Edifying experience

Tonight I had the humbling privilege to narrate a piece of music at our high school's fall concert.
The piece was 'A Jefferson Portrait'* - by Elliot Del Borgo. We practiced for at least a month or more. It was challenging to try to count and listen to the band and watch for the director's cues. It was a fun challenge to read dramatically for fluency and expression, and yet be careful not to be over dramatic so as to respect the dignity of the words.

It was a moving experience for me because I love Jefferson's words so much and they are so important and valuable to us, even more so facing such an important election. Several teachers and parents who were there complimented me and of course that felt good. One parent even said that I should consider working in radio- so I had to try not to let myself get a big head.

But the most meaningful part was when a disabled Vietnam veteran thanked me because he felt like we had a government that had become "destructive of these ends," and needed to be altered or abolished. I knew that he blamed our government for the Agent Orange which had destroyed his life and pursuit of happiness. You can blame both Democrats and Republicans for that war (Johnson first, then Nixon). He went on to say that he feared another revolution was on it's way if things didn't change dramatically in the next few months. I didn't ask if he supported McCain or Obama ("leave a tender moment alone" Billy Joel always used to say). I thanked him for his service to our country and agreed with him that Jefferson's writing meant as much or more to us today as 230 years ago.

Just as pastors have to give credit to God for words form the Bible, I know that it was these words and these ideas that have the power, not my reading or our bands performance (although they did a supurbe job). I know it's October, not July but I hope that people will remember and meditate on the meaning of Jefferson's words before they vote on Tuesday- whether they are liberal, conservative, moderate, or undecided.

*In case you follow the link and listen to 'A Jefferson Portrait,' you should know that this is not a recoding of our performance tonight- just a sample from some music company that I found on the web to halp me practice.

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;...

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

I declare, yet another Independence Day

Every Fourth of July all we ever hear about is Thomas Jefferson this and Thomas Jefferson that. Oh, sometimes you’ll hear a little bit about John Adams and Ben Franklin, but it’s as if the other 56 guys who signed the Declaration of Independence didn’t exist. I hear you shouting out the names of George Washington and John Hancock, but Washington was off fighting some war, too busy to even show up for the vote on the resolution to declare independence. And Hancock may not have become president of the second Continental Congress if the previous president, Peyton Randolph from Virginia hadn’t gotten sick and died (at the ripe old age of 54).

John Adam’s cousin Samuel Adams has become better known in recent years because of the premiere beers which bare his name. But in actuality while he was an excellent politician, in his time he was an unsuccessful brewer, and a poor businessman. It’s actually pretty ironic that he became such a rabble rouser for the cause of independence and “no taxation without representation” even leading the Boston Tea Party. You see, his first job was as a tax collector.

Hardly anyone remembers Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson. Probably because he didn’t sign the Declaration and in fact tried several times to stifle debate over the resolution. In fact, much to Ben Franklin’s chagrin, he split the Pennsylvania delegation on the issue. His object had always been reconciliation, not independence or revolution. He loved his country and had always been proud of his country, love her or leave her. Of course, his country was Great Brittan. Ah, a regular Benedict Arnold you say? Not at all, he served in the militia as both a private and as a brigadier general. He moved to Delaware and in 1777, while Delaware's wealthiest farmer and largest slaveholder, he free all his slaves.

So Dickinson turned out to be a decent person after all. He was so decent, that in 1781 he became the President of Delaware (under the Articles of Confederation, governors were called “president”). This was complicated by the fact that he became President of Pennsylvania in 1782 without resigning from the Delaware presidency. State presidents weren’t directly elected by the people, but appointed by the state legislatures. Needless to say, Delaware was really irked.

Josiah Bartlett was the first to sign the Declaration, after John Hancock. Bartlett served on the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. He was elected the first (and presumably only) president of independent New Hampshire, and then its first governor, under the U.S. Constitution.

Another New Hamphirean was William Whipple. He lead the successful battles of Stillwater and Saratoga against General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne. Nothing to sneeze at, but I still get a kick out of the name “General Whipple.” I imagine him ordering his troops not to squeeze the Charmin.

Speaking of grocers, they plaid a vital role in the revolutionary war. Roger Sherman started out as a humble cobbler from Connecticut. But eventually his business wasn’t limited to selling shoes, he was appointed commissary for Connecticut troops, which meant he provided groceries to military personnel. He served on the committee to write the Declaration, along with John Adams, Phillip Livingston of New York, Franklin, and of course Jefferson.

There may not have been a Declaration of Independence without Jefferson, but Congress may never have declared independence if it hadn’t been for another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee. It was Lee who actually offered the Resolutions for Independence to the committee of the whole in 1776. John Adams had tried repeatedly, but he was obnoxious and disliked, did you know that? History is stranger than mythology sometimes because this man, to whom the United States owes its birth, wound up being the great uncle of a certain Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who nearly brought about its demise.

Finally there was Judge James Wilson from Pennsylvania. You’ll remember that John Dickinson opposed declaring independence; well Wilson was the swing vote. Despite Ben Franklin’s best efforts, Wilson rode the fence so long, he got splinters. Pennsylvania was divided on the issue of separation, and Wilson refused to vote against the will of his constituents. He had spoken eloquently for independence so long as he never had to vote on it. He didn’t want to be famous. He wanted a quiet, simple life. He didn’t want to stand out as a radical. He claimed he had to consult with his constituents. He managed to stall for three weeks. Dickinson urged him to vote in the people’s best interest, which was to reconcile with Mother England.

In the end, he sided with the majority in Congress and so faded into obscurity. Sometimes swing votes are the most important.

Memorial Day is about more than beer and barbecues

Every Memorial Day and Fourth of July I cry. Maybe I’m a sap, or maybe I just have a deep affection for our country and the ideals it’s supposed to be founded on.

I realize that I have a tendency to rock the boat sometimes with the opinions that I air in this column. Each and every one of us holds unique perspectives on every event and every issue. Sometimes our opinions come between us which is too bad. Some say ‘my country, right or wrong, love it or leave it.’ I prefer to think of patriotism as a relationship that you participate in, not just blind loyalty. My country right or wrong, but when she’s wrong, try to right her.

Yes, “God bless America”, but also “stand beside her, and guide her thru the night.” I don’t know about you, but I want my country to be a blessing to all the other nations of the world, not a curse.

Here are some of the words that make me tear up whenever I hear them.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

What did Lincoln mean by that? I think he meant ALL men, rich or poor, black or white, European or Latin, African or Asian. Liberty means the freedom to make decisions about the laws that affect us. It means the right to participate in society. Jefferson put it this way-

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

You could say we get the government we deserve. You could say we have met the enemy and he is us. What you should always remember is that we ARE our government. That’s the great experiment. It started in 1776 and countries around the world tried to copy it. By the 1860’s there were some who thought that the experiment was failing.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure,” Lincoln recognized.

Lincoln summarized what the true purpose of Memorial Day would be, “We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate,” he admitted, “we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

We often hear people say that our soldiers are fighting for our “freedom.” What freedoms are important to Americans? The First Amendment guarantees us the freedom to practice our own religion and the freedom from having any single official religion opposed on us. It promises freedom of speech, freedom of the press, do we exercise those rights? Do we bother reading and writing and speaking up for what we believe in, or do we take our freedom for granted? The First Amendment includes freedom of assembly and petition, and freedom of association. How often are we afraid of people getting organized, or people who protest? How do we impose guilt by association?

What was it that was being tested by the Civil War? That dedication to liberty and equality. That experiment where we are all in this together, that we’re here for each other, or as it says in the Constitution-

“We 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 our Posterity…”

I think that the most important part of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is not merely recognizing the noble sacrifices of the dead, it’s his admonishment for us to keep working for those ideals.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

“…for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Amen.

You have become your mother, country

Indedependence Day should be more than just a day
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, July 5, 2007 – Page 3

I like to write a special column for the Fourth of July because it is one of my favorite holidays. Unfortunately I missed my chance to write one before the Fourth and because of the way it lands in the middle of the week, few of you will read this one on the Fourth, most of you will get your paper on July fifth. But that’s okay.

Really, it could be a whole season. Virginia Delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution calling for independence from Britain on June 7. The Congress passed another resolution calling for independence on July 2 already. The Declaration was really just a formality, after all a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that you should declare the causes which impel you to separation from your mother country.

John Hancock, as president of Congress was the only delegate to really sign it by the Fourth. Most of them didn’t sign it until August 2. Thomas McKean of Delaware didn’t get around to it until 1781. The first newspaper to print the Declaration was the Pennsylvania Evening Post on July 6, 1776. On July 8th the Declaration had its first public reading in Philadelphia's Independence Square.

This column has really been getting too long. I get to writing and just get carried away. Before I know it, I’m up to 8 or 900 words and poor Michelle at the newspaper office can only fit one recipe at the bottom of the page. I really need to keep it down between 500 to maybe 750 tops. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, it was 1,817 words; Congress made 68 changes, killing 480 words- far be it from the patriots to criticize King George for the practice of slavery.

So I’m a day late. Hallmark doesn’t have any “belated Independence Day” cards that I’ve found, so I just have to count on your good natures to forgive me.

It’s the thought that counts, doesn’t it? How do you send a birthday card to a country?

Why do I love this crazy, uncouth, 231 year old amalgamation of people and cultures from all over the globe, ideas, hopes, dreams? I think it’s because it at least used to be founded on principles drawn from the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment that promised fairness and honor.

That core second paragraph says it all;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

In other words, it ought to be obvious that no one is better than anyone else because of where they come from. Every human being on Earth is entitled to certain God-given rights. Since it’s human nature to trample on each other’s rights, we establish a system of laws in order to balance all of our competing interests and make sure that the playing field is evened out for everyone.

What do you do when you loved ones just aren’t themselves? Let’s say someone in your family is acting different, maybe due to mental illness, or someone’s diet has them headed for complications of diabetes or high blood pressure? How about when a friend is in a destructive relationship, or has started abusing drugs or alcohol? Do you hold an intervention? Do you try to talk with them, lovingly yet honestly? Do you confront them? Do you abandon them? The least you can do, which sometimes ends up being the most powerful, is to pray for them.

So here we are, 231 years after dissolving our bonds with England, I wonder if we aren’t more like the old British Empire than we care to admit. Does everybody have to turn into their parents? When I read through the long list of offences that make up the bulk of the Declaration (that most of us never bother to look at) I wonder how many people around the world could accuse us of.

Secret prisons, secret “courts,” torture, spying on our own citizens, reversing desegregation, a regressive tax structure, staggering trade deficits, and lest we forget, using false intelligence to justify unilateral and preemptive invasions of countries that don’t have weapons of mass destruction and occupying them for years.

With Jefferson, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

But he provided the solution; “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

So that the REAL way to celebrate the Fourth of July is not with fireworks in the summer, but by taking some time to caucus in January and casting your ballot on the first Tuesday in November.

Okay, now I'm pushing 900 words again. Ah, but Jefferson didn't have a blog- I can post this in it's entirety, and cut out a good 300 words or so before I turn it in for printing.

Happy Birthday America, now knock this shit off, you're not acting like yourself. Act your age, not your President's IQ. Thank you.