Category Archives: Past as Prologue to Future

A “Christian” Nation?

Throughout the centuries since Jesus of Nazareth lived on earth, Christians have wandered between the hardships of persecution and the temptations of power.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day spurned his teachings. As Christians increased in number, the secular Roman powers grew alarmed at their growth. They feared that the teachings of this Jesus might lead to insurrection, so they persecuted early Christians but were unsuccessful in stopping their growth.

In time, Christianity’s spiritual power overwhelmed both the secular and religious powers. Jesus’ followers then had to deal with the temptation to forge a political kingdom. Indeed, from the earliest days of Jesus’ ministry, some had attempted to make him a political leader. However, he refused temptations to be a king.

The fight to overcome the temptations of power has emerged whenever Christians have gained favor. The struggle resurfaced in the United States when an antiquated electoral system put in the White House an irreligious president never popular with a majority of Americans. To assure that he remained in power, he used U.S. Supreme Court appointments to curry favor with Christians.

What has resulted is a Christian movement gaining political power but losing in numbers and moral power.

Jesus refused to gain power through political means. When Christians have fallen prey to the temptation to do so, Christianity is weakened.

Working Out Working and Home

Several decades ago, I lived for a while in a small town in north Georgia, a mill town in years past. As in many such towns, most of the jobs had moved elsewhere, often to other countries. Fortunately, the town was close enough to Atlanta to experience growth from that urban area, offsetting loss of mill jobs. In fact, the mill village that had housed former workers was seeing some revitalization as a cluster of both historic and affordable housing.

When the mills first came to the town, the mill housing was not as separated from the jobs and commercial sections as in later suburban housing in larger cities. Nationally, this newer separation of work and housing became more pronounced after World War II. Many Americans bought houses in suburbs away from city centers, commuting in then affordable automobiles using cheap gas.

Rising costs of commuting as well as the Covid pandemic may have changed these housing patterns, at least temporarily. First came “the great resignation.” Secondly, some workers who were able to work from home via their computers have resisted a return to pre pandemic work customs.

Some workers resigned because of difficulties in finding child care when the pandemic was spreading. Another reason for resignation appears to be a new level of job dissatisfaction with commuting. A surprising number of workers have resisted returning to the old nine-to-five office presence once the pandemic became more manageable.

For several centuries, we in the western world have accepted increasing separation of home and work. Factories, then offices, became the standard place of work. Cities became employment centers while workers lived elsewhere, increasingly in suburbs, increasingly further from city centers.

Throughout recorded history, however, until the industrial revolution, work and home were physically close. Will the work/job separation caused by the industrial revolution continue or will computers now make possible workers returning to more historic norms?

Letting the Other Side Win

Carl Bernstein, the author, along with Bob Woodward, of All the President’s Men, has written an account of his earlier days as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. In his recent book, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recounts events he covered in the Kennedy/Johnson presidencies, beginning when he was in his teens.

When reading about the scandals, tragedies, and major political events of the 1960’s, I was struck by a sense of dé·jà vu with some of today’s events

Bernstein described a campaign rally in Maryland for George Wallace, running for president in 1968: “It was the first time I’d seen a demagogue inflame the emotions of American citizens who I’d thought were familiar to me.”

His reporting on the Wallace rally included a description of a group led by someone waving a Confederate battle flag. “When the bedlam subsided, he [Wallace] repeated his boilerplate speech about federal encroachments on states’ rights and his opposition to the civil rights bill, saying it would mean death to labor unions and private property.” Later in the speech, Wallace told the crowd, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The anger that spurred rioters on January 6, 2021, to attack the capitol is related, it seems to me, to the same emotions spurring those Wallace supporters. It also was evident in the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting in the death of a protester.

Again and again, we have difficulty allowing the political process to play out when the process brings in changes we don’t like. That difficulty ignited falsehoods about stolen elections in 2020, leading finally to those January 6 riots.

The final test of democratic rule is allowing the other side to win.

Glory Days: Cold War’s End

In December, 1990, a young U.S. diplomat was serving at the U.S. consulate in what was then Leningrad, in the former Soviet Union. He took a trip into the neighboring country of Latvia. The diplomat, George Krol, wanted to visit the Latvian officials who had recently declared independence from the Soviet Union.

Following the astonishing revolts that year against Soviet rule in various Soviet republics, Latvia was among several former republics declaring their independence.

However, even as Krol was visiting, the celebration was cut short. News arrived that a coup of former Soviet communists against Russian President Boris Yeltsin was intent on restoring the Soviet Union. Word spread that Russian tanks were even on their way to Latvia to restore Soviet rule.

As Latvian leaders thanked Krol for being with them at this dangerous moment, Krol realized what it meant to represent America: “To them, I was not George Krol, a young American diplomat from New Jersey, I was America; and America was standing with them in their darkest hour. . . . I thought: I represent the United States of America; I can’t believe they pay me to do this.”

Today, as Ukraine fights back against Russian power in a struggle that was supposed to have ended over thirty years ago, we might revisit what that America is called to be.

May God help us overcome the hatreds that work against what we are supposed to be and what the world has such need of.

Another Mass Murder of Innocents: Thoughts

For a day or so after the mass murder of innocent children and two adults in a school in Texas, I refused to look at the news. I could not process or live with it. This current horror had followed the murder only a few days before of supermarket shoppers, and I wondered if the country had reached a place too low to climb out of.

Finally I steeled myself and read the reports, accepting that I could never be part of overcoming these horrors if I let despair win. To identify with the victims, I had to own them, had to know them as best I could.

Coupled with my dealing with the awful tragedy were other thoughts brought on by reading a thoughtful book by the late Richard Twiss, a native American, One Church Many Tribes.

How does allegiance to a nation compare with allegiance to God?

My generation basked in the afterglow of defeating the Nazi powers and of defending against godless communism. We found it easy to merge religion (majority Christian) and country.

Many of us came to think of America as a sort of “God’s country.” For those Americans able to vote and live in new suburbs, America meant white America. We forgot about our genocide against native Americans or our enslavement of blacks or our racism.

Amazing today that some who call for defending America against immigrants are themselves descendants of immigrants who invaded and stole land from original inhabitants. By condemning immigrants, they are condemning their own ancestors.

So far as I know, I and all my American relatives are descended from those who came to this country from various nations in Europe before the American Revolution. They were part of white people who settled on land originally belonging to native Americans. At least one of my direct ancestors owned slaves.

Of course, two of my ancestors patriotically fought in Europe in two world wars, one suffering for years from post traumatic stress.

As far as I know, all of my ancestors professed the Christian religion, as do I.

In looking back at this history of my family, I admire many of their qualities—for raising children to love God and to be good neighbors in their communities, to give time and money to worthy causes. I find little evidence of any who worshiped wealth.

However, I am called to repent of their and my sins for a sometimes superior attitude. It easily assumed no responsibility for racism and drew a line against which no non-white should cross.

I condemn but, because of beliefs I myself have flirted with, must assume some responsibility for those who, on January 6, 2021, decided to override democratic norms by storming the Capitol in a rebellion against our constitutional processes.

I condemn, but will not hate, those who are so concerned about an America turning less white that they will swallow obvious lies about an election, an election whose proven results do not agree with what they wanted.

I, like other white Americans, have been part of an America who worships guns instead of God. I must bear some responsibility for the unbelievable killing and suffering that takes place with those guns we refuse to control.

Perhaps the killing of innocents and our refusal to regulate the guns used in their killing are a part of our worship of power. We prefer this false worship rather than living out the justice and mercy preached by the Jesus many of us profess to follow.

Religious Freedom and Religious Belief

Few practices weaken the message of Jesus more than allowing his followers the power to force their beliefs on others.

During the Middle Ages, as the political power of the church increased, its moral power and the respect for its teachings decreased. The established church too often became a power broker in various political rivalries leading to war and suffering.

The founders of the United States, no doubt learning from the religious wars endured by many of their immediate ancestors, included freedom of religion as an unmistakable principle in their founding document, boldly enshrined in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As political scientist Francis Fukuyama writes: “But respect for autonomy was meant to manage and moderate the competition of deeply held beliefs, not to displace those beliefs in their entirety.” (“A Country of Their Own; Liberalism Needs the Nation,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2022)

Though the early U.S. included dedicated Christians, many Americans calling themselves Christians probably meant it in a cultural sense only.

As education and cities increased, American Christianity deepened. Christian movements thrived in an atmosphere where no adult was forced into an established religion and where Christians competed for the hearts and minds of citizens. Movements included anti-slavery groups, temperance organizations, missionary societies, and those working among the poor. Christians grew in number in the United States and in the world.

Then two world wars, a cold war, and the growth of terrorism led to a worldwide displacement of suffering people. Many Christian-raised Americans examined the depth of a “Christian” country whose good works had nevertheless allowed slavery, racism, and domination by the pursuit of money.

The idea of returning to a mythical American past is a chasing after phantoms. Writes Fukuyama: “Some American conservatives hope to return to an imagined time when virtually everyone in the United States was Christian.”

The word “imagined” is important. America has never been “Christian.” The best times for Christians in the United States have always been when a few people, dedicated to the practices exemplified by Jesus, have attempted to live out his example.

Wealth and Taxes

Communism as practiced by Stalin and early leaders of the Soviet Union included forcibly taking land away from owners to be run by collectives. Ukraine, now again in Soviet cross hairs, was a victim of Stalin’s ruthlessness.

For centuries, however, the problem of poverty next to great wealth was part of unrest and rebellion in many parts of the world, from peasant revolts in China to the French Revolution.

Both Hebrew and Christian scriptures allow wealth. The scriptures are filled with feasts and celebrations, often a product of wealth. The problem is not wealth—indeed wealth is seen as a blessing. The problem with wealth is the same as with many other blessings—musical ability, beauty, political success, for example. The problem is the hoarding or use of blessings for oneself alone.

Every so often, according to Hebrew scriptures, wealth is to be curtailed, with part of it returned to original owners or their descendants. Wealth is allowed and to be enjoyed, but within limits.

The problem is not the enjoyment of wealth but the hoarding of wealth. Wealth is to be both enjoyed and shared.

We might look at our taxation as a modern day version of scriptural righteousness. The rich should be allowed the use of their wealth for their own enjoyment, but a responsible portion of it should be taxed for the use of all—schools, child care, low income housing, medical care, and other uses that benefit all of us.

Guilt versus Confession

Some Americans fear remembrance of our past slave-holding days. We might be damaged by too much guilt if we dwell on the slaves and slave holders in our past. Even more, it might damage our country if we admit to imperfections. We certainly don’t want our children suffering guilt over our country’s racism, do we?

As a white American who had at least one ancestor who owned slaves, I don’t fear facing our sins. One of my privileges is to own my ancestor’s sins and to repent of them. I can also repent of those days in my childhood when blacks had to move to the back of the bus after entering and paying their fare like everybody else. Had to drink at separate water fountains.

How would I feel about those days if I had grown up black? The hurt surely is still there.

Somehow, the idea seems to be that the if the United States is deemed less than perfect, it’s like saying God is less than perfect. Somehow, we seem to think the United States is God.

To ascribe to God what is not God is, I believe, blasphemy.

Even more, we can never change for the better if we don’t recognize our sins and repent of them.

More Than Democracy

Perhaps America’s climb to world power is due more to the ability of its ordinary citizens to make a decent living than simply because it practices a form of democracy.

Despite racism and other sins, for most of its history the United States has constantly been renewed by immigrants coming to make a new life, start new businesses, and provide their children with a good education. Yes, they became participants in our political processes, but they also took advantage of the ability to thrive economically.

Surely Americans cannot be faulted for encouraging democracy in other nations as a major part of our foreign policy. Yet our push for democratic institutions has worked best where we have also pushed economic incentives, such as the Marshall Plan for Europe following World War II.

In the Middle East and North Africa, democracy has stalled. Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins write: “It appears that the people of the Arab world have internalized one lesson above all from the revolts of the last decades: democratic change does not necessarily produce economic improvement.” ( “Why Democracy Stalled in the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs, March-April 2022)

Tunisia, where I lived for a few years, appeared to have perhaps the best chance for an Arab nation to develop a democracy. With a low birth rate, an educated population, and a generally homogenous society, Tunisians appeared set for a democratic awakening when the strong man ruler, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, was overthrown in 2011 in a bloodless coup.

Unfortunately, in July 2021, the current popularly elected Tunisian leader, Kais SAIED, seized exceptional powers, fired the prime minister, and suspended the legislature.

Both Ben Ali’s earlier overthrow, and the powers assumed by the current leader, were occasioned by economic problems, including low job expectations for young people.

Here in the United States, even though our economy is growing, the change in job structure has led to the loss of good jobs for many. Geographically, some areas are thriving while others have suffered.

At the same time, our tax policies favor those who are already wealthy in keeping and growing huge amounts of their wealth, not in encouraging more equitable taxation. Such taxes could be used for programs like child care and education and job training to bring others into the mainstream.

Obviously, the wealthy have more money to invest in political campaigns for keeping the status quo than do the non wealthy. Some of those political campaigns may play on falsehoods about election counts rather than on needed changes to our tax system.

Nevertheless, if the U.S. is to endure as an influential nation, those changes must come. The country must be seen as economically fair as well as politically healthy.

China: Now the Senior Partner

China’s stance on Ukraine’s struggle for independence from Russia is of utmost importance. China has reversed its relationship with Russia from Cold War days: from junior partner to senior.

Linda Jaivin, in The Shortest History of China, recounts the multi- millennial history of the country from the beginning of human settlement to the current reign under Xi Jinping.

From shadowed beginnings, China rose and fell under various dynasties until the last one ended in the early twentieth century. Fighting between factions ensued, including the Chinese Communist party, founded in 1921. The other major faction, the Nationalists, opposed to the Communists, was led by Chiang Kai-shek.

The Japanese invasion of China before World War II, despite its horrors, did little to overcome the struggles between the Communist and Nationalist parties. After World War II, the Communist party became ascendant.

Through years of turmoil, including horrible self-inflicted famines, the Communists eventually overcame the disastrous years of Mao Tse-tung. They began to grow the economy into the giant it is today. Meanwhile, Russia stumbled from promises of a democratic government to the current kleptocracy under Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy.

How much freedom will countries enjoy who exist on the margins of Russia and China? Is it possible for Ukrainians to enjoy the independence they desire? To become a partner with the successful countries of Europe? Can Taiwan maintain its independence?

Checkpoint Charlie

October, 1961: Checkpoint Charlie: one of those barely remembered confrontations in the early days of the Cold War.

A few months before, the Soviets, against allied protests, had built the Berlin Wall, effectively sealing off East Berlin from the rest of the world. Western diplomats were refused free access to the area, against earlier agreements that they would be allowed such access.

The confrontation escalated when Americans moved tanks to the border to support the accord. The Soviets responded with tanks of their own on their side. Would someone begin firing, triggering World War III?

Fortunately, neither U.S. President John F. Kennedy nor Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wished to begin a war. Back channel negotiations were established. Eventually both sides began backing away their tanks. Diplomats on both sides continued to have access to the entire city.

Before these events, before the Wall was even in place, in the mid 1950’s, John Kerry was a school boy in Berlin with his father, a U.S. official there. Kerry, who would later become U.S. Secretary of State, likes to tell of the time he biked over into East Berlin, apparently using his American passport, to explore the area. His father was horrified when he discovered what his son had done and promptly grounded him. Apparently, he had visions of his son’s escapade causing an international incident.

Now, more than six decades later, the world is still subject to crises along that longer divide between east and west.

August 1991

From my job at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I watched with millions all over the world as a coup attempt played out in Moscow. Were the efforts to finally install democracy in countries of the Soviet Union doomed to failure? Were similar attempts in Russia itself to be overcome?

Mikail Gorbachev had become leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the youngest member of the Soviet politburo. He had attempted a loosening of the Soviet system, allowing some Eastern European countries to begin breaking away and forming their own governments. He also began instituting changes in Russia’s governance.

However, for a few days in August 1991, while Gorbachev was away from Moscow, hardliners placed him and his family under house arrest and attempted to wrest power away from him.

Countries in eastern Europe, having begun steps toward their independence, watched in horror, afraid that their new freedom would be taken back.

George Krol, a U.S. diplomat serving at a U.S. consulate in Russia was especially concerned. He had traveled into the Baltic republics as they began throwing off the Soviet yoke. Awakening now to the news of the attempted coup, he drove across to Riga in the Baltic republic of Latvia.

He found government officials there watching in horror as Soviet armored personnel carriers threatened their own country. Krol then met with leaders of the Latvian parliament. As they thanked him for being there, he realized, he said “what it meant to truly represent my country.” He was standing with them, as a representative of America in their darkest hour.

The world watched as resisters under Boris Yeltsin eventually overcame the attempted coup, a victory to be savored as former Soviet nations continued steps toward democracy.

No one, however, should think that some sort of ultimate victory was won. Not all Russians were happy to see their empire fading away. Economic hardships ensued for many.

This stage was part of an ongoing story, still being written, as Putin’s attempts in Ukraine attest.

It was, however, a most important step. As Krol wrote, “On that beautiful summer’s day, as I drove with the windows down through the idyllic Baltic country-side, I thought: I represent the United States of America; I can’t believe they pay me to do this.”

U.S. and Russia: déjà vu?

In 1946, George F. Kennan, a U.S. diplomat stationed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, examined U.S./Russian relations in what is famously known as “the long telegram.”

The telegram, sent from the embassy to the U.S. State Department in Washington, outlined directions that greatly influenced our relations with the Soviet Union for the rest of the Cold War.

Kennan summarized Soviet ideology as based on its belief that capitalism is evil and will eventually be overcome by the triumph of the working class. However, the early Russian communists had to first overthrow the Tsarist regime. Since the majority of people in the first communist country, Russia, were not inclined to this “necessary overthrow,” a dictatorship had to be established to bring it about.

Indeed, any opposition to this firm belief in communism had to be fought, including any opposition in the rest of the world, including the United States. Soviet ideology must stress the menace of capitalism.

“It must invariably be assumed in Moscow that the aims of the capitalist world are antagonistic to the Soviet regime . . .” Kennan wrote.

Basically, the Soviets saw communist ideology as absolute truth. If democratic ideas inhibit the growth of this ideology, then democratic ideas must be destroyed.

However, whether the Soviet system would triumph would depend on the success of the different model chosen by the United States. “The issue of Soviet-American relations is in essence a test of the overall worth of the United States as a nation among nations. To avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.”

The overthrow of Soviet rule by Soviet satellite states in the 1990’s obviously was a blow to the communist ideology outlined by Kennan. However, the cheering crowds in Germany and other places should not obscure the fact that dedicated communists like Vladimir Putin remained as dedicated to the communist ideology as ever. They bided their time and are now working their way back into power in Russia and other former Soviet states.

This is the background against which Putin operates today. A Soviet operator in the former East Germany, Putin saw the Communist regime in east Germany topple. His world suffered ignominious defeat.

With this background, we can see the challenge posed by a Ukraine desirous of democracy, including connections with democratic nations of Europe.

Yet the stakes are bigger even than Ukraine or a few former Communist bloc countries. The communism of Vladimir Putin is patient. It believes capitalism will eventually implode, overcome by capitalist selfishness.

Perhaps we should understand the importance of the choices we are making regarding the kind of capitalism we choose. That which plays into Putin’s hands, in which the rich get richer and the rest pay more of the country’s taxes? Or a more responsible kind which, among other choices, takes care of its children and vulnerable citizens and is upheld by a fair system of taxation?

Sweet Revenge for Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago

Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century until his death in 1953. During that time, millions of people, dissidents and sometimes ordinary citizens with modest wealth, were sent to Soviet prisons as punishment. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago chronicled their imprisonment.

What happened to these prisoners after their release?

The Economist (December 4th, 2021; “‘Levelling up’ at gunpoint”) pinpointed a study shedding light on this question.

Released prisoners, the study indicated, tended to settle close to where they were released, generally isolated regions of the Soviet Union. The dissidents often were well-educated. The study suggested that their choice, upon gaining freedom, was a boon for the regions where they settled. After the Soviet Union broke up, economic activity tended to grow rapidly where the released prisoners settled.

This result, the article suggested, is a revenge on Stalin’s inhuman practices: “Joseph Stalin did his best to wipe out perceived enemies.” Instead, their activities have “outlived the gulag by six decades.”

Daniel Boone and Native Americans

I grew up in Tennessee with a father who gave me a love of history, beginning with local and regional history. He told me about the pioneer Daniel Boone and his early settlement in Boonesborough in nearby Kentucky and how Boone lived for a time with native Americans.

In Matthew Pearl’s book The Taking of Jemima Boone, the stories I had learned as a child were fleshed out with Pearl’s research. Pearl begins with the capture of Daniel Boone’s daughter and two other young women by a Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party in July 1776.

The American Revolution began that month. The land’s original inhabitants would be called on to take sides in the struggle. The wiser ones knew that a win by either side would not be of benefit to them in their struggle to survive the coming of European settlers.

Pearl lays out the conflicts, the reasons, and the struggles of the time. We have celebrated America as a haven for the oppressed fleeing Europe’s wars and persecutions. Jemima Boone’s story and its long aftermath does not take from this story. Daniel Boone was portrayed as a decent individual, with feeling for his family as well as native Americans with whom he came in contact.

The coming of Boone’s people began in hope for inhabitants in the old world, those on the margins who now had the opportunity to better their lives in this new country.

But how does a country act as a sanctuary without the sanctuary being overwhelmed? The question exists for African villages, overwhelmed by fleeing refugees, as it did for America’s original inhabitants and does for the United States today and for Europe, pressed by desperate people on Europe’s borders.

The ultimate answers surely include actions which improve the lot of the sending countries. The ability of people who want to better their lives by moving is generally a spur to a more advanced society only if the numbers are not overwhelming.

In the meantime, the American story needs to be seen warts and all. Our great American experiment has been more costly than it should have been to some.

Owning Up to Our History

Tish Harrison Warren, a white Anglican priest, addressed the question lately roiling the political landscape: “Is America Willing to Tell the Truth About Its History?” (The New York Times, November 14, 2021)

“Yes, the white American church has sometimes conflated a sanitized story of America with Christianity to embrace loyalty to ‘God and country,’” Warren wrote.

As a child of the American south myself, I appreciated her commentary. I accepted, as children do, without reflection, the racism of my early years: the separate drinking fountains for “Colored” and the segregated schools.

I began to change as court decisions mandated an end to separate school systems. My undergraduate study was in an all white Southern Baptist college (at the time) in Alabama. Yet we students, especially in our church groups, discussed how wrong this segregation was. By the time I studied for a graduate degree in a state school in Georgia, it had changed. The school was integrated without, it appeared, whites thinking much about it.

Only much later, I confess, did it occur to me that I indeed had been favored by my white skin. I never had to think about my color when I applied for a job or went shopping or approached a teacher in school. I realized that any American of color, stepping into the larger society, knew that the people around them, even if not consciously racist, noticed first that the person before them was not white.

Within my lifetime, black Americans have been killed and mutilated by whites without the whites, at the time, in any way being called to account for their sins.

Do we need to understand this? Do we need to repent? Yes, we do. It can’t be said often enough.

The old South, where white school children, including myself, stood up for “Dixie” as they did for the national anthem, has to repent.

Pax Victoriana and Pax Americana

Julia Baird’s Victoria the Queen, a detailed biography of Britain’s Queen Victoria, highlights that long nineteenth century when Britain became a world power. The nineteenth century, most of which was during her reign, belonged to Britain, it is said, as the twentieth century belonged to the United States.

The accomplishments of Britain in the nineteenth century were many; nevertheless, the author also delves into the shortcomings of her times. They include the terrible legacy left by the superiority many Europeans felt over the rest of the world. A little over a decade later, some of the failings of Victoria’s time became evident in two world wars.

What about the United States and the twentieth? We saved the world for democracy, yet have difficulty keeping democratic rule for ourselves.

We have never been able to rid ourselves of what Jim Wallis, of Sojouners, calls our “original” sin—that of enslaving Africans and refusing to recognize and repent of that sin. Even today, white supremacists march in calls for rule by whites only.

Who will the twenty-first century be named after?

Wretched Refuse

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” (Emma Lazarus, 1883)

Once again, the tempest-tossed find their way to the United States. They join a long line of previous refugees—escapees from Europe’s religious wars in the 1600’s; then joined through the centuries by the poverty-stricken, seeking economic opportunity; followed by survivors from Nazi concentration camps; then the “displaced persons” of World War II; then Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, and now Afghans.

In between, the descendants of black slaves and native Americans have fought prejudice. From south of our border, economic migrants added to the mix.

Our population history is a mixture of marvelous acceptance and depraved hatred. Yet, from these struggles, the country has continually been blessed by new life.

Nobel prizewinners and philanthropists, inventors and scholars—as well as ordinary business owners and stalwart middle class citizens have descended from this jumble.

May God give us the grace and wisdom to once again be blessed by this newest “wretched refuse.”

Vaccines Then and Now

I grew up in the dark ages. Children died from diseases like polio and measles. I remember attending a funeral for a young girl in my neighborhood who died of complications from measles. Another child died of complications from polio. A classmate was crippled by this disease. We saw images of children in “iron lungs”—large metal tubes they lived in to help them breathe after suffering polio. Measles could be a short childhood illness or it could kill or blind a child.

My parents were constantly worried about my brother or me catching one of these horrible sicknesses. We came back early from a vacation because a polio epidemic had suddenly broken out where we were planning to visit. During the summer, swimming pools required swimmers to get out of the water every hour and rest for ten minutes because overexertion might encourage the disease. Nobody complained about this restriction harming their civil rights.

Of course, we had immunizations against some diseases. Death and serious illness from small pox and typhoid no longer visited whole populations as they once had. My great aunt told of almost dying from typhoid, with a fever so high, she said, that her hair had fallen out.

Immunizations against these diseases were given each year in our public schools. The county nurse would make the rounds inoculating all students against the diseases for which we had vaccines.

When vaccines against polio came out, parents rushed their children to schools to be vaccinated—it was midsummer, as I remember—but schools opened for mass inoculation. Almost immediately, the fear of polio vanished in this country because almost every child had been vaccinated against it. It was a miracle.

If only, I remember thinking, the vaccine had come out a few months or a year earlier, my classmate’s life could have been saved.

With this history and these memories, I have a hard time understanding the massive resistence to vaccines. To me, science and vaccines and modern medicines are a gift God has given us with the power to create good for the world’s people.

Fulbright Scholarships and Segregation

It’s one of those paradoxes—America’s sometimes heroic leadership in the post World War II era and its torturous dealings with its racist sins at the same time.

A recent article in Foreign Affairs about J. William Fulbright, a senator from Arkansas from 1945 to 1974, mirrors this struggle. (Charles King, “The Fulbright Paradox,” July/August 2021).

Fulbright’s name is attached to the famous scholarship awards program begun in 1946. The program has allowed thousands of American and foreign students to study each other’s learning and culture.

Senator Fulbright also led the successful fight to end Senator Joseph McCarthy’s reign of terror. McCarthy’s false conspiracy theories had destroyed careers and people’s lives.

In addition, Fullbright began hearings on the Vietnam war in 1966. Testimony was taken from numerous people, including John Kerry, then a young anti-war veteran of the war. Kerry’s testimony is remembered to this day for his question: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Here is Fulbright, then, espousing such liberal causes as opposition to the war.

But Fulbright shows another side to his character: “In 1956, Fulbright signed the Declaration of Constitutional Principles, also known as the Southern Manifesto . . . .The document codified southern resistance to racial integration . . .”

The idea of black Americans in Arkansas having as much power through voting as white Arkansans was simply, for him, a bridge too far.

Though he could advance learning and understanding between nations and could see the folly of Vietnam, he, like many Americans today, could not see our own racial sins.

As King writes: “He was a figure who committed his life to global understanding yet found it impossible to apply the same ideals to his homeland. What seems like a contradiction in Fulbright’s outlook, however, is really a blind spot in Americans’ own. Ths combination of open-mindedness abroad and bigotry at home was not unique to him.”