UGH! ANOTHER OUTRAGEOUS AMERICAN INSTITUTION

By Edwin Cooney

I guess it was inevitable in the wake of the disaster at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas last Sunday, November 5th…

Americans are many things. We’re the greatest democracy in the world. Since the early 20th Century we have led the world in creating the most ingenious technology. We’re an extremely generous people in that we respond to world disasters quickly and liberally. We possess socio/political empathy for the dispossessed all over the world. We’ve done more than any other people to attack disease and rebuild nations from natural disasters. Our good is almost, but not quite, flawless.

As I see it, our social and spiritual “achilles heel” lies in our tendency to solve too many of our problems by using death: legal death and institutional death.

Legal death is written into our statutes. There’s an incredible irony here. People who otherwise insist that they don’t trust government insist on empowering government to commit murder. That is legal death. Insofar as I’m concerned, by indulging in “legal death” government neither deters or prevents murder.

Then, there’s what I call cultural or institutional murder. That’s murder by expectation. Many believe that property rights are the basis of human rights. Thus, invasion of one’s property for many people is an invitation to the death of the intruder. 

Since most of us are not murderers, we lack the mindset of a potential killer. I’m pretty much convinced that anyone who murders has given up entirely on both him or herself and, feeling pain and despair, is ready to inflict it on others. Furthermore, to understand the cause of murder should never be seen as a search for the legitimacy of murder. To prevent murder we must first comprehend what works and what doesn’t as we deal with it. In the meantime, there is no power that can prevent a murderer or mass murderer’s ugly and irresponsible act. I’m convinced that fear, even of death, is incapable of penetrating the rationality of a killer such as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock who first took the lives of 59 people before taking his own life. The tragic fact of life, especially here in the United States of America, is that we continue to try and master criminal killing with legal killing. Now, there’s a new twist to an institution that’s come into being that can only bring more tragedy. 

What puzzles most people around the world according to an article by Max Fisher and Josh Keller in the November 8th New York Times is why there are so many murders in the United States. Fisher and Keller conclude by the end of their column that the cause of so much killing is the astronomical high degree of gun sales here in America. They point out that the U.S. population is only 4% of the world population but that Americans own 42% of all guns in the “whole wide world.” A comparison of the killings that take place in America, Canada and Britain is stark. Americans annually kill each other at a rate of 33 per million people. Canadians kill at an annual rate of 7 per million and the British kill at a rate of .07 people per million. Gun lovers insist that people, not guns, kill people and, of course, they’re right, but that misses the mark. Sadly, unlike the rest of the world, Americans see gun ownership as a right where most of the people throughout the western world see the baring of arms as an earned privilege. As I see it, there’s a distinct difference between exercising a right and taking advantage of a privilege. Those enjoying a privilege are invariably awed and perhaps a little humbled by that privilege. Those who exercise a right are very often “righteous” in their exercise of that right and even a little angry when that right is challenged.

Now for the first time (insofar as I’m aware), we have the institution of the “Pistol Packing Preacher.” The idea is that with more guns, there will be a higher degree of safety and security while we worship. 

Thus, in this brave, defiant new “Trumpian world,” a clergy man or woman comes to the pulpit to assure parishioners of a peaceful eternity packing sufficient lead to induce an immediate start toward that journey. How about that, a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other!

When a society spends more money for guns than it does for charity, there is something outrageous about that society. To interrupt a killing is an heroic act worthy of the highest praise, but those who propose that a working clergyman or woman should see killing as being part of their spiritual obligation makes them automatically unworthy of their profession.

Probably somewhere in the thousands of western films produced by Hollywood there’s a scene depicting a preacher with a rifle, but it’s my guess that he’s hunting not preaching.

The very idea of a “Pistol Packing Preacher” is the height of misplaced religiosity. America didn’t become great on the religious wrath of revenge.

Righteous wrath, after all, was Marshall Dillon’s job!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

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AS JIMMY CARTER REMINDS US: “THERE’S ALWAYS A RECKONING!”

By Edwin Cooney

Usually a reckoning has to do with money. However, one must inevitably reckon with the results of human behavior.

For the last 10 days or so, politicians, civil rights leaders and historians, who know a lot more about history than does this observer, have been quarreling with John F. Kelly, President Trump’s chief of staff’s assertion that the Civil War was the result of the North’s and South’s failure to compromise.

Although for the most part I agree with the historians, there is one aspect of Chief Kelly’s assertion that hasn’t been adequately addressed insofar as I’m aware.

As the historians point out, there were at least seven occasions in history when the North sought to compromise with the South:

(1.) The Founding Fathers deleted Thomas Jefferson’s condemnation of slavery in the Declaration of Independence;

(2.) In Article II of the Constitution there are two provisions that appease Southern slavery. One allows the value of Blacks and Indians to be devalued to three-fifths of a free white citizen. In addition, the African slave trade is legitimized for 20 years following passage of the Constitution;

(3.) The expansion of slavery was permitted under the Missouri Compromise of 1820 up to the 36°30′ latitude and also provided that for every free state admitted into the Union, a slave state must be simultaneously admitted;

(4.) The California Compromise of 1850 that admitted California, the Territory of Utah and the Territory of New Mexico into the Union also instituted the Fugitive Slave Law that allowed Southern slave owners to legally pursue run-away slaves into Northern territory with the support of the federal government. Note: Strange wasn’t it and isn’t it how welcome federal intervention into state affairs is when it’s for the convenience of a “sovereign” state’s more prominent and powerful establishment figures!;

(5.) The 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act permitted the expansion of slavery under the provision of what was called popular sovereignty thus bringing about what was termed “Bleeding Kansas”;

(6.) Even after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Congress sought to pass what was called the Crittenden Compromise, one prevision of which was the permanent right to own slaves;

(7.) Even during the Civil War, President Lincoln, right up until late 1864 when he supported passage of the 13th amendment to the Constitution, insisted that the war was about the restoration of the Union rather than being about slavery. Remember that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which was made public in September of 1862, asserted that states who agreed to rejoin the Union by January 1st, 1863, could keep its slaves. After that date, slavery in states remaining in the Confederacy could not keep their slaves once the war was complete.

As for General Robert Edward Lee’s decision to resign his lifelong federal army service to support his native state of Virginia’s decision to secede from the Union, as honorable or noble as it may have then seemed, under today’s “conservative” standards, it would constitute treason. (Note: Ah, but treason can only be committed by the left!) Of course, insurrection isn’t treasonous, it’s merely disloyal - what’s wrong with that - it’s only principle writ large! Build that man lots of monuments. Actually, it’s likely that General Lee  would have been embarrassed by all those monuments as he was a very dignified, private and principled man. Besides, they weren’t constructed for him, they were constructed in prideful defiance of the North.

Therein lies the aspect of Chief Kelly’s assertion that neither he nor his critics adequately address.

From the very establishment of our federal union, Southerners have insisted that our states are sovereign. Sadly, Jefferson and Madison launched that idea in 1798 with what was called the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. (The issue at the time of the adoption of those resolutions wasn’t slavery, but passage of the Alien and Sedition acts in 1798 making it unlawful to criticize the government during our then quarrel with France.)

The fact is that when all states adopted the Constitution, they surrendered their sovereignty thus becoming a union rather than a confederacy. That’s why separate conventions were established to consider the proposed constitution rather than simply using the existing state legislatures to do the ratifying. Thus, adoption of the Constitution was a compact between the people and their freely constituted government. Even more to the point, if states are sovereign, for what purposes ought they be sovereign?

John F. Kelly is absolutely right about only one thing. The North and South couldn’t compromise over the bottom line issue which was the morality and long term workability of chattel slavery. Historian James MacPherson points out in his 1988 book “Battle Cry of Freedom” how differently the North and the South perceived themselves and each other.

Northerners saw slavery as absolutely immoral and many believed it ought to be abolished. For Northerners morality was about hard work in exchange for remuneration. They saw Southerners as violators of human liberty.

Southerners on the other-hand saw Northern society as largely materialistic - enslaved by the almighty dollar. Southerners saw themselves as noble minded to the extent that they took care of poor blacks, offering them cradle to grave security regardless of what it cost slave owners. They believed that their society was equivalent to Medieval European society at its best. Even worse, both sides considered themselves as morally superior to the other side. Moral issues are usually regarded as being beyond compromise. How many times have you heard people insist that rules aren’t necessarily sacred, but principles are?

President Trump and his chief of staff appear to believe that property rights, law and order, and capital profit “trump” human rights. General Kelly’s over simplification of the causes of the Civil War and his lack of ability to put his finger on the real cause of America’s greatest tragedy may for some reason in the not too distant future call for some kind of a reckoning.

Nearly 90 years ago America suffered its most serious economic depression. That depression was ultimately curable. Reckless pronouncements about climate change, chronic campaigning against those with different beliefs and agenda priorities, ongoing threats against other nations, and the continuous criticism of the freest system of government ever created may well bring about a psychological depression that may take generations to overcome.

Now, if you ask me, that would be one hell-of-a reckoning.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY