A TEN COUNT INDICTMENT

By Edwin Cooney

I believe that the American people, this commentator included, deserve a ten count indictment for what the great patriot Thomas Paine might call  “being a summer patriot.” Remember, an indictment isn’t a declaration of guilt. It is merely a charge of misbehavior that, for the purpose of this column, subjects those charged (specifically “we the people”) with censure and an admonition to conscientiously clean up our collective acts.

 A patriot, from what I understand was Tom Paine’s perspective, constituted much more than loyalty on the field of battle. A patriot was someone who championed the principles of a cause, even when it was uncomfortable or inconvenient to do so. Thus, a “summer soldier” or a “summer patriot” would ultimately shrink away from the service of the cause.    

Before I proclaim the specifics of this indictment, there are several defenses that are unacceptable as responses to these indictments. They are as follows:

(1) the election, conduct, political acts or character of either Barack Hussein Obama or 
     Donald John Trump;

(2) the moral superiority of your political faith or doctrine;

(3) lack of knowledge about America’s social, political, or moral past deeds;

(4) the immorality of any secular or religious critics;

(5) your personal patriotism;

(6) the lack of patriotism on the part of political opponents:

(7) the excuse that “many Americans gave their lives to preserve our freedoms;”

(8) your belief that we’re a Christian nation.

Now that I’ve stripped you and me of all the defenses that come to mind as I write this, here is my ten count indictment:

Count #1: We’re guilty of full trust in our fearful beliefs while putting little trust in the beliefs and experiences of others. Even our attempts to objectively evaluate our domestic and international woes are severely muddied with the tendency to reinforce our pre-existing conclusions by finding comfort in the righteous wrath of highly paid talk show hosts and doctrinaire conservative or liberal commentators

Count #2: We cherry-pick the dos and don’ts of our religious beliefs especially when we’re angry, too often emphasizing punishment over grace that we’ve been taught is God’s most powerful gift.

Count #3: When assessing the priority of our domestic affairs, we primarily emphasize our legitimate right to review the action or inaction of our national leadership because we are “taxpayers” rather than because we are simply worthy of consideration. A “taxpayer,” because his or her power comes from his or her wallet, possesses the justifiable right to judge all expenditures of a free and independent people.

Count #4: Too often we deliberately and meanly belittle the experiences of social, racial, and other minorities because we are unwilling to treat all men and women equally (something which Abraham Lincoln believed was our obligation under the Declaration of Independence.) Lincoln always insisted that the core of our freedom lay in the Declaration of Independence more than in the Constitution. Furthermore, he believed that the people, not the states, created the national government. He pointed out on numerous occasions (and such political giants as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster also observed) that the state conventions that adopted the Constitution were conventions of the people rather than meetings of the elected state legislatures. Hence, whatever state law might say, how we view and treat one another is vitally important to our personal well-being. (I’ve always found comfort in the way FDR once put it: “I like to think of our country as one home in which the interests of each member are bound up with the happiness of all. We ought to know by now that the welfare of your family or mine cannot be bought at the sacrifice of our neighbor’s family; that our well-being depends, in the long run, upon the well-being of our neighbors.”)

Count #5: Our definition of what it means to be patriotic is too narrow. To be patriotic means loyalty to the physical safety of our land. It doesn’t require a free citizenry to accommodate the political policies of our government except perhaps during a time of war when our actual physical survival is at risk.

Count #6: We are too often swayed by opinion rather than thought or knowledge, as we assess both our national and international circumstances.

Count #7: We’re resentful of minorities who demand for themselves those lifelong privileges which we’re convinced we’ve earned just because we are Americans.

Count #8: We still insist that property rights are superior to human rights.

Count #9: We justify our fears more than we glorify our hopes for the future. An angry or outraged commentator is someone with the courage to speak his or her mind. An optimist is both absurdly naive and unrealistic.

Count #10: As President John F. Kennedy once observed in a speech at Yale, too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion over the discomfort of thought.

So you may well ask, why do I offer these rather pompous and fictional counts of indictment against a people during this time when we are defensive and feeling badly about ourselves and our national leadership?

The answer is simple: Tom Paine began one of his most inspiring pamphlets with these words: “These are the times that try men’s souls…” Thus, in this 2017 summer of discontent, it’s clear to me that our very patriotism requires us to take a penetrating view, not only of others, but particularly of ourselves.

Do you dare to take that path?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

UNTYING THE GORDIAN KNOT

By Edwin Cooney

Regular readers of these pages are, I trust, fully aware and in many instances share my concern about the steadily increasing squalidness of the American “body politic.” How can we untie the Gordian Knot of political, social, racial, economic and spiritual resentment, anger and sense of helplessness that a vast majority of Americans feel today?

Before offering a suggestion or two, here’s my assessment of what are only symptoms of our current dilemma — rather than being the cause of today’s national malaise. (Note: President Carter never used that word in his Sunday, July 15th, 1979 address to the nation, but it’s exactly the “state of the union” now as I see it!)

First and foremost, President Donald J. Trump is only a symptom of our national dilemma. Likewise, Barack Obama and “Obamacare” and even the 2000 election that put George W. Bush in the White House are only symptoms of our national funk. In  order to get to the root of the matter, one must objectively examine our past and present temperament. Space is exceedingly short here, but I’ll do my best to outline what I’m driving at.

As students of history, the “Founding Fathers” pretty well mastered the art of government when they established the federal Constitution in 1787 and 1788. Their brilliance lay in their dividing governmental responsibilities into the administrative, legislative and judicial functions of government. What they weren’t adequately prepared to do was to master the inevitable social consequences that would come about as the result of governmental policies. The Bill of Rights which was added to the Constitution in 1791 only partially tackled the demands of the individual states to be regarded as “sovereign” as are foreign nations. Subsequently, some states in New England as well as in the South proclaimed that since the federal government was created by the states, the states could and should establish their own social, legal and even sovereign identity with other nations. Thus, the seeds of the civil war were sown even as early as 1789 as Washington took his first presidential oath of office.

At the time we adopted our Constitution, we were an agrarian rather than an industrial society. Wealth was measured in land and property more than in money. Hence, the value of human slaves made men insist that government was invading their sovereign right to own property. Therefore, the fugitive slave law, division over passage of the Kansas Nebraska act, Stephen A. Douglas’s popular sovereignty concept, and Abraham Lincoln’s moral objection to the advancement of slavery brought about the Civil War.

Once the Civil War was over, the next great clash was between industry and labor. Industry dominated the state legislatures and the congressional seats in the west, the midwest, and the northeast. Industry, with all its monitory resources in the different levels of government, hired public law enforcement to fight its battles with labor rather than accommodating labor.

Rich men in industry rather than the poor had the support of the government at the close of the 19th Century. An incredible pronouncement by President Grover Cleveland during his second inaugural address makes this plain. He addressed what he called the danger of governmental paternalism:

“The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government, its functions do not include the support of the people.”

This resulted in an unnecessary social divide that would only be partially mitigated during that great period of liberalism and progressivism encompassed by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.

Calvin Coolidge in his 1925 Inaugural Address observed “economy reaches everywhere.” By 1969, the era of “20th Century enlightened liberalism” had run its course. The old guard consisting of economic and social conservatives had regained its “sea legs.” Division over Vietnam and the civil rights movement (which invariably advanced from stressing the rights of blacks to encompassing the rights of women, secularists and, most controversial of all, LGBTQ Americans threatened the traditional sense of well-being felt by an increasing number of citizens.

All of these social conflicts have left their emotional, intellectual and emotional reactionary scars. Members of Congress and of the judiciary are under continuous economic and political pressure to prevail in the peoples’ struggle for dollars and prestige even in the uncertainty of who constitutes or doesn’t constitute “we the people.”

At some point, and I believe this will occur sooner than later, the whole country will tire of the culture war between conservatives, liberals, and even Obamaites and Trumpites.

History offers at least two ways out of our dilemma. First, the people must insist on being given the right of national initiative, referendum and recall. The rights to initiate legislation, hold a referendum on the effectiveness of government policy, and recall elected leaders constitute three powers that are within our legal grasp, but haven’t been offered as “American freedoms.” The primary reason for this is that neither conservatives nor liberals trust the people sufficiently to popularize these three rights which were born in the early 20th Century under the Progressive Movement.

Finally, it’s up to the states to rapidly adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This would be an agreement between states that have 270 electoral votes to cast those votes for the popular vote winner. I’ve received no word that the movement has moved beyond the 165 electoral vote states to the needed 270 votes necessary to make the change.

We all have in common the tendency to want our own political, social, legal, and spiritual ways guaranteed, while minimizing the needs of others. Sadly, we insist on guaranteeing what we believe to be our own comfort while insisting that the racial, social, political and spiritual needs of minorities should more or less remain on hold.

While the suggestions offered above won’t guarantee “peace in the valley,” I’m convinced they will head us in the right direction.

What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

AN INTERVIEW WITH A GREAT PATRIOT

By Edwin Cooney

What you’re about to read wouldn’t have been possible had I not come across a delightful article in the New York Times last Sunday, July 2nd, 2017. Since I did find and read the article by David Segal, a Times Business Reporter, you’re about to benefit from Mr. Segal’s research and a great patriot’s heritage and, most of all, his wisdom.

Exactly where I met with this great patriot, Mr. Yankee Doodle the Seventh, for national security reasons has to be a secret. All I can tell you is that it was in a small town in New England. He was astride a huge white stallion and he bore a striking resemblance to George Washington except that throughout our interview he was cracking and chomping down on walnuts with strong white teeth that clearly weren’t wooden, or false, in any way.

“What brings you to town this July 4^th, Mr. Doodle?” I asked quizzically.

“Today’s my birthday,” Doodle responded most proudly. “Strangely enough, since the birth of Yankee Doodle my great, great, great, great grandfather back on Thursday, July 4th, 1776, all of my Yankee Doodle ancestors were born on the Fourth of July.”

“Wow,” I gasped. “what a coincidence that is.”

“No coincidence,” Doodle insisted. “It’s pure destiny designed by nature to keep those British aristocrats sufficiently humble, since it was they who derided the perfectly respectable name Yankee Doodle back in the 1770s. You see, back then all armies composed songs in derision of battlefield opponents. The Macaroni society was made up of a bunch of British swells and, as I understand it, wore the Italian pasta in tall hats as a mark of upper European aristocratic identification. Hence, during the early stages of the Revolutionary War, those Red Coats loudly sang Yankee Doodle as they rode into battle. The purpose was to demoralize the good citizens of Lexington and Concord throughout April of 1775. It was pure arrogance through and through, of course, because while they sang that silly ditty they were riding in a straight line through our Minute Men, who were gathered behind the trees and in the bushes picking them off one and two at a time, thus insuring our success rather than their goal to confiscate our large cash of armaments stored in Concord, Massachusetts. By the time we surrounded them and then drove them off Breed’s Hill (it wasn’t Bunker Hill), we’d even appropriated their derisive song. After all, showing them up as decisively as we had, we were proud to be Yankees or, if you prefer, Yankee Doodles!”

“What was a Yankee and what was a Doodle?” I next inquired.

“A Yankee was a withering British definition of a colonist. A Doodle was another word for a rube or a fool. As for the pony, the idea was that Yankee Doodle rode a pony passing it off as a horse and stuck a feather in his cap hoping to look like the British aristocrat Macaroni,” said Yankee Doodle the Seventh grinning broadly.

“Since your great, great, great, great grandfather Yankee Doodle was born in 1776, he was obviously too young to participate in the Revolutionary War, so did he participate in any other significant patriotic event?” I asked.

“Of course, he did. Furthermore, all seven of us Yankee Doodles have taken a patriotic hand in American history. Some of these roles were a bit obscure, but we took part in them nevertheless,” exclaimed the latest Doodle.

“What were some of them?” I queried.

“Well, great, great, great, great grandfather Doodle was part of the fire brigade that put out the fires at the capital and at the president’s house that were set by the British in 1814. My great, great, great grandfather Doodle, who was born on Friday, July 4th, 1806, was the president of the first bank to go bust during the Panic of 1837. He never went back to banking. He decided, after all, that he should have stuck to farming. His son, my great, great grandfather Yankee Doodle the Third, who was born on Monday, July 4th, 1836, much to his distress, wrote an editorial in his small town New England newspaper, which went out of business right after that, that predicted that there would be no Civil War. As for my great grandfather Yankee Doodle who was born on Wednesday, July 4th, 1866, his distinction, or perhaps national obscurity, was that he was assigned to care for Theodore Roosevelt’s horse which he rode up Kettle Hill in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. (Note: San Juan Hill was the name of a group of hills nearby Kettle Hill mistakenly reported as the place of the charge of Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt. Kettle Hill was the precise place of TR’s triumph.)

Granddad Doodle, who was born on Saturday, July 4th, 1896, helped conduct the 1936 presidential poll that predicted that Alfred M. Landon would defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt for re-election. As for my dad, who was born on Sunday, July 4th, 1926, he had the distinction of casting the first vote that Nixon, the loosing candidate, received on Election Day of 1960.

“Fascinating!” I goggled, “So that leaves you. What’s your obscure or not so obscure role in American history? As I calculate the Doodle pattern of birth, you were born on Wednesday, July 4th, 1956. That makes you a reasonably young 61 years old. That gives you plenty of time to make your obscure or not so obscure national mark.”

“I have yet to make my mark, but I’m drawing up a plan,” exclaimed Doodle. “Here’s what I’m considering. How would it sound if President Trump were to announce in a week or two that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was being replaced by Yankee Doodle the Seventh?”

My response was simple and direct. “It would really be electric if you rode that horse, stuck a feather in your hat and called it Macaroni. Were you to do that, you might well become the most popular man in the Trump administration. The Democrats would love you for that. As for how the president would take it is anybody’s guess. My guess is that he’d tweet like a Trump-Doodle bird!”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

CELEBRATING THE FOURTH, LUNKHEAD AND DUNDERHEAD STYLE

By Edwin Cooney

As I’ve written many times in these pages, anytime I’m genuinely confused over what to think or how to feel on national social and political topics, I inevitably consult Lunkhead and Dunderhead, my two watering hole gurus. It’s not that they’re always right; often it’s because they’re both so wrong that the right way just naturally bubbles to the surface through the whirlpool of quarrelsome chaos.

Just a couple of nights ago, I found the two of them in a heated conversation over who was more justifiable in his reasoning for celebrating the Fourth of July.

“Look, Dunderhead,” insisted Lunkhead, “some things just aren’t reasonably debatable  — such as gratitude for the fifty-seven statesmen and thousands of Minutemen who freed us from England. It’s that simple!”

“Nuts,” shot back Dunderhead. “Gratitude is pointless because those who fought for our freedom are as dead as George Washington and are beyond any reception of such gratitude. The gratitude you and your super patriot friends insist is due to George Washington and company is what they should have shown George III for the Seven Years War that he and his subjects fought with the French and Indians to save their right to speculate in the Indians’ lands. Finally what it all came down to was what all wars come down to and that’s money, money, money. If they’d shut up and paid their legitimate taxes, thousands of them would have saved their physical “you know whats.”

“You know what, Dunderhead? shouted Lunkhead, “You’re not a true American. You may be a legal citizen, but you’re no patriot,” Lunkhead shouted through clenched teeth while pointing his ever present dead cigar at Dunderhead.

“I’m every bit as patriotic as you, Lunkhead,” Dunderhead insisted. “I like money and property as much as you do. Like you I insist as much as possible that in all things it’s my way or the highway and I cherish my right to be as hypocritical as you do. The major difference between us is that my sinful ways compel me to be addicted to you, Lunkhead.”*

In order to save the situation, I quickly cut in. “You don’t mean that you’re wrong to love Lunkhead do you, Dunderhead?”

“Of course, I’m wrong to love Lunkhead!” Dunderhead said. “But what would life be like if we didn’t have the freedom to be wrong about some things in life? The best thing about Lunkhead is that he’s wrong about many issues and I am obligated to be a burr in his immortal soul. The best thing about American freedom is that it’s not against the law to have contrary interests or viewpoints so long as you don’t get caught breaking the law.

“You’re out of your mind, Dunderhead!” Lunkhead said as he beckoned the bartender for another scotch on the rocks. “The late great Paul Harvey used to assert that those fifty-seven American patriots who signed the Declaration of Independence fought not to do what they chose, but to do what they ought. That’s exactly why I put up with you, Dunderhead: not to do what I want, but to do what I ought.”

“Nuts, Lunkhead!” Dunderhead growled, “you know that I can name so many sins, and I mean deliberate sins, which were committed by the “Founding Fathers” that it would make your head spin. I begin with human slavery, go to the genocide of the Indians, to dueling, gambling and so on. And remember, Lunkhead, the colonials didn’t call Washington, John or Sam Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and so on our “Founding Fathers.” It was President Warren Harding who gave them that name.” Dunderhead put a handful of peanuts into his mouth before swallowing some beer.

“So,” I asked. “Why should I celebrate the Fourth of July?”

“Because,” said Lunkhead, “there are just some things that our common humanity requires you to do. It’s just plain love of country,” purred Lunkhead.

“How about the celebration of May Day throughout Europe and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or Nazi Germany’s celebration of Hitler’s birthday?” asked Lunkhead. “Weren’t Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia as legitimate and as real as we are?”

“They were as real but neither was legitimate,” said Lunkhead.

“Nuts, they were all born in defiance. We defied British taxation, Hitler defied an unjust peace after World War I and the Soviets defied cruel monarchy,” insisted Lunkhead, “What’s illegitimate about that?

“So, let me see. Lunkhead says I should celebrate the Fourth of July because we were courageous to defy unjust taxation and construct a nation of justice and freedom in place of British tyranny. Dunderhead primarily celebrates his right to be defiant, but my guess is that he’s not much on celebrating anything.

"So, what should I do?” I wondered. Then suddenly it hit me! The things I ought to do have more to do with how I treat others. To the extent I treat or serve others well I’m justified in celebrating. Ah! this just occurred to me. What is celebration?

Celebration is valued acknowledgment. Of course, I recognize on a daily basis the existence, legitimacy and value of my country. What shortcomings I acknowledge are up to me to work with others to remedy. Celebration of the Fourth thus is much more than praise for the minutemen and President Warren Harding’s Founding Fathers.

To celebrate the Fourth of July is to celebrate our daily opportunity to alter the various paths we’re on.

So, bring on the hot dogs, chicken, hamburgers, steamed clams, salads, macaroni and potato, watermelon, marshmallows — and especially the beer. Turn on the ballgame — who’s playing tonight? Bring on the fireworks! “Wasn’t this morning’s parade terrific with its seventy-six trombones?”

I’m celebrating American freedom. Why shouldn’t I? The Republicans, try as they may, just can’t beat Obamacare!

As for Messieurs Lunkhead and Dunderhead, they’ll be celebrating each other tomorrow and won’t even realize it!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY