PEACE ON EARTH, GOODWILL TO PEOPLES — REALLY!

By Edwin Cooney

I know you’re not going to believe this, but it’s true!  I’ve found the answer to “peace on earth, goodwill toward peoples!”  Yes, I modified that last word, as the problem with the original saying is that it leaves out half of humanity and that’s so counter to Twenty-First Century thinking!

About a week ago, a dear friend of mine sent me a commentary in the New York Times by William Baude, an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago.  Professor Baude postulates that the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court validating same sex marriage may well open the door to the legalization of plural or polygamous marriages in another 20, 40, or 50 years.  If there’s no magic in the union of opposite sexes, he writes, where is there any particular magic in same sex marriages?  There might however be some magic in an unfathomable type of marriage.

It’s hard to argue with the good professor, so I won’t.  One good idea gives birth to another and thus from here on Professor Cooney takes over.  Actually, once you open that dusty old history book on your shelf, you’ll realize that the idea I’ll soon offer isn’t exactly new, although I’ve modified a medieval tradition that worked almost as often as it didn’t work. 

The solution to wars among nations, great and small, is very simple.  After all, every other institution created by humankind -- alliances, ententes, leagues of nations, treaties, the application of “Realpolitik”, and even the establishment of the United Nations at San Francisco in June of 1945 -- have had only limited success in bringing about that dream of universal peace which must be achieved if humankind is to survive.

Hence, the solution to wars is — get ready now — drum roll — marriage.  That’s right, everyone ought to marry everyone else!  I’m not anxious to marry Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Jihad Johnny of ISIL, Benjamin Netanyahu or even Barack Obama, but if the result is “Peace on Earth…” how can I rule it out?

History is bedecked with the positive effects of marriages.  Take Henry VIII of England.  He married Catherine of Aragon, his late brother Arthur’s widow.  Catherine was the sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  When Henry decided he needed to dump her because she couldn’t bear him a prince, he was forced to spare her life.  After all, his brother-in-law would have turned all of Europe against Henry and perhaps would have successfully invaded England.  Thus, as Henry seemed likely to threaten the Pope, Charles surrounded the Vatican with his forces.  Hence, Henry had to spare both the Pope and Catherine to preserve his own neck.  What else could Henry do but create the Anglican Church that is today headed by Queen Elizabeth II?  Of course, there were nasty events that occurred meanwhile, but by having been married to Catherine and honoring Catherine’s special status, England grew economically, militarily and spiritually enough to become a world power a century later.  Never mind the fates of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.  I only consider evidence that supports my thesis.  About 20 years later, Henry and Catherine’s daughter, “Bloody Mary,” enabled England to prosper by marrying her mother’s nephew (her cousin), the Catholic King Phillip of Spain.  Never mind the Spanish Armada of 1588 that Francis Drake had to crush to save Elizabeth I’s throne.

Throughout the 19th Century peace prevailed most of the time in Europe largely due to the marriages of Queen Victoria’s daughters to the most prestigious princes of Europe.  Never mind how war-like Victoria’s grandson Wilhelm (the German Kaiser) turned out to be. Wilhelm was second generation after all!

As for the power of marriage throughout American history, only three marriages — those of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, John and Abigail (Smith) Adams and, of course, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt have really benefitted both our culture and the body politic.  However, history might well have been different had Confederacy President Jefferson Davis married Julia Ward Howe, author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  My point is that who marries whom can have a significant effect on who we are and what we do or don’t accomplish in the decades to come.

Consider, if you will, the following.  We evolve generation by generation slowly but inevitably changing every aspect of our beings.  Sixteenth Century England that was dominated by Henry VIII and his protestant daughter Elizabeth, whose mother Anne Boleyn he had executed, was vastly different from the Cromwellian England of the 17th Century.  England in the 19th Century which was dominated by the diminutive Victoria, as different as it was from Henry’s and Oliver Cromwell’s times, was nevertheless still England.  We too have evolved down the avenue of ages.  Many ways of our forefathers and mothers aren’t our ways and indeed they shouldn’t be.  Thus last month’s Supreme Court decision, whatever it portends, will be what a future generation believes it ought to be.  As much as we too often try, we can’t control the future.  Polygamy may indeed return in different form guided by different mores.  Our evaluation of those mores is meaningless and, even more, to do so is exactly none of our business.  Our time is now; their time is coming and will be their business.    

Marriage, at its best, is a relationship of cultural structure as well as of spiritual and legal expectation.  Many who come from a Judeo-Christian background often believe that human marriage is a Judeo-Christian institution.  However, marriage, even within materialistic Soviet society, was not much, if at all, different than it was in western nations.  Nina Khrushchev was as married to Nikita as Mamie Eisenhower was to Ike.  Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev were as married as were Ronald and Nancy Reagan.  Marriage requires its partners to love, honor and cherish.  Within the next century, for its own survival, humankind may encourage multiple marriages between a set of housewives in White Plains, New York and a set of shepherds in Nepal, between a union of truck drivers in Argentina and a bunch of congressmen from Texas to assure marital bliss to all humankind.  Perhaps someday we’ll all be married to each other!  Outrageous as this may seem, these couplings may be the surest path to “Peace on Earth and goodwill to peoples” that humankind has ever discovered!

There surely must be a Nobel Peace Prize somewhere in my future, wouldn’t you think?  Surely you must be envious that you don’t think like me!  Tell you what — if the Nobel Peace Prize Committee mails my award to me without announcing it as they do with all their other awards, I’ll surely put it in that week’s column!  How about that!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

THE JEWEL OF AMERICA’S BLACK CULTURE

By Edwin Cooney

Since I’m neither a sociologist nor a theologian, I have to be careful here.  Still, I was very impressed with a recent editorial in The Washington Post by E.J. Dionne in which he marvels at the power and depth of the faith coming forth from black churches even in the face of Dylan Roof’s alleged act of terror.

“A Sacred Oasis,” E.J.Dionne’s editorial, draws a distinction between the traditional or white conservative way of quiescent interpreting and worshiping versus the way blacks interpret and worship God.  Whites primarily see God as an omnipotent and ever present force of authority demanding glorification and worship that requires surrender to that authority.  Blacks, if I read E.J. Dionne correctly, see both the Old and New Testaments as stories of liberation from human oppression by a loving God.

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a black friend of mine, I’ll call him John, used to emphatically assert that the main reason white America had nothing to fear from blacks was due to their firm Christian faith.  John regarded the Black Panthers and left wing revolutionaries of the late 1960s and early 1970s as possessing little sway in the black community compared to Dr. King, Roy Wilkins and others.  His point was that religion was much stronger among blacks than any secular political doctrine such as Soviet, Chinese or world communism.  “If it were otherwise,” John insisted, “white America would be in big trouble!”

As I see it, by comparison the mixed response of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s victims and their families and that of the victims and their families of Dylan Roof and even James Holmes in Colorado, provide a remarkable contrast.  Tsarnaev’s victims and their families were mostly those whose lives were free of oppression.  They were a mixed group of men, women and children from varying racial, ethnic and social backgrounds.  As a whole, they were not accustomed to victimhood.  Thus, their reactions were varied.  Although several remarkable victims insisted that Tsarnaev should be spared the death penalty, insofar as I’m aware, none actually forgave Tsarnaev.  The families of Roof’s victims were all black.  They were people who have, almost from childhood, understood that millions of powerful and resentful white citizens dislike and regard them as inferior as well as nettlesome beings.  Therefore, Roof’s hostility came as no surprise to them once they learned of its source.

No one more dramatically or effectively drew national attention to the historic hostility by whites toward people of color than President Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1965 “Voting Rights Speech.”  Referring to the little Mexican children he taught as a young teacher in Cotulla, Texas, he said that even as children they knew but couldn’t quite figure out why lots of people didn’t like them.  “I know this is true,” LBJ insisted, “because I saw it in their eyes.”

As President Obama pointed out in his eulogy for Reverend Pinckney, even the construction of Christian churches by blacks were regarded with suspicion and at times outlawed in the South.  However, believing that the same loving God who first freed the Israelites and then freed all humankind through the love of Jesus Christ would ultimately free them, these devout people knew that their greatest source of decency and strength comes not from secular doctrine but through their Christian faith – and so they built their churches.

Broadly speaking, of course, you don’t have to be a Christian or a follower of any religious faith or be black to possess sufficient magnanimity to forgive.  Non-Christians and nonbelievers possess solid morals and support noble causes and institutions that alleviate guilt and suffering while nurturing healing.  It must be acknowledged that there undoubtedly exists a criminal element in the black community as is the case in all communities.  However, it is hard for this observer not to believe that as a group blacks are more deserving of the grace of a loving Providence than those who just know that their wealth and power are gifts from a very discerning God!

To forgive someone for an act that deprives you of something you have a natural right to possess requires a monumental effort of strength and will.  Most of us only hope and pray to possess that will and that strength.  I’m told that to forgive others frees the forgiver of the burden which outrageous fortune may bring.  

As I asserted at the outset, I am neither a sociologist nor am I a theologian.  However, what I do understand and heartily endorse is that blacks have made their religious faith the jewel of their rich culture.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

EVERY DAY MATTERS -- REALLY!

By Edwin Cooney

As I prepare for each week’s column, almost the first thing I do is to see what might be significant about that date in history.  Most of the time I don’t feature an event based on the date, but occasionally I do – as I am doing today.

Perhaps first and foremost, July 13th’s greatest significance is that on that historic day, a Tuesday in 1568, Dr. Alexander Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, discovered that bottled beer was actually drinkable.  He apparently poured beer into a bottle before going on a fishing trip but lost it in the grass.  Some days after the pouring, it must have been on July 13th, he discovered the bottle and found that the beer was very drinkable.  Ah! July 13th, what an outstanding day in the history of humankind!

On Friday, July 13^th, 1787, while Ben Franklin, James Madison and others were writing the Constitution, the Congress meeting in New York adopted the Northwest Territory Ordinance.  In addition to creating the territories of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, the ordinance banned the extension of slavery into those territories.  Accepted as this was by both North and South, it could be interpreted as recognition by a significant number of Americans that slavery was wrong and shouldn’t be allowed beyond where it existed.

On Monday, July 13th, 1863, anti-Civil War draft riots broke out in New York City and almost a thousand blacks were killed.  Sadly, some Americans were determined not to fight to end slavery in the wake of President Abraham Lincoln’s recently issued Emancipation Proclamation!

On Thursday, July 13th, 1865 from his editorial desk at the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley urged Americans to “Go West young man and grow up with the country!”

On Friday, July 13th, 1898 Guglielmo Marconi patented the radio.  Ah! What a lucky Friday the 13th for Marconi and surely an unrecognized lucky break for millions yet unborn who would use Marconi’s invention to listen to American baseball broadcasts and make heroes of baseball broadcasters.  Ironically, on another Friday, July 13th, exactly 36 years later in 1934, Babe Ruth would hit his 700th career home run.

July 13th marked two fascinating dates in the history of major league baseball’s All-Star Game.  On Tuesday, July 13th, 1943, the first night All-Star Game was played at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.  Of course, that was during World War II when few night games were played.  It had been generally feared that the lights required for night baseball could conceivably assist enemy bombers bent upon attacking major American cities. Hence, night games were few and far between throughout the war.  The game, which resulted in a 5 to 3 American League victory, featured two especially interesting performances.  First, left-hander Johnny Vander Meer of the Cincinnati Reds, who had pitched two consecutive no-hit games back in 1938, fanned six A.L. batters in 2 and 2/3 innings.  Then, a man named DiMaggio hit a single, a triple and a home run.  However, it wasn’t “Joltin’ Joe” but his older brother Vince, an outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who wielded the big bat that historic night!

The July 13th, 1954 All-Star Game saw the first All-Star home run ever hit by an African American, Cleveland Indians’ outfielder Larry Doby.  However, the amazing winner of that 11 to 9 American League victory was Dean Stone of the Washington Senators.  The amazing part of Stone’s success was that he had never pitched to a National League batter.  A lefthander who naturally pitched with his back to third base, Stone caused Red Schoendienst, a swift and daring St. Louis Cardinal base runner for the National League who was camped on third, to think he could steal home.  Schoendienst tried and Dean Stone threw him out at home plate.  The inning was over and Stone would benefit as the American league tied and then went ahead to win the game in the last of the ninth inning.  What made it all special for Dean Stone was the fact that that game was the highlight of his eight-season big league career.  He finished his career with a 29 and 39 win/loss record with 12 saves.  He had begun with the lowly Washington Senators just ten months before his big All-Star Game performance.  With all the mediocrity of his time in “the bigs,” Dean Stone can claim a distinct uniqueness in the annals of baseball history. He can also assert, with some plausibility, that for at least one day he was the star of all the stars in professional baseball!

Wednesday, July 13th, 1960 was the day Massachusetts Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination offering to open a “New Frontier” of opportunity to the American people.

I chose to write about this date, however, when I looked through the births and deaths of July 13th past and I saw the headline “July 13th, 1955 Ruth Ellis hung.”  Who, I wondered, was Ruth Ellis?  What did she do to be hanged?  It turns out that she was the last woman to be executed in Britain.  She died 94 days after her Easter Sunday April 10th murder of her racecar driving boyfriend David Blakely.  Blakely and Ellis were entangled in an extremely tawdry love affair that was bedeviled by violence and betrayal.  The murder, which was clearly an act of passion, was the last act in a relationship that was mutually poisonous.  While public opinion throughout Britain showed little sympathy for Ruth Ellis, Britons nevertheless clearly realized how inappropriate legal murder was to British society. Despite her murderous misdeed, Ruth Ellis was no future threat to the British people.  Ruth was the last woman to die at the end of a British rope and less than ten years later the British hangman was history.

Yes indeed, July 13th is historically a day of days --

a day of delight, of beer in 1568,  of baseball in 1934, 1943 and 1954;

a day of moral recognition and advancement in 1787;

a day of tragic human malfeasance in 1863 and 1955; and

a day of promise in the years 1865, 1898,  and 1960.

Every day a story is told, a lesson is learned, and for millions a path to the beckoning future is blazed!

Ah, lucky July 13ths — you’ve got to love them — I know I do!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHAT DOMINATES OUR NATIONAL DNA: REVOLUTION OR LIBERTY?

By Edwin Cooney

Each year on July 4^th, we celebrate the publication of the Declaration of Independence.  In the long run, the significance and meaning of that document is what really matters!

Although probably few colonists realized it at the time, there was really nothing very new about what they were doing that day if all they were doing was rebelling against injustice.  After all, almost exactly a century earlier, the Virginia colony had experienced Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion against Governor William Berkeley.  There were two reasons Bacon, a well-to-do farmer, rebelled against the governor.  First, Governor Berkeley had refused to grant Bacon the commission in the colonial militia which he had promised him.  Second, the governor wasn’t doing enough to protect landowners in Bacon’s part of Virginia against marauding Indians.  Nathaniel Bacon and a group of farmers rebelled, ultimately burning the capital at Jamestown.  The rebellion, which had begun on Sunday, July 30th, 1676, succeeded in forcing the British government to recall Governor Berkeley, but Nathaniel Bacon didn’t live to see the results of his insurrection. He died of dysentery on Thursday, October 26, 1676. 

The Boston Massacre had taken place on Monday night, March 5^th, 1770 when British Troops fired on the citizens of Boston who were rebelling against high unemployment brought on by increasingly intense British tyranny. That was soon followed by the first shots fired at Lexington, Massachusetts in the early hours of Wednesday, April 19th, 1775 in order to prevent British soldiers from reaching Concord, Massachusetts where the citizens had stored large amounts of ammunition.  The future would bring more rebellions.

Daniel Shays’ Rebellion against rich Massachusetts landlords and bankers during the spring of 1786 would be credited with bringing about the adoption of the new United States Constitution during the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia.  Next came the famous (or, if you prefer, infamous) Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 declaring that the states of the union were sovereign and therefore not subject to the federal government.  Those resolutions were sponsored by two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.  Even more, they would constitute the legal basis Confederate leaders used to justify the legitimacy of their rebellion.

Almost four years before the South seceded from the Union, a convention of New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut in December 1814 to consider exactly that. Angered ever since Thomas Jefferson’s embargo of 1807 which crippled New England commerce, New England Federalists were very interested in considering secession from the Union so that they might restore their own prosperity. There ultimately would be no vote to secede, but you can be sure that the sons of these delegates would view Southern secession through different eyes forty-seven years later.  

The intensity of the industrial revolution after the Civil War would bring forth the

advent of increasingly militant labor unions. Anti-war protests during and after World War One would be stirred by anarchist and socialist forces in America's largest cities. Finally, civil rights and taxpayer protests would mark the decade of the 1960s and 1970s.

As we celebrate the 239th anniversary of our rebellious birth, we are prosperous beyond the imagination of any previous generation, self-indulgent in the expectation of conveniences heretofore incomprehensible even to ourselves just 20 years ago, anxious about the future security of our country, and cranky about the possible alterations in lifestyle which climate change may force upon us. The question is: what is 21st Century America ultimately all about?

Bedeviled as Americans are about the conduct of our leaders, the stability of our economy and our national safety, how long can we continue to be our truest selves?  Sure, we’re loyal, patriotic, intelligent, lovers of freedom, generous to nations that possess less than we do, and as concerned about our prosperity and safety as any people around the whole wide world. What is our heritage?  Is it liberty or revolution?  Are we now, or should we ever be, satisfied with the status quo?  Is it enough to celebrate our independence?  After all, aren’t most nations independent these days?  Hasn’t colonialism, imperialism and almost every other kind of tyrannical “ism” been renounced in 2015 -- even as ISIS and Al-Qaeda rear their ugly heads?

What most concerns me on this 239th “Fourth of July” is whether revolution or liberty is the most dominant part of our national DNA. I vote for liberty - everybody’s liberty!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY