YOU BET YOUR SWEET BIPPY HE DESERVES IT!

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, so betting my sweet bippy dates me!

So does my birth certificate, my waistline and my increasingly poor memory! However, I'll bet my bippy as well as yours on any challenge to Dr. King's reputation and memory.

Although one doesn't have to be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize to have been adequately courageous or brave, I am not personally aware of anyone I know who would volunteer to participate in a project that continuously endangered their children's lives. Of course, anyone who soldiers or polices continuously puts his or her life in danger, but even most of them are monetarily compensated.

When Martin and Coretta Scott King publicly supported the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott in December of 1955, Coretta had just given birth to the couple's first child, a girl, Yolanda Denise King, whom they nicknamed Yoki.

As for the Nobel Peace prize, I think it's always helpful to remember what peace is and what it isn't. Peace is beyond measurability since it is far more than the mere absence of war. Peace is a state of mind that requires more than mere tolerance. It requires an appreciation of others' conditions in life. Dr. King saw peace as a command from God ordering the followers of its precepts to — among other things — draw a distinction between principles and mere rules. Rules are primarily a matter of orderly conduct whereas principles are about a way of conduct during one's life.

As for Dr. King's less admirable habits, specifically his marital misconduct, author Jonathan Eig tells us in his recent huge biography of Dr. King that he always confessed his misdeeds to Coretta as a matter of conscience.

Although the grandson and son of two stern preachers who issued corporal punishment to their children, Martin (or if you prefer, Michael King III as he was originally named on Tuesday, January 15th, 1929) was gentle with his children.

We celebrate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as much for the significance of their presidencies as we do for their personalities.

However, Martin Luther King neither founded our nation nor preserved its union. He merely proclaimed and glorified its legitimacy!

At the heart of Dr. King's very being lay his profession.  On Tuesday, April 16th, 1963, he published his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Author Jonathan Eig in his monumental and brilliant work on the life of Martin Luther King writes that Dr. King was concerned that both citizens and his fellow clergymen were all too ready to compromise on the issue of racial accommodation. Accommodation, as he saw it, amounted to acceptance of the status quo. Thus, he reminded his fellow preachers and his and their followers that no unjust law was a legitimate law. Dr. King was neither a lawyer nor a legislator; he was a preacher doing God's work. God's work was God's will and God's will wasn't negotiable.

A people who insist that they trust God's will is a righteous people. A country that strives to be worthy of God's will is a righteous nation.

George Washington gave us our independence. Abraham Lincoln cemented our unity. Equally significant, Dr. Martin Luther King glorified America's spirit!    

As our greatest spiritual leader, Dr. Martin Luther King more than deserves a national day of permanent recognition!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE TRUTH, THE ENTIRE TRUTH...

By Edwin Cooney

Nikki Haley's response to a December 27th inquiry about the cause of the Civil War was more generally revealing about political outlook than it was revealing about Nikki Haley herself. No one other than Ms. Haley knows whether she is entirely truthful or conveniently truthful about anything depending on the circumstances as they affect her personhood.

What we say about truthfulness these days concerns comments such as whether something is "relatively true” or "partially true.” There are “equal truths” and "convenient truths” which one could use to apply a truth about another subject or circumstance to the truth currently at issue. Some expound on the exertion that on almost any topic there are many truths. Then, there are those who insist that absolute truthfulness doesn't exist. Today, I introduce the entire truth. The entire truth encompasses historical legal and social circumstance as they affect the nature of all truth about an historic event or circumstance.

One of the most constant threads running throughout American history is our discomfort with racial, ethnic, physically different people. We've practiced genocide of Native Americans, enslaved and lynched blacks (even those recently home from fighting Hitler!). We disdain minority religions. We instituted and still defend Jim Crowism while insisting that redress of social grievances are socialistic or communistic.

The entire truth is that we've always struggled politically, socially, and even legally with people we brought to America from Africa whom we eventually declared our personal property rather than as people.

The question is whether we're willing to stop applying our fears to our politics?

Nikki Haley's task that eventful day was to emphasize that today's “liberal” government must be rejected for intruding itself into our personal business. She insists as conservatives have since the days of William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan that government has always been and surely always will be the enemy of the free.

Of course, slavery was the major cause of the Civil War. The South feared that the industrial North may one day soon seek to abolish that "peculiar institution." Ms. Haley wasn't interested in discussing the conditions of the poor or of anyone else. Her topic was big bad government even as once led and influenced by her political party's greatest leader Abraham Lincoln. 

  

Finally, the entire truth is this: good government in order to be effectively powerful must be responsible to the preservation of liberty.

Never forget that…”[w]e the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America."

To minimize or deny the above purpose demonstrates plain and determined ignorance. To assert that government is our national problem amounts to an assertion of politics over patriotism.

As for the political fate of Nikki Haley, her December 27th gaff probably won't matter much. You can be sure however, that the political, legal and social fate of another candidate will matter much, much more!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY         

WHAT MAKES ANY OLD OR NEW YEAR SIGNIFICANT?

By Edwin Cooney

On Christmas Day of 1999, my friend David B. and I lingered over a few glasses of wine trying to decide what year of the fading century was likely to be the most historically significant one affecting the fate of all humanity. I, of course, was ready to nominate six years: 1914, 1918, 1933, 1945 1969 and 1991.

The years 1914 and 1918 began and ended World War I. The year 1933 saw Adolf Hitler and FDR both come to power. The year 1969 saw humankind land on the moon. The year 1991 saw the collapse of the Soviet Union, thus ending the "cold war."  

David and I finally settled on 1945 for several reasons.

First, Franklin Roosevelt's death occurred on Thursday, April 12th ending an historic era here at home. Second, the war with Hitler's Germany ended on Tuesday, May 8th. Third, the United Nations opened in San Francisco on Monday, June 25th.  Fourth, the World War with Japan ended on Sunday, September 2nd aboard the Battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Most significantly, the two atomic bombs which were dropped on Japan on Monday, August 6th and Thursday, August 9th ushered in the atomic age altering scientific and social events beyond anyone's imagination up to that time.

As for the present, 2023 was both good and bad for most of us. Certainly, many people experienced happy marriages, births, and financial opportunities. Then, there were sad divorces, deaths and departures as well as academic and professional achievements and disappointing setbacks.

The year 2023 saw the 100th birthday of Henry Kissinger on Saturday, May 27th which was celebratory. Mr. Kissinger's death six months and two days later, on Wednesday, November 29th, evoked criticism and praise for his remarkable life and career.

I was saddened especially by the deaths of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter on Sunday, November 19th at 96 and of singer Harry Belafonte on Tuesday,  April 25th, also at age 96. Then there was the passing of Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson on Tuesday, September 26th at age 86. Finally, we Yankee fans lost Joe Pepitone on Monday, March 13th at the age of 82. Ah, crazy Joe Pepitone! The first baseball player to openly and proudly use a hair dryer in a big league clubhouse, showing it off for the television cameras.  

If you're a Kansas City Chiefs football fan, your team's Super Bowl victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, 38 to 35 last February 12th, was grand. If you are a Texas Rangers baseball fan, their World Series victory on Wednesday, November 1st was both wonderful and about time since it was their first since the team was founded in 1972.

The major factor that makes any year good, bad, significant or insignificant is how we rate our personal, national or international fortunes. An even more intriguing question is what's behind or what constitutes our fortunes. If one asserts that good luck creates good fortune, isn't “good luck” the result of our capacity to arrange the sources and circumstances to create that good luck? Does God really and truly only help those who first help themselves or is that admonition just a little too slick and self-serving on the part of some pretty arrogant people?

As for the nations currently at war: Israel versus Hamas and Russia against Ukraine: has 2023 been a good year for any of them? What the events of 2023 tell this observer is that all heads of state face substantial limitations that invariably obstruct their goals of conquest or gain, but more about that another time!

It's both natural and right that you and I wish one another a “Happy New Year” even though we know unhappiness will rear its ugly head occasionally!  After all, we not only expect to live but, more significantly, we expect to be a happy and prosperous people. Any other expectation would be unworthy of us!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY  

WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

By Edwin Cooney

 

Eighty-two years ago, as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, several factors favored fortress America.

First, there was our geographic isolation from Japan and Germany. Second, there was what Winston Churchill called Britain's and America's fraternal association of blood, law and language. Third, totalitarianism was at war with itself which was emphasized by Nazi Germany's invasion of Communist Russia and therefore Russia needed to be saved from Nazism by the “free world.”

The last time that Congress declared war on any country was Monday, December 8th, 1941.

Today's world, of course, is vastly different than the world of 1941. It is much more deadly than the Second World War was for millions of people across the globe.

The close of World War I marked the end of empires and royal dynasties.

The close of World War II opened the atomic age and a worldwide agenda to avoid World War III.

Back in 1991, millions of us believed that the end of communism and the advance of democracy meant that World War III had been pretty permanently avoided.

Now, however, Armageddon may — just may — be around the corner. Hence, the inevitable question: where do we go from here?

Last night, as the host of a zoom program called "The Political Parlor," I featured a Christmas Eve broadcast from the South Lawn of the White House by FDR and Winston Churchill.

President Roosevelt wondered how we could celebrate Christmas, how we could light our tree and give our gifts. He found the answer to those questions in the significance of Christmas as the birthday of "our Savior Jesus Christ.” After all, the sharing of gifts to one another was to share gifts with Christ.

Prime Minister Churchill, in his best Dickensian way, linked family tradition and Father Christmas with children's innocence and happy inheritance, asserting that the hard and grim days ahead constituted a struggle to win for the children's future their natural birthright of happy lifelong  expectation.

Perhaps there's some hope that catastrophe will be avoided for most of us if not for all of us. After all, human nature has a habit of doing what it takes to preserve life here on earth.

Someone once observed that perhaps communism stayed its hand during the cold war because it came to realize that it was too materialistic to deserve the blessings of a spiritual reward and that capitalism was sufficiently anxious to avoid nuclear disaster because there was still much more profit to be realized.

For now, I'm allowing myself to take comfort in the best images of our imperfect but glorious past.

Ah! Grandfatherly Winston: with your plum pudding, your cigar, and your imperial eloquence, bathe today's crises with the assurance you offered the less than worthy world of eighty-two years ago!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

A BEFUDDLED PEOPLE

By Edwin Cooney

When I was growing up in the 50s, 60s and 70s, many people asserted that there were three topics one should avoid discussing: race, religion, and politics. That admonition was advice I happily and totally rejected. After all, how could one resolve issues without writing and talking about them? These three topics were always an aspect of human relationships, but neither Democrats nor Republicans had a monopoly when it came to coping with the emotional components of race, religion, or the wise application of politics.

Last week, I wrote that since 2000, Americans have been bombarded as never before with crises that in one way or another reflected on our wisdom or well-being as a people. The wisdom or sincerity of lawyers and politicians has always been suspect, but the genuineness of educators, physicians, and even the clergy have, over recent decades, been dulled and even poisoned by their increasing connection with political parties and controversial social conflicts. Political divides have become personal.

Political talk show hosts of the left, right, and of the “Trumpian cult” appear to have more influence than Twentieth Century spiritual leaders.

Even more disheartening is the degree of person to person animosity among people who just awhile ago would have been tolerant of one another. Many who are straight resent the marriage and parental privileges that gays and lesbians have been granted. People resent the sympathies of legal immigrants’ support for other immigrants fleeing from terror in their native countries. Whites fear the almost inevitable majority status of Blacks. Law enforcement resists and resents efforts to monitor their behavior. “Black lives matter” to some and don't matter enough to others.

The 2024 elephant in the room is the electability of former President Donald Trump. His appeal lies in his decisiveness and his willingness to destroy all lawful and even constitutional impediments that would obstruct his agenda. He says that his enemies are “corrupt politicians” while he and his supporters are “American patriots,” pure and simple. The question is: would a reasonable and rational people elect Mr. Trump as our 47th president in 2024?

The answer to that question is that as unlikely as it ought to be, they might! However, the fact that they might doesn't mean that they will.

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln asserted that no government worthy of its purpose would allow for its destruction. He established our ultimate Union by characterizing the upcoming conflict as a “rebellion” rather than a war. Thus, the Congress never declared war against the Confederacy.

Sadly, Donald Trump's political availability via the voting booth, means the people may overthrow their government if they so choose.

Freedom, vital as it is, does not guarantee wisdom. Freedom is only about freedom. Freedom doesn't require either morality or wisdom. Freedom is merely dependent on both! 

Therein lies freedom's greatest challenge to a befuddled people!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

AMERICA — SCARED STRAIGHT OR SCARED TO DEATH?

By Edwin Cooney

Although “America the Beautiful” plays deep in my soul as I write, the unpublished song “America the Scared” rattles around in my brain!  In many states, a program exists designed to "scare straight” teenage delinquents who are thought to be ticketed for adult prison. Hence, will America be scared straight or scared to death due to the social, economic, and political body blows she has suffered over the past nearly 24 years?

A review of recent history reminds me that we've had at least ten major national crises since the year 2000. First there were those “hanging chads” and the partisan Supreme Court that defeated the winner of the popular vote of 2000.

Next came September 11th, 2001 when Toby Keith suggested in his angry song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” that “we’ll put a boot in your ass” of one or two Arab societies who had sought to intimidate us by hijacking our own airplanes.

Next, believing that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” we pinned him down in a cave and eventually sent him to the gallows. Then, we sent good American soldiers into Iraq in a frustrating and rather futile attempt to control the land of the Tigress and Euphrates from which we all originated. That conflict lasted until 2011.

In 2008, there were two disasters. One, which was economic, resulted from poor commercial banking and consumer rip-offs. For too many, the other disaster was political — the election as president of a man both Black and of Islamic and African extraction!

In 2010, there came  “Obamacare."

In 2011, Osama bin Laden was captured but, satisfactory as it was, our president didn't deserve credit for it!

In 2012, there was the Sandy Hook shooting and a government shutdown by the president's political opposition.

As shootings continued throughout 2014 and 2015, the old capital punishment controversy became silly as most shooters killed themselves.

In 2016, for the second time in 16 years (and four presidential elections), the electoral college winner was the popular vote loser. There were matters having to do with one candidate's emails and the other candidate's relationship with women.

Once 2017 got underway, there was the National Security Advisor's lies and an angry president's cries. There were 7 school shootings in 2017, 9 in 2018, and 7 more in 2019.

Finally, 2020 brought the question forth as to whether Black lives mattered or didn’t and what was right, wrong or uncertain regarding our responses to Covid!

Accompanying all this was the 2020 election and what, if anything, either candidate had to do with it.

Twenty-first century Americans have more information at their fingertips than any generation in history. We're flooded with stories of minority groups' lifestyles, mores, and political demands. We know, or think we do, about many types of people and their lifestyles that appear to threaten our very national heritage. All of these uncertainties both personalize and politicize every public issue. 

In addition to attitudes which are anti-Semitic,  anti-Catholic, and against those who are foreign born — going back to the beginning of our republic — people hate gays and lesbians, Muslims, and others who may be married or unmarried. Many insist, especially the religious, that they hate the sin, but love the sinner but when you ask them what sinner they love, their response gets vague and defensive. Fear, the father of hatred, so dominates us, including fear and jealousy of the successful and perhaps especially of the rich, that we're ultimately confused as to where the root of our fears resides.

Back in 2020, candidate Joe Biden told author Evan Osnos, "The problem addressing hatred is that to do so only gives hatred more oxygen. If we can't even address hatred, how can we hope to wisely select and elect our national leadership?”

We've become so enamored by suspicion, hatred and fear that  the very idea of tolerance either scares us to death or may, just may, one day soon even scare us straight!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY