THE REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PARTIES - ARE THEY INSTRUMENTS OF PRINCIPLE OR PRACTICALITY?

By Edwin Cooney

If you’re a Republican, why is that? If you’re a Democrat, where does that come from? At one time, I firmly believed that the two major parties were more parties of principle than they were of either mere reactionism or opportunism.

Back in 1964, when I was a political babe, my interest in national politics was awakened by conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater’s campaign for the presidency. Senator Goldwater’s presidential quest occurred in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy the previous November 22nd. Jack Kennedy’s tragedy compelled a large percentage of the people to sustain the martyred president’s personal and political legacy into the future as far as possible. Passage of JFK’s tax cut, as well as his civil rights proposals most believed would be vital to that end. Senator Goldwater as a candidate for the presidency badly needed votes but there were two aspects of these proposals for tax relief and civil rights he couldn’t endorse as a matter of principle.

Tax cuts, as wonderful as they were, Barry Goldwater asserted weren’t applicable in view of the mounting national debt. We ought to pay our bills first, Goldwater was quoted as observing.

As for the civil rights struggle, Senator Goldwater insisted that it would be unconstitutional to force Americans to do what they clearly ought to do. As time proved, Barry Goldwater was no racist, as much as his positions appeared to accommodate Southern racism. As Goldwater saw it, the application one uses in the implementation of a cause ought to match the intention of what your cause must be all about. If the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was about the people’s freedom, forcing people to accommodate the public, whether they wanted to or not, amounted to a limitation of that freedom. This combination of logic and principle impressed me, and I was a Goldwater man for the rest of the campaign. Across the years, I still respect and admire the integrity of Barry Goldwater even though I’ve abandoned the idea that absolute freedom ought to be our first principle. In fact, insofar as I’m concerned, absolutism is absolutely unworkable!

Today, the “burning question” is how much or whether we need government at all. Compelling as this question is, the devil is in the details! The fact of the matter is that the people live in the details rather than in the principle of the question.

I’ll never forget Monday, January 22nd, 1973. Richard Nixon was two days into his second term. Lyndon Johnson, only four years and two days after leaving the presidency, suffered a fatal heart attack while taking his afternoon nap at the LBJ ranch. Then, out of the blue for most of us came the less dramatic, but real news of the day. Specifically, it was the Supreme Court’s affirmative decision in Roe v. Wade. There were much more compelling stories happening at that time. A peace treaty had been negotiated by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger which Secretary of State William P. Rogers, a personal friend of President Nixon, would sign in Paris the following Saturday, January 27th. There was the anticipation that soon freed American prisoners would be coming home from North Vietnam. Then, just peaking around the corner so that the public could glimpse the tip of its iceberg was the Watergate Scandal. In short, fundamental as it was, Roe v. Wade hardly made a ripple on the political scene.

The slow dawning of the significance of Roe v. Wade didn’t lighten national politics until the presidential year of 1976 when Ellen McCormack, a Massachusetts widow, sought the Democratic, not the Republican presidential nomination. Hers was a campaign of principle, but there was only scant attention to it. The Republicans insisted that it was ultimately a states rather than a federal issue. The Democrats, through their new leader Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, accepted the legitimacy of the court’s decision, but President Carter would tuck its significance away by the passive position not to make public money spent by the federal government available to pay for abortions. Thus, Roe v. Wade would not find a home in the GOP until 1980 and the dawning of the “Conservative Revolution.” Although there was principle on both sides of the Roe v. Wade decision, what would spark that decision into the headlines was people’s reactions and experiences as a result of that decision. Thus my assertion that people live in the details of issues rather than in their principles.

So the question remains! Are political parties instruments of principle or practicality?

I’m convinced that the major factor in all political decisions is not principle, but money. Money is a practical tool. This, unfortunately, has always been the case. Money is both practicality and freedom. One might say money is practical freedom. Neither projects nor causes can prevail without the “almighty buck.” Not one of us can or is willing to get along without it — not even you, not even me.

If only we could find a project everyone’s anxious to spend money on out of the conviction that it would educate, employ, and add to our national defense, as did the space race with the Soviets beginning in the late 50s extending throughout the 60s! It might be observed that the Russians scared us into our future unity and prosperity on Friday, October 4th, 1957 when the first satellite Americans ever saw was called Sputnik rather than Explorer.

Ideally, it’s the task of the two major political parties to identify causes, projects or programs and unite you and me behind them resulting in unity, peace, and prosperity for the maximum number of people.

Unfortunately, neither party is ready to lead people for whom they have little or no respect. So for the immediate future, all we can hope for is to be sufficiently entertained while the two parties, as they are, seek each other’s obliteration.

I’ve always liked politics and most politicians. As I see it, however, the difference between the “old politics” and the “new politics” is that old politicians spent more time listening to the needs of their constituents than do twenty-first century politicians of both the left and the right. Politicians today are less interested in what constituents say, think, or believe. They see it as their mission to preach and manipulate their constituents according to their needs. At the outset I asked whether either political party was an instrument of principle or practicality. Sadly, I’ve concluded, for the present at least, neither party is driven by either principle or practicality. What they crave most are money and votes.

Our two political parties have one thing in common. In order to breathe they must have money. What John and Susie Q. Citizen’s task is is to get a hold of the bulk of their money and channel it into government that seeks to serve everyone!

Where is old Huey Long now that we need him!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

IS VLADIMIR’S RUSSIA MORE WORTHY OF TRUST THAN WAS NIKITA’S?

By Edwin Cooney

Let’s see now! We won the Cold War just about 27 years ago in 1991 when the bottom dropped out of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. Next came the colorful and democratically oriented Boris Yeltsin, the NKVD or KGB were defanged, and free enterprise blossomed. (No one can say for certain how free Russian Federation business enterprises are!) However, since Christians practice “free enterprise” and Soviet Russia never did, by logical extension free enterprise must be Christian, mustn’t it? Thus ridded of Godless Communism, Russia has become pretty respectable (or perhaps profitable) in the eyes of international corporations.

Even before the election of Donald Trump as our 45th president in November 2016, Russian behavior in Syria and the Ukraine, along with its treatment of some of its antagonists, seems pretty comparable to those of Nikita Khrushchev and two or three of his successors. Hence, we’re left with the task of assessing and evaluating the motives and character of the new Russian Federation, as they pertain to we “…the free.” Specifically, the activities, motives and character of Federation President Vladimir Putin has millions of Americans wondering how he differs from the crude or shrewd round little pig-eyed Mr. K. (Khrushchev was a nasty “Godless Communist” all right, but he was far more entertaining than either Brezhnev or Putin.)

The close of the Cold War was supposed to purify the new government, especially since it was no longer either Godless or Soviet. Its new religion was Capitalism and that’s what most Americans were glad to settle for. Now however “the Russian bear” seems to be as meanly mischievous in foreign relations as “Uncle Joe” Stalin ever was.

Throughout at least the early stages of the Cold War, Americans were convinced, not without reason, that Communist Russia, along with her Chinese and North Korean “conspirators,” were out to conquer the world -- the phrase was “World Domination.” Another stimulus to the ongoing tug-of-war was Nikita Khrushchev’s 1959 declaration that the world Communist movement would soon “bury” western Capitalism.

Millions of Americans interpreted that statement as a near declaration of war. Khrushchev, however, insisted that it was merely a legitimate assertion of the ultimate success of Communism over Capitalism in the minds and hearts of the people.

While both Republicans and Democrats vigorously opposed both the proclaimed and imagined intentions of the Soviets, the Republican Party came across to most Americans as more belligerently anti-Communist than did the Democrats.

For the first 10 or so years following the Christmas Day resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev along with the clear succession of Boris Yeltsin, relations with the new Russian Federation began to seem almost cozy.

During recent years Russia under Vladimir Putin has become increasingly hostile to the idea that Russia can live unmolested alongside independent and free democratic states such as the Ukraine, and just lately, Montenegro, the newest member of NATO.

The heart of my question at the top of this musing is primarily one of perspective since “Soviet Russia” has been replaced by Putin’s Russian Federation. Nonetheless, I think the question forces the respondent to examine the elements of international conflict.

Throughout the Cold War we opposed the Soviets because they sought to maintain their national security by wars of liberation in violation of the legitimate rights of free nations. Another justification, one that motivated millions of Americans even more than her ruthless foreign policy, was her materialistic Godlessness.

Putin’s regime appears to lack the Soviets’ religious malady. It may even be true that religion in the Russian Federation is flourishing in comparison to what it was before 1991. One of the questions therefore is: has Federationist Russia actually become more moral than it was under the Communists?

Second, it appears to this observer that Putin’s Russia is all about business. Business at its best however is mainly about profit. Is profit moral?

Third, who are 21st Century Russia’s allies? Is Bashar al-Assad better, worse or merely equivalent to Mao Tse-tung and Kim Il-sung (Kim Jong-un’s grandfather)?

Third, for over 70 years FDR has been regarded (especially by Republicans and Conservatives) as the chief appeaser of Russia. If you believe he did appease Stalin, was or wasn’t he surpassed last Monday in Helsinki, Finland, by President Trump?

The ultimate question is how do we cope with an antagonist that appears to be increasingly, although not completely, like us?

What’s almost as fascinating is how Republicans who have traditionally been such opponents of “Mother Russia” suddenly find themselves being forced to support their own political leader who apparently is more comfortable with the assurances of a foreign leader than he’s inspired by the warnings of his own intelligence agents. Now he’s invited Mr. Putin to join him in Washington during an election campaign. That brings up still another fascinating question for me that, so far, I’ve heard nobody else ask. Here’s the question:

How many campaigning Republican leaders are looking forward to posing for pictures with Vladimir Putin less than a month before Americans go to the polls?

Despite evidence that she has tampered in our domestic business of politics, something the old Soviets might well have done had they the capacity to do so, is Vlad’s Russia more worthy of our trust than was Nikita’s?

I say absolutely not. What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY   

I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT!!!

By Edwin Cooney

Last Monday, July 9th, 2018, the day many of you got my previous column, was a “red-letter day!” True, I can’t, for physical reasons, enjoy the vividness of red letters the way most people can, but as I understand it, a red-letter day is full of bright and sheer gaiety.

The cause of this gaiety was a response to last week’s column from my personal representative in a certain Great Lakes community. Nothing pleases a budding columnist more than a deliciously flavored response.

My friend is exceedingly bright. However, he’s often overwhelmed by what makes him mad. Come to think of it, he tends to be a liberal reactionary. That is, he verbally strikes out at what annoys or angers him rather than seeking to master its defiant challenges.

On the other hand, I pummel challenges to death by trying to strip them of their historical, emotional and, if I can, even their spiritual legitimacy. The reason I do this is my belief in the significance and even legitimacy of two vital conditions, cause (the reasons that make things happen) and effect (the results of any reaction). This all comes from Isaac Newton’s third law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

By asserting the connection and significance of General Edward Braddock’s death to the greatness of George Washington and the legitimacy of national greatness (which I conceded was difficult to define), I apparently rubbed raw his sense of frustration over some current events. Hence, this is what he wrote me:

“I was somewhat distracted as I read this, by the fact that I was watching some paint drying on the wall of my neighbor's house!

“Anyone with any sense knows that what Trump means when he speaks of America's greatness is its whiteness!

“This column is, at least for me, an exercise in pedanticism, if such a word exists.

“This is some heady dude trying to speak loftily about greatness which is a synonym for luckiness and/or silliness!

“Washington was lucky that Edward Braddock died. Lou Gehrig was lucky that Wally Pipp couldn't play; and he was lucky he was strong like a bull, until ALS came along. Dizzy Gillespie was lucky he could play the trumpet really well, and that the right people heard him at the right time! No one is great, nor is anyone minimal. It's all luck, it's all random, it's the luck of the draw.”

My friend really and truly is deeper than that; he’s merely and legitimately frustrated, as I am, too. The problem as I see it is that he probably simply loses interest in what concerns or bothers his strong sense of equality or equity. In the tradition of 20th Century enlightened liberalism, he is outraged by injustice -- especially institutional injustice such as racial prejudice and the death penalty along with the license to kill which too many people and politicians are willing to hand out to the National Rifle Association.

My friend’s response to last week’s column thus gives me a stage from which to encourage him and others to try and examine the existence and significance of cause and effect.

While mastering the significance of cause and effect in every situation won’t necessarily bring about a balmy satisfaction as to why something happened and what the effect was, it will, I think, give one a sense of orientation with respect to a controversial issue. Orientation often brings about perspective and perspective amounts to understanding and even mastery of an issue or circumstance.

As for my “pedanticism” as he puts it, being called pedantic is a risk anyone takes who seeks to enlighten or inform. Sometimes we teachers, preachers, and budding columnists are really and truly guilty of the charge.

I’d try and wax eloquent on the topic of luck, but you need a break after all this!

Since this is my fourteenth year writing these columns I guess I shouldn’t refer to myself as a “budding” columnist, but if I do stop so identifying myself, I’ll have to come to grips with the possibility that I’ve actually grown up!

What a terrible thing to have to both grasp and acknowledge!

Oh, one more thing: as they often used to say at the close of television programs: please keep those cards and letters coming!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

A DAY AND DATE WHICH COULD BE HISTORIC!

By Edwin Cooney

I know that most people spend little time bothering about the significance of any date but I’m almost (but not quite, you understand!) obsessed with the meaning and significance of nearly every day and date. That makes me busy 365 days a year and on 366 days and dates every four years. So, what could possibly be historically significant about July 9th?

Of course, millions and millions of people are born and die every day. On Monday, July 9th, 1804, Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine, was born. On Monday, July 9th, 1928, Dr. Ben Casey (okay, it was really actor Vince Edwards) was born. Lee Hazelwood, who sort of sang with Nancy Sinatra about Summer Wine and Jackson, first opened his eyes on Tuesday, July 9th, 1929. Then came Wednesday, July 9th, 1947 when Phillip Mountbatten and Princess Elizabeth of Great Britain announced their engagement. Finally, on Thursday, July 9th, 1948, Satchel Paige, who’d been toiling in the Negro Leagues for nearly two and a half decades, finally pitched for Bill Veeck’s Cleveland Indians. Thus, as you can see, this rather obscure date has ultimately meant a lot of things to a lot of people - some of them good, some of them bad, and some of them forever! As for Monday, July 9th, 2018, President Trump assures us it’s going to be a wonderful day, because by nominating someone “outstanding” to the United States Supreme Court, he’ll take another step forward toward making “…America Great Again!”

Now, I’m sure that some of you reading the above are of the impression that I don’t at all believe that the President is about to make “…America great again” and you’re largely right because as a student of history (and that’s all I am as I’m not a historian), I can’t tell you who or what made America great to begin with. Nor can I identify what constitutes national greatness. Nevertheless, sometimes, something no one predicted, affects the fate of whole nations.

On Tuesday, July 9th, 1754, the sudden death of British General Edward Braddock launched the career of George Washington amidst the wilds of western Pennsylvania. Soon thereafter, at the forthcoming battle of Fort Necessity, Washington won his first victory over the French. George Washington, the military leader, made George Washington a national leader. His national leadership made him president of the convention that created the Federal Constitution that hot summer of 1787 in Philadelphia. The success of that whole convention was brought about in large part because the delegates trusted General Washington enough to turn over the documents they worked with during the day for safe keeping overnight. The entire convention was held, at Washington’s insistence, with windows closed and window shades drawn so that no one, not the Continental Congress or the press, knew what was taking place at the convention that was called merely to make adjustments to the Articles of Confederation then governing the young nation. When it was all over on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 19th, 1787, when asked by someone what the convention had given the nation, Benjamin Franklin said “…a republic, if you can keep it!” Hence the question: did America become great that day when work on the constitution was complete, on the day the proposed constitution was ratified or was it when George Washington was sworn in as our first president? Any one of those three occasions could reasonably be identified as the first day of America’s greatness. Ah, but could any of that taken place had young Washington not have been forced to assume command of Virginia’s army following General Braddock’s demise in the woods of western Pennsylvania that long ago Tuesday? However, the ultimate question is: does national greatness really mean anything definable let alone tangible?

As I see it, individual greatness has more realistic meaning because it’s easier to establish that: Here stands a great musician! Here stands a great sports figure or singer or a great preacher or parent or doctor etc. One’s achievements can be easily compared and contrasted with another professional’s achievements thereby setting forth a standard of measurement by which to evaluate past precedence and forthcoming innovations.

One of the easiest things for a teacher, a commentator or an historian to do is to minimize the greatness of any historical figure, event or era. I can list several political scandals that occurred in the 1790s and early 1800s, during which our “Founding Fathers” ran the government, but all it would tell you is something you already know — human beings are fallible.

The wisdom of a people is cumulative over time rather than a single lesson learned. If there is such a thing as “American Wisdom,” it wasn’t taught us by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or even Abraham Lincoln. As I see it, such wisdom, or if you prefer greatness, was born of trial and error, adjustment and revision, guided by experience and application of both reason and conscience.

Whether his name be Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Obama or Trump, when he tells us that he knows the formula for our future greatness, he’s lying to us and we seal our demise if we’re stupid enough to believe him. Insofar as I’m aware, past presidents have hoped that their best judgements and actions just might be “great,” but only one name in the above list has proclaimed his ability to bring about American Greatness.

In his first inaugural address Abraham Lincoln referred to “the better angels of our nature,” but he never identified what or who they are.

It’s possible that an event that takes place or a person born on Monday, July 9th, 2018 could launch a new era of American greatness, but if I were you, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it!

Still, enjoy what you can out of this day. Make it as memorable or “great” in your life as you can. You’re entitled to do exactly that!

After all, America’s greatness is not merely any president’s business - it’s everyone’s business!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

JULY 2ND 1776 - AMERICA’S FIRST D-DAY

By Edwin Cooney

As I’m guessing you know, Thursday, July 4th, 1776 was the day the Declaration of Independence was published. Tuesday, July 2nd, 1776 was the day that independence from Britain was declared by the Second Continental Congress. Thus, some historians insist that July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is America’s real birthday.

More significant than the triviality regarding the actual date is a question we inevitably ponder even as late as Monday, July 2nd, 2018. That question is invariably: what does the latest news all mean for our future?

For the moment the big question was whether our new independence could be militarily sustained or might Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and surely George Washington eventually be hauled off to the Tower of London for a grand hanging as an example to future would-be rebels against the British crown. Even more intriguing was what the future relationship of the separate colonies would be toward one another as well as toward the world at large. After all, there was nothing in the Declaration of Independence outlining the form of government the 13 separate colonies were prepared to agree to. Passage of the federal constitution was 13 years away and within individual colonies were various forces that urged ultimate allegiance to both Britain and France. These 13 separate colonies had just declared themselves united in rebellion, but they weren’t at all united in either policy or purpose.

The fact of the matter is that for the most part we today celebrate a unity of policy and purpose that really and truly wasn’t in existence when the first Fourth of July fireworks and parades took place. The southern colonies had a strong tendency to favor France while northern and eastern colonies, whose merchandizing economies were still closely linked to Great Britain, were quite reluctant to break loose from George the Third. Additionally, it’s been estimated that as many as two thirds of the people were, at best, indifferent to this radical idea of independence from Mother England. For the greater number of people the question wasn’t Patrick Henry’s call to “…give me liberty or give me death!” It was rather:

“How are the crops coming along?”

“Might the summer ahead be dry or rainy?”

“What can I buy with what money I earn?”

“May God protect our families from last year’s epidemic of small pox, typhoid fever or diphtheria!”

For most people, life wasn’t primarily a political or even an economic venture, it was a struggle for survival from starvation, disease and yes, from the will of Satan which they believed was guaranteed only by the protection of Almighty God.”

As we indulge our historic fantasies and our cravings for fun and food throughout this Fourth of July season, we find ourselves facing a future easily as momentous as was that facing “The Founding Fathers.”

For many 21st Century Americans, George the Third is no match for tyrannical behavior in comparison with President Donald J. Trump. In other American eyes, President Donald J. Trump is the equivalent of Patrick Henry if not of Washington or Jefferson. Surely the decisions being made by the president to break away from the bonds of treaties and other agreements made by Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama affecting everything from climate change, trade and world economy will be equally and perhaps even more significant than were the efforts nearly two and a half centuries ago to rebel against “taxation without representation,” the quartering of British soldiers in citizens’ homes, and the tea tax.

Even more challenging is the question constantly being raised by those who claim to love America much more than does any “liberal.” That question appears to be whether a multi-cultured America consisting of increasingly dominant females, skeptical blacks and Hispanics, and unhappy LGBTQ and immigrants of all sorts is worthy of a patriot’s love.

Two and a half centuries ago, resolution of these painful questions could more-or-less simmer on the back burner of our body politic and thus heal in time as the institutions of family marriage and connection invariably mixed Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and even agnostic and atheist people together within family folds. This summer, however, at least two national conflicts will be up for public and political resolution that could well permanently rupture the very fabric of our national unity. They are:

(1.) Will the right of women to choose whether they or the state dictates their physical, emotional, and moral path when it comes to abortion rights be jeopardized by a single appointment to the United States Supreme Court?

(2.) What is the real key to solving the “illegal immigration” question? Is the family unit the right place to be addressing this issue or is illegal immigration a much deeper problem?

The term “D-Day” became 74 years old this last June the 6th. On that day a great American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a brilliant set of statesmen and generals named George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle made June 6th, 1944 a day of decision, just as Tuesday, July 2nd, 1776 was America’s first real “D-Day.”

D-Day of 1776, whether you celebrate it on July 2nd or 4th, brought forth an almost endless supply of wonderful possibilities: freedom of press and speech; a market economy; FDR’s “four freedoms” as enunciated in his January 6th, 1941 State of the Union address before Congress; labor and minority group legitimacy legislation; and the capacity to build alliances to protect ourselves from international aggression - to name only a few of these possibilities which stretch back to that glorious Fourth.

The question is: what will America’s 2018 version of D-Day bring forth?

Are you sure you know the answer to that question? If I knew the answer to that question, I’d be glad to share it with you!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY