boeing 767 which struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center,
as well as on American Airlines Flight #77, the Boeing 757 which crashed into the Pentagon.
The personal pain, emphasized and dramatized by the films taken that day of the crash scenes, invoked an intensity of anger and heartache that, no doubt, will cause long term anguish and illness in hundreds of thousands of innocent hearts and souls for years to come. It’s the very energy produced by the horror of 9/11 that most disturbs me.
Even worse than recalling the pain and suffering experienced by so many perfectly innocent human beings six years ago is the sense of helplessness so many of us feel as to what we can effectively do to redress that outrage and to prevent future outrages perhaps of even more catastrophic severity.
As far back as the March 5th, 1770 Boston Massacre, Americans have been urged by various elements in our society to vividly recall and respond to our national misfortunes.
We were asked to remember the cruelty of the pre-revolutionary “bloody British”. “Remember the Alamo” was the cry when that San Antonio fortress fell to Mexican General Santa Anna on March 6th, 1836. Two editors named Pulitzer and Hurst prodded us to “Remember the Maine”, the American battleship that blew up in Havana harbor on February 15th 1898 thereby compelling a reluctant President William McKinley to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Spain. Later from Tin Pan Alley came “Remember Pearl Harbor,” just one of the songs we sang to keep our respective chins up, especially during the early months of World War II when news from distant battlefields was all bad.
Two centuries ago, our forefathers created a government pledged to defend our liberty and designed to carry out our will. While there is some argument as to whether or not our “Founding Fathers” established a republic or a democracy, there’s little disagreement even among our most radical opinion makers of today that our government is expected to be responsive to both the will as well as the safety of the American people.
Thus my dilemma: I share President Bush’s outrage against Al Qaida and the Taliban. However, there is a difference between an angry response and an effective response. Additionally, it seems to this observer that Mr. Bush, our leader, has done more to rile us than he has done to reassure, let alone comfort, us.
If the magnitude of the crisis with Radical Islam is as great as President Bush insists, America is hardly in a position to handle it alone. It used to be a presidential strategy to establish international alliances, but sadly, it doesn’t appear that President Bush respects the international community enough to realize that he could lead it if he only would.
In the fall of 1991, during the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush, the largely bloodless final days of Soviet-sponsored international terror came about. Although President Bush and former President Reagan took bows for having brought this gigantic and nuclear-muscled “Godless” monster to its knees, not even they believed that they had accomplished the deed alone.
Communism was resisted first by nine American presidents, from Mr. Truman through Mr. Bush the elder, thirteen Secretaries of State (Edward Statinius through George Shultz) as well as leaders named Attlee, Churchill, Macmillan, De Gaulle, and Adenauer. Finally, who can forget those brave Berliners who prospered over Communism even more than they fought against it with weaponry?
It is important to keep two things in mind. Presidents do deserve more support than they are likely to receive given our self-appointed modern media experts at all points of the political spectrum. However, just as important to keep in mind is that distinction between citizen and presidential responsibility.
We the people can afford to be sad, joyous, resentful and angry about world attitudes and events. Of course, Citizen Bush may have the same reactions, but not President Bush. After all, he chose to be elected President and to responsibly shoulder our burdens. As Jimmy Carter used to say when asked about the burdens he carried, “They go with the territory.”
The challenge to 9/11 faced by President Bush is vastly different than the challenge FDR faced by an angry and ambitious Japan in 1941. Unlike Japan, Al Qaida isn’t a nation state anchored to Mother Earth awaiting the hot and poisonous breath of an atomic bomb. Thus the forces needed to still Al Qaida or other powerful pockets of Radical Islam require a different strategy than that of the Axis sixty-seven years ago.
Iran or a radical Iraq -- or any nation -- knows its destruction is assured if it unloads its nuclear capacity on America or any other country. Thus, it seems to me that President Bush’s challenge is to devise a strategy aside from preemptive war -- which has already proven to be a disastrous policy -- to prevent an attack on us by a crazed future antagonist.
Meanwhile, September 11th, 2001, the date I hate to think about, is indelibly carved into our national history. The suffering it marks is not something to celebrate. To celebrate 9/11 is to allow the horrors and outrages of that day to fester in our national heart.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a festering heart the same as a broken heart? If so, can we afford a broken heart?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, September 17, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
THE “WE” VS. “THEE” SCANDAL
By Edwin Cooney
The fate of Idaho Senator Larry Craig has been inevitable given the socio/political climate under which we‘re living -- and given who he is.
Shortly after noon on Monday, June 11th, 2007, the 62-year-old third term Conservative Republican Senator visited a Minneapolis-St. Paul men’s room at the airport. Entering one of the stalls, Senator Craig placed his luggage in front of him so that it blocked the space in the front of the stall. He peered through the space to his right where police Sergeant David Karsnia was seated on a commode in the adjoining stall.
Sergeant Karsnia had been assigned to perform a sting operation because of complaints about homosexual solicitation activities which had recently been occurring in area public bathrooms.
Senator Craig, of course, did not know that the gentleman in the stall just to his right was a policeman. Nor did Sergeant Karsnia have any idea who had taken the stall just to his left. However, the occupant of that stall proceeded to place his right hand, palm up, through the space connecting the two stalls moving it back and forth several times. Next, he placed his right foot against Sergeant Karsnia’s left foot and proceeded to make a toe tapping motion. This series of actions, according to those who know these things, are exactly the signals used by those seeking homosexual engagements. Sergeant Karsnia, in accordance with procedure, flashed his police badge and motioned with his left hand toward the bathroom exit. Senator Craig got up from the commode and, without flushing the toilet, rolled his luggage along with him to leave the men’s room. Sergeant Karsnia informed Senator Craig that he had received his set of signals and asked the Senator to accompany him to the airport security operations center. Senator Craig refused the request. The Sergeant then informed Senator Craig that he was under arrest and that Karsnia didn’t want to make a scene.
Ushering his quarry to the police security operations section of the airport, the former occupant of the men’s room stall just to the sergeant’s left, did a bit of his own credentials flashing. Protesting his innocence, Mr. Craig said to the sergeant “I’m a United States Senator. What do you think about that?” Only then did Sergeant Karsnia learn that he had just landed one of the 100 biggest of a particular brand of “fish” in the United States of America.
About forty-five minutes after having been taken into custody, Senator Craig was cited and released. On Wednesday, August 1st -- seven weeks and two days later -- Senator Craig pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, a misdemeanor. He paid $575 of a $1,000 fine and was released on one year of unsupervised probation.
Nearly four weeks passed by before Senator Craig’s arrest, guilty plea and fine were even announced. It appears that Senator Craig didn’t inform his staff or his colleagues of what had occurred. (When he told his wife Suzanne about the incident would be interesting to know, but rightfully is a private matter.)
The date was Monday, August 27th when the June 11th incident and the August 1st guilty plea were made public.
By Wednesday, the 29th of August, GOP Senate leaders Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John Kyl of Arizona, and John Ensign of Nevada had met and stripped Senator Craig of all his chairmanships and special assignments thus lowering him to the rank of a freshman senator. They also submitted his case to the Senate ethics committee for investigation. Such an investigation would of course be public and could reflect poorly on the senator.
Thus, on Saturday morning, September 1st , asserting that he always had and always would do what was best for Idaho, Senator Larry Craig announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate effective September 30th. At his side were his wife Suzanne and his daughter Shea along with Governor and Mrs. Otter and Congressman Bill Sali.
Three days later, a spokesman for Senator Craig announced that the Senator had decided to try and have his guilty plea withdrawn -- and that if he could do it before September 30th, he might not resign after all. Additionally, the Senator, a member of the political party that seeks public favor in part by demonizing lawyers, has hired two or three very high-powered attorneys. One of those attorneys represented Michael Vick, the professional football player recently convicted of participating in an illegal and brutal dog fighting, gambling and abuse operation.
It is notable that the GOP leadership is now insisting that having made the decision to resign his Senate seat, Larry Craig should keep his word. His continuing presence in the Senate would keep the touchy issue of possible Conservative homosexual vulnerability before the public’s attention at a time when the GOP is on the political defensive as it prepares for the 2008 national election campaign.
Of course, no political party can function as successfully as it otherwise might when the values and morality of its leading officeholders are in doubt. There are many who believe that because it didn’t adequately chastise its senior Massachusetts Senator, the Democratic Party has suffered even more than Senator Edward M. Kennedy from the Chappaquiddick tragedy of 1969. However, Senator Craig insists that his personal values and actions are in complete compliance with the dictates of Conservative Republicanism. His problem, he insists, is that his actions in the St. Paul, Minnesota airport were misconstrued by officer Karsnia and that he pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct only because he thought that would be the most efficient way to rid himself of the outrageous and certainly nettlesome incident.
Almost as intriguing is the fact that Senator Craig was advised recently by his fellow Republican Senator Arlen Specter, a man of lifelong prosecutorial experience, that the case against him was sufficiently weak that he could have easily challenged it. It apparently never occurred to Senator Craig, a Conservative Republican, that Senator Specter, a Liberal Republican, might well have provided him invaluable assistance before it was too late (so much for traditional Senate collegiality!)
There is, of course, nothing new about scandal in America. Our system of government was very young indeed when:
In 1795, the corrupt Georgia legislature—which would be replaced in its entirety by angry voters that fall—sold land in the Yazoo River valley to four land speculation companies for its own enrichment;
In 1797, former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton publicly confessed to having purchased sexual favors from Maria Reynolds through her husband James Reynolds using private rather than public funds;
In July 1804, sitting Vice President Aaron Burr shot the same Alexander Hamilton to death in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.
...So much for the absolute purity of “our founding Fathers.”.
Neither Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans nor Democrats are absent from history’s roll call of moral villains. For every Bill Clinton, there’s a Warren Harding. For every Ted Kennedy, there’s an Alan Simpson. (Former Senator Simpson openly admits to a youthful indiscretion that apparently cost a life.)
The dilemma currently facing Senator Craig and his GOP colleagues is the light in which they have placed homosexual activity. Hence, many gay men and lesbian women find themselves in sympathy with Senator Craig’s vulnerability even though he insists that “I’m not gay.”
Whether or not Senator Craig is gay, his interpreted action, in a public place, is a violation of the law in Minnesota and most everywhere else. Even if he had been soliciting heterosexual favors, he would have been vulnerable to arrest and conviction. Violation of just laws is rightfully punishable whether a person is powerful or meek. Such punishment is particularly essential when it involves the politically influential because of their potential vulnerability to blackmail.
In recent years, in part as a response to Roe v. Wade but also in response to the civil rights status that Liberal Democrats have granted to gays and lesbians, Conservatives (especially the “Moral Majority”) have made gayness and lesbianism immoral and hence a political -- if not societal -- crime.
By so doing, they assign the Republican Party a role it can’t possibly sustain—that of moral watchdog over the sins of the American people. The sad truth is that Conservatives, no more and no less than Liberals, are subject to personal temptation and thus vulnerable to inevitable political and even moral judgment.
Idaho Senator Larry Craig may or may not be gay (although an Idaho friend of mine -- a proud Conservative Republican -- tells me that there has been speculation for a long time as to the Senator’s sexual orientation). However, the June 11th St. Paul incident has resulted in Senator Craig’s biggest political crime. His personal or “me needs” have embarrassed the powerful “we”, his righteous colleagues.
Hence, even if Senator Craig gets his guilty plea invalidated—which I’m told is an exceedingly remote possibility—his GOP sponsored political career is over. So, you might ask, how much does this matter?
On the surface, probably not much, but over the long run the “knee jerk” reaction of Senator Craig’s Conservative colleagues is continuing an unhealthy trend.
That trend by resourceful, powerful and self righteous ideologues is the socio/political punishment of people for their strictly personal activities whether or not they victimize anyone. Hence, even the morally pure have impure colleagues. Even more humbling is the reality that they have impure sons, brothers, cousins and fathers -- oh, no -- and wives and mothers as well. As everyone knows, such associations can be destructively embarrassing when so allowed to be!!!
In the realm of criminal behavior by a public official, Senator Larry Craig has barely hit a single. My guess is that in five years only the most obsessed political junkie outside of Idaho will even recall his name. However, the political “We” will still be judging the political “Thee” and setting themselves up for their own future political and historic obscurity.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
The fate of Idaho Senator Larry Craig has been inevitable given the socio/political climate under which we‘re living -- and given who he is.
Shortly after noon on Monday, June 11th, 2007, the 62-year-old third term Conservative Republican Senator visited a Minneapolis-St. Paul men’s room at the airport. Entering one of the stalls, Senator Craig placed his luggage in front of him so that it blocked the space in the front of the stall. He peered through the space to his right where police Sergeant David Karsnia was seated on a commode in the adjoining stall.
Sergeant Karsnia had been assigned to perform a sting operation because of complaints about homosexual solicitation activities which had recently been occurring in area public bathrooms.
Senator Craig, of course, did not know that the gentleman in the stall just to his right was a policeman. Nor did Sergeant Karsnia have any idea who had taken the stall just to his left. However, the occupant of that stall proceeded to place his right hand, palm up, through the space connecting the two stalls moving it back and forth several times. Next, he placed his right foot against Sergeant Karsnia’s left foot and proceeded to make a toe tapping motion. This series of actions, according to those who know these things, are exactly the signals used by those seeking homosexual engagements. Sergeant Karsnia, in accordance with procedure, flashed his police badge and motioned with his left hand toward the bathroom exit. Senator Craig got up from the commode and, without flushing the toilet, rolled his luggage along with him to leave the men’s room. Sergeant Karsnia informed Senator Craig that he had received his set of signals and asked the Senator to accompany him to the airport security operations center. Senator Craig refused the request. The Sergeant then informed Senator Craig that he was under arrest and that Karsnia didn’t want to make a scene.
Ushering his quarry to the police security operations section of the airport, the former occupant of the men’s room stall just to the sergeant’s left, did a bit of his own credentials flashing. Protesting his innocence, Mr. Craig said to the sergeant “I’m a United States Senator. What do you think about that?” Only then did Sergeant Karsnia learn that he had just landed one of the 100 biggest of a particular brand of “fish” in the United States of America.
About forty-five minutes after having been taken into custody, Senator Craig was cited and released. On Wednesday, August 1st -- seven weeks and two days later -- Senator Craig pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, a misdemeanor. He paid $575 of a $1,000 fine and was released on one year of unsupervised probation.
Nearly four weeks passed by before Senator Craig’s arrest, guilty plea and fine were even announced. It appears that Senator Craig didn’t inform his staff or his colleagues of what had occurred. (When he told his wife Suzanne about the incident would be interesting to know, but rightfully is a private matter.)
The date was Monday, August 27th when the June 11th incident and the August 1st guilty plea were made public.
By Wednesday, the 29th of August, GOP Senate leaders Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John Kyl of Arizona, and John Ensign of Nevada had met and stripped Senator Craig of all his chairmanships and special assignments thus lowering him to the rank of a freshman senator. They also submitted his case to the Senate ethics committee for investigation. Such an investigation would of course be public and could reflect poorly on the senator.
Thus, on Saturday morning, September 1st , asserting that he always had and always would do what was best for Idaho, Senator Larry Craig announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate effective September 30th. At his side were his wife Suzanne and his daughter Shea along with Governor and Mrs. Otter and Congressman Bill Sali.
Three days later, a spokesman for Senator Craig announced that the Senator had decided to try and have his guilty plea withdrawn -- and that if he could do it before September 30th, he might not resign after all. Additionally, the Senator, a member of the political party that seeks public favor in part by demonizing lawyers, has hired two or three very high-powered attorneys. One of those attorneys represented Michael Vick, the professional football player recently convicted of participating in an illegal and brutal dog fighting, gambling and abuse operation.
It is notable that the GOP leadership is now insisting that having made the decision to resign his Senate seat, Larry Craig should keep his word. His continuing presence in the Senate would keep the touchy issue of possible Conservative homosexual vulnerability before the public’s attention at a time when the GOP is on the political defensive as it prepares for the 2008 national election campaign.
Of course, no political party can function as successfully as it otherwise might when the values and morality of its leading officeholders are in doubt. There are many who believe that because it didn’t adequately chastise its senior Massachusetts Senator, the Democratic Party has suffered even more than Senator Edward M. Kennedy from the Chappaquiddick tragedy of 1969. However, Senator Craig insists that his personal values and actions are in complete compliance with the dictates of Conservative Republicanism. His problem, he insists, is that his actions in the St. Paul, Minnesota airport were misconstrued by officer Karsnia and that he pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct only because he thought that would be the most efficient way to rid himself of the outrageous and certainly nettlesome incident.
Almost as intriguing is the fact that Senator Craig was advised recently by his fellow Republican Senator Arlen Specter, a man of lifelong prosecutorial experience, that the case against him was sufficiently weak that he could have easily challenged it. It apparently never occurred to Senator Craig, a Conservative Republican, that Senator Specter, a Liberal Republican, might well have provided him invaluable assistance before it was too late (so much for traditional Senate collegiality!)
There is, of course, nothing new about scandal in America. Our system of government was very young indeed when:
In 1795, the corrupt Georgia legislature—which would be replaced in its entirety by angry voters that fall—sold land in the Yazoo River valley to four land speculation companies for its own enrichment;
In 1797, former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton publicly confessed to having purchased sexual favors from Maria Reynolds through her husband James Reynolds using private rather than public funds;
In July 1804, sitting Vice President Aaron Burr shot the same Alexander Hamilton to death in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.
...So much for the absolute purity of “our founding Fathers.”.
Neither Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans nor Democrats are absent from history’s roll call of moral villains. For every Bill Clinton, there’s a Warren Harding. For every Ted Kennedy, there’s an Alan Simpson. (Former Senator Simpson openly admits to a youthful indiscretion that apparently cost a life.)
The dilemma currently facing Senator Craig and his GOP colleagues is the light in which they have placed homosexual activity. Hence, many gay men and lesbian women find themselves in sympathy with Senator Craig’s vulnerability even though he insists that “I’m not gay.”
Whether or not Senator Craig is gay, his interpreted action, in a public place, is a violation of the law in Minnesota and most everywhere else. Even if he had been soliciting heterosexual favors, he would have been vulnerable to arrest and conviction. Violation of just laws is rightfully punishable whether a person is powerful or meek. Such punishment is particularly essential when it involves the politically influential because of their potential vulnerability to blackmail.
In recent years, in part as a response to Roe v. Wade but also in response to the civil rights status that Liberal Democrats have granted to gays and lesbians, Conservatives (especially the “Moral Majority”) have made gayness and lesbianism immoral and hence a political -- if not societal -- crime.
By so doing, they assign the Republican Party a role it can’t possibly sustain—that of moral watchdog over the sins of the American people. The sad truth is that Conservatives, no more and no less than Liberals, are subject to personal temptation and thus vulnerable to inevitable political and even moral judgment.
Idaho Senator Larry Craig may or may not be gay (although an Idaho friend of mine -- a proud Conservative Republican -- tells me that there has been speculation for a long time as to the Senator’s sexual orientation). However, the June 11th St. Paul incident has resulted in Senator Craig’s biggest political crime. His personal or “me needs” have embarrassed the powerful “we”, his righteous colleagues.
Hence, even if Senator Craig gets his guilty plea invalidated—which I’m told is an exceedingly remote possibility—his GOP sponsored political career is over. So, you might ask, how much does this matter?
On the surface, probably not much, but over the long run the “knee jerk” reaction of Senator Craig’s Conservative colleagues is continuing an unhealthy trend.
That trend by resourceful, powerful and self righteous ideologues is the socio/political punishment of people for their strictly personal activities whether or not they victimize anyone. Hence, even the morally pure have impure colleagues. Even more humbling is the reality that they have impure sons, brothers, cousins and fathers -- oh, no -- and wives and mothers as well. As everyone knows, such associations can be destructively embarrassing when so allowed to be!!!
In the realm of criminal behavior by a public official, Senator Larry Craig has barely hit a single. My guess is that in five years only the most obsessed political junkie outside of Idaho will even recall his name. However, the political “We” will still be judging the political “Thee” and setting themselves up for their own future political and historic obscurity.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Saturday, September 1, 2007
LABOR DAY, WHAT DOES IT CELEBRATE?
By Edwin Cooney
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
Okay! Ascribe this to what you will: I assert that Labor Day—with all of the deservedly high sounding phrases that have been welded together to describe what it stands for—is the least enthusiastically celebrated holiday on the American calendar. It rates right down there with National Prune Day in our patriotic regard.
Think about it. How much did your mother, father or even your teacher tell you about the significance or history of Labor Day?
Labor Day was celebrated for the first time in New York on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 under the sponsorship of the Central Labor Union of New York City. There is something of a dispute as to who was the actual father of Labor Day. The contenders, as you might guess, are two Irishmen both named McGuire (to further confuse matters, I’ve seen both men’s last names spelled interchangeably —Maguire and McGuire.)
For many years it was thought that Peter J. Maguire Secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners was the force behind the original promotion of Labor Day by the Central Union of New York City in 1882. However, it’s been recently discovered that Matthew McGuire, Secretary of both local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson N.J. as well as of the Central Union of New York City, sent out the invitations to workers to attend the scheduled parade and picnic. Keep in mind that since it was an unofficial holiday, attendees would be sacrificing a day’s pay in order to participate in the first Labor Day, so the invitations had to be pretty compelling. Hundreds of people so sacrificed and Labor Day became, first a municipal, next a statewide and finally a nationally celebrated holiday.
Some people have concluded that the reason Peter J. Maguire was favored over Matthew McGuire--as the father of Labor Day—had mostly to do with Matthew McGuire’s politics. Though both men dabbled in Socialism as young labor activists, Matthew McGuire had the audacity to run as the Vice Presidential nominee on the Socialist Labor Party ticket in 1896 under the party’s presidential candidate Charles Horatio Matchett. Thus, because of labor’s early association with Socialism both here and abroad, Americans who insist that they admire nothing more than hard work have been quite touchy about celebrating the value of the American laborer because of labor’s link to socialist doctrine.
The state of Oregon was the first to adopt Labor Day as a state wide holiday in February of 1887 followed by Colorado, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts that same year. By the mid 1890s, Labor Day was celebrated in nearly thirty states.
To further blur the legitimacy or respectability of the labor movement in the minds of the American people, there exists another unfortunate historic reality. The president, who signed the legislation creating the American worker’s holiday we call Labor Day, wasn’t really very friendly to the American worker. In fact at the time President Grover Cleveland signed the Labor Day proclamation on Thursday, June 28th, 1894, the Nation was in the middle of the infamous “Pullman Strike” against the Pullman railroad car maker George Pullman. Five days after signing the congressional legislation creating Labor Day, President Cleveland sent troops to Kensington, Illinois just outside of Chicago, to enforce a court injunction declaring that the strike was “interfering with delivery of the mail” and thus the strike was in violation of interstate commerce and illegal.
Shortly thereafter, the president declared that he’d insure the delivery of the lowliest postcard if it took the whole army to deliver it. What the president didn’t so readily acknowledge was that he was doing this in part to appease his Attorney General Richard Olney. Olney had been a railroad director and was, even while in office, the attorney for several railroad companies.
It appears that President Cleveland wasn’t cruel or unfeeling toward the working man or woman, it’s just that he had an old fashioned idea that the owners of private property possessed behavioral activity rights on their own property that superseded the rights of the working -- man, woman or even child who had only conditional rights on someone’s private property. Thus, Stephen Grover Cleveland was able to both kiss and kick labor at the same time and in all good conscience.
President Cleveland’s conscience aside, one of the most common threads that runs through American history is our confusion about and the inconsistency we display on the value of labor or work.
Let’s start from the very beginning. For as far back as I can remember, I was taught to regard Jamestown Colony founder Captain John Smith’s assertion that “…those who don’t work, don’t eat,” as a statement reflecting the Protestant work ethic.
That pronouncement was made by the twenty-eight-year-old Captain Smith at a time when the less than two-year-old colony, made up largely of the British upper class who were not used to hard labor, was facing a combination of disease epidemics, environmental challenges and Indian attacks which were threatening to destroy Great Britain’s second attempt to establish a colony in Virginia.
Young Smith had recently been returned to the colony by Algonquin Chief Powhatan after having spent four weeks as a captive in the wake of an attack which had killed his companion. (Smith, who believed that he’d been saved by the chief’s daughter Pocahontas, was probably saved by the “magic” in the compass that the chief most likely confiscated from his person.) Thus, Smith’s wide experiences had taught him situational lessons more than they had taught him moral precepts. Hence, when John Smith said “…those who don’t work, don’t eat,” he was telling the truth more than he was preaching a sermon. Had Captain Smith actually been preaching a sermon, his congregation in Jamestown hardly got the moral force of his message. A decade after Smith’s departure from Jamestown, Smith’s former neighbors began importing black slaves from West Africa to do the work they couldn’t or wouldn’t do themselves. Not even Captain Smith would assert that chattel slavery was established for the moral upgrading of black Africa.
Of course, during the two-hundred plus years following John Smith’s observation or pronouncement, which ever you prefer, work was a way of life primarily because it was intensely personal. One had to work in order to eat, get shelter, and be adequately clothed as well as to be protected against disease, malnutrition or from hostile attack.
Not until the dawning of the industrial revolution in the 1830s did Americans en masse begin working for someone else who needed their labor to sustain or advance his or her wealth. As working conditions and worker’s pay made life increasingly unsafe and unprofitable in an increasingly cash-oriented society, workers began banding together to use the sheer weight of their numbers to improve their working and living conditions. Hence the American Labor Movement was born in all its infamy or glory.
Then, of course, there is the distinction between labor and work. Labor, in the minds of most, is hard physical (usually unskilled) toil which drains the energy and, if prolonged, the spirit of the laborer. (Thus, new Moms suffer “labor pains” rather than work pains.)
Work, on the other hand can be both skilled or unskilled. Thus the American Labor Movement has such divisions as craftsmen, carpenters and joiners, assembly workers, musicians, plumbers, garment workers and so on.
What it all boils down to is the value we put on labor or work. We say we value the “work ethic” as a cornerstone to our fundamental religious affiliations, but do we?
Who gets more monetary compensation?
The teacher who can provide both the inspiration and the information to our children that creates industry and hence their future employment or the sports hero who entertains us all;
The nurse who eases our pain or the movie star who expresses our cultural values:
The preacher we say we believe can provide sufficient counsel to save our souls or the Black Jack dealer in one of our major resorts?
It should also be kept in mind that work is required to perform some pretty unsavory activities: A masterful bank robbery requires precision planning. The same goes for the successful planning of other dastardly crimes such as embezzlement, murder and war.
Then, of course, there are the perfectly legal and hard working men and women — in many cases our own sons daughters, brothers, and sisters — whom we disdain as “bureaucrats. These are very often conscientious people who have worked hard for their college degrees in preparation for honest employment. Yet, even with all of the industry and initiative these men and women possess, we still eagerly vote for politicians who promise to put them in unemployment lines.
Finally, do any of us really and truly compare our monetary compensation to the personal satisfaction we derive from our enterprise or employment? Even more, would we -- if we could afford to?
As we celebrate Labor Day, we, of course, celebrate the laborers or workers who built our homes, our towns, our roads, our schools, our places of worship. We celebrate the labor or work of our teachers, our preachers, our business entrepreneurs and caregivers—and all of those who labor and work for the genuine enhancement of a peaceful, prosperous and equitable society.
Samuel Gompers, the Scotsman immigrant who founded the American Federation of Labor, explained the meaning of Labor Day as follows:
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or Nation."
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.
It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”
That sounds good enough to me, Sam, as long as we celebrate (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln) the better angels of our labor or work.
One more thing: I’m all for celebrating Labor Day as long as we don’t forget the picnic that goes with it.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
Okay! Ascribe this to what you will: I assert that Labor Day—with all of the deservedly high sounding phrases that have been welded together to describe what it stands for—is the least enthusiastically celebrated holiday on the American calendar. It rates right down there with National Prune Day in our patriotic regard.
Think about it. How much did your mother, father or even your teacher tell you about the significance or history of Labor Day?
Labor Day was celebrated for the first time in New York on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 under the sponsorship of the Central Labor Union of New York City. There is something of a dispute as to who was the actual father of Labor Day. The contenders, as you might guess, are two Irishmen both named McGuire (to further confuse matters, I’ve seen both men’s last names spelled interchangeably —Maguire and McGuire.)
For many years it was thought that Peter J. Maguire Secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners was the force behind the original promotion of Labor Day by the Central Union of New York City in 1882. However, it’s been recently discovered that Matthew McGuire, Secretary of both local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson N.J. as well as of the Central Union of New York City, sent out the invitations to workers to attend the scheduled parade and picnic. Keep in mind that since it was an unofficial holiday, attendees would be sacrificing a day’s pay in order to participate in the first Labor Day, so the invitations had to be pretty compelling. Hundreds of people so sacrificed and Labor Day became, first a municipal, next a statewide and finally a nationally celebrated holiday.
Some people have concluded that the reason Peter J. Maguire was favored over Matthew McGuire--as the father of Labor Day—had mostly to do with Matthew McGuire’s politics. Though both men dabbled in Socialism as young labor activists, Matthew McGuire had the audacity to run as the Vice Presidential nominee on the Socialist Labor Party ticket in 1896 under the party’s presidential candidate Charles Horatio Matchett. Thus, because of labor’s early association with Socialism both here and abroad, Americans who insist that they admire nothing more than hard work have been quite touchy about celebrating the value of the American laborer because of labor’s link to socialist doctrine.
The state of Oregon was the first to adopt Labor Day as a state wide holiday in February of 1887 followed by Colorado, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts that same year. By the mid 1890s, Labor Day was celebrated in nearly thirty states.
To further blur the legitimacy or respectability of the labor movement in the minds of the American people, there exists another unfortunate historic reality. The president, who signed the legislation creating the American worker’s holiday we call Labor Day, wasn’t really very friendly to the American worker. In fact at the time President Grover Cleveland signed the Labor Day proclamation on Thursday, June 28th, 1894, the Nation was in the middle of the infamous “Pullman Strike” against the Pullman railroad car maker George Pullman. Five days after signing the congressional legislation creating Labor Day, President Cleveland sent troops to Kensington, Illinois just outside of Chicago, to enforce a court injunction declaring that the strike was “interfering with delivery of the mail” and thus the strike was in violation of interstate commerce and illegal.
Shortly thereafter, the president declared that he’d insure the delivery of the lowliest postcard if it took the whole army to deliver it. What the president didn’t so readily acknowledge was that he was doing this in part to appease his Attorney General Richard Olney. Olney had been a railroad director and was, even while in office, the attorney for several railroad companies.
It appears that President Cleveland wasn’t cruel or unfeeling toward the working man or woman, it’s just that he had an old fashioned idea that the owners of private property possessed behavioral activity rights on their own property that superseded the rights of the working -- man, woman or even child who had only conditional rights on someone’s private property. Thus, Stephen Grover Cleveland was able to both kiss and kick labor at the same time and in all good conscience.
President Cleveland’s conscience aside, one of the most common threads that runs through American history is our confusion about and the inconsistency we display on the value of labor or work.
Let’s start from the very beginning. For as far back as I can remember, I was taught to regard Jamestown Colony founder Captain John Smith’s assertion that “…those who don’t work, don’t eat,” as a statement reflecting the Protestant work ethic.
That pronouncement was made by the twenty-eight-year-old Captain Smith at a time when the less than two-year-old colony, made up largely of the British upper class who were not used to hard labor, was facing a combination of disease epidemics, environmental challenges and Indian attacks which were threatening to destroy Great Britain’s second attempt to establish a colony in Virginia.
Young Smith had recently been returned to the colony by Algonquin Chief Powhatan after having spent four weeks as a captive in the wake of an attack which had killed his companion. (Smith, who believed that he’d been saved by the chief’s daughter Pocahontas, was probably saved by the “magic” in the compass that the chief most likely confiscated from his person.) Thus, Smith’s wide experiences had taught him situational lessons more than they had taught him moral precepts. Hence, when John Smith said “…those who don’t work, don’t eat,” he was telling the truth more than he was preaching a sermon. Had Captain Smith actually been preaching a sermon, his congregation in Jamestown hardly got the moral force of his message. A decade after Smith’s departure from Jamestown, Smith’s former neighbors began importing black slaves from West Africa to do the work they couldn’t or wouldn’t do themselves. Not even Captain Smith would assert that chattel slavery was established for the moral upgrading of black Africa.
Of course, during the two-hundred plus years following John Smith’s observation or pronouncement, which ever you prefer, work was a way of life primarily because it was intensely personal. One had to work in order to eat, get shelter, and be adequately clothed as well as to be protected against disease, malnutrition or from hostile attack.
Not until the dawning of the industrial revolution in the 1830s did Americans en masse begin working for someone else who needed their labor to sustain or advance his or her wealth. As working conditions and worker’s pay made life increasingly unsafe and unprofitable in an increasingly cash-oriented society, workers began banding together to use the sheer weight of their numbers to improve their working and living conditions. Hence the American Labor Movement was born in all its infamy or glory.
Then, of course, there is the distinction between labor and work. Labor, in the minds of most, is hard physical (usually unskilled) toil which drains the energy and, if prolonged, the spirit of the laborer. (Thus, new Moms suffer “labor pains” rather than work pains.)
Work, on the other hand can be both skilled or unskilled. Thus the American Labor Movement has such divisions as craftsmen, carpenters and joiners, assembly workers, musicians, plumbers, garment workers and so on.
What it all boils down to is the value we put on labor or work. We say we value the “work ethic” as a cornerstone to our fundamental religious affiliations, but do we?
Who gets more monetary compensation?
The teacher who can provide both the inspiration and the information to our children that creates industry and hence their future employment or the sports hero who entertains us all;
The nurse who eases our pain or the movie star who expresses our cultural values:
The preacher we say we believe can provide sufficient counsel to save our souls or the Black Jack dealer in one of our major resorts?
It should also be kept in mind that work is required to perform some pretty unsavory activities: A masterful bank robbery requires precision planning. The same goes for the successful planning of other dastardly crimes such as embezzlement, murder and war.
Then, of course, there are the perfectly legal and hard working men and women — in many cases our own sons daughters, brothers, and sisters — whom we disdain as “bureaucrats. These are very often conscientious people who have worked hard for their college degrees in preparation for honest employment. Yet, even with all of the industry and initiative these men and women possess, we still eagerly vote for politicians who promise to put them in unemployment lines.
Finally, do any of us really and truly compare our monetary compensation to the personal satisfaction we derive from our enterprise or employment? Even more, would we -- if we could afford to?
As we celebrate Labor Day, we, of course, celebrate the laborers or workers who built our homes, our towns, our roads, our schools, our places of worship. We celebrate the labor or work of our teachers, our preachers, our business entrepreneurs and caregivers—and all of those who labor and work for the genuine enhancement of a peaceful, prosperous and equitable society.
Samuel Gompers, the Scotsman immigrant who founded the American Federation of Labor, explained the meaning of Labor Day as follows:
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or Nation."
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.
It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”
That sounds good enough to me, Sam, as long as we celebrate (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln) the better angels of our labor or work.
One more thing: I’m all for celebrating Labor Day as long as we don’t forget the picnic that goes with it.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)