Leading Ethically Only

Sac Chief Black Hawk: A Native American Warrior Addresses His Captors

2010-09-04T10:01:00.001-04:00

       Muckete (black) Meshekiahkiah (sparrow hawk), or Black Hawk, was born in 1767, and died in 1838. He succeeded his father as Chief of the Sac Nation in 1788. He acted against the Americans in the War of 1812. Because of the occupation by the whites of certain vacated lands, he began the Black Hawk War in 1831, and was defeated in two battles in 1832. He surrendered, was taken East and confined in Fortress Monroe until June, 1833.
       This speech was delivered in the late summer of 1832 to a General Street, who appears to have been a militia officer. Black Hawk, having been defeated in July and August by General Dodge and General Atkinson in battles on the Wisconsin and Bad Axe Rivers, made his surrender to Street at Prairie du Chien, August 27.
       He was placed in the charge of a young lieutenant, Jefferson Davis, afterward president of the Southern Confederacy. Robert Anderson, who commanded at Fort Sumter, and Abraham Lincoln, served in the war defending against Black Hawk. It also is of interest that Black Hawk, on being taken to the East a captive, was confined in Fortress Monroe, where, thirty-three years afterward, Jefferson Davis was confined.
       Before going to Fortress Monroe, Black Hawk was taken to Washington and presented to Andrew Jackson in the White House, where he saluted him in words which then could not have raised the smile which they raise now: “I am a man and you are another.”

You have taken me prisoner, with all my warriors. I am much grieved. For I expected, if I did not defeat you, to hold out much longer, to give you more trouble, before I surrendered. I tried hard to bring you into an ambush, but your last general understood Indian fighting. I determined to rush on you, and fight you face to face. I fought hard.

But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in winter. My warriors fell around me. It began to look dismal. I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire.

That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. His heart is dead, and no longer beats quick in his bosom. He is now a prisoner of the white men. They will do with him as they wish.

But he can stand torture, and is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black Hawk is an Indian. He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, against white men who came, year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands.

You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The white men despise the Indians, and drive them from their homes. They smile in the face of the poor Indian, to cheat him; they shake him by the hand, to gain his confidence, to make him drunk, and to deceive him.

We told them to let us alone, and keep away from us; but they followed on and beset our paths, and they coiled themselves among us like the snake. They poisoned us by their touch. We were not safe. We lived in danger.

We looked up to the Great Spirit. We went to our father [i.e., the President of the U.S.]. We were encouraged. His great council gave us fair words and big promises. But we got no satisfaction. Things were growing worse. There were no deer in the forest. The opossum and beaver were fled. The springs were drying up, and our squaws and papooses were without food to keep them from starving.

We called a great council and built a large fire. The spirit of our fathers arose, and spoke to us to avenge our wrongs, or die. We set up the war-whoop, and dug up the tomahawk. Our knives were ready. The heart of Black Hawk swelled high in his bosom, when he led his warriors to battle. He is satisfied. He will go to the world of spirits contented. He has done his duty. His father will meet him there, and commend him.

Black Hawk is a true Indian, and disdains to cry like a woman. He feels for his wife, his children, and his friends. But he does not care for himself. He cares for the Nation and the Indians. They will suffer. He laments their fate.

Farewell, my Nation! Black Hawk tried to save you, and avenge your wrongs. He drank the blood of some of the whites. He has been taken prisoner, and his plans are crushed. He can do no more. He is near his end. His sun is setting, and he will rise no more. Farewell to Black Hawk!

Seneca Chief Sogoyewapha: A Native Amercan Comparison of Religions

2010-09-03T12:16:00.002-04:00

On the Religion of the White Man and the Red

Sogoyewapha

["Red Jacket"]

(c.1758–1830)

He was born around 1752, and he died in 1830. He was a member of the Seneca Nation. He was given the name “Red Jacket” due to his embroidered scarlet jacket presented to him by a British officer during the Revolution. He served on the American side in the War of 1812. This speech was delivered at a council of chiefs of the Six Nations in the summer of 1805 after a Mr. Cram, a missionary, had spoken of the work he proposed to do among the Indian Nations. This and other famous orations with human rights content can be found at this LINK.

FRIEND AND BROTHER:

It was the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet together this day. He orders all things and has given us a fine day for our council. He has taken His garment from before the sun and caused it to shine with brightness upon us. Our eyes are opened that we see clearly; our ears are unstopped that we have been able to hear distinctly the words you have spoken. For all these favors we thank the Great Spirit, and Him only.

Brother, this council fire was kindled by you. It was at your request that we came together at this time. We have listened with attention to what you have said. You requested us to speak our minds freely. This gives us great joy; for we now consider that we stand upright before you and can speak what we think. All have heard your voice and all speak to you now as one man. Our minds are agreed.

Brother, you say you want an answer to your talk before you leave this place. It is right you should have one, as you are a great distance from home and we do not wish to detain you. But first we will look back a little and tell you what our fathers have told us and what we have heard from the white people.

Brother, listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians. He had created the buffalo, the deer, and other animals for food. He had made the bear and the beaver. Their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over the country and taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this He had done for His red children because He loved them. If we had some disputes about our hunting-ground they were generally settled without the shedding of much blood.

But an evil day came upon us. Your forefathers crossed the great water and landed on this island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men and had come here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat. We took pity on them, granted their request, and they sat down among us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return.

The white people, brother, had now found our country. Tidings were carried back and more came among us. Yet we did not fear them. We took them to be friends. They called us brothers. We believed them and gave them a larger seat. At length their numbers had greatly increased. They wanted more land; they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened and our minds became uneasy. War took place. Indians were hired to fight against Indians, and many of our people were destroyed. They also brought strong liquor among us. It was strong and powerful, and has slain thousands.

Brother, our seats were once large and yours were small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets. You have got our country, but are not satisfied. You want to force your religion upon us.

Brother, continue to listen. You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to His mind; and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a Book. If it was intended for us, as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given to us, and not only to us, but why did He not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that Book, with the means of understanding it rightly. We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?

Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the Book?

Brother, we do not understand these things. We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.

Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all, but He has made a great difference between His white and His red children. He has given us different complexions and different customs. To you He has given the arts. To these He has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since He has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude that He has given us a different religion according to our understanding? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for His children; we are satisfied.

Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.

Brother, you say you have not come to get our land or our money, but to enlighten our minds. I will now tell you that I have been at your meetings and saw you collect money from the meeting. I can not tell what this money was intended for, but suppose that it was for your minister; and, if we should conform to your way of thinking, perhaps you may want some from us.

Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest, and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said.

Brother, you have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at present. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand, and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey and return you safe to your friends.

S.I. Hayakawa on THE POWER OF YOUR WORDS

2010-08-20T15:37:00.000-04:00

Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa:
A Man To Be Remembered

In Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2, Shakespeare wrote, the good men do "is often interred with their bones." Once we are gone, only a very small few remember us. Many readers will not know the name of this long-forgotten American academic and U.S. Senator. Let us resurrect only a small bit of his esteemed memory and benefit from it. Readers are encouraged to read the Wikipedia entry on S. I. Hayakawa, though it scratches only the surface of his rich life.

Why dig up the memory of a PhD who was both master and defender of the English language, a semanticist who understood the power of language in itself--in a time where so many Americans are more concerned out our financial crises and their own futures? True to my own nature, I will connect history past with current ethical concerns.

Our Feelings of Fear,
The Power of Words

We live in an era of fear and, in such a time, our human emotions and mental functions spill out into words. Many feel helpless, powerless, and lash out at family, coworkers, neighbors, and others. For those who have been driven into bankruptcy, with everything they once had stripped away, or for those who fear that future condition, words seem to be all they have left, and many are negative and destructive.

There is an old, false saying: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but your words never will hurt me." Physical harms usually can be healed. Verbal harms often never are healed. There is more moral power in your words than you ever have or had in your bank account.

Hayakawa himself became interested in language because of a man who used the mere power of words--written by his hand, expelled into microphones from the air in his lungs and up through his vocal cords--Adolf Hitler. Hayakawa wrote about a republished edition of one of his great works:

The original version of this book, Language in Action, published in 1941, was in many respects a response to the dangers of propaganda, especially as exemplified in Adolf Hitler's success in persuading millions to share his maniacal and destructive views. It was the writer's conviction then, as it remains now, that everyone needs to have a habitually critical attitude towards language — his own as well as that of others — both for the sake of his personal well being and for his adequate functioning as a citizen. Hitler is gone, but if the majority of our fellow citizens are more susceptible to the slogans of fear and race hatred than to those of peaceful accommodation and mutual respect among human beings, our political liberties remain at the mercy of any eloquent and unscrupulous demagogue.

If you have economic fears today, as many of us do, fear even more the misused power of your words, written or spoken. Though everything else may be taken from you, you always remain the complete ruler and autocrat of your own speech. Please, I beg you, do not take for granted this great power you have.

With your words you have the power to build up, or tear down; to speak truth, or lies; to nourish love, or fuel hate; to deepen trust, or sow doubt; to inspire, or depress. Your words have more power than any money you ever had, have, or will have.

If one person writes a gift check for ten thousand dollars to a stranger, that stranger will remember the gift, at least for a while. Yet if a person speaks only a few phrases or sentences to a stranger, at a particular moment when the stranger's psyche is uniquely open and sensitive to what is said, those words can have the power to change a life forever. Some have changed from bums to billionaires. Others have changed from stable to suicides.

The Moral Content of Language Today

Hayakawa died before the spread of such phenomena as "Gangsta Rap," but he already knew well the escalating degeneracy of the English language. I myself am part of the Baby Boomer generation of the 1950s, and my generation contributed greatly to the intentional disregard of educated, standard uses of the best English.

Our Age of the Individual taught us that the individual person's values and forms of communication and behaviors were "just as good" as any other individual's. By right of simply being alive, the breathe in our lungs "validated" whatever we said as "true for us."

I remember one day, as a freshman in college, "hearing myself" speak a stream of curse words that were "hip." I thought to myself, "I came to college with more respect for my self than this, and used better grammar and vocabulary. Is this what I came to college to become?" From that day, I determined I would become educated, and use that education. I decided to avoid the use of gutter-language for its "shock value" in polite society.

To intentionally butcher the English language, or to intentionally avoid learning not to is an excuse for the intellectually and morally degenerate. Why would I say such a thing?

Animals have language. They make their vocalizations to each other, and strangers, to communicate. Some have very complex, others have very primitive language. No other creature has the capacity for language we do.
Yet millions of people use language based on emotional reaction, not thinking or higher level communication. It is often not many steps away from animalistic grunts or growls. "F*** You!" is faster, easier than thinking and being human. It can mean anything, mostly contemptuous, selfish, and harmful, but it can be intended for humor. Now, to save time, many abbreviate the previous epithet to "FU."
Degeneration of language abuse continues to spiral downward with "texting." Everyone is learning immediate, reactive, un-thought, ambiguous abbreviations to "communicate." Ignorance is our norm, and many misunderstandings, arguments, fights, and break-ups, have happened due to this "great technological tool."
Adults and youth show this decline in their abilities to use language. Even leaders send emails riddled with signs of ignorance or disregard for careful communication.

Hayakawa as Defender of Democracy,
Or Racist-Elitist?

During the 1960s and 1970s, there were several major movements to displace (1) English as our national language and (2) standard English usage as normative and expected for all Americans in employment and government. These movements were intellectual expressions of the privatization and subjectivization of language use alluded to above (whether one cites it as beginning with the Beat Generation, or not.

Large immigrant groups, such as Spanish language speakers, lobbied they needed linguistic, social, and political affirmation and accommodation. Many said they neither wanted to learn English, nor should. Other, indigenous large English dialect groups, such as the Ebonics Movement, lobbied for the same. I remember watching a program on television, when I lived in Chicago, where Black intellectuals debated--50% for, 50% against--whether or not language developed after slavery, or in the ghettos, was or was not to be affirmed and accommodated. I thought how many other groups might petition for the same. We might have Redneck-English, or something else.

On leaving the U.S. Senate in 1976, Hayakawa formed an organization, U.S. English, Inc, dedicated to "preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States." Some declared him to be a racist for this action. Hayakawa was Japanese origin, yet he founded this group. Why? As a PhD in English and an expert in semantics and linguistics; as a former president of a university; and, then, as a U.S. Senator, he famously said, "I never could have done any of these things without learning and mastering the English language."

Hayakawa was no racist. He was an American committed to democracy. He knew that if these lobbying groups were allowed to have their way, their constituencies would be cutting themselves off from every opportunity dependent on mastery of the best English. He was loving well-intentioned people trying to defend things ultimately harmful to their own peoples. I note, according to the website of his organization, that only 30 states have English as their official language, which amazes me.

Words as Tools for Morality

Now while I am a parent of four adult children, I cannot say that all of them have chosen to master the English language as they could or should--at least not to date. The oldest has an undergraduate degree in English literature, but the rest still are making their own decisions as to the levels of English mastery they believe are required for them. And all are "texters," though their father is not.

What most people fail to realize is that mastering the English language has an impact on both their intellectual and moral development. Indeed, the greater their mastery of English, the greater is their potential to think clearly, and to become--potentially--better moral agents towards others.

Note, however, that Hayakawa became interested in language because of Adolf Hitler, his ideology written and verbal. In our time, we have many genocides, or criminals like Bernard Madoff, who use language persuasively for harmful purposes. I understand this. Yet let me discuss briefly why we can become better people intellectually and morally through our mastery of language (any language).

Like animals, we can, if we wish, grunt and curse, use chopped-off, elliptical, ambiguous, privatistic bits of words and phrases. Those who love us most will try to figure out what we are saying, unless we learned from them. Then we are fine, so long as we do not communicate out of that circle.
Human language separates us from the animals. To learn language--if our parents do not know, or will not teach it to us--we must work. We must learn grammar, syntax, vocabulary, style, rhetoric. Excellent language is not emotional grunting and texting. It is a dynamic, creative, highly complex, intelligent, social human act.
Language, at its best, enables us to be better moral people. Nearly all in our use of language has moral components, when used according to accepted standards. We listen carefully. We pause before communicating. Why? We must think of the "sender's" content sent to our ears or eyes. we must consider context, vocabulary, tone, educational level, emotions involved, or "subtexts" of things unstated but implied or potential. When we have done all this, THEN we respond. All this is a moral process, an interaction between people where so many things are possible as outcomes to it..

You Have Power In Your Words

Regardless of your current financial condition, regardless of whether you (to date--the future is open) have mastered the English language, or another if that is your native form, you have real power in your words.

You may feel powerless. Yet know that within your mind, coupled with your powers of speech and writing, you have real power, at all times and in all places. Remember the person who encouraged you when you were a child. Remember the person who hurt you deeply with words. You have an unlimited amount of potential power either to help or hurt others with your communications.

Until the day or night comes when your powers of communication are taken away, temporarily or forever, I beg you to cherish this wonderful human gift; to cultivate it as a sign of your self-worth and dignity; and, to use it for good. You have that power.

Perhaps too you will remember S.I. Hayakawa, for his life's work and its worth to us in our troubled times, where some use words for good and others for evil. Join with me in our alliance for the former! JDW

Working With Briars in Your Life

2010-08-12T23:33:00.000-04:00

Life Makes Messes
The other day I decided to take my chain saw and clear away a large branch that had fallen in my side yard some time ago. A strong wind blew that limb down. I just let it lay where it fell for a while, still attached to the trunk at the top, hanging down at a forty-five degree angle. No sap ran through it any more and week by week, its once-green leaves turned brown and wrinkled in death. I drove in and out of my house for some time and decided it was time to clean up the mess.

I own an inexpensive Poulan saw, but it serves its purpose for a homeowner. I started cutting off the small limbs, in lengths large enough to fit neatly into my truck bed. As I cut three or four, I put down the saw, running still, and quickly picked up the cut branches and placed them in the truck. Progress was fast. I cut the limbs as I came to them and before long, I was cutting the large center limb in five foot lengths.

When there was only another ten feet or so, dangling in the air and still attached to the tree, I attached one end of it to a pulling chain, and the other end to a towing bar on my truck. It pulled right off and fell to the ground. I cut that into two pieces, both heavy, but manageable. I then looked at a number of trash limbs growing all around the trunk, green and wild-looking. I decided to clean around the trunk to trim the tree up better than I had cared for it in some time.

So I began to move quickly, cutting this one and that one. I reached into a particularly messy bunch of greenery on the right side of the trunk, and then felt scratches on my hand. Looking more closely, I saw that a thick briar, one that had been growing for a while, was somewhat hidden among the scattered little branches. I realized I had to slow down, look with care, and cut both the small green branches around that briar, which were entangled with it.

I cut away the branches and that briar, loaded all carefully into the truck, then hauled it to the back of my thirty acres. I knew a wet-weather drain where I would dump the results of my work. I backed up carefully to the little drop-off, put on the emergency brake, then carefully remembered the thorny briar enmeshed amid the dead and live branches I had cut. I slowed down, took my time, determined that the briar would not get me again. The load came off with little trouble, and I drove back to the house.

But on the way back, I thought about what I had done during the two hours this work took. I decided there was a little moral lesson to be found in this little incident, so I share it with you now.

There Are Messes in Our Lives

Life is like that tree. One day, everything is fine, green and growing, beautiful and blowing in the wind. Then, due to no fault of ours, troubles comes, strong forces break up what was fine and beautiful. And we have a mess in our life. There it sits, a reminder of what was, but no longer is.

We have several choices and, in the messes that have blown into my life, I have made them all. We can get up every day, ignore the mess, and let one day follow after another. We know it's there. We may look the other way and see it out of the corner of our eye. We may be aggravated it's there. We may think back to when there was no mess, but are too preoccupied with memories of the past to deal with the present. We may even be too bull-headed to change our routine and remove it. A mess unattended to will stay there as long as it's allowed to remain.

But if we are wise, one day we decide to deal with it. We have to set aside time. We have to assess what tools we need. And then we start. We have to take the parts of the mess that appear closest at hand. We take charge of them, one at a time. We do not rush to the central, bigger parts of the mess. We must remove the smaller parts, master them, and put them away, one by one. After all, our messes often have larger issues attached to the smaller ones, and we never will get to the really tough ones until we have mastered what we should first.

Yet after we finally clean up the mess, we still must be careful. The original destruction may be cleaned up. But if we look closely, there are still little things left, very real and alive, that are waiting to grow into bigger problems later. If we are presumptuous, we may jump right in and think we can remove them without much trouble. But just like the big messes in our lives, they still can inflict pain and damage their own way. So it is best to be warned by what they are, and to be just as careful with them as if they were as big as they someday will be, if we do not remove them now. JDW

Thoughts Mourning a Murdered Medical Team in Afghanistan

2010-08-07T15:56:00.005-04:00

I just read an NPR story of a medical team killed in Afghanistan. Most of them were members of the International Assistance Mission, a Christian organization with the following values: "dependency on God, love for all, teamwork, accountability, learning, quality work." They had just completed two weeks of traveling in villages doing eye surgeries, other medical care, and assistance to the poor. I enclose a quotation from that NPR article:

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press that they killed the foreigners because they were "spying for the Americans" and "preaching Christianity."
Frans said the International Assistance Mission, the longest serving nongovernmental organization operating in Afghanistan, is registered as a nonprofit Christian organization but does not proselytize....

Among the dead was team leader Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, New York, who has been working in Afghanistan for more than 30 years.... Another relief organization, Bridge Afghanistan, said on its website that the group included one of its members, Dr. Karen Woo of London.

Little, who was overseeing eye hospitals in Kabul and two other major cities as well as small clinics in three smaller towns, was expelled by the Taliban government in August 2001 after the arrest of eight Christian aid workers — two Americans and six Germans — for allegedly trying to convert Afghans to Christianity. He returned to Afghanistan after the Taliban government was toppled in November 2001 by U.S.-backed forces.

According to Frans, two members of the team worked for IAM, two were former IAM workers and four others were affiliated with other organizations, which he did not disclose. He said five of the Americans were men and one was a woman. The Briton and German also were women.

Gen. Agha Noor Kemtuz, police chief in Badakhshan province, said the victims, who had been shot, were found Friday next to three bullet-riddled four-wheel drive vehicles in Kuran Wa Munjan district. He said villagers had warned the team that the area was dangerous, but the foreigners said they were doctors and weren't afraid. He said local police said about 10 gunmen robbed them and killed them one by one.

"We are a humanitarian organization. We had no security people. We had no armed guards. We had no weapons," he said.

I have three responses to this tragedy: one, from the Muslim point of view; the second, from a humanitarian point of view; and the third, from Christian point of view.

The Muslim Point of View

First, Islam forbids any proselytizing as a capital crime. These clearly were brave and committed Christian medical personnel. Who knows what they said, or if they prayed in the name of Jesus Christ, for their patients. One website I found had a photo of a Muslim holding a child's picture book, "A Children's Guide to the Bible," though I was unable to learn if that material was captured as "contraband" from the possessions of these people. If these good people were proselytizing, they knew they were risking their lives in these dangerous territories.

It is entirely possible the Muslim killers took medical compassion alone and in itself as proselytizing. Normally, we think of proselytizing as "actively discussing conversion." But if you were a Muslim father or mother whose child had an eye deformity and disease, and a group of strangers came in asking for nothing else than permission to help heal your child, then left after doing it, would you not be grateful? And if your own religion offered no medical help to you, would you not perhaps, perhaps, ask yourself in curiosity, "What kind of God would put so much love in people's hearts?" So there is some potential proselytizing force and power in medical assistance, without prayers, active "conversion talk," or literature.

What disappoints me, as an outside observer, is that I hear nothing from Muslims who disagree with such murders. Oh there are some "condemnations" in various quarters. But these are isolated, weak, then disappear. There is no mass Muslim movement to find and punish the Muslims who do such horrible deeds. Why? I have a simple theory. I would like Muslim readers to respond whether or not I am accurate.

Muslims are united by the Shahadah, their confession of faith--"There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger"--and the Qur'an forbids killing another Muslim. So I think Muslims will condemn bad Muslim deeds, but are constitutionally and theologically chained not to harm another Muslim acting on his or her own faith. If I am correct, this is a problem for us all. Would Muslims please respond?

The Humanitarian Point of View

There are many humanitarian organizations, religious and secular. To desire to do nothing else but good for others, regardless of motive, is a beautiful and wonderful thing. But when you are trying to serve Muslim peoples who have a theological doctrine to kill, there is no way to control how any Muslims will apply that doctrine. To serve such peoples requires the deepest commitment to humanitarian mission, and to embrace the risk of being killed wrongly, due to religious conviction, if not hatred.

Now I know not all Muslims apply the Qur'an the same way, just as Jews and Christians do not apply their holy books the same way. But in Afghanistan and some other Muslim nations, there are many--either a majority, or fighting and killing to become a ruling elite--who are dedicated to force and violence to ensure their form of Islam is the rule of law. The Qur'an includes force and violence, so they have divine sanctions from their holy book, when they see applications.

So in these nations and regions, humanitarian aid is extremely high-risk, when services provided for some willing and accepting Muslims is taken by unwilling and rejecting Muslim observers as transgressing the Qur'an's commands requiring death. There are humanitarian assistance agencies serving many Muslim nations for decades, so they have known these things for a long time. Yet they still believe strongly enough in their missions to love Muslims they serve, despite the risk of suffering and death. One only can be impressed by the strength and durability of their love.

The Christian Point of View

Christians who intentionally go into Muslim lands know there are many there who consider Christians, Jews, and others, as religious enemies to be killed. They know there are Muslims who enter lands where they live in order to kill, but those who are members of organizations like the International Assistance Mission go to give life. Such Christians as those in IAM go in faith, hope, and love, despite the dangers to themselves.

When they go into Muslim lands, they know they will meet Muslims who believe, because the Qur'an teaches them this, that Christians, Jews, and non-Muslims are their divinely revealed enemies. These Christians also know there are many Muslims who have heard or know millions of others, who call themselves Christians, are ready, willing, and able to kill as many Muslims as possible. The theological and relational cards are stacked against them.

So why do they take such risks? The answer is simple really and it can be found in the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. Setting aside the behaviors of the many Christians who do not obey these, let us see why such people as those murdered in the past several days do what they do.

I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. And just as you want men to treat you, treat them in the same way. And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same thing. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, in order to receive back the same. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for God is kind to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. [Gospel of Luke, 6:27-36]

These teachings are clear enough, but they are insufficient on their own to send Christians who believe them into dangerous lands. Christians like those in International Assistance Mission believe them because Jesus himself obeyed them, even unto death. As he was dying on the cross, he said regarding his killers, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." The Romans, and any Jews who approved, thought they were killing a troublesome man.

The Christians in IAM believe Jesus was the living embodiment of God's love revealed to the world. Jesus was not merely a man but the son of God. And he expected and commanded those who believed his message to do what he did: to love and do good to and for all people, regardless of whether they accepted or rejected it, or whether they appreciated or hated it for their own reasons Jesus was not merely a moral teacher, but God speaking and demonstrating divine love in him.

The Religious Ironies of These Killings

So here we are today. The Christian men and women of IAM went to Afghanistan, serving people with medical assistance, Muslims who consider themselves the enemies of Christians, Jews, and others. The Muslim men, and I will presume no women were there, followed them to track, stop, strip naked, then kill one by one some they considered their enemies, the enemies of their faith, and they succeeded. Those who brought God's divine love through medical service are dead. They who brought their God's divine judgment through bullets are alive.

Two religions brought these people face to face. Faith in two different Gods, love for two different prophets, and hope that full and complete obedience to divine commands given in two different religious books, brought the physicians and executioners together.

Based on what we might guess about the Christians there, it is very likely they prayed for divine mercy for their killers, as they saw them slay their brothers and sisters in Christ, one by one, before they themselves died. Based on what we might guess about the Muslims there, it is very likely they felt satisfaction in obeying Allah, who saw themselves meting out divine justice for their victims, as they lined them up, one by one, to shoot them wherever they fell.

In the event that created this blog, we have these ironies. These Christians healed strangers, even enemies, because they saw their duties towards them from their God's point of view. These Muslims killed strangers, their enemies, because they their duties towards them from their God's point of view.

Yet I must point out, to be fair to both religions, at other times and in other places, there have been Christians who killed Muslims and Muslims who have been merciful to Christians. In neither religion is there complete unanimity or uniformity in the theological views, or behaviors, towards persons not members of those faiths. This is not ironic, only a fact not to be changed ever in the history of the world.

Theism and Atheism

As a Christian myself, who has spent many decades studying why, first, my religion, and then, later, why other religions have killed strangers based on theological views, I want to plant my feet firmly with the Christians like those in IAM. Yet the history of my faith too often has been filled with rivers of blood--that of heretics, Jews, Muslims, and even other Christians lined up in national armies all over Europe and the United States, during our Civil War. There have been too few like the good believers murdered the other day. Jesus said, "Blessed are the makers of shalom (spiritual peace with God), for they shall be called, 'children of God.'"

I understand why atheism seems to be growing in God's world. Anyone who reads certain portions of the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament, and the Qur'an, surely must not wish to believe in a deity who wills the death of strangers. John Wesley, I think, once told someone their god was his devil. The context was different, but I long have felt spiritual resonance with his statement, as I have tried to cope with what has been done in the name of God for millenniums.

Because I believe--sometimes very tenuously, because I know too much Christian history, which weakens my faith--in the New Testament statement that "God is spirit...God is love," for many years I have wondered what the God I believe in thinks about all the little babies, boys and girls, men and women, who have died at the hands of people, of various faiths, who thought they were doing God's will.

There have been many millions whose last mental operations and emotions were filled with the question, "Why?," as they felt their bodies tortured by feeling steel and lead, fire and water, to begin the process, short or long, that would kill them, and take them into the presence of the True God--not the false god of their killers.

I think of the millions of Jews during the Holocaust who asked that question as they heard and smelled the gas come into those false baths, slain by many Nazis who somewhere had their names on some Christian church's roll books. I think of all the millions of African slaves whose lives would have remained better, except for the collaboration of Christians, Muslims, and even some Jews, who all profited from slavery. I think of the millions of Native Americans exterminated and displaced by the collaborations of every European immigrant who came to America and had a share in their demise, and most had a faith in a god who, in their minds, approved, permitted, or tolerated their crimes.

I close this blog by saying how troubled I am by these murders; by what I know led to them; and, by the facts that there are two separate groups in two divided religions--one which grieves, one which rejoices--by these events.

I confess that I need more faith, hope, and love, to continue, as long as I live, in promoting the same kind of loving God served by those in IAM. Though millions of other Christians all over the world seem ready, if not eager, to do the bidding of their separation national leaders and generals, to kill strangers, not to bring love and healing.

In the face of such brutality and bloodshed, are wars sometimes not necessary? It used to be that World War II, and the Nazi ovens and death-camps, were the classic apologies for war and its necessity. However, now more millions know the details of all the menus and operations of an I-Phone than recognize precisely who Adolf Hitler was. Yet, without any major exception, wars have been started mainly due to mass suffering and injustice (when people support them), or due to calculating greed. Today's wars in the Middle East are not "necessary" in the sense "justice requires them."

Whatever the Taliban would have become, had there been no Westerners in their lands, one thing we know. Jesus Christ himself is not to be blamed for the history of Western exploitation around the world. The main "Christianity" the Taliban knows is that of the same American "Christians" who reveled and celebrated the accuracy of the "smart-bombs" during the seige of Baghdad, the celebrated Shock-And-Awe of American military destruction. Few so-called "Christian" Americans cared to think about the horror and terror being inflicted on thousands of innocent Iraqi children, women, men, of all ages and conditions. No, the flash and boom was of greater interest than human beings created in God's image. So how is the history of American "Christian" behavior towards so many of any connection with the tradition of Jesus? No, the members of the Taliban probably saw themselves as killing "Westerners who were sent by Washington," not disciples of Jesus.

When I think about the good Christians who were executed only a few hours ago, I still grieve for them. For their kind of religion was and is good. And I pray to my God that I will have enough faith, hope, and love to pray not for the destruction of those who killed them, but for the illumination of God to show them--in the best places in the Qur'an--that only God knows the hearts of strangers unknown and, as Jesus said, "By their fruits you will know them."

God, give me the strength not to hate, or desire the vicious cycle of retaliation, but to leave all in the hands of a just God who will render on the Last Day a just judgment, and wipe away every tear from the eyes of the just who suffered and died during their time on the earth. I live for this work and pray for more time to do loving work, for the just and the unjust, the righteous and the sinner. I, as the latter, know I need divine help for that work in times like these. JDW

PS: Here is the story of the team's burial in Kabul, covered by the NY Times.

Military PTSD: Veterans Jim Gourley and Thomas Ricks Assault Ignorance

2010-08-04T19:45:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine, who works directly in a military hospital with combat veterans returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan, sent me this. I can not help but pass this on to my readers, who can see it and related links at Thomas Ricks's site. These are combat veterans who understand PTSD, as warriors, as brothers, as patriots who need to be understood.

Do not stare too hard when you go to that link and see Northrup-Grumman's advertisement banner at the top for global security. And do not ask whether or not any of our many military contractors EVER would lobby Congress for peaceful negotiations on any war, if peace would lead to the cancellation of defense contracts. JDW

On Criminality and Federal Offenders

2010-07-20T19:04:00.000-04:00

Occasion for this Essay

Eliza Manningham-Buller, MI5 Chief from 2002-2007 in Britain, just testified that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001, attack nor had any weapons of mass destruction. She said our CIA knew the same, but that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had set up a separate intelligence agency in the Pentagon to arrive at the Bush White House's needed conclusions to declare war against the oil-rich Iraq.

What interested me was the note in the article that the London panel in the inquiry "would not apportion blame or assign criminal liability for mistakes made, but will issue a report later this year with recommendations for future operations and military missions."

In our nation, everyone knows the many people involved in creating a pretext for war with Iraq: the President, Vice-President, and many others all colluded to lead innocent Americans and Iraqis to their deaths, all for oil fields. Yet like those in London, few leaders in either the Republican or Democratic parties ever wanted to press for the many criminal charges possible for such conduct. Representative Dennis Kucinich did draft articles of impeachment against President Bush, but Kucinich, not Bush, was treated as some kind of political crank and renegade.

America and Britain make great claims about being democratic nations living "under the rule of law," as if all other nations do not have their own laws. Yet when our highest officials engage in criminal conduct, we do not treat them as we do other criminals. No, we will not even charge them as criminals, not most of us, with people like Kucinich excepted. We allow them to "admit error" and confess they "made mistakes."

Had no lives been sacrificed upon these plots to obtain control of petroleum reserves, I am sure I would be less motivated for justice, and less driven by the barbarity of what happened in the potentially millions of deaths of innocent people on all sides so far, and continuing.

I feel no inclination for polite slaps on the hands, or for mercy, for any who would use political power to murder innocent people. So, knowing what I am about to write really matters to only the few, I still write for my own adult children, if no one else.

The Legal Definitions of Murder

The definition of murder is "the unlawful killing of a human being by another with malice aforethought, either express or implied." There are three degrees of murder, where killing is: (1) premeditated, with design; (2) lack of premeditation, but a purpose to kill or inflict injury without caring whether it caused death or not; and without provocation to reduce the charge to manslaughter; and, in some states, (3) without intent to kill, in the commission of a felony.

Note that murder is "unlawful killing." War is lawful killing. Regarding our past President and his cabal of oil-hungry collaborators, in their minds all they had to do was obtain the legal consent of the U.S. Congress in order to do their legal war-killing. Their conspiracy they would call later, "a mistake on incorrect information." Yet they constructed that incorrect information, and denied to accept the full corroborations of both the CIA and MI5 which denied their information. Enough of this, for we all know it.

They premeditated, using the legal means of war, killing innocent Americans, and millions of Iraqis who died or will die from the war, to control oil reserves. If somehow in their minds they pushed away these facts, then they are guilty of second degree murder, since they carried out their conspiracy in disregard of its fatal consequences for all those who would die. Finally, if we consider the many points in Kucinich's articles which were felonious, they are guilty of murder in the third degree, since many were killed as "collateral damage" to their commissions of felonies.

The Moral Offense

Every day there are individual Americans and British who are charged, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced either to terms in prison or the death penalty. When these murderers have committed multiple counts of victims, sentences are multiplied and issued concurrently. No one questions, in either nation, that the deaths of innocent people require punishment; that the integrity of our nations requires justice; that our legal systems must mete out severe punishments for murder, for the sake of the dead, their survivors, the welfare of stable societies, and as warnings to those who would commit murder.

Now in America, we know that many are wrongfully convicted due to poor legal representation, other issues such as discrimination due to race or socio-economic status. Our systems of justice do not always work well. Yet we continue to use them, in their imperfections, because the principles of law, justice, and the preservation of society, require us to use the courts as best we can, and to learn from their errors.

Every time I see a murder conviction, and read the frequent severe punishments for the killing of one person--often twenty years without parole, in the federal system--I think about every American war declared on a pretext. This includes Lyndon Johnson's undeclared war in Vietnam, based on The Tonkin Resolution, as well as our latest war in Iraq.

Until the people of the United States of America require that the penalties of our laws apply to all our people, without distinction, we cannot hold up our heads proudly as a free people. Now, Britain has joined us in favoring the high and mighty, but in punishing severely the low and relatively powerless.

If the Bush girls' lives were to have been put on the front lines of battle, just as if the children or grandchildren of the entire Congress were to have been put there, the Iraq War never would have been plotted, approved, declared, and waged. I am amazed and saddened by my Republican and Democratic acquaintances who do not see, with me, that American Justice is selectively applied only to those outside the corridors of power, money, and politics.

The Lincoln Penny: Moral Reflections on Saving A Divided Nation

2010-07-20T17:09:00.000-04:00

The face of Abraham Lincoln is on our U.S. one cent piece, our penny. Most Americans think nothing of Old Honest Abe when they receive or give the lowly penny in daily financial transactions. I used to be puzzled why such a great President was honored in such a lowly denomination. But eventually I realized it was our highest high compliment to him.

The penny is found in every pocket, from the poorest to the wealthiest. The penny is The Everyman Coin. You may never see or hold our highest paper currency, but you always will have access to a penny. Every other denomination we have is only a multiplication of our lowly Lincoln Cent. If only every owner of our U.S. One Cent were reminded of Lincoln's character and morals, which led him to become the great leader he was.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Lincoln ended his Second Inaugural Address wit those words. The Civil War was nearly over, though the nation would remain divided for years to come. Lincoln wanted healing, not punishment; renewed unity and mutual love, not division and enduring hate. "A just and lasting peace" both for the U.S. and with all nations was his closing prayer, though a bullet would still the brain that held out that dream.

It is a great irony that many of today's problems in the United States are due to the penny. People high and low have done every immoral and unethical thing to accumulate the Lincoln Cent, multiplied many hundreds of millions of times over. Forgetting "malice towards none and charity towards all," the values of Lincoln have been replaced by the new golden rule: "Who has the gold, rules."

Above Lincoln's hallowed image is inscribed, "In God We Trust." Many have pointed out that America's real god has been money and, from that fact, that it is fitting that we imprint on our material god our allegiance to it.

E Pluribus Unum:
No Longer True

Flip over the penny and you will see a picture of the Lincoln Memorial. Right above it, you will see the Latin phrase, "e pluribus unum," which translated means, "out of many [peoples], one [nation]." This is a historically, literally true statement. We are a nation of immigrants, and always will be. But being members of the same nation, under the same U.S. Constitution, does not make us one people united in any other way. And that is our problem today.

America's truer motto should read, "out of one [nation], many [factions]." Whether you call our current situation a "plutonomy" or an oligarchy, a small minority controls the most money and power over the great majority of citizens. There is among the oligarchs, contrary to Lincoln's values, "malice towards most, and charity for the few."

Parallels Between Lincoln's Day And Ours

The secession of the Confederate States from the Union was based on the same principle, "malice towards most, and charity for the few." The slaveholders were like today's oligarchs. Their personal profiteering off the backs of millions of slaves was more important than the suffering they imposed on them. When their money supply was threatened, they flaunted the U.S. Constitution and broke away from their own nation, all for money.

Lincoln loved his country. When the "money at any human cost" alliance, with its supreme loyalty to profits more than nation, showed their contempt for the United States of America, Lincoln accepted the war they started. The Civil War was about reinstating e pluribus unum, not allowing our one nation to remain fractured by those who loved money more than our democratic republic.

In our time, our money-hungry and money-driven oligarchs have not caused any states to secede from the Union. No, but what they have done is far more insidious, for it all is legal. They have purchased the loyalties of many in the U.S. Congress who make the laws for all of us. They have protected their money-interests by ensuring that the Few will continue to exploit the Many.

Prior to the Civil War, many speeches were given by Congressmen in southern states that resemble speeches made today. They said, if the status quo was not maintained, the economy would collapse. The Many under the yoke of slavery was not so bad. The Many were better off than they would have been, but only for the benign oversight of their Few masters. Progress was needed, yes, they said, to control a bad Few; however, the entire system was too vital to national interests to remove.

Today's Few have said the same. They refuse term limits. They refuse radical reforms in campaign contributions. Now, the Supreme Court--with a seated majority representing the interests of the Few--has ruled in favor of our oligarchs in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that "corporations are people." The Few now can pour their unlimited funds to elect, with greater assurance than ever, Representatives and Senators for the Few, against the Many. The inversion of Lincoln's sentiment--with malice towards the Many, with charity for the Few--now is legally reinforced. The democratic process, where the Many elect the Few, is permanently infused with the cancer of money.

Lincoln's Dead, But Not Patriots Like Him

I have been thinking about the millions of good Americans throughout our history who made our nation great. The United States of America, with all our problems, remains great because of the Many, not the Few. People of every racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural background always have and always will make up the Many.

In all our past wars, and in our current ones, the Many have set aside their differences to defend freedom. They put aside differences at home, to preserve their common home. Out of many nations, one nation was formed, remains, and in all of its people have hope today.

Abraham Lincoln was killed by a man who wanted to preserve the status quo of the Few over the Many. We have endured and survived much since Lincoln's death. But I hope that the Many will remember their numbers, their U.S. Constitution, and their duty to preserve freedom here at home from those who would rule them as slaves.

When you look at your lowly Lincoln penny, remember who you are, and the man who loved his nation. Resurrect Lincoln's spirit by your own courageous patriotism.

AFRAID TO DIE - A Poem

2010-07-15T13:14:00.005-04:00

AFRAID TO DIE

I’m afraid to die, she said.
I told her it was the bridge
we all crossed.
She told me they were the words
we all used.

Hold me for a while, she said
to her husband
who was speechless
as we spoke.

And he held her,
gently putting his arms
around his wife of many years.

So we talked of death for a while.

They feared to die, I said,
as I spoke of loved ones lost,
who had crossed before.

Their bridge is our bridge, I said,
and we all will cross over it,
must cross over it, together.

There are many alone, I said,
reminding her that there were many
who died alone.

But we’re here with you, I said,
reminding her that to be not alone
was a gift.

I’m dying, she said,
and cried.

As tears rolled down my cheeks,
I told her it was the truth
for us all.

But you’re not alone, I said.

When it comes, and surely it will,
we’ll be here.
That it will come, we know,
but when it will come,
we have no right to guess.

I must go now, I said.
I told them to keep on living,
for breath was.

Thank you, she said,
and sighed.

I walked away, her on my mind,
in my aching heart.

We’re dying, I say,
and I hope,
that someone will say,
I am with you,
when we die.

Rev. Dr. John D. Willis
1985
Written at Salonika’s Restaurant
Chicago, Illinois

jwillis@leadershipethicsonline.com

COMMENTARY

For many years, I served as a Christian minister. During that time, I was studying deeply in history and ethics as I pursued the doctorate. My intellectual formation was shaping my spiritual formation, as I daily learned how people in the past had acted morally and ethically, or not, in the uses of their lives. Every day for me in ministry I knew could be my last, due to accident or illness. I generally took no day's opportunities for granted, though I will not represent myself as always having done the best with what was put before me. I did want to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant," when my life was over.

The poem above was written after I had visited a dying woman and her supportive husband in a hospital. Its content is self-explanatory. The moment in ministry was powerful for me, and I did not return home right afterward. I drove to one of my favorite little restaurants in Hyde Park, in Chicago, bought a cup of coffee, took out some paper, and tried to put down in poetic form what just had happened. Looking back now on this poem, I still have these views, so share this moment in my life in hope that perhaps my readers will find something of benefit for themselves.

I have a few things I want to say about death and dying in America, as I see it today, and of our ethical duties, if not your own religious duties, towards your own family members and friends who face death. The poem has its own charge for you to consider.

America does not manage death very well as a culture. Our media give us images of beautiful, healthy people of all ages, in every context. Everyone has the appearance of perfection--hair, teeth, complexion, dress, and affectations. When we see them, there is conveyed somehow the sense that this is how real people look, communicate, and are. And millions of our people spend billions of dollars, those who have jobs anyway, trying to emulate these Perfect Americans.

All our cultural images reinforce vitality and success. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, are what we see. Yet life also includes death, carefree liberty eventually is displaced by the bondage of unwilling suffering, and happiness will be replaced at some future point with grief.

We are trained by our culture to "look at the positive, not the negative." We are trained to money, profit, materialism, and buying things. Yet real life is so much more than these externals. Our cultural emphases have robbed us of so much of the full richness in real life, and made many nearly automatons to a false idea of what it means to live a full and meaningful lives.

Billions of dollars are spent every month on cosmetic surgeries, periodontal perfection, wardrobes purchased to ensure conformity to current fashion, and every item advertisements convince purchasers somehow will add to their "quality of life." The men and women who have helped ruin our nation all were seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their neighbors, all because they were obsessed with the idea that millions in profits, or added political power, somehow were the most important goals for their lives.

When I was in ministry, I saw some families who, when their loved ones became ill, did not have the capacity to stand beside them in their suffering, decline, and approaching death. I have seen too many family members whose visits became less frequent as the physical conditions of their loved ones worsened. The healthy could not accept the mirror of themselves in the unhealthy. So when they did visit, some went into long explanations of all their many activities and schedules, which had interfered to keep them away.

Many times I have watched in pain, as the sick, enduring terminal illness known by all, silently listened to litanies of excuses. Typically, the last comment and question would be, in a cheery tone and with a forced smile, "You look so good. How are you feeling today?"

Nearly all the patients had listened blankly to what they were hearing. Perhaps they were familiar with the narrative, having themselves offered the same when they were healthy. Depending on the patient, the answers would vary. Some would say quietly and clearly they did not feel well. Some would turn to the facts well-known by all, and say they were "ready to go." And there always were some who did not want to make their loved ones feel uncomfortable, saying they felt better than they did. A few did not answer much. A few said thanks, but they were not feeling well, thanked their visitors for coming, and said they wanted to be alone.

Almost invariably, if a patient said he or she was ready to die, these kinds of visitors would say something like, "Oh, no, you're going to get better. You're going to get out of here. Your golfing buddy is ready for you to go out on the links again. Don't be negative. You have to be positive and cooperate with the doctors. I don't want to hear you talking like that!" These were the people who clearly themselves were trying to avoid the fact of suffering and death. They could not face them even though their own loved one needed their quiet, unremitting support, and understanding.

I realized their responses were from years of conditioning in and by our society, which presents a very shallow and unrealistic view of life, and which suppresses and pushes suffering, decline, and death, out and away from our collective consciousness. These people were not bad. In fact, they had an inner turmoil at work within them. I could see it. Thinking back now on them, I am sure some left the room, dropped their cheery facades, and wept on the way to the car.

Thankfully, I can tell you I also saw many, many family members who did not do this. Their love for their patient made them shed off the habit of shallowness, as they became fully real, fully engaged, fully sacrificial, doing all they could every day and on into the night, whatever was required to listen, respond appropriately, and to become servants of love.

I saw family members gently wash their loved ones. I remember how one loving wife put a small sponge saturated with frozen water to cool the tongue of her husband who could not drink as he lay dying. I saw many who always were there when I came into the room, sleeping there beside their loved ones, ready for any call or any need. What a love I saw in so many. I was deeply moved seeing and hearing the real definition of love poured out in every detail.

In the medieval period, some Christian theologians used to write manuals entitled, "De Ars Bene Moriendi," or, "On the art of dying well." For many years now, when someone solemnly tells me someone they know is "terminal," I say immediately, "Yes, as are we all." Those medieval writers were instructing their readers to live every day within the context of truth--that our lives eventually have an end. What they wrote about, therefore, was not how to develop skill in dying well at the very end, as with fortitude and acceptance. What they taught was, "Live well every day, now, wisely and with well-chosen thoughts, words, and deeds, and then, at the end of your life, you will die well, having lived well."

Those medieval theologians were Christians. For them, to live well in order to die well meant to live every day within the context of divine love. Jesus Christ said that the Great Commandment was to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength; and, that the Second Great Commandment was to love our neighbors as ourselves. There is another passage in the New Testament that says, love covers a multitude of sins.

To be motivated by love, to live in love, to create relationships in love, to live through in love whatever roses or thorns life brings, to be saturated in love, is a wonderful way to live. Let us be purged, and seek to purge from our lives, all that is not of love, and to be open to the divine love that transcends and outlasts all temporal loves.

I hope you enjoyed the poem. JDW

On Fighting and Winning Wars Against Muslims--Or Among Ourselves

2010-07-09T02:43:02.075-04:00

General Petraeus's Remarks: July 4, 2010

We are engaged in a contest of wills.... [The enemy uses] unwitting children to carry out attacks.... In answer, we must demonstrate to the people and to the Taliban that Afghan and international forces are here to safeguard the Afghan people, and that we are in this to win... After years of war, we have arrived at a critical moment. We must demonstrate to the Afghan people, and to the world, that Al-Qaeda and its network of extremist allies will not be allowed to once again establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan from which they can launch attacks on the Afghan people and on freedom-loving nations around the world.... Protecting those we are here to help, nonetheless, does require killing, capturing or turning the insurgents. We will not shrink from that...

These statements were given to the press on the Fourth of July. They were not intended as anything more than general reassurances of commitment to the American people back home. The two phrases that generated this essay were (1) "We are engaged in a contest of wills" and (2) "We are in this to win." My immediate thoughts were, If we're in a contest of wills, we are in for big trouble, and then, He's sending signals to the People, but wonder what 'winning' will mean, when this is over, IF it ever is over?"

I recognize these are sound bites. However, my reactions were more sardonic cynicism than real questions. Petraeus's words were well-received by most Americans on the Fourth of July. But most Americans actually are naive when it comes to foreign wars. For anyone knowing anything about the history of war, let alone America's Vietnam and other guerrilla wars, Petraeus's words were quite hollow for me. Now I am neither naive nor a veteran.

Learning a Little About Islam: 1975 to the Present

I began learning about Islam around 1975, in a general sort of way, by reading entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, and the Encyclopedia of Islam. My main interests in reading about Islam were that religion's historic interactions with my own faith, Christianity, such as the Crusades, and also structural comparisons in dogmatic theology and theological ethics. Most of my PhD curriculum was devoted to studying the history of Christianity, with special attention to the history of Christian violence against heretics as well as persons of other faiths, or without faith.

On the day the World Trade Center was struck, I was at work in the offices of the Kentucky Commission for Human Rights, where I served as an enforcement officer. We went to the storage room and wheeled out the TV on the portable cart and watched in disbelief. In the day or two after September 11, 2001, as soon as I heard the name, "Osama bin Laden," I applied my seasoned research skills to learn about him and whatever he might have written or said prior to that horrible event.

I was excited to find his 1996 declaration of war against Americans and his 1998 declaration against the West and Israel. The news media continued to play and replay the scenes of the destruction, and to move from one "talking head" in Washington DC or the Pentagon to another. After reading just these two statements by Bin Laden, I was completely perplexed as to why no one wanted to cite or reproduce his grievances. There was no need to "speculate" about his motives, for he had revealed his point of view years before.

It seemed to me that both the news media, and its political management in Washington (the White House, CIA, NSA, and FBI), really wanted to "fire up the American people" rather than try to understand Bin Laden's positions--which raised questions about U.S. policies abroad. Three years later, I attempted my own effort at public education.

In 2004, I designed and chaired a symposium for the Association of Conflict Resolution, "Moses, Jesus, Muhammad: What Did the Prophets Teach Regarding Violence and War?" In designing this event, I sought to have at least three representatives respectively from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (in the chronological order of their historical appearance). Since each religion has great diversity within it, I originally hoped to include at least two or three representatives from each, with divergent theological interpretations of their own holy books. This proved too much to manage.

Most of the mujahidin on September 11, 2001, had been citizens from Saudi Arabia, our "historic ally and trading partner." THAT perplexed me, until I read that Bin Laden and others were greatly influenced by Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, from whom had emerged a "Wahabi" Muslim tradition. So I wrote to Prince Bandar, head of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington DC, seeking to have a representative at least present at the symposium. I met with one of his representatives in Embassy in Washington to that end. He gave me a mini-library of Islamic books, including the Qur'an, which I soon learned contained the "Saudi perspective" on Islam. From that point of view alone, these have been helpful.

Facts More Valuable Than Propaganda

America is in trouble in many respects; however, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution still enables much information to remain open in the public domain. There are men and women in various places in our country who would remove any information that contradicts their propaganda. Fortunately, our American democracy still functions well enough that political fascists (and both national parties have their own fascists who want to control the Public Mind) are unsuccessful.

As a historian and also as a man raised on a farm--where facts and hard truth are more valued than "spin"--skepticism at "first appearances" and the "opinion of the Crowd", followed by diligent and unremitting research into as much evidence as possible, I have found that "following the money" often is a very rewarding method to sift and sort out the real motives of most people.

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda struck at the financial heart of America because they HAD followed the money over many years of U.S. foreign policy. American politicians and transnational corporations had no real interest in Muslim peoples other than controlling and extracting their oil reserves. Bin Laden's list of complaints no one here in America seems interested in. It is as if, because he is a murderer, and an abuser of the Muslim doctrine of jihad, no one is interested in his reasons for murdering.

It seems reasonable to me for any democratic society, which historically has made claims to teach the world about human rights, to have the moral strength of character to listen to allegations of our enemies when there IS a "gap between our talk and our walk." Is is not true that sometimes we rise up in hate and revulsion when our worst critics speak the TRUTH, or include truth as a core part of their criticism?

Even an enemy can teach us something, besides providing us with a target for our laser-guided missiles. Why should Americans not use their democracy and freedom to discuss whatever weaknesses or failures we have as a people, as all other nations have, since none are perfect? Why should we not take the facts within the charges of our enemies--who seek to destroy us--and admit them?

To deny those facts, or say they are not facts, is to SUPPORT our enemies' contentions that we are moral and political hypocrites. If someone speaks the truth about some person, organization, or even a nation's policies--yet the person, organization, or nation is so arrogant, proud, self-righteousness, and DELUSIONAL, as to think that Denial Is Sufficient to overcome truth, this is a sign of moral cancer and turpitude.

Nevertheless, as one who has studied the history of my own beloved nation, and taught it on the undergraduate level, whatever our merits, and the freedoms enshrined within our U.S. Constitution, we have been as slow to admit our sins and wickedness as every other nation.

Propaganda always has been more important to politically-minded peoples, not only in America but in all nations, than a full and balanced statement of the facts. So while Gen. Petraeus's short comments on the Fourth of July surely had some element of sincerity within them, he and other veterans of foreign wars know things are far more complex and difficult. To that extent, his words were propaganda.

The following comments are posted after a number of revisions. I've tried to pare down my thoughts to the attention span of most readers. Any who want a fuller exposition can ask. JDW

Petraeus Is Correct:
There is a Such a Thing as "Will"

Gen. Petraeus said we are in a "contest of wills." For many years, I did not believe there was such as thing as a "will." It was too ethereal, too theological, too immune from scientific analysis. I held the "will" to be deeply committed ideas and values. I think many would agree with this today. Yet over the years, I have come to believe there is a will that is deeper than rationalism. Torture breaks down the resistance of reason. Many have their "wills broken" under waves of pain. This is understandable and acceptable to me. They have no criticism or condemnation.

Yet there are many examples of men and women, even youths, upon whom every physical torture or duress, even obliterating reason, do not break their wills. Perhaps military experts in psychological manipulation will deny this. Perhaps they are correct. But I know, or believe I know, based on my studies of historical narratives, some individuals have denied or broken the wills of their captors, whose torture could not break them.

So while I still continue to value the indoctrination of reason, and the habituation of behavior modification rendering near-autonomic responses, I will affirm there is a will to fight and win. I now turn to consider the differences between the American will to fight and win, and that of our Muslim enemies.

The U.S. Will is Contingent

Contingent means, dependent on certain outcomes. If certain strategic objectives are not attained at some indeterminate time in the future, there is a possibility the U.S. will withdraw from these combat operations. Based on what I know, as an outsider, it may be a very long time until we have a Vietnam-like cessation of operations. There are other pressing factors now that may, possibly, forestall unlimited combat. I will address the U.S. economy and other issues below, later.

Among American citizens, some have a non-contingent attitude about fighting and defeating our Muslim enemies. Some of these believe nuclear annihilation is an option to be exercised. They believe carpet-bombing the entire region would end the conflict by exterminating all living persons, the guilty along with the innocent. We do have precedent for the annihilation principle in U.S. military history, the genocides of some Native American nations. Nevertheless, nuclear annihilation is neither a political option, nor a pragmatic final solution. The last two words are not an allusion to the Nazi program with the same name.

The U.S. military strategic goals are dependent on achieving certain specific military and political objectives. Gen. Petraeus has said we are in this to win. What this means is the U.S. will not withdraw from either Afghanistan or Iraq, ever, until our objectives are attained. I will describe below why our contingent will to win cannot obtain our goals, ever, because of certain factors resident in our enemies' will to win and their definition of "winning," neither which are contingent.

Regarding U.S. soldiers on the ground, they are patriot-tools for our generals and strategists in the Pentagon. Their wills also are contingent. So long as they believe they are fighting for their homeland, so long as they believe their leaders are fighting to win, they will remain resolute. Since our soldiers are in the field and see first-hand the victories or set-backs they do, and since they also talk among themselves and hear reports from home, these factors have contingent effects of their fighting will.

The Muslim Will is Absolute

The Muslim will to win is absolute, not contingent. Even if carpet-bombing took out all living strategists and warriors in the region, other Muslims would arise from the international scene to replace them. If somehow all the international recruits could be killed, indeed, if all Muslims in the world could be killed, the cause of their will would remain: the Qur'an. And since the Qur'an cannot be annihilated and removed from human history, its teachings always will raise up new converts to obey nothing contingent, but everything, absolute.

I will take a few moments to describe generally the dynamics that create and sustain the Muslim will to fight.

The word, islam, means "submission" and in the heart and soul of Islam is the absolute demand, given throughout the Qur'an, on Allah's requirements for submission for every believer, of both genders, of all ages, of all tongues, and in all nations.

From the time a person becomes a Muslim by believing and confessing the Shahadah, the confession of faith--La ilaha illa-Allah, Muhummadur Rasuhullah ("there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet")--the life of islam is the daily struggle to submit all the believer is, and all the believer's deeds and effects in the world, to the will of Allah. There are no exceptions. There is no grace. This is the duty: to direct one's will, thoughts, emotions, speech, behaviors, and social relationships in and under the will of Allah. This is the Muslim way. There is no democracy here, only a theocracy.

The task of submission is not easy, and requires struggle. That word, struggle, in Arabic is called, jihad. Americans think this word, in their minds shaped by propaganda, means a hate-filled war against the U.S. and all things Western. This is incorrect. There are three main aspects in the Muslim struggle to submit and subordinate all to the will of Allah revealed by Muhammad.

Jihad had three spheres in which this struggle occurs: (1) personal jihad, the struggle to submit the self; (2) social jihad, the struggle to use all one's personal efforts, resources, and influence, to help other Muslim society in all its organizations submit to the will of Allah; and, (3) military jihad, the struggle--first and always only defensively, after an attack on fellow Muslims, or after Islam has been rejected and attacked--either to defeat the enemies, or, something either unknown, neglected, or rejected by U.S. and Western strategists, to negotiate a just end to hostilities.

The Muslim will, therefore, is completely conditioned by, daily familiar with, and committed to both submission to Allah and the struggle required even to be a Muslim in this multi-faceted concept a Muslim calls jihad. The first two spheres of jihad are positive in orientation with a positive goal: success in submission. In the third sphere, however, attack against Muslims and the House of Islam, this is a compounded negative struggle.

Enemies--wherever they exist--threaten the individual Muslim, one's family, one's extended family in the faith wherever they live in the world. Islam is one people united in their submission to and struggle for obedience Allah. Therefore, military jihad, irrespective of why or against whom the harm or offense has been done, is of international and universal Muslim concern.

Recruitment, therefore, is not based on innate or natural hatred of all things American or Western. Were there no aggression against Muslim people, lands, or natural resources, there could be no permissible basis on which to fight. Muhammad and the Qur'an do not allow it. The will of Muslims to engage in jihad is dissolved when conditions for military jihad are removed.

The danger for good Muslims, like good Americans, is based also in perceptions. Corrupt and evil imams or mujahidin leaders know the jihad principle is fundamental, elemental. And they, like American leaders interested in oil reserves, can and do manipulate other Muslims, who are not innately bellicose, to perceive, for example as an extreme case, "all Americans must die." These are precisely like Americans who want to carpet-bomb the region.

The problem we have, as I see it, is that there are factual bases bad Muslim leaders can use: (1) U.S. interests in Muslim oil; (2) U.S. alliances with corrupt regimes [i.e., shirk, or false Muslims selling out Muslim resources for their own greed and power]; and, (3) many examples where the U.S. have turned a blind moral eye to suffering Muslims [e.g., those persecuted by corrupt Muslim regimes, or passively, as in the case of the Palestinians, allowing others to harm them unjustly].

The following point is missed by nearly all Americans. On September 11, 2001, television news showed Muslims all over the world rejoicing in the streets. Many Americans and others in the West were completely benumbed and dumbfounded, asking, "Why would these people cheer such a horrible event?" The answer actually is simple. They did not hate the American people, or despise the dead.

Americans as a people have followed whatever propaganda dished out by our administrations. Though the Saudis, for example, are historic allies for profits with our petroleum industries, they are brutal in the suppression of reform groups. They have their own torture chambers. In scores of examples, American politicians and our corporations have called "friends" those who assist U.S. profits, but who oppress local populations. This has gone on for at least one hundred years, if we add in the British, then American, systematic legal disestablishment and physical displacement of Muslims in Jerusalem, then the West Bank. This is not an anti-Israeli statement, merely a factual one.

The cheers on 9-11-01 were based on a long-developing antagonism with U.S. collaboration in injustice against Muslims. The antipathy was against U.S. government policies historically disinterested in Muslim grievances against injustice, historically allied with corporate profits (and Israeli policies). While surely there were some in those crowds who hate "all Americans" (as some Americans hate "all Muslims" or even "all Jews"), most Muslims applauded that untouchable America had been touched, in a nerve center, and graphically for all the world to see.

For those who hate all Americans, I would surmise their basis is not innate vile hatred, but their disgust that the American people have for so long accepted passively the propaganda dispensed by their oligarchs, a consistent and long line of U.S. administrations allied with transnational corporations.

Bad Muslim leaders cherish the fact that American leaders and corporations have given them the objective conditions for jihad. This enables the worst of them to use genuine abuses as cover for their own egotistical manipulation. Just as there have been bad Christians and Jews, who abused their faiths for personal ambition and power, so also there are equally bad Muslims who harness the theological dynamic of jihad, for theirs. Having a holy book does not make a holy man, nor does a wicked man quoting a holy text know the God of that text.

The final steel in the backbones of Muslims' will to fight is well known. There is only one assured path to salvation, so far as I know, in Islam: martyrdom in military jihad. This motivation emboldens children, teens, women, and, of course, men (who have testosterone added), to volunteer for and remain in combat, with the prospect of dying in it, or to use military strategies involving various forms of suicide, to achieve assured paradise. In itself, this is layered upon the structural concept of jihad and is most useful for corrupt and manipulative imams or mujahidin generals for exploitation.

Brief Summary Comparison:
U.S. and Muslim Wills to Fight

There are individual U.S. military, strategists and soldiers on the ground, with wills to fight and win just as completely indomitable as any Muslims today. This always will be true. There are Americans who love freedom who possess in implacable will to fight and defend it. The great constitutive difference between the two armies, as classes, is the difference between democracy and theocracy.

The American will to fight is not engaged by holy books. Yes, our history of wars is full of mainly Christian preachers and priests quoting the Bible to justify the latest policy passed down from their favorite politicians. But today, the American will to fight is driven by sufficient contingent conditions commonly called "just war." This means, Americans go to war when there are factual events warranting war. We live in a democratic society, and our will to fight always has been based on defending our way of life. We must be persuaded that fighting is necessary for our safety, our families' safety, and to preserve our way of life. Americans live in a free society where we defend freedom not through dictatorial order, but the consensus of our people a "just cause" exists to go to war. Unfortunately, over the past several decades our Presidents and their psychological warfare advisers have trained us like seals to bark and gulp down every fish code-named "national security."

Therefore, the American will to fight is contingent on two fronts. Compelling factual and reasonable causes for war and, as Petraeus briefly outlined, specific military objectives to attain. These are our basic drivers to fight. When these drivers are either removed, through victory, or else eroded through discovery of data showing wars were initiated or fought contrary to the initiating drivers, the erosion of will follows. (I will discuss this point, used by bin Laden and all other Muslim strategists, under the next major section heading below.)

In the case of Islamic warriors, the will to struggle in military combat is the third sphere of the revealed, normal, theocratic life for all Muslims. Again, the Qur'an does not teach external warring in the world as the "normal" Islamic way, despite what the worst imams teach through their perverse doctrines. But Muhammad did command defensive war. When Muslims are harmed, Muslims must fight.

I will not go into details on Muhammad's several reasons for military jihad. Defense is one. Justice, primitive justice--the ancient "eye for an eye" principle found in Moses, but not Jesus--is another. Yet Muhammad forbids emotional revenge. Revenge must be restrained and controlled under Allah's principle of just retaliation. But again, Americans generally are uninterested in reading the Qur'an, and some clearly want their own revenge, e.g., carpet-bombing.

Therefore, the American will to fight is contingent, and the Muslim will to fight is absolute. One is based in the democratic process, the other is based in the theocratic process. Enough has been said on these points.

Muslim Military Strategy:
Eroding the American Will to Fight Through Contingency

Muslim strategists like Osama bin Laden, and many others besides him, understand the democratically-generated will to fight. I have discussed contingency above as attaining certain specific military objective. Our Muslim enemies understand that, since Americans do not possess a natural jihad-based view of life (again, I mean in the fullest sense of three spheres), other contingent factors can erode the will to fight that does exist. I will address this now.

In 2004, Osama bin Laden taunted "Bush II" with a radio address, but used this public format to try to erode the American will to fight.

All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make [American] generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits [i.e., profits] for their private companies. This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers. We, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.... So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.... That being said, ... one cannot say that al-Qaida is the sole factor in achieving those spectacular gains. Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations, whether they work in the fields of arms, oil, or reconstruction, has helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results. [A]l-Qaida spent $500,000 on [one] event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost, according to the lowest estimate, more than $500 billion. This means that every al-Qaida dollar defeated a million [American] dollars ... besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. As for the size of the [U.S.] economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan.

This is a most important statement. Bin Laden's main content is focused on how Muslim military strategies, essentially guerrilla tactics using carefully devised hit-and-run tactics, are highly economical and demonstrably effective. Using the protracted Soviet war in Afghanistan as his historical example of success, he expresses a calm confidence in the "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan" for the current conflict. A few remarks are in order.

First, it is true that American allied support, engendered by the successful efforts of Texas U.S. Representative Charles Wilson, enabled the Muslim victory to occur as it did. Without that support, the mujahidin would have fought on for years, though they never would have quit. Soviet losses were accelerated and compounded by the use of U.S. advanced weapons, finally draining the Soviet will to continue. But the Soviet will also was eroded by economic collapse at home.

Before connecting bin Laden's "bleed-until-bankrupt plan" strategy--which is essentially the war of attrition using macroeconomics--to our current situations here in the U.S., I suggest that the attack on the World Trade Center was the first application of this.

Had bin Laden and his group been wishing to kill as many Americans as possible, he would have chosen something like biological warfare or, what many fear now, nuclear weapons. Destroying the World Trade Center was not a good target selection for killing large numbers. But it was highly effective in two ways: (1) as a physical symbol of American capitalism, based in New York, and (2) as a real nerve center for many U.S. financial and other corporations.

In his radio speech, bin Laden put the economic damage at $500,000,000 dollars. I have heard estimates it actually was $1,000,000,000,000. I propose that the destruction of the World Trade Center was the first strike in the "bleed-until-bankrupt plan."

American Corporations:
Unwitting Allies With Bin Laden and Others

I have thought many times how our most intelligent Muslim enemies must laugh at what has happened here over the past several years. Again, I do not believe their laughter is because they hate the American people as a people. I simply do not believe that, not because I am pro-Muslim or naive to the worst leaders they have who sincerely hate all things American and Western. I am not pro-Muslim, and I do believe some Muslim leaders simply must be killed, not because they are our enemies, but because they are insane.

No, the laughter about which I speak is how our greediest American corporations have accelerated and compounded American bankruptcy in progress. Bin Laden, and all groups more extreme than his, have much about which to laugh.

If U.S. missiles against the Soviets can be compared with the U.S. commercial jetliners against the World Trade Center, just as the collapsing Soviet economy dissolved their will to fight on, so too the collapsing U.S. economy is an acid eating away our the U.S. will to fight on.

The Acid of Economics

If our nation were flush with cash, I have little doubt that even nine years of fighting would deter the majority of Americans from pouring more into our current wars. Yet we are unofficially bankrupt. Congress continues to strip and pare down domestic programs affecting millions of citizens. The Senate now has refused even to authorize benefits for the unemployed because they are "not paid for."

Many millions of Americans have lost jobs, homes, savings, and face poverty. Millions have run out of options. Yet these same citizens see Congress spending hundreds of billions for wars overseas, with no complaints. All know that--whatever one's politics on those wars--the bulk of the money goes into the pockets of military contractors, not pay and benefits for brave soldiers in combat. Congress approved nearly One Trillion dollars of "bailout" for irresponsible corporations. How ironic that the capital for the bailouts is many decades of as-yet uncollected tax revenues from a shrinking tax base, compounding this foolishness. Conditions for a domestic war between the American Oligarchs and American Sheared Sheep are growing.

Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist centuries who lived centuries before the Roman Empire, is required reading for anyone waging war. Among his classic strategies in his famous book, The Art of War are these: "await the exhausted enemy at your ease" and "loot a burning house." Bin Laden surely has read Sun Tzu. So did Chairman Mao Zedong. So do his children and grandchildren, as the Communist People's Republic of China's strategic economy victory of the U.S. now is nearly complete.

Millions of Americans eagerly would slay simultaneously both the good and evil, just and unjust Muslims with carpet-bombing. Not many Americans even know the phrase, Fifth Column. Educate yourself. I would argue persuasively that the same corporate interests which (1) historically ignored legitimate harms against certain Muslim peoples, through corrupt alliances for profit and (2) willfully plundered and ruined the American economy are our Fifth Column today.

But again, Americans are more interested in propaganda. Nevertheless, now they are beginning to feel the acid of economic collapse, this factual cancer already having eaten the American Dream of millions--never to be restored. This acidic cancer was not caused by one Muslim military strike costing $1,000,000,000 and 3,000 lives. This was caused by domestic economic terrorists whose cluster bombs cost at least $14,000,000,000 and how many millions of American citizens, in the present and future long distant.

Our enemies can laugh in derision, not necessarily due to any real hate for people like me and you. The same American corporate interests that ignored Muslim injustices for greed, also perpetrated injustices against us for greed. Now we feel at home what our enemies felt abroad.

Still, Americans are like all other nations. We simply prefer propaganda. We want to believe, like Gottfried Leibniz, we are the "best of all possible nations," despite, like him, evidence to the contrary. We always have preferred scapegoats to historical honesty. Educate yourself. Read merely the history of U.S. laws, our factual codifications of who we were and what we were willing to enforce wtih police and armies.

Though we have domestic terrorists among us, guilty of many counts of the federal crime, misprision of treason, we forever will be what our democratic ancestors were: the pawns of propaganda. We willingly pour on the Altar of Freedom precious blood and treasure on pretexts by those who rule over us in contempt of us.

The Acid of War Come Home

There is an ancient Roman proverb, dulce bellum inexpertis: "war is sweet to the inexperienced." Mark Twain illustrated this truth in his posthumously-published little piece, The War Prayer.

Men and women who return from combat--physically whole and uninjured, or not--forever carry emotional and psychological scarring. Whether infantry or support, no one in battle or providing medical or other care for warriors can forget the memories of war.

What American mother would want to know that the picture to the left is all that remained of her son or daughter? What comrade, if any survived the blast causing this carnage, can forget the name and face of this patriot who volunteered to risk and lose life for freedom for the United States--and for Muslim peoples under the tyranny of Taliban, or current chaotic and corrupt governments either installed by the U.S. or voted into office by people unready for democracy. I honor the remains of the soldier to the left. I hold contempt for the oligarchs who sent him or her to die not for freedom, but profits.

The picture to the right is an Afghan child, I think a female, burned by an American white phosphorus weapon. The rules of engagement limit how this weapon is used, but noncombatants regularly are eaten alive by it. Her forehead shows a cross-hatch scar from an American bandage that saved her life. One American nearly killed her and turned her beauty into monstrosity. Another American saved her life, but for what, in Muslim society? No Muslim will marry her. She will fend for herself all her days. The U.S. soldiers who hurt or helped her may, if they survive, return home to see their own daughters and granddaughters. The rest of their days will have the memory of this girl, and they will wonder if what they did was right.

Our U.S. Veterans Administration now has a section devoted to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have a close friend at a military hospital who treats combat veterans suffering from PTSD. All had symptoms of PTSD on the battlefield. Nearly all were examined and given clean bills of psychiatric help when their combat tours were over. Why? A discharge with a disability qualification means years of expensive treatments, which must be absorbed by the VA. So they were discharged healthy.

This friend comes from three generations of decorated Army officers, graduates of West Point. This friend has a cousin with several stars on his shoulders. My friend is no pacifist, but is bitterly against the oligarchs, who send men and women to war for profits, then install bean counters to keep brave soldiers, not from profits, but from treatment and healing. This friend has a cancer of cynicism and despair, placed within by what is seen every day.

Dick Cheney's heart condition is aggrieved by many, but it aggrieved millions while he was in office. His decision not to allow media coverage of veterans' coffins returned home, on the specious ground of "privacy and respect for families." Gullible supporters accepted that, but the real reason was he did not want the acidic reminder to Americans that Halliburton's venture was costing human lives. The Vietnam war effort suffered at home by media coverage, and the Bush White House wanted ideological control and command, even at the cost of seeing the our fallen patriots' remains back home.

"In This To Win":

Succinct Comparisons Between U.S. and Muslim Goals

The U.S. Definition of Winning:
Temporal and Contingent

The initial reason for bombing Afghanistan was revenge against the September 11, 2001, bombings and to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his strategic planners, and those following them. We still do not know why at Tora Bora insufficient troops were on the ground, or why bin Laden was allowed to escape. We do not know why President Bush later said he no longer was concerned with bin Laden.

We do know the war in Iraq was based on lies regarding WMDs. We also know war plans against Iraq were begun soon after September 11, 2001, with detailed maps of oil fields. We know President Bush instructed Iraqis not to "destroy oil fields" prior to the bombing campaign or to defend a regime about to fall.

The U.S. definition of winning in the Iraq war is for control of its oil reserves. Now that minerals and metals have been discovered in Afghanistan (if not known before), perhaps our goals there also have changed. In any case, the U.S. definition of winning is tied to economic objectives which, if they ever are obtained, must be sustained by Muslim coalition governments willing to cooperate with U.S. economic goals. The U.S.'s "nation-building" goals are for pro-American indigenous governments, not democratically elected governments protecting their own natural resources.

The American government is using the precious blood of its patriots for temporal purposes, economic objectives, not the spread of freedom and democracy.

This is seen by the fall of Iraq. In April, 2003, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner was put in charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Garner believed in real democracy. He began to work for free elections within 90 days. He wanted to hand Iraq over to them through free elections to form their own government. After serving three months, he was removed and replaced by Paul Bremer, before he could finish. Washington had not had enough time to form coalitions favorable or controllable by the U.S. In December, 2004, Bremer was given the Medal of Freedom by President Bush. He had done his work.

This is seen by the installation of Hamid Karzai as President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in December, 2004. Whether or not Wayne Madsen's 2002 article, "Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team, can be verified in its many details, I do not know. He is so specific in his names, dates, and events, he has great courage if he is a liar. One thing I know. Karzai is targeted by our U.S. enemies, for he is completely subordinate to U.S. economic interests in his country and the region.

"Winning" the war in Afghanistan is, like Iraq, meeting and holding strategic political and economic control of natural resources. Since this is the case, so long as the U.S. can afford financially to fight (which will be discussed below), it is committed long-term and permanently to the "contest of wills" to which Petraeus referred. The U.S. will is engaged, therefore, in a contest over natural resources, control and command over them, in the U.S.'s economic interests. This contest is for temporal gain.

The Muslim Definition of Winning:
Absolute and Eternal, or Contingent and Temporal?

Nearly all Americans are ignorant of anything about Muslims or Islam, other than what they are told, and willingly believe, by (1) their national political party, (2) their favorite utterly vacuous radio talking-head, purchased by one party or another, or (3) trying to discern what might be true in federal propaganda. It behooves all true patriots, if they really love the men and women we send to fight a war, to know why our enemies are fighting U.S. troops, and what they hope to obtain, or win.

One would dream, but this is only a dream, that the American people would use the precious Bill of Rights to search far and wide for all the available answers to such questions. But then, it seems most Americans are more sheep than lions when it comes to searching for facts. Regarding September 11, 2001, I recently have been gratified by one lion in Vermont, John Heartson. What interesting work for an engineer and a musician. I encourage readers to go through his materials, and challenge his results.

Based on what I can determine, our Muslim enemies are divided among themselves as to what they hope to win in Afghanistan, Iraq, the West Bank, or any other region where U.S. interests, policies, and presence have created or allowed harm to Muslim populations. One thing is sure. Our enemies in the current wars are allied, at least temporarily, until certain strategic objectives are obtained.

Yet any American who believes that all Muslim enemies are solely dedicated to the destruction of America and all its innocent citizens are wrong. Simply and flatly wrong. In order to save time in this already overly-long essay, I have tried to summarize the main Muslim factions and what they seek.

If what follows below is any help to my fellow Americans interested in a more complex understanding than that offered by our worst media figures, and our worst U.S. Congresspersons, then I will have done some good. Our enemies are not one group, but several in alliance. I will try to separate their separate, different goals, starting with the immediate ones common to them all, and descending to broader ones.

Withdrawal of U.S. Forces and Corporations From Muslim Lands

This seems a common goal among all groups.
This guarantees, since the U.S. will not allow this, interminable hostilities.
Our Muslim enemies know this, and are prepared to fight forever.
Their will to fight is not, again, natural bellicosity, the Qur'anic teaching; that is, no foreign aggression against the House of Islam can stand.
Because the "bleed-until-bankrupt plan" has worked before, and because the U.S. has accelerated its own bankruptcy from within, our enemies are stirred and emboldened with rightly-placed confidence of some as yet unknown but certain progress towards this ultimate goal.

Establishment of Muslim Regimes in Freed Territories/Nations

Here is where sectarian, tribal, and ethnic differences assure hostilities among Muslims themselves, were the U.S. to withdraw.
The Taliban, for instance, is not loved by all Muslims, nor even by all Afghanis, but the Taliban is committed to its version of what sharia requires. So the Muslims who find Taliban doctrines and arrogance insufferable will oppose it their own way.
Saddam Hussein's despotic rule might have ended earlier, without U.S. support for so many years. Now that the U.S. is trying desperately to set up another indigenous coalition favorable to our economic interests, the absence of a dictator-gone-off-the-reservation promises unsatisfactory results. Iraq has its own thousand-years' history of sectarian and tribal hostilities in various regions. This in itself promises perpetual U.S. involvement, to control what Muslims have found uncontrollable without despotism.

Negotiated Peace With the U.S. for Independent Muslim Development

Not many Americans understand that some current Muslim enemies want the two military objectives above, but seek a negotiated peace with the U.S.
Muhammad commanded negotiations with enemies under the following conditions:

the enemies, who initiated the conflict, must initiate negotiations with Muslims as equals, not subordinates;
the enemies must have their intentions verified as in good faith;
Muslim negotiations must be in good faith, in no way setting aside or surrendering just Muslim claims for restitution
Muslim negotiations must be honorable in the sight of Allah.

Unconditional Defeat and Destruction of the U.S. and the West

Many Americans wrongly believe this is the sole military objective of all our Muslim enemies abroad or in this country. There are many now engaged in battle against us, who use this language; however, for some this is propaganda.

They must use bold and threatening language to keep their troops in line, and from defecting to the ranks of those who truly have this goal.
Upon changed conditions, these propagandists will abandon this language, if they believe their Muslim interests are advanced, and will show themselves in the third class above.

The enemies truly in this class have multiplied since the invasion of Afghanistan and the Iraq war. Always committed to the first and second objectives, many of these also were amenable to the third objective. However, the evidence of the past nine years has moved them permanently away from that, to the fourth objective.

The killing and maiming of civilian populations has hardened them against negotiation in the future.
The evidence that the Iraq war was started on false grounds, with its added killing of innocent Iraqis, compounds the conviction that the American people--who did not rise up to remove the Bush administration--are in collusion with corporate interests.

Summary:

A "Contest of Wills" and On "In This To Win"

The Contest of Wills:
Americans Against Its Energy Oligarchs?

The United States is committed, apparently forever, to its petroleum interests in the Middle East. Until the foreign policies of our nation are detached from petroleum derived from Muslim nations and territories, we forever will fight indigenous Muslims who are, to the degree they want self-determination to rule themselves in their own ways--after they have slain each other to see who the victors will be, among their own--they are merely "freedom fighters."

No, their freedom is not American freedom. No, the Taliban, the Saudis, the Iranians, and any other Muslims, who stone or cut off the heads of adulterers, who the Qur'an justifies in domestic violence, who indoctrinate little children through isolation in madrassas, who use the lash and every form of inhumane coercive punishment against those who disagree with them, all these have a twisted and perverse religion, in my view.

But the United States has had its own perversions in our history. And many of them were driven by profits. See the historical appendix when this section is done. We are not clean. We are not a consistently moral people, based on our own history. Even in our own day, the heirs of slaves still are treated with contempt by a percentage of our population. And no one cares about the heirs of Native Americans, or how we stole an entire continent from them. The Indians are a dead issue.

So I find it a complete historical hypocrisy to ridicule Muslim peoples abroad or at home. At least officially, they tolerate no pornography. They require prayer five times a day. They require zakat, the giving of alms to the poor. They do not allow, again, at least officially, any Muslim to loan money to another Muslim at interest, something no Christians or Jews have much trouble with. I do not know how well they do these things. But the burkah and beheading are not the sum total of Islam.

Therefore, if any American truly wants an end to most of our enemies' antipathies against American corporations, and an entire unbroken line of American Presidents who tow the line for them, then separation from the United States of any unjust alliances with puppet Muslim governments is the simplest and most direct route.

Another Contest of Wills:
Engaging Our Enemies on Their Ground

Now we all know our Muslim enemies train little children, teens, and women to strap on bomb-belts. This, they teach them, is jihad. As stated before, there are two other forms of jihad: personal and social.

I believe it is time for Americans to quit focusing so much on military jihad and start reading the Qur'an. I can just hear some readers now: "This idiot says I need to read the Qur'an? He's got to be one of those camel-jockeys! What they need is the Bible, and him too!" Hold your horses, and I'll hold my camels. Now the reason I say we need to start reading the Qur'an are obvious to me.

If someone is out to kill you, based on a religious book, it behooves you to read the religious book. Otherwise, from a military point of view, you fail to gather intelligence. And, as Muhammad himself recognized, his commands were given aware that some unbelievers would try subterfuge for conquest.
Nevertheless, Muhammad gave these as commands. They are obligations. And unless one is such a hater of innocent Muslim babies and children, who God gave life, or such a hater of Muslims who do not agree with imams dedicated to killing you, why would you not want to know a legitimate basis of appeal upon which to negotiate treaties for the sake of the innocent?
Moreover, there are Muslims who hear nothing but the "kill the infidels" commands and who, just like Christians, whose right-wing pastors encourage them to kill "the infidel hordes of Muslims" or the "unbelieving Christ-killers, the Jews," does it not honor the good Muslim who wants to obey Allah, not even his or her ordinarily favorite but prejudiced imam?
And, for those in the U.S. political or military establishment who are Christians in spirit and the letter, is it not in their interests to know each, every, and all bases for negotiated treaties and settlements, and in that way, to have the tools truly and honorably to love their enemies by respecting what they believe to be the Word of God?

But there is a more important reason than this. All our Muslim enemies say, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet." OK, fine. Then let's start reading the Qur'an to see if they are following everything Muhammad commanded. I can recommend this because I've read just about all the Qur'an and there are some things Osama bin Laden is leaving conveniently out. Muhammad commanded things I have heard no U.S.-hater claim, teach, or obey.

I ask these mujahidin to engage in personal jihad and submit their own hatreds and vengeance to all Muhammad commands in Anfaal, and Taubaor Bar'aat:

Fear trial which affects not in particular only those of you who do wrong, and know that Allah is strict in punishment. Call to mind when you were a small band, deemed weak throughout all the land, and afraid that men might despoil and kidnap you. But He provided a safe asylum for you, strengthened you with His aid, and gave you good things for sustenance: that you might be grateful. O, you who believe! Betray not the trust of Allah and the Messenger, nor misappropriate knowingly things entrusted to you. (8:25-26)

Let not the unbelievers think that they can get the better. They will never frustrate. Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemies, and others besides, who you may not know, but whom Allah does know. Whatever you shall spend in the cause of Allah shall be repaid unto you, and you shall not be treated unjustly. (8:59-60)

But if the enemy inclines towards peace, you do also incline towards peace, and trust in Allah; for He is the One who hears and knows. Should they intend to deceive you, truly, Allah is enough for you. He is the One who has strengthened you with His aid and with the believers. (8:61-62)

An immunity from Allah and His Messenger, to those of the Pagans with whom you have contracted mutual alliances.... Obligations are not dissolved with those pagans with whom you have entered into alliances and who have not subsequently failed you in anything, nor aided anyone against you. So fulfill your engagements with them to the end of their term, for Allah loves the righteous. But when the forbidden months are past [i.e., treaties expire], then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem. But if they establish regular prayers and pay zakat, then open the way for them, for Allah is often forgiving, most merciful. If one among the pagans ask you for asylum, grant it to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah, and then escort him to where he can be secure. This is because they are men without knowledge. (9:1-6)

How can there be a covenant before Allah and His Messenger, with the pagans, except those with whom you made a treaty near the Sacred Mosque? As long as these stand true to you, you stand true to them, for Allah does love the righteous. (9:7)

But if they violate their oaths after their covenant, and attack your faith, you fight the Chiefs of unfaith, for their oaths are nothing to them, therefore, that they may be [self-?] restrained. (9:12)

O, you who believe! Do not take for protectors your fathers and your brothers, if they love infidelity above faith. If any among you do, they do wrong. Say, "If it be that your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your mates, or your kin, the wealth you have gained, the commerce in which you fear a decline, or the dwellings in which you delight--are these dearer to you than Allah, or His Messenger, or the striving in His cause? Then wait until Allah brings about His decree, and Allah guides not the rebellious." (9:23-24)

Some Direct Questions for Our Enemies:
On Why You Do What You Do

Muhammad commanded that Muslims could fight when people rejected Islam or when they attacked Muslims. He also said many things about Christians and Jews: that they were People of the Book, that they had Moses, Jesus, and the other prophets; that they were to be tolerated so long as they respected Muslims; and, that if they acted justly towards Muslims, they were to be treated with respect. Muhammad also commanded that women and children, strangers and noncombatants, were not to be slain but protected. He also commanded that Muslims were to use retaliation--an eye for an eye--as their basis for holy jihad, just as Allah, who so often is called Most Just and Most Merciful, is to Muslims.

Enemies abroad, you have declared military jihad on all Americans, Christians, Jews, and their allies. When you say "all," that includes little children. Allah was the One who gave those children life. They were born in the nations they were. They were born into the families they were. Perhaps those families had a religion, perhaps not. Some of those families all over the world include Christians and Jews. Perhaps some of the parents of those children taught them Islam was not their religion, or that it was an incorrect or bad religion. Tell me, when a child is a child, and when Allah gave life to that child in a family that child did not choose, and that child never has himself or herself ever actively--within their own minds and wills--learned enough to reject Islam, is that a just basis, according to Allah, to kill them?

Based on all I've read, enemies, what you have done is take commands to strike, attack, and kill-- all preconditioned by Muhammad's requirements for rejection, harm, and willful unbelieve--then made them absolute rules for all people in every class mentioned by Muhammad, whether they ever personally rejected or attacked Islam, you, your family, or your kin, or not. Do you not see my point?

When I read statements by Muhammad showing appreciation for the faith in God by the Jews and Christians; that he himself included in the Qur'an stories drawn from their faith traditions; and, that he commanded respect for them, their synagogues and churches, because those are holy places where prayers to Allah are lifted up--why, are you the enemies sworn to kill and exterminate American Christians like me? Or why do you want to kill my family? What have I or my four children ever done to harm you? Or do you know that I have defended your faith--not mine, yours--from false accusations? Or does that matter to you?

I am not a very good Christian at times. But let me tell you, I know some Christians and Jews, and members of other religions, who are far better than me. They have more faith. They believe, as you do, God is One and over all people in all nations, of all tongues and conditions, and that God's will must be done. These are not Muslims. Do you, my enemies, choose to disregard the elements of Muslim faith in them, simply because they are not part of your sect, your madrassah, or because they do not know you exist?

Last of all, I want to turn away from this subject of military jihad. I want to turn to the most elemental form of jihad, the most important and first one of all: within your own self.

I am no scholar of Islam. Unless you kill me first, it is my intention to study and learn more about your faith. I want to know, not for subversive reasons, or to trick you, as if I could. So you tell me.

Take any Muslim who has not successfully waged jihad within himself, or herself; one whose will, thinking, emotions, and behaviors still are more like a non-Muslim's than a Muslim; or one quite familiar with the faith, yet one who is over-sensitive, insecure but with over-compensatory pride; over-hasty and prone to error; or, perhaps, one who competes with or rejects a parent or a sibling, because of innate insecurity, CAN such Muslims be trusted to know either good social jihad, or just military jihad?

Here is why I ask you this. I once was a Christian minister. There are many kinds among us, as you may know, or may not. Some say Jesus was God. All say Jesus was God's son, though not all agree on such things as the virgin birth, or things about him you Muslims teach. Regardless of these doctrinal matters, I personally know Christian ministers vary widely in their personal faith; their personal piety; their personal obedience; their degrees of humility or arrogance; their detachment or attachment to money and material things; their capacities to be solely devoted to God, or polluted with self-interest, or even, yes, those who follow them and their teaching.

I believe Muslim imams are like ministers in these things. Not all have mastered their personal jihad, their personal journey to submission in all things to Allah's will. Not all are capable of seeing their own society as imperfect and partial, which means they may be incapable of knowing and applying social jihad as Allah would will. And when it comes to identifying who are their enemies, as with both Christians and Jews, and other religious leaders, there are some who sight is clouded or darkened by their own personal experiences, affecting their capacities to wage military jihad. Is this not true?

Finally, I will close with a statement from Jesus, because I believe this illustrates what I earnestly am trying to say the best I can.

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? Even so every good tree bears good fruit; but the rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree produce good fruit.... The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills the heart.

Now this is not the Qur'an, I know. But my point is this, in regard to military jihad. To wage war against the enemies of Allah is a most serious thing. For to take the life of one given life by Allah, in the name of Allah and warranted by Allah's command given in the Holy Book, cannot be undone. The life once taken is gone and returned to Allah.

So if a Muslim warrior has not mastered himself, in regard to his or her personal jihad, nor has this warrior been able to apply social jihad as is proper, can anyone trust this warrior, on his or her own, to identify and kill the true enemy of Allah? And if so, then tell me how killing any child, or any woman, or any stranger, none who is known to have harmed any Muslim, or rejected Islam, or attacked the House of Islam, is approved by Allah? Or if you say these things ought not to be, then why, why, do not more Muslims openly rebuke, condemn, and execute false imams for inciting these things, against the Qur'an, against the honorable name of all Muslims, and against Allah?

POSTSCRIPT:

A Few Historical Notes on U.S. Generals and Military Policies

America has had generals in the past whose will to fight and win were absolute. I will cite three examples from American military history: (1) President Andrew Jackson, on the Native Americans; (2) Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, on his orders to burn Atlanta; and, (3) Gen. Curtis LeMay, of Allied Air Command, his view of firebombing noncombatants in World War II. These are quoted here for several reasons.

Each of the men quoted killed noncombatants, some in the millions, with a clear conscience.
These are only a few examples from U.S. history.
The U.S. "Rules of Engagement" change, depending on the goals for the military.
From a strictly military point of view, the U.S. has used the same tactics as bin Laden on September 11, 2001: (a) surprise attack; (b) economically important target, e.g., attritional strategy [bin Laden's "bleed-until-bankrupt-plan"]; and, (c) noncombatant deaths and injuries [what we call "collateral damage"].
Our U.S. Army has killed, when considered a tool of attrition, perhaps millions of noncombatants in our history of wars.
These quotations are from "mainstream leaders" in U.S. military history, not wild renegades.
Historical self-knowledge is important, if we are fairly to judge just "how brutal" current enemies are, to prevent false pride. In terms of sheer numbers, the U.S. is the only democratic nation to kill so many noncombatants. But Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong's communist nations killed many tens of millions more in their Communist wars and internal purges than the U.S. ever did.

These documents below would have been stamped out in Communist nations. But because we live in a still-wonderful democracy where our Bill of Rights preserves us from Soviet-like "reverse-engineered history," we have them. Let us bow our heads in gratitude, thankful for all patriots who died to preserve access to these documents, however uncomfortable and ashamed they may make some of us feel.

The Will to Fight and Win Against the Indians

From Thomas Jefferson's confidential letter to Congress in 1803, to Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act twenty-seven years later, extermination, put in the polite terms of those days, was our federal option against the indigenous Indian nations opposing the taking of their lands, resources, and ways of life. I quote the words of President Jackson to Congress.

Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country; and philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it. But its progress has never for a minute been arrested; and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race, and to tread on the graves of extinct nations, excites melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes, as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated, or has disappeared, to make room for the existing savage tribes. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests, and ranged by a few thousand savages, to our extensive republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise, or industry execute; occupied by more than twelve millions of happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion!

The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same progressive change, by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated, or have melted away, to make room the for whites.... Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government towards the red man is not only liberal but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States, and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense at his removal and settlement. [p. x, col. A, pars. 2-3, and col. B, par. 2]

Perhaps President Jackson, Indian Fighter, was correct. Without the mercies of the Trail of Tears, the tribes surviving the expatriation and forced march would have been exterminated, or his preferred term, annihilated.

The Will to Fight and Win Against the Confederacy

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman has been called a brutal U.S. general. From a military point of view, his conscience was guided solely by one goal: the swiftest, most complete, unconditional surrender of Confederate forces to restore the Union, and peace under one flag. His cruelty was motivated by no personal animus, as the following letter attests, before he burned Atlanta.

We have his Letter to the Mayor of Atlanta. He had ordered the evacuation of the city to save lives, but not property. The strategy was attrition, to break the enemy's capacity to wage war. The mayor and his delegation appealed that the city not be burned. Sherman would not change his strategy because of the reasons he gave. He was willing to allow people to withdraw, or be burned. Because Sherman has been maligned by the one quote, emboldened by me, I cite this to enable readers to see his entire position.

Headquarters Military Division of the Mississippi, In the field, Atlanta, Georgia, September 12, 1864.
James M. Calhoun, Mayor E. E. Rawson and S. C. Wells, representing City Council of Atlanta

Gentleman: I have your letter of the 11th, in the nature of a petition to revoke my orders removing all the inhabitants from Atlanta. I have read it carefully, and give full credit to your statements of distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the cause, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest. We must have peace, not only at Atlanta, but in all America. To secure this, we must stop the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country. To stop war, we must defeat the rebel armies which are arrayed against the laws and Constitution that all must respect and obey. To defeat those armies, we must prepare the way to reach them in their recesses, provided with the arms and instruments which enable us to accomplish our purpose. Now, I know the vindictive nature of our enemy, that we may have many years of military operations from this quarter; and, therefore, deem it wise and prudent to prepare in time. The use of Atlanta for warlike purposes in inconsistent with its character as a home for families. There will be no manufacturers, commerce, or agriculture here, for the maintenance of families, and sooner or later want will compel the inhabitants to go. Why not go now, when all the arrangements are completed for the transfer, instead of waiting till the plunging shot of contending armies will renew the scenes of the past month? Of course, I do not apprehend any such things at this moment, but you do not suppose this army will be here until the war is over. I cannot discuss this subject with you fairly, because I cannot impart to you what we propose to do, but I assert that our military plans make it necessary for the inhabitants to go away, and I can only renew my offer of services to make their exodus in any direction as easy and comfortable as possible.
      You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling. This feeling assumes various shapes, but always comes back to that of Union. Once admit the Union, once more acknowledge the authority of the national Government, and, instead of devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of war, I and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may. I know that a few individuals cannot resist a torrent of error and passion, such as swept the South into rebellion, but you can point out, so that we may know those who desire a government, and those who insist on war and its desolation.
      You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.
      We don't want your Negroes, or your horses, or your lands, or any thing you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and if it involved the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.
      You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters, the better. I repeat then that, bu the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South began the war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or title of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands and thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.
      But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.
      Now you must go, and take with you the old and feeble, feed and nurse them, and build for them, in more quiet places, proper habitations to shield them against the weather until the mad passions of men cool down, and allow the Union and peace once more to settle over your old homes in Atlanta. Yours in haste,
W.T. Sherman, Major-General commanding [William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, vol. 2 (New York, 1875), pages 600-602.]

Lincoln approved Sherman's scorched earth policy; however, when victory was complete, the President famously said in his Second Inaugural Address:

      Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.       One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained.
      Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
      With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Lincoln had dreaded war and, prior to the secession of Confederate States, sought legally to stop its spread in the Western territories. Sherman did not want war yet, when it came, used his scorched earth policy. Still, in the case of Atlanta, he offered an exit for noncombatant populations. Once war was nearly over, Lincoln did not play the swaggering victor. He was assassinated before he could engage his version of Reconstruction. What resulted was a second pillage of the South.

The Will to Fight and Win Against the Japanese in WWII

Gen. Curtis LeMay had his own scorched earth policy, but less merciful than that of Gen. Sherman. Perhaps, had his enemies been other Americans and not Japanese, LeMay also would have exercised restrain. Nevertheless, his Allied Air Command dropped Hell's fire from the heavens on civilian populations in Japan. In 67 cities, the fire bombs killed 500,000 men, women, and children,and made 5,000,000 homeless. Speaking later of killing noncombatant Japanese:

Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.

What is most important is that, after half a million Japanese were burned alive and another five million were driven into poverty, their Emperor, generals, and soldiers fought harder. This was one reason, among several, why the atomic bombs were selected as options as soon as they were available. The Japanese were seeking a negotiated, conditional surrender when the two atomic bombs were dropped.

Though President Truman's public statement to the American people indicated he thought the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, was a "military target," the city was of marginal military significance. Of the original population of around 350,000, extremely conservative American estimates of the bomb's effects held between 70-80,000 of the people were killed, with about the same number severely injured. Over 90% of the doctors and nurses were killed, so trained medical care was unavailable to casualties.

This first detonation did not lead to the U.S. objective, unconditional surrender and agreement to "thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender" noted on a Japanese language leaflet dropped over Japan. Many in the Japanese military staff did not believe such devastation was anything other than a natural disaster, so they remained resolute to fight, though with great misgivings and uncertainty.

Having been warned by leaflet this time (the first bomb was secret for many reasons, not cruelty), the second bomb was dropped August 9 on Nagasaki which was, indeed, of great military significance as a port and source of materiel. The immediate deaths, again conservatively estimated, were between 40-70,000 immediate dead, and 80,000 by the end of 1945.

Quite frankly, during the earlier drafts of this essay I proposed that the Emperor Hirohito, viewed as an incarnate god by his people, overruled his general military staff in a one-man (or one-god) intervention. Years later, he would claim this in his reflections on the decision, according to Herbert P. Bix, in his book, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan.

I thought by then that it was impossible to continue the war.... The main motive behind my decision at that time was that if we...did not act, the Japanese race would perish and I would be unable to protect my loyal subjects.(515)

According to another report, Hirohito was also motivated by the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan. Given the Japanese concern to save face at any cost--and much face and hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in the closing days of the war--it was solely through the emperor-god's direct and absolute decision that Hirohito took his delegation on the U.S.S. Missouri and signed an unconditional surrender before Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Gen. LeMay's carpet fire-bombings, which led to the deaths of 500,000 and homelessness of 5,000,000 noncombatant Japanese, did not stop the war. The first atomic bomb did not stop the war. There is a very good possibility the second atomic bomb did not stop the war, since we do not know the complete effects of the Soviet declaration of war on the Emperor's psychological and decision-making condition.

If the emperor-god had not issued his absolute divine will for surrender, then more bombs would have dropped, of whatever type, until there was either no Emperor alive to command, or no generals either. If ever the U.S. faced a foe with an indomitable will before today, it was the Japanese. With their bushido code, and state Shinto religion, when the proud, racist Japanese declared war, it was nothing less than a declaration, to paraphrase Patrick Henry, "Give me victory or give me death!"

In his final 14 August speech of surrender to his still-adoring millions, Hirohito asked them to "imagine the unimaginable." It was unimaginable, even despite the widespread death, dismemberment, starvation, homelessness, and rampant fear throughout the land. Surrender was not in the Japanese mental furniture as something an honorable and true Japanese could do.

Yes, our Allied forces had some Japanese soldiers surrender. But when they did so, they were few in number. When they did surrender, they always were emaciated with hunger and overcome by their conditions to fight any more. They were absolutely devastated by what they had done, once they got American food in their bellies. They had descended and defected from their proud Japanese identity down into the sub-human, bestial condition of their enemies. For that was what the Japanese were taught and believed. Indeed, they were well-matched to fight with the Aryan Nazis.

Application to Our Muslim Enemies

From September 11, 2001, until today and, undoubtedly for as long as the U.S. is at war with Muslim mujahidin, I will compare Japan's indomitable will with what I know of Islam. Both armies have an absolute duty to fight and win, or die. Both the Japanese and our current Muslim enemies have an absolute theocratic principle. For the Japanese, it was their mythological history and their incarnate emperor-god among them. For the Muslims, it is their complete personal, social, and military duty to submit to the will of Allah through jihad, the struggle for submission and conformity.

I cannot adequately express, reader, my complete contempt for either white-collar or red-neck Americans who mock our enemies' will to fight and win. They call them crazy, towel-heads, camel jockeys, and sand niggers. But these armchair quarterbacks are here at home, while someone else's sons and daughters are blown to bits by simple, cheap armaments placed strategically in this guerrilla war, and by every other means.

When we turn to consider America's nine years of war against Muslim warriors engaged in a jihad, which parallels the experience of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, our American strategists now understand our Muslim enemies share a very similar Japanese commitment to victory or death. And though average Americans ridicule our enemies just as they did the Japanese kamikaze pilots who dove into U.S. targets to their deaths, and to an awaiting Japanese paradise, our generals may, or may not, understand precisely the indomitable wills we face, the One Will of the House of Islam.

If an American soldier falls on a grenade to save his unit and dies, he is a patriot. At his funeral, no one doubts but that God will reward him with heaven. But a Muslim soldier straps on a bomb-belt, he or she not only is defending fellow Muslims and his or her religion. The bomb is a one-way ticket to paradise. Yet the Muslim is ridiculed as a fanatic and enemy of democracy. Old Japanese soldiers understand absolute commitment, and they do not ridicule the Muslim mujahidin, for they truly are brothers with similar ideology.

Our living Vietnam veterans also do not mock the steely will of the opponents they faced. Without Chinese help, a military victory perhaps could have been achieved through sheer American firepower. Yet, even if the North Vietnamese had surrendered under such force, their spirit was indomitable. So long as one North Vietnamese freedom fighter (for that is how they saw themselves) lived, and so long as any foreign power was in the land, the Ho's regulars would fight when they next had the chance.

Many Americans still believe, and will believe even after this essay, that Osama bin Laden's military strike on September 11, 2001, was terrorism, and out of the blue in more ways than one.

Yet none of those have taken the time to read anything we have of his in translation. None of those have tallied all the Muslim dead he listed in his narrative of grievances in either of his fatwahs. None of those even know what a fatwah is. They have memorized the endless psycho-babble put forth by two Republican administrations as "God's honest truth."

But most Americans simply and really are not interested in the truth about this war, or any of our wars. They prefer to believe that blind following, despite virtually our nation's entire history of wars and their close correlations with profiteers, is patriotic and good. These sheep deserve to be sheared, their masters of war, cynically conclude. Yet I pour out all my contempt on those who know the truth, yet are silent, as if they themselves are not just as guilty as the Nazis at Nuremberg who bleated, "I was only following orders."

These are those who put on a veneer of patriotism to cover their corporate profiteers. We have them today among us, though throughout the two Bush administrations, anyone who questioned anything they did had their patriotism questions. And there were many Democrats who knew better, who knew the facts, but who went along to get along.

The Will to Fight And Win For Peace

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander of the European theater in World War II. He was there to see off our young boys before Operation Overlord, the Normandy invasion. This good man knew war and its costs in blood and treasure. Yet he was no hawk, eager to subjugate and humiliate his enemies. In this, he also was like Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who brilliantly engineered the post-surrender Constitution of Japan, treated the Japanese with respect, and earned even their love.

So to our long line of Presidents who have cow-towed to the whims of our Middle Eastern sources of petroleum--who surrendered American sovereignty, some for golden handcuffs, and others for less--I quote a man of war who famously warned of the alliances in his own nation, the military-industrial complex in his famous Farewell Speech to the American People. The emboldening is mine.

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.

Three days from now, after half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other -- Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling -- on my part -- of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice, would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many fast frustrations -- past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament -- of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust in that -- in that -- in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the sources -- scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.

Eisenhower, a humble yet great and honorable soldier and leader of men, died on March 29, 1969. While he should have gone to his eternal reward, I believe his spirit has been disturbed from his well-earned rest. I believe Eisenhower's ghost has walked solitary these many years, in both the White House and Pentagon, seeking patriots who loved their country more than self-interest, self-promotion, power, and greed.

If my belief is true, his spirit never can rest so long as the America he loved so well itself is asleep under the hypnotic spell of both the military-industrial complex and its energy-oligarchs who control their ever-swinging pendulum, their propaganda.

General Petraeus

What Will Your Legacy Be?

Reflections on The Declaration of Independence: July 4, 2010

2010-07-04T14:53:00.015-04:00

Two hundred forty two years ago, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence of the Colonies from Great Britain. This document has provided generations of Americans and people all over the world an elegant, relatively short, explanation of why one people sought "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" through the formation of a new nation. A few thoughts are offered today as we seek to sustain our Founders' dream for ourselves and our offspring.

Self-Evident Truths

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.

Jefferson, and Madison, to the extent he contributed to the text, proposed a theological foundation for their political act.

Divine fiat had created all people equal before God. Every person on the earth was granted equally Jefferson's, nay, God-granted inalienable rights to live, to live free, and, within the context of that freedom, to make choices as to how best to life so as to achieve their happiness. Jefferson proposed human nature and its purposes, created by God, as anthropological drivers leading to the political necessities for breaking with Great Britain.

The Revolutionary Idea In Historical Context

This was a revolutionary idea, and opposed to centuries of political theory. Throughout the medieval period, kings had ruled over their subjects by "divine right." In the New Testament, in St. Paul's Book of Romans, chapter thirteen, verses 1-8, Christians had been told that existing government were by divine fiat. Caesar had been appointed by God to rule over his subjects "for their good" and, on that basis, was not to be feared but obeyed.

Over the next centuries, kings and queens used Romans 13 to justify their rule over all others. Despots and tyrants did not administrate for the good of millions. Those at the top of the pyramid used the labor of their peoples and all natural resources for their own enrichment and power. Christian bishops and clergy typically were allies of the political elite, though some preached against abuses of power. Most preached that kings and queens had a "divine right" given to them to rule.

According to this pernicious notion, when citizens submitted to the whims of the existing regime, they were submitting to the God who ordained it. Hobbes's Leviathan was the classic exposition of this idea in political theory. Divine right was a curse on Europe and, from the French Revolution on through later secular dictatorships. How perilous to civil society when religious ideology justifies passivity and quietude against injustice, or actively prosecutes or enables such horrors as genocide. We have analogies for both in many nations, all over the world, including our own. The "divine right" doctrine has slain millions, garbed in religion or secular patriotism.

By the time Jefferson wrote, the history of nations had proven how rulers, once in power, often had no thought either of their duty to a just and good God or of their duties to rule people "for their good," as St. Paul had written. Now Jefferson was an unorthodox Christian, if he could be called a Christian at all. He was a Deist who, as the Declaration makes clear, believed in "Nature's God"--the God revealed in the "Laws of Nature and not by the sectarian interests of the warring religions.

Jefferson admired Jesus, but he literally took scissors and cut out all the miraculous stories about him, and placed Jesus' moral teachings to be read as guides for conduct. This was "Jefferson's Bible," and I have a copy of it, obtained from Monticello's bookstore.

While Jefferson was a Deist, his statement of the "inalienable rights" given by God could be said to be appropriated from the Book of Genesis, chapters 1-2. There the primordial human parents were given life, were free, and were allowed to choose how they would use that freedom, within the framework of God's single command on what they were not to do: eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It might be said, though Jefferson was not doing this, the Declaration's inalienable rights also had some foundation in St. Paul's statement in the Book of Galatians, chapter 3, verse 28, that in Jesus Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female." All human distinctions were dissolved in the new theological regime. All were equal before God.

In any case, Jefferson's inalienable rights were revolutionary for their time, and for today. We now have the biological facts of human equality stated affirmatively through our knowledge of the humane genome. That in itself provides a scientific basis for asserting human beings are created equal, that all by nature are free, and that all desire happiness.

Jefferson's Authority For and Purposes of Governments:
Causes for the Declaration

Governments derived their authority from the "consent of the governed," not God, according to the signers of the Declaration. Their purposes were to "secure safety and happiness" for the governed. Governments never were to be changed for "light and transient causes." People tended to endure unjust governments as long they could stand them, Jefferson wrote. Yet, under certain conditions, the governed would rebel and overthrow what became intolerable. 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.

Jefferson and his comrades then listed their grievances against King George and his policies. Readers curious to know the principal complaints of our forefathers should read the entire list. The signers of the Declaration claimed they had repeatedly had appealed to dear ears. They were driven to declare severance from British rule because their past government, they wrote, had failed to preserve their safety and happiness.

They knew what they were doing. They knew their Declaration only could be considered seditious and treasonable. Their last line read, "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." Benjamin Franklin said, "Gentlemen, we must all hang together or we all will hang separately."

The American rebellion was based, first, on a harmful government unwilling to redress wrongs for right. Had Britain listened and shown willingness to reform, the Declaration never would have been written. Yet its refusal to hear and change pressured the Founders to reassert what was divinely given, their lives, freedom, and search for happiness secured by a government of their own making and consent.

The Declaration in American History

The words of the Declaration have inspired many groups of Americans through later centuries to rebel against U.S. federal laws that did not, in their united opinions, provide for their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Because the government did not secure "safety and happiness," these worked to overthrow the yoke of oppressive rule.

President Washington, who was a master distiller enriched by keeping his Revolutionary troops stocked with rum, sent federal troops to Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Independent distillers refused to pay the federal tax as "taxation without representation," a Revolutionary grievance. Washington sent those troops knowing he had self-interest at stake, as well as the federal law on taxation on his side.

The Confederate States' Congressmen appealed to The Declaration as a warrant for their secession from the Union. They argued that slavery, which always had been legal in most states, was a matter of "states' rights" and the consent of the governed in those states. Lincoln did not run for the Presidency to abolish slavery, but to limit its spread. Yet when the Confederate States left the Union, they declared themselves seditious and rebellious to federal authority under the U.S. Constitution.

The war would be won and the Union restored, but it would be exactly 100 years before the freed slaves' great-grandchildren would be assured the right to vote. And the residuum of racism yet lives among some whites today, who would deny life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to people possessing more melanin than them.

Not too many years later, coal miners and railroad workers united to oppose labor abuses. Companies virtually owned them and their families. They lived in company homes, were forced to buy from company stores. Men were worked more like abused draft horses than fellow Americans. And when they were maimed or killed, their wives and children were put out to starve on their own. Federal troops were called out to quell these "seditious and rebellious" acts, as they were called.

The words of the Declaration inspired hundreds of thousands, and finally, millions of workers seeking life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Like Britain a hundred years before, Washington did not listen for a long time. In fact, listening to the vest interests of the company owners and their money, federal troops were called out to suppress and kill fellow Americans engaged in what some called "seditious and rebellious acts." I have been to Matewan, West Virginia, and seen where one gun battle occurred.

Nevertheless, when the leaders in Washington DC finally realized that their choice either was changes in federal law or domestic violence, U.S. labor laws were passed. Any protections today for labor against harmful corporations are owed to those brave men and women who lost their lives and jobs to assert their "inalienable rights."

It seems incredible to us now, from our point in time, that half of the U.S. population, women, should have been denied the right to vote. Yet the Suffrage Movement also appealed to the Declaration as millions of women peacefully but powerfully wrote, spoke, demonstrated, and worked for change. What a blemish on the national story that men on horses, men with truncheons, men with handcuffs and prisons, opposed the race that gave them life and tenderness--their mothers--which also gave life to their children--their wives.

Once again, federal troops, allied with state and local law enforcement, opposed the right of women to vote. What had begun with Frances Wright in 1826, among others, finally came to fruition only in 1920 with the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Right to the end, some men fought that. Not all states ratified it, only 36. Kentucky was Number 23 in the original group. Mississippi was the last, in 1984. That's right. Look for yourself at the list of sorry states who respected and loved women so little for so long.

If readers will go deep into our national story, they will see that whatever noble and true words were written in 1776, it has required a series of brave patriots to rebel against unjust government--even our own--to work for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Even today, Jefferson's "inalienable rights" still elude millions across our land.

The Declaration in Our Present Time

Let us remember Jefferson's primary cause for breaking away from Britain: its refusal to listen to grievances, and unjust exploitations of those it ruled in the Colonies. He noted how people by nature are willing to endure injustice, until the burden becomes unbearable, and pain motivates the move towards rebellion and insurrection.

Just today, I heard my preacher, the Rev. Peter H. Whelan, of St. James Episcopal Church in Shelbyville, say, speaking within the context of the American Revolution, "Treason, if successful, is never known by that name." Throughout American history, groups seeking political and social reforms who were successful have gone down as heroes and heroines, but those who failed by other names, none good.

I think my first exposure to first-hand knowledge of American justice gone wrong was when I read the transcript of the Sacco-Vanzetti trial in 1920. I owe my English teacher at the University of Kentucky thanks for being required to write a paper on that transcript. Anyone reading the primary documents will be shocked by the legal process through which both men finally were executed. American history calls these men "anarchists and murderers" but, if they were, they surely did not enjoy the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1787.

Today there are millions of Americans who feel alienated and distrustful of their federal government. There are too many who believe Washington does not listen nor cares to hear their lists of grievances. They are too many who believe Washington desires only their taxes and submission to the elite who seem to hold sway among the elected who seek re-election and self-interest.

There is a TEA ("Taxed Enough Already") Party gaining attention. Most of the Americans in this coalition appear to be conservative Republicans who believe their elected party leaders are not conservative enough. The TEA Party also uses some language drawn from The Declaration and the Revolutionary War for some of its rhetoric. Some call for the overthrow of the existing government, and a new one formed to "secure safety and happiness." All cry out against "taxation without representation" and new laws that allow We the People to keep their money for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet. But I am a historian. And on this day where we remember that first July 4, 1776, I have grave concerns for the future of our country.

Millions now swim in a tide of rising debts threatening to drown their American Dream, now the American Nightmare. Millions already are stripped bare of possessions and are on their own, on the plains of desperation, feeling the icy wind of Poverty freezing their hopes for help. Millions have seen trillions poured into the pockets of corporations, insurance companies, and banks, and for foreign wars where pallets of American cash were passed out to buy the temporary loyalty from anti-American war lords.

Unless the people in Washington are willing to do what Jefferson and the signers of The Declaration did--risk their lives and fortunes for America--history suggests that unrelieved suffering will produce again patriots seeking redress by whatever means at their disposal, if the government will not listen.

What we need now is a Declaration of Interdependence, for independent self-interest has nearly pillaged our land. I pray for patriots who love America, who will seek to avert violence, and work for just solutions to our current crises. AMEN

On Personal Responsibility: A CREED

2010-06-30T23:27:00.002-04:00

I AM RESPONSIBLE

John D. Willis

President
Leadership Ethics Online LLC

I am responsible for myself, to myself.

I am the only person holding the power to control me today.
No one else has that power.

I am responsible for controlling me today.
No one else is responsible.

I take all responsibility for my self-control, its effects on me and others, today.
No one else gets the praise or blame but me.

I am responsible for my thoughts.

I am the only person holding the power to control my thoughts today

No other person owns my thought process but me.

I am responsible to controlling my thoughts today.

No one starts or stops my thoughts but me.

I take all responsibility for my thoughts, their effects on me and others, today.

No one can make me healthy-minded but me.

I am responsible for my emotions.

I am the only person holding the power to control my emotions.

No person expresses or withholds my emotions but me.

I am responsible for controlling my emotions today.

No one affecting my emotions can control my emotions but me.

I take responsibility for my emotions, their effects on me and others, today.

No one can make my emotions work well except me.

I am responsible for my words.

I am the only person holding the power to control my mouth.
No other person opens my mouth or moves my lips but me.
I am responsible for controlling my tongue today.
No one holds back good words, or issues bad words but me.
I take responsibility for my words, their effects on others and me, today.
No one has my words today except me.

I am responsible for my actions.

I am the only person holding the power to control my actions.
No other person makes me do anything but me.
I am responsible for controlling my actions today.
No one prevents my good deeds, or does bad deeds but me.
I take all responsibility for my actions, their effects on others and me, today.
No one else can do the good I can today but me.

I am responsible for me, all I am, and all I do.

I am alive today!
Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is uncertain.
I have a God-given purpose.
I am alive to think, say, and do all that pleases my Maker.
I have a brain and unique talents and skills.
I am the only person like me alive, so do my best.
I will see people today only I will see.

I am in their lives for good, never harm.

I will see opportunities no one else sees.

I must use them for good, never evil.

I will remember my Maker today.

I need God's help for all these things.

AMEN

Request Permission To Reproduce

jwillis@leadershipethicsonline.com

Albert Pike on Serving Ourselves, or Serving Others

2010-06-30T18:44:00.004-04:00

I was reading a site that discussed collisions of bodies within the vacuum of space, and one of the authors had an interesting quote under his signature line. This quote's significance, and reflections on its author and his organization's positive moral effects, have generated this essay.

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have
done for others and the world remains and is immortal. Albert Pike

This quote stimulated considerable thought in me. I immediately thought of one of America's greatest charities, The Shriners Hospitals. Readers unfamiliar with this network of health care institutions dedicated to the healing of children should go to the previous link. They also should visit the website of Shriners International, and an in-depth look at the organization available in .pdf, The Shriners Primer.

Now I will have more to say on Pike's quote, the Shriners Hospitals, and how these connect with today's challenges in America. Before proceeding to these main points, I provide some background on why the quotation and Pike's name generated this essay.

Albert Pike, My Father, and Me

Pike was responsible for promoting and growing the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry into the global fraternity it is today. My father, William Henry Willis, became a Scottish Rite Mason when he was in the Army, stationed at Ft. Benning, Georgia. He attained the 32nd Degree and is a member in good standing today. As a boy growing up in my home, I remember seeing Lodge publications arrive in the mail and my Dad reading them. I used to pick these up and read the articles. I once found a copy of Albert Pike's Morals and Dogma, a large and bulky tome, kept clean and safe in his dresser drawer when I was snooping around in my parents' bedroom, as children sometimes do.

Years later, I was a minister and ran across books and pamphlets written against Masonry and Pike in particular. My curiosity was aroused because my Dad was a Mason. His morality was impeccable. His imprint on my moral and ethical formation was indelible. So I found a copy of Pike's Morals and Dogma in a used bookstore and read for myself a man who shaped part of my father's values and character. I still have that book.

Pike's Morals and Dogma intrigued me when I read it, or much of it. I already had earned my PhD and was surprised by his intellectual complexity, his synthesis of Masonry, moral philosophy, and many structural elements drawn from the Bible and Christianity. My reactions to what I read varied, between genuine admiration and inspiration, to wry detachment and bemusement. He was a bold man, not prone to overweening care in his generalizations, which sometimes reflected his limitations in learning and his place in time, the nineteenth century.

As I read Pike, I began to understand my father from a different point of view. My father had, without ever really saying much about it, embodied the best in Masonic values and practices in how he lived his life as a husband and father, worker and neighbor. Things he had taught to my two brothers and me, requirements for being a good and moral person, principles he demanded we follow or be disciplined for disobeying, were Masonic rules. Albert Pike had helped shape my father into the man I loved and love today. In fact, I saw how my father's adherence to the best in Masonry had been infused into his own sons.

Honesty and integrity are values built into my nature, though I am human and have lapsed sometimes from embodying both as I should. But when I read Pike, I realized that some of the Christians who had written lock, stock and barrel against Masonry, misrepresented some of it. And I had experienced the best of it, mediated through my Dad.

A Quote From Morals and Dogma

In preparing for this essay, I found an online copy of Pike's book, and re-read parts of it. Because my company, Leadership Ethics Online, teaches the value of ethics and leadership, I find it valuable and necessary to provide an illustrative quote from Morals and Dogma.

Masonry has its decalogue, which is a law to its Initiates. These are its Ten Commandments:

I. God is the Eternal, Omnipotent, Immutable WISDOM and Supreme INTELLIGENCE and Exhaustless Love. Thou shalt adore, revere, and love Him! Thou shalt honor Him by practicing the virtues!

II. Thy religion shall be, to do good because it is a pleasure to thee, and not merely because it is a duty. That thou mayest become the friend of the wise man, thou shalt obey his precepts! Thy soul is immortal ! Thou shalt do nothing to degrade it !

III. Thou shalt unceasingly war against vice! Thou shalt not do unto others that which thou wouldst not wish them to do unto thee! Thou shalt be submissive to thy fortunes, and keep burning the light of wisdom!

IV. Thou shalt honour thy parents! Thou shalt pay respect and homage to the aged! Thou shalt instruct the young! Thou shalt protect and defend infancy and innocence!

V. Thou shalt cherish thy wife and thy children! Thou shalt love thy country, and obey its laws!

VI. Thy friend shall be to thee a second self! Misfortune shall not estrange thee from him! Thou shalt do for his memory whatever thou wouldst do for him, if he were living!

VII. Thou shalt avoid and flee from insincere friendships! Thou shalt in everything refrain from excess. Thou shalt fear to be the cause of a stain on thy memory!

VIII. Thou shalt allow no passions to become thy master! Thou shalt make the passions of others profitable lessons to thyself! Thou shalt be indulgent to error!

IX. Thou shalt hear much: Thou shalt speak little: Thou shalt act well! Thou shalt forget injuries! Thou shalt render good for evil! Thou shalt not misuse either thy strength or thy superiority !

X. Thou shalt study to know men; that thereby thou mayest learn to know thyself! Thou shalt ever seek after virtue! Thou shalt be just! Thou shalt avoid idleness!

But the great commandment of Masonry is this: "A new commandment give I unto you: that ye love one another! He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, remaineth still in the darkness."

Pike's closing "great commandment of Masonry," for anyone familiar with the New Testament, was a direct quote combining Jesus' words in the Gospel of John 13:34a, and those of the author of I John 2:9.

Pike's commandments speak for themselves: love for God; love for doing good in and of itself; war against vice and use of the Golden Rule; love for parents and the young; love for wife and family and country; love for friends and honor; aversion to "passions" or being driven by emotions, more listening and less talking but always doing well; and, studying human nature for the cultivation of virtue, justice, and a fruitful life of work.

Were I analyzing Pike's words for their origins, many references would come from the Bible. At any rate, I have thought for a long time ago that Masonry's emphasis on taking personal responsibility for shaping and honing one's intellectual, moral, emotional, family, and social life--using the tools revealed by the Great Architect--was and is a good thing.

On Christianity's Opponents of Masonry

I was a Christian minister for a long time. I have seen many believers say they love God, yet harm themselves, their families, their workplaces, and society. I am a scholar and expert on two thousand years of Christians showing arrogance, hate, and abuse to those within and without their circle of faith. Many do what St. Paul commanded must not be done. They sin boldly because they are so sure of grace and forgiveness. Read the Book of Romans, chapter 6, verses 1-2.

Such are the perky sinners who emblazon their bumpers with, "I'm not perfect! I'm just forgiven!" The world has enough of consciences dulled by delusions. And people who glibly harm others, then expect easy forgiveness from God, have not read or at least learned much from Jesus.

Therefore, Christian critics who dismiss Masonry en masse show me two things. (1) They either are ignorant, or unjust. (2) In dismissing Masonry, they dismiss all its obvious and clear dependencies on Jesus' teachings and, to that extent, they discard Jesus' positive impacts within Masonry.

As with other haters, I could pray the worst of these critics first served notice on their fellow members' hypocrisies. But such a prayer would be wasted. They are so like the same Pharisees who trusted their own status before God was sound and implacable. Their idea of religion is to attack and tear down others, as if this elevates their own defective faith. What they cannot emulate or exceed threatens them, since it holds up a mirror to higher standards.

Reflecting on Albert Pike's Couplet

Let us return now to Albert Pike's famous couplet. "What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal." You may discard everything else Pike ever did or said, if you would be unfair. Yet his twenty-three words have provided generations of Masons with two motives: (1) to limit and sacrifice self-interest and (2) to invest money, time, work, and talent "for others and the world."

These two independent clauses reveal and suggest much. Perhaps a few paraphrases help. Live for yourself and die alone...Invest in people, not things. Jesus taught it is "more blessed to given than receive" (Acts 20:35). Pike knew cause-and-effect. One person doing good to another had effects creative, unpredictable, but all good.

More than eighty-one years after Pike, Edward Lorenz would write in 1972 of the "Butterfly Effect". He showed how infinitesimally small events had unpredictable and even great effects, because of the interrelationships between things. Pike did not need a mathematical model for his doctrine. It was self-evident.

All human life is on a continuum, one generation giving birth to another. In every generation are men and women, boys and girls, capable of (1) consuming and taking or (2) producing and giving. The former harm themselves, ruin others, and start wars. The latter help themselves become the best persons in mind, body, emotions, and morality they can--which leads to a life of giving to those around them, and for the next generation.

I know I love Pike's little couplet for its simple elegance and truth. When you add to it his "Second Great Commandment of Masonry"--do good to others for pleasure, not duty--this is a powerful doctrine. Many do good to others out of self-interests...recognition, reward, benefits, avoidance of punishment. Yet I love that Pike commanded his fellow Masons to learn how to do good to others for its own sake, its pleasure in the doing of it.

That requires a purity of intention, an advancement in moral understanding, few today achieve. To want to do good for others because your inner being has been cleared of its junk, because you have become so healthy all you can do to feel "normal and happy" is to love, now THAT is a fantastic way to be and live! Pike taught that in this couplet, and in all of his "Ten Commandments" noted above.

Pike's Couplet Fulfilled:
Shriners Hospitals for Children

First, let us get something straight from the beginning. Masons always have been involved in charitable work. In my state alone, Masonic Homes of Kentucky has provided senior care since 1867. So what I am about to say about the Shriners--who all must be Master Masons as a precondition for membership--must be placed within the context of Masonic charities as a whole.

For many Americans, their only image of a Shriner is an overweight old man wearing a fez topped with a tassel, an Americanized version of an Arabian outfit, and riding figure eights on either a very large Harley, or a miraculously teeny-tiny motorcycle, in a parade. As for Shriners at convention, well, just like some religious conventions with thousands of preachers and priests, there always are a few who support the local trades, ending up arrested with their names in the papers.

For a better more truthful understanding, one is advised to go and see one of the fine hospitals for children created and sustained by Shriners. The Shriners Hospitals for Children is a network of 22 medical centers around the United States, all dedicated to healing children. I summarize below information drawn from The Shriners Primer, pages 14-15, which readers can download at that link.

19 hospitals offer juvenile orthopedic care--spinal injuries, joints and muscle conditions, brittle bone disease, spina bifida, and cerebral palsy
4 hospitals offer juvenile burn injuries care--acute, fresh burns; reconstructive and restorative surgeries for kids with healed burns; treatment for those with limited mobility due to scarring; and, help for kids with severe facial scarring and deformities caused by burns
3 hospitals offer specialized spinal cord injuries care--long-term rehabilitation, intensive physical, occupational, and recreational therapies
In 2005, a cleft lip and palate program was initiated--lip and palate repair, nasal reconstruction, facial work and dental procedures, and audiological, speech, and psychological services

Jesus' disciples once shooed away the children, but the Master presented a child to them and said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Generations ago in America, the Master Masons-Become-Also-Shriners decided to select suffering children for benevolence. Now look at their legacy.

Hundreds of thousands of children have been healed. I wish I had the exact numbers. Millions of those children's immediate and extended families have been touched forever by what was done for their children. I wish I had the numbers. Tens and hundreds of millions more who knew those families--neighbors, coworkers, communities, and all organizations to which they belonged--have been touched forever by the healing and compassionate work of The Shriners Hospitals for Children. There is no calculating those numbers.

Pike declared deeds done for others and the world would remain, and were immortal. His Second Commandment required that good be done to others for pleasure, not duty. Based on the achievements of the Master Masons-Become-Shriners, Pike surely taught the truth.

No one could sacrifice so much, give so much, work so hard, as the greatest Shriners have, unless they were driven by the desire to invest in little precious, damaged people. The children were not captains of industry, who could reciprocate with a juicy deal. The children were not political power brokers, who could open doors for billions in profits. No. Each little patient always has been and always will be, Every Mother's Child, Every Father's Child.

Personal Experience With Shriners' Compassion:
Two Events

Around 1985, I served as minister to the Orchard Street Christian Church on the South Side of Chicago. On Halloween night, one of my young members, Kenny Bereta, was playing in some leaves piled alongside a residential street. A teenage driver thought it would be funny to drive through the leaves. Kenny's neck was broken in several places, with the spinal cord swelling and hurt.

His parents were uninsured. Only one had a job. On the way back from the ER, around 2 a.m., Kenny's mother looked at me and cried, "WHAT are we going to DO?" I told her I didn't know, but the Lord knew, and I knew I was going to do something. I wasn't the only one.

Kenny first was taken from one hospital to another, as bills mounted. I raised $17,000 from the community, around $50K in today's money, so the family could have travel money, food, and pay their utilities. Then one of my closest friends, the late James B. Wollesen, saw that Kenny was admitted to the Shriner Children's Hospital out on the West Side. Jim was a 32-second Degree York Rite Mason, and a leader in the Eastern Star.

Kenny got the best surgeries, therapies, and care. His parents were treated like royals. And Jim and I got the pleasure of watching progress and healing. About a year later, Kenny gingerly was helped back to the church, and we all applauded the great blessing.

During the past year, my 3-year old granddaughter was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a highly fatal tumor in her adrenal glands. She was taken to Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville--where stands out on the sidewalk stands a Giant Shriner with a Little Child. Isabella had surgery, is alive and spunky now, seems in remission, and we thank her physicians and the Lord for every healthy report.

Pike's Couplet and Our Era:
Americans Divided Today

Using Pike's two lines, then adding to them his "Ten Commandments of Masonry," we have seen small snapshots of how Masonic doctrine is ethical and moral. We have seen too how that Masonic doctrine has been embodied in the wonderful work of the Shriners Hospitals for Children, as well as a 150 year old tradition in senior care.

Today, the United States of America has been split nearly down the middle along the lines of Pike's Couplet.

There are many among us who want to get all they can, while they can, from as many as they can. These are our fellow Americans who are harming the rest of us. Though their selfish living will only end when they are interred in the grave, the harms they are doing will live after them. This is another, negative type of "immortality" not addressed by Pike.

Then there are many among us who believe, like Pike, that doing good for others and the world is an investment in life, people, and the future. These are our fellow Americans who are sacrificing by working multiple jobs, volunteering at church and school and, yes, raising money for causes like the Shriners Hospitals for Children, or Kentucky's own WHAS Crusade for Children. And I know many grandparents now who are spending out their savings, to save their children and grandchildren.

Thinking about Pike and his moral duties will lead to the next blog, a creed on Personal Responsibility. Hope you like it, and will pass it along. JDW

We Are Our Brother's and Sister's Keepers: Genesis 4:1-12

2010-06-28T12:43:00.004-04:00

Cain Killed His Brother, Then Denied Responsibility

Read the text above. Cain killed his brother, Abel, from jealous wrath. God asked Cain, "Where is your brother?" Cain lied, then asked, "Am I my brother's shamar?," which in Hebrew means keeper, observer, and preserver. Cain disavowed he had any responsibility to watch out for his brother's protection, welfare, or preservation. The question put to Cain was not because God did not know where Abel was. The evidence of the murder already was known. God told the fratricide, "What have you done? Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground."

The question was asked to see if Cain would take responsibility for what he had done. He knew what he had done. He feigned ignorance. He answered he had no binding obligation to his brother. Cain's punishment was two-fold. (1) His labor was cursed. His work no longer would provide food. (2) He was forced to spend the rest of his life as a wanderer on the earth. Having harmed his own family, Cain would find no permanence, only instability, for the rest of his days.

Are There Cains Among Us in America?

While no Americans intentionally murder their fellow citizens (though sending them to war on false pretenses wills them no good), the tradition of Cain is alive and well among us.

We have some citizens who intentionally have deprived millions of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Like Cain, some taken away the means to live: jobs, homes, savings, retirements. They did this, like Cain, from focusing on themselves and what they wanted, rather than what was good for those they destroyed. And their destruction has led to death for some. From desperation, some of their victims have slain their own families then committed suicide. Others have committed crimes to feed their families, and still more consider that option.

The heirs of Cain answer for their harms to their fellow Americans as he did, "Am I caretaker and overseer for their welfare?" We have some wealthy citizens who truly believe they have no moral obligation towards any but themselves. If questioned concerning their conduct, the only duty they allege they have is to keep their conduct within bounds so it is legal, and they are not subject to prosecution. And because they have many kinds of attorneys, with wealth to pay them, the likelihood of ever being punished is very low.

Chief Justice Earl Warren: No Cain

I recently came across an old biography on Earl Warren. I have just started and probably will have more to say about what I learn there. However, one thing I have learned about him applies to this essay. Warren's father was a first-generation immigrant: hardworking, thrifty, honest, and dedicated to his family. He worked for the Union Pacific Railroad, which controlled California's politicians for years.

During the depression that followed the stock market crash of 1893, three million railroad workers were unemployed. The Pullman Company in Chicago slashed workers' pay by 25%, leaving men $1 to feed their families for two weeks, after pay deductions to live in company-owned homes. In May, 1894, 250,000 members of the American Railway Union (ARU) walked off the job to protest the firing of three members of a grievance committee. Chicago was a railway hub and that strike shut down rail traffic. The U.S. Attorney General said workers had taken the nation to the "ragged edge of anarchy."

The rail strike spread to California and Warren's father and 3,000 other workers for the Union Pacific and Sante Fe struck sometime around June. Newspapers called their strike the "Debs Rebellion." Eugene Debs founded the ARU (and the International Labor Union) and was a socialist dedicated to fairer treatment of labor. On July 3, federal troops of the First Regiment were called out to reopen the railroads in Los Angeles. The railroad strike of 1894 eventually was broken, and all the strikers lost their jobs and were blacklisted.

Chief Justice Earl Warren's father and family had experienced what a powerful corporate oligarchy like the Union Pacific Railroad could do to workers. Later in life, he saw how power and wealth often controlled the law and used it to harm the welfare of average people trying to survive. Warren himself was an average law student, but he had a social conscience.

When he eventually sat on the Supreme Court, his biographer wrote he used a simple question to guide him in seeking good legal judgments for all Americans: Is it fair? The results were profound for American history. The phrases, "separate is not equal...read him his rights...one man, one vote," never would have become common stock in our national vocabulary, without the work of the son of Norwegian immigrant, Methias Varran. We know him as Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Some American Cains Use the Law

When I was a boy, I was raised by my parents to believe that a moral person also was "law-abiding." Because we were farmers, the Willises tended to be socially and economically very conservative. Yet I grew up during the 1960s and 1970s. The Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Watergate, these events and more showed that some American laws needed change, and even one President abused his legal powers (though he was not punished).

When I worked for the Kentucky Commission for Human Rights--which enforces federal and state civil rights statutes--I decided to study the history of civil rights in America. I knew more about the history of Europe, in which I earned my PhD, than American history. Because any nation's laws reflect its morality, I focused only on the history of U.S. federal laws.

The history of American law is morally schizophrenic. On the one hand, you will see the widest range of laws favoring a small minority's power to amass wealth at the expense of common people. On the other hand, when that minority's abuses and harms became so extensive and finally intolerable that millions rose in domestic unrest, rebellion, and sedition, only then did the most sweeping legal reforms occur, to preserve the Republic.

In the most recent period of unrest leading to federal legislation, only millions of Americans taking to the street--under King's leadership peacefully, but after his death with many riots and violence--the Voting Rights Act and then the Civil Rights Act were stopgap measures to quell another civil war. Even then in the South, millions kept Blacks under their thumbs wherever local law enforcement was inclined to maintain the status quo.

The history of federal laws regarding the Indian Nations, labor, the rights of women, food safety, monopolies and price-fixing, and hundreds more subject areas, only arose from millions of Americans harmed, not from an anterior moral conscience driving laws to answer Justice Warren's question, "What is fair?" Money and profits have driven the first drafts of most American laws, with morality and people forcing the second drafts.

This is the nature of our American legal schizophrenia. Violence against the masses incited violent opposition by the masses. I first heard the statement, "We are a nation of laws," from the mouth of James Baker, Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan. When the federal traffic controllers went on strike--with concerns that their overwork could lead to public safety risks--Reagan fired them all without negotiation. This act sent chills down the spine of labor unions all across the nation.

Since that time, many American corporations took their labor needs to non-democratic and Communist nations, where no American labor laws apply. U.S. laborers were incapable of cutting their hourly pay and benefits as low as Mexican or Chinese workers, unless they were willing to go back to the times in American history when all workers lived in company houses and bought everything from company stores. Unions still exist, but many American industrial jobs, those which are on our shores, are for non-union enterprises.

We always have been "a nation of laws"; however, there is no doubt that today's serial American crises are not due to the Abels, but the Cains among us who answer as their ancestor did: "Am I to oversee the welfare of my fellow Americans? Do I have a moral duty to know where my family members are or what has happened to them, as a result of my conduct?"

The Golden Rule

Jesus famously extended the command, "Love your neighbor as yourself," originally given in the Book of Leviticus, chapter nineteen, verse 18. The Hebrew word there, rea, means friend, companion, and neighbor. Jesus, in his relationships with both fellow Jews and Gentiles, showed love for all people.

He recognized in his day there were some who amassed great wealth yet who did so at the expense of fellow countrymen. The story of Lazarus, which appears in the Gospel of Luke, chapter sixteen, is worth citing.

Now there was a certain rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, happily living in splendor every day. A certain poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, and earnestly desiring to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. The dogs were coming and licking his sores.

Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be comforted by Abraham. And the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, the rich man looked up, in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his care. He cried out, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool off my tongue! I am in agony in this flame!"

But Abraham said, "Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things. But now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony." The rich man then begged Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to tell the rich man's family, so they might change and not suffer as he was. Abraham answered, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they listen if someone rises from the dead."

The rich man in life had seen Lazarus devastated by poverty, hunger, and disease. Yet opulence and self-interest made the rich man blind. His attitude in life was precisely that of Cain's, "Am I my brother's keeper? Am I obliged to oversee his welfare?" Abraham's answer is my own. We already have had enough religious teaching and commands to love the neighbor. The Cains in our land are on their own and will earn interest in the next life on the lack of investments made in the Abels they harmed, whose blood spills now in the nation through suicides, domestic violence, and growing crime.

A final word from Jesus is not too much. In the Gospel of Luke (6:24-25), Jesus said, "Woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep."

To the Abels among us, I say, there is an American tradition for legal change. Do not resort to violence, and thereby use the method used to harm you. But take heart and unite. Change the laws through legal means. It has been done before. It can be done again, though there are Cains in Congress who will fight you to the end!

An Ethical Woman - Pam Platt's Reflections Regarding an Apology to Jimmy Carter

2010-06-21T12:51:00.009-04:00

Pam Platt has written an article in Louisville's sole remaining newspaper, the Courier-Journal. This fine thinker has offered a "belated apology" to former President Jimmy Carter, in the light of the current Gulf oil debacle. I recommend that you read her wise words, to be found at that link, along with one of Carter's prophetic speeches on energy.

When he was in the White House, most of us did not appreciate his foresight and vision regarding energy, or our dependence on petroleum as a matter of national security. He declared the "moral equivalent of war" on untying America's future to petroleum, or dependence on foreign suppliers. We need that declaration of war again but, this time, for it to be waged and won.

Reading Pam's column made me remember how I viewed Jimmy Carter. I was raised a Kentucky Democrat. I personally liked Carter as a man, but the fuel shortage crisis during his term, the 20% interest rates, and the Iranian Revolution, crippled him for reelection. I voted for Ronald Reagan.

Why I Voted for Reagan

There was one reason. Regan said he was concerned with the national debt, at that time one trillion dollars. Back in 1979, I saw that debt as a threat to national security. When foreign investors hold U.S. Treasury notes, they can influence the White House and Congress, contrary to national interest. That was true in 1979 and it is today. The wealthy, corporations hold most Treasury bills, their hands weigh Reagan tripled the debt, and Congress soon voted itself a pay raise.

A secondary reason for my first vote for a Republican was a sense of frustration with President Jimmy Carter's "Rose Garden" foreign policy on the Iran hostage crisis. He seemed vacillating and weak, unable to be strong in the face of the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. I liked Carter personally but felt America needed someone capable of stronger leadership. Khomeini released the hostages on the eve of Reagan's inauguration, showing his contempt for Jimmy Carter and, perhaps, a nod to Reagan's bellicosity. Carter had tried negotiation. Reagan threatened military action.

Once in office, Reagan became known as the Great Communicator. His fatherly gravitas and patriotic language rallied all Americans. I know I was impressed with his speeches and believability. Most of us did not know that Reagan, TV actor and host to "Death Valley Days," spoke the sterling words put in his mouth by speechwriter, Peggy Noonan. As far as his leadership, it would be years later we would learn, unlike Carter the Workaholic who read everything on everything, Regan's workdays were filled with naps. Others in the White House would put before him what to sign, and his words to say before the public. These are facts.

The Debt Increased: Reagan and Bush

Under Reagan, the national debt was tripled, mainly through contracts to the military industrial complex and "Star Wars. Taxes were slashed for corporations and the wealthy. Federal regulations on business were loosened, with Reagan appealing to average Americans about the evils of "big government interfering in the lives of the people." And the profits began to roll in for the wealthiest Americans.

David Stockman's "trickle down" economics--the propaganda that held "when the wealthy profit, the money runs downhill"--was a scam. Stockman later wrote a book admitting that. Corporate takeovers resulted in millions of firings for workers no longer needed in the "downsizings." Millions of jobs began to flow to China. The wealth from the Reagan years went into pockets not the People. "Trickle Down" now has been called "Trickle On" the American middle class.

We just finished eight full years of former members of the Reagan White House--Cheney, Rumsfeld, and many others. They were the brains who guided another Empty Suit who did their bidding. September 11, 2001, was their perfect staging ground. Reagan used the rhetoric of patriotism to unlock the Federal Treasury in Star Wars. The War on Terror became the bullet-proof shield against blank checks for Bush and Cheney to feed Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, and other corporate friends with non-competitive contracts.

Like Reagan before, the Bush White House systematically reduced federal agencies tasked with corporate regulation. The FBI's unit on corporate crime was stripped down and transferred to Homeland Security. Tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, and a tide of profits followed. And for those who questioned the wide swathe cut into the U.S. Constitution, and the corporate feed trough, their patriotism was questioned.

Bush added to the national debt by nearly 30%. The link shows every Republican administration added a net gain to our national debt, while every Democratic administration did not, at least to the present day.

Sen. McConnell, Stellar Partisan

Throughout the Bush years, Senator Mitch McConnell always stood behind the Empty Suit at every television appearance, smiling and nodding yes. He was the perfect shill for all things Republican. He was vocal to approve any Republican deficit spending, always "vital for national security" or "free market recovery."

When scandals appeared, he defended party leaders implicated. He derided critics as unpatriotic and uncommitted to national security or our best interests. When evidence of inproper or potentially illegal conduct piled up, he had nothing to say. From the plan (or conspiracy) to start the Iraq War on false information presented to Congress and the American people, to such silliness as Harriet Myers's nomination to the Supreme Court, Mitch was the partisan. But he never, ever was an Empty Suit. No, he is apparently a brilliant Machiavellian.

Today he is the perfect hypocrite regarding deficit spending. He leads every charge against deficit spending because it is not going into Republican pockets. He repeatedly votes to deny unemployed Kentuckians extended benefits because "they are not paid for." Every deficit package proposed by Democratic is "contributing to our deficit crisis" and "socialism" and "dangerous." He speaks and votes as if his constituents back home are all wealthy and immune from unemployment.

Yet when he can, he still speaks up for the corporations. After the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to be a "victory for free speech." Why? Corporations now can donate any millions to their favored candidates. If any reform candidate appears who is immune to bribery, they can flood the airwaves with misrepresentations, attack ads, and lies against him. He who cannot be bought CAN be destroyed. So the Supreme Court majority--all Republicans--helped "free speech" to keep incumbent lackeys in office. And Mitch is one.

Pam Platt's Apology to Carter, and Mine

I too have hindsight on both Carter and my vote against him. I have had decades now to reassess his Presidency and all his work since, from his building homes for Habitat for Humanity, to his untiring work for peace in the Middle East. So I have composed my own apology, from the point of view of what I teach--ethical leadership. If someone can get my humble words to him, please do.

Dear Mr. Carter,

I want to thank you for being an ethical leader throughout your life and career. You have used your intelligence and gifts to improve the lives of others. You truly model the Golden Rule. You love your neighbor as much as you do yourself. You take risks to do the right thing, regardless of political consequences, or attacks upon yourself and your reputation.

I voted against you back in 1979, for the reasons stated above. I made a grave error. The Republican Party has made much of moral issues--abortion, homosexuality, patriotism. Yet when they have had power, they have shown an immoral disregard for what Mother Theresa called, "the poorest of the poor." In fact, they have added millions to the rolls of the American poor.

I apologize to you, Sir, for having failed to understand or appreciate what you were doing when President. I wish now I had voted for you again.

But I pledge to you now to do what I am doing--teaching principles of ethical leadership you yourself have modeled throughout your life. You are a Christian. Jesus said, "You will know the tree by its fruits." Your fruits demonstrate bold and innovative ideas, courage against unprincipled opposition, and finally, a positive outcome for people, from America and all over the world.

Teaching ethical leadership for me means supporting people who practice it, and opposing those who do not to the harm of others. I am no partisan in this matter.

Democrat, Republican, or Independent, I will support any American in office, or seeking office, who loves the United States of America more than self-interest and reelection. To any incumbent or candidate of any party willing to ignore or harm the American people out of partisan or ties to special interests, I pledge bold opposition.

May you, Mr. Carter, "live long and prosper," to use the words of Spock in Star Trek. We are on a perilous journey now in America. We need your leadership for as long as you're able!

Sincerely,
John D. Willis

Pam Platt, Thank YOU!

It requires moral courage to say, "I'm sorry." To use the public forum of a news column adds moral force to what you had to say. Keep on using your precious place in the press, assured by the First Amendment, to uplift our thoughts and ennoble our efforts as Americans. We need more like you, an exemplar of ethical leadership!

JDW

Revisiting the Ethics of Greed and Benevolence

2010-06-20T18:39:00.001-04:00

I was going back into some earlier blogs to send to someone and found my entry on March 7, 2010 on the ethics of greed and benevolence. There were a number of things I made clearer and several added discussions. I hope you like what you see there. The link is:

The Ethics of Greed and Benevolence

Have a great day, and comment if you will!

John

On the Constitutionality, Morality, and Consequences of the Senate Denying Help to the Unemployed

2010-06-19T19:01:00.004-04:00

On June 16, 2010, in a 52-45 vote, the U.S. Senate voted down a bill that included extending unemployment benefits. Of the 52, 40 were Republicans and 12 were Democrats. Senator Ben Nelson (D - NB), who has a long history of concern for government spending, explained, "... this is not paid for, and that translates into deficit spending and adding to the debt. The American people are right. We've got to stop doing that."

Senator Mitch McConnell (D – KY) has used the identical phrase, “not paid for,” back in April, when he voted “no” against an unemployment benefits extension. Nelson has found McConnell, from my state, to be his ethics counselor.

For U.S. Senators to deny help for unemployed Americans is both an ethical and leadership issue. The reasons above are framed as a single issue: insufficient funds. If the Senators were accountants who consistently refused to approve any expense over available funds, the decision on June 16 would be reasonable. But they are not accountants. Neither are they consistent. In fact, they are complete hypocrites. Before and after this vote, the Senate has and will approve unfunded spending. When they do, they always explain, “This was necessary,” for whatever reason.

It is the purpose of this essay to state clearly how these 52 Senators have (1) openly breached their Oath of Office; (2) shown contempt for the U.S. Constitution; and, (3) knowingly created conditions for unemployed Americans potentially leading to domestic unrest and violence. While this essay will not be read by them, nor will it change anything, I feel it my ethical duty as a concerned and patriotic American still to write the truth as I see it.

Those Voting NO Are Against the Intentions of the U.S. Constitution

The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution reads,

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, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We the People are the three most important words in the U.S. Constitution. The People of the United States are the subject. The People of the United States wrote, ordained, and established the Constitution. Its purpose and power derive from them. The People elect the members of Congress to obey the Constitution. The People require them to swear or affirm their Oath of Office and allegiance to the Constitution. The People's Constitution includes impeachment for any member of Congress who breaches the Constitution.

The People will their government “form a more perfect Union.” But the Senators voting “NO” divided the Union. They willfully harmed millions of People who are unemployed through no fault of their own, who otherwise would be ineligible for unemployment benefits. The terms of unemployment law approved them eligible for help. Yet the Senators who refused help for the People and their children, knowingly driving them into poverty and more ruin. These Senators have divided those harmed by them against their own government’s Constitutional purpose to “form a more perfect Union.”

The People will their government to “establish Justice.” But the Senators voting “NO” created injustice. The Senate voted to give billions of dollars of the People’s money to help corporations in trouble. Unlike the unemployed eligible for benefits, the corporations were responsible for their crisis. Prior to the vote, the People expressed their opposition fully and clearly to reward malfeasance. Yet the Senate met in private and acted against the People’s will. These same corporations are responsible for the unemployment of the People. Yet when the Senators had opportunity to help the People harmed by corporations helped by the Senate, they denied help.

The Senators voting “NO” have created injustice. They helped corporations responsible for their crises. They refused help to American people unemployed as a result of corporations. They listened to corporations, but refused to listen to the People. They used the money of the People to help corporations against the will of the People. They denied to use the money of the People to help the People. Added to these injustices is insult. The Senators helped corporations in deficit spending, but harmed the People on the pretense deficit spending required the harm. These Senators are not only unjust. They hold the People in contempt to issue such a reason.

The People will their government “insure domestic Tranquility.” But the Senators voting “NO” ensure domestic unrest, and violence. The People cannot be tranquil or peaceful when their children’s stomachs are empty, or when they have no home to protect them against the elements. By denying the minimal help to the millions of People unemployed and eligible for benefits, the Senators drive them into poverty and despair.

Marie Antoinette did not say, as has been reported, “Let them eat cake” in regard to the poor French peasants calling for help. Yet that infamous phrase and its contempt for common people conveys the message some Americans may hear Senators voted to end the small unemployment checks. The Senators place no value on them or their children to do such a thing. They will not be disposed to tranquility, nor to have a tranquil response, when ordinarily patriotic and good Americans turn to any means possible to feed their starving children.

The People will their government “provide for the common defense.” But the Senators voting “NO” provide no defense, but show aggression, to the People they harm. Based on votes to help corporations, the Senators have shown whose interests they defend, even against the will of the People. The Senators understand, but rebuke, the definition of “common” by their selective assistance. The Senators use deficit spending for the alleged defense of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, but argue deficit spending is impossible for the common defense of their own People. The Senators love foreigners--who pay no taxes here, who did not write nor support the U.S. Constitution, some even opposed to its democratic principles--more than their own People of the United States of America.

The People will their government “promote the general Welfare.” But the Senators voting “NO” promote the final and complete destruction of millions of unemployed People, absenting an Act of God that miraculously feeds them. The Senators have proven willingness to feed billions of bailout dollars into the coffers of corporations, and billions more into the coffers of their favorite corporate contractors, all using the People’s money and deficit spending. The Senators are demonstrated to be inimical to the general welfare of the People, not advocates of it.

The People will their government to “secure the Blessings of Liberty.” But the Senators voting “NO” deny blessing and invoke cursing on unemployed People. Concerning liberty, by taking away the last remnant of financial support, the Senators effectively say to the unemployed, “You are free to fend for yourselves and your children.” Whatever freedom this is, is contemptible and despicable. The Senators themselves are not free, for they are the willing bondservants of the corporations whose every wish they fulfill. What the Senators have secured for themselves are the curses of the People harmed by them. Yes, the People will use the freedom they have to find some way to bless their children with a crust of bread. And, yes, the People, some of them at least, will use their freedom to remove from office the Senators and Representatives who are slaves to money and power.

Those Voting “NO” Have Breached Their Oath of Office

In their Oath of Office, Senators and Representatives swear or affirm before fellow countrymen, and pray to God, the following:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Oaths spoken into the air, or signed by the hand, are only as meaningful and true as the character of those who take them. To swear or affirm anything is easy for a liar or immoral person, but difficult and solemn for one intending to keep its terms. Based on the conduct and voting records of many Senators and Representatives, they prove they are the former, not the latter.

I hope I have shown already that the Senators voting “NO” have not supported—but denied and contradicted--the principle purposes of the Constitution of the United States. However, the Oath of Office specifies too that the Constitution be “defended…against all enemies, foreign or domestic.” It is this sworn duty that is of great import for our times. I now devote two small sections on this critical part of the Oath.

Those Voting “NO”: Enemies of the Unemployed?

What does the word and its concept of “enemy” mean? I ask the reader to permit a generalization. In its most literal sense, an enemy is one who has ill will or who intends harm.

Now immediately we can say that the Senators who voted against unemployed People receiving help did not, we will pray to God, consciously will or intend harm to come to the People. In their own minds, what they intended, to aver back to Nelson’s statement, was to stop deficit spending with the Americans who “were right” in wanting deficit spending to end. This was the Senators’ avowed purpose.

There is a problem the Senators cannot avoid now. The term “enemy” is always used by the person who concludes some person, or even a corporation, for example, bears him or her ill will or intends harm. So regardless of their success in agreeing with some Americans, who mattered more to them, the Senators voted to create harm for millions of other Americans, who mattered less. This means the Senators who voted “NO” to helping millions of unemployed Americans practically and effectively made themselves “domestic enemies” to all they harmed.

The Senators have made themselves, in practical terms and regardless of all the words they will use to explain themselves, enemies of the People. There is no other way for People harmed by this vote to conclude anything else. Every Senator whose name appears on the list of the “NO” votes cast made himself or herself the very real and practical enemy of any constituents whose families are harmed. When people are harmed, it is they who track down the source of the harm. And when that source is a specific person whose specific act harmed them, they rightly ascribe the phrase, “This person is the enemy of my family and myself.”

Those Voting “YES” to Help Certain Corporations: Enemies of The People?

Corporations are, regardless of what the Roberts Supreme Court majority ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, not People who wrote and for whom the Constitution was established. Corporations are legal constructs, fictions created under law so their owners and shareholders can transact business. For-profit corporations have that one purpose, profit. All they do is aimed to increase profit and reduce expenses, or risk.

For-profit corporations are pecuniary, centrally concerned with money. They are amoral in nature. If they have in their mission statements moral or ethical operating principles, they exist because they are believed to add value for prospective customers. And stated moral or ethical principles need not be applied in practice, if profits are threatened. Let us completely divest ourselves of any illusions, or corporate propaganda, about the nature of for-profit corporations.

A brief note now on American history, which means I am interested in facts and not emotional arguments. Our history is perforated and punctuated throughout with for-profit corporations harmful to the People. In fact, for-profit corporations actually have killed, maimed, defrauded, and criminally abused millions of Americans.

Throughout the history of the production of food, pharmaceuticals, goods, machines, transportation, labor practices, in every area where American or foreign for-profit corporations have sought profits, millions of Americans have been harmed. Sickness, injury, and death, the suppression of workers' rights protected under the First Amendment, American corporations have shown they value the People only as means for profits.

For these factual reasons, every federal law and regulation on the books was enacted--always against the cries "Foul!" by for-profit corporations--to stop monopolies, sweat shops, child labor, price-fixing, health standards, workplace safety, and much more. The only reason these laws passed was that harms, suffering, and death, had grown so prevalent Congress feared a general social uprising greater and more pervasive than those when laws were passed. The People have required protection from for-profit corporations, organized individuals, willing to harm millions of their own countrymen, for money.

The very crises we have today ALL were preventable, ALL were, had the Congress and federal agencies under past White House administrations not reduced vigilance, staffs, and the will to prosecute evidence clearly in their possession. I say with vehemence that it is not corporations--but the Congress, the White House, and now, with one repetition after another--who bear the MAIN blame for not protecting The People from the suffering today. They had the history. They had the legal power. They had not the will to love the People as they loved themselves.

Our history shows some for-profit corporations are enemies of the People.

In our day, some for-profit corporations have harmed millions of American people. In every case, the harms were for profits. Millions of unemployed People were fired or permanently laid off as corporations went overseas for cheap labor. This is an illustration that profits, not moral aversion to human harm, drive for-profit corporations. The millions of Americans were harmed legally. We are a capitalist society. People still employed in for-profit corporations in this country are paid and retained for their profit value. We understand this. As many of my friends as I have left in the for-profit sector tell me, “It’s not personal. It’s just business.”

For-profit corporations who harmed millions of American people are like the Senators who voted “NO.” They have said of their harms, “I meant no harm. I did what was right. Harm was a consequence of my goal. I apologize.” We understand. And so long as their harms were legal—even if immoral and unethical, driving into poverty millions—Americans have no legal ground to complain. Oh, how for-profit corporations love their attorneys in all the fields for which they are paid well.

Let us return now to the Oath of Office and its concern that Senators (and Representatives who take the same Oath) “defend from enemies domestic and foreign.”

The People who wrote the Oath of Office did not mean only military enemies at home or abroad. They knew well the definition of “enemy” as someone who intends or does harm. Harm is not merely bullets and bombs. Harm also is economic. Throughout our history (and I apologize a little for preferring facts to fiction), our Founders knew money interests, profit interests, always worked to use the People for amoral purposes, to their harm. Thomas Jefferson fought a National Bank for that reason. He knew wealth and power could undermine democracy in America, just as wealth and power in all the nations of Europe had driven immigrants to these shores.

The Senators who voted “NO” against unemployed People voted “YES” to help for-profit corporations in financial crises. How did those amoral (and in some cases, immoral) corporations get in trouble? They engaged in business practices that harmed People. But their methods went out of control, and collapsed back on their heads. Nevertheless, all who voted “YES” to help those for-profit corporations still helped those proven and demonstrated enemies of the People.

The great irony, of course, and already stated before, is that millions of Americans are unemployed, and millions more will be unemployed, because of many for-profit corporations who are demonstrated enemies of the People. That the U.S. Senate had a majority of Senators who already helped the corporate enemies of the People (with the People’s money, and against their will), then doubly harms the People already stricken by their corporate enemies, is a mockery of the Oath of Office.

The Consequences of “YES” and “NO” Votes

The American People are basically good people. They are law-abiding people. They are proud of their Constitution and democratic institutions. Millions now have come to believe their elected officials in Washington have betrayed them and are their enemies. This is not really all that new. Nevertheless, people generally have not acted against the traitors they believe some Congress members are. But when bellies are empty, when homes are lost, when there are no jobs or means of government assistance, these conditions predict violence from some Americans. I will cite the work of a man no one longer reads, but which applies to my prediction.

In his book, Power and Innocence: a Search for the Sources of Violence (Norton 1972), the Harvard psychologist, Rollo May, tried to understand how and why some individuals in society become violent.

For violence has its breeding ground in impotence and apathy. True, aggression has been so often and so regularly escalated into violence that anyone's discouragement and fear of it can be understood. But what is not seen is that the state of powerlessness ... is the source of violence. As we make people powerless, we promote their violence rather than its control. Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate they they, too, are significant.... Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness. As Hannah Arendt has so well said, violence is the expression of impotence. (23)

An unemployed person in America is, because of how we have structured our society, for all practical purposes, impotent. The word, impotence, means lacking power. We are a capitalist society. The man or woman with the greatest wealth and possessions has power, and is recognized for it. There is a bitter twisting of the Golden Rule—“Love your neighbor as yourself”—“Who has the gold makes the rules.” But the one who has no gold is subject to the one who has it. Impotence leads to submission.

“As we make people powerless, we promote their violence rather than its control.”

The jobless in America knows they are powerless. They are at the mercy of a society built on earning, buying, and selling. Yet when they receive an unemployment check—and we absolutely must note many millions are jobless from employers who never paid into the unemployment syste—those few dollars are a little bit of monetary power. No, the petty little sum is not enough to do much with. But the unemployment check gives, in its own little way, a little bit of economic empowerment not to lose hope. When the Senators voted “no” to allow an extension for unemployment benefits, they disempowered millions more Americans from the little they had.

Economic power has shifted in America over the past decades. Less than ten percent, perhaps as little as five, are richer and more powerful. President Bush joked to a wealthy crowd, “You are my base.” Ninety percent or more are poorer. Of that ninety percent, how many have descended into the lowest depths of poverty and powerlessness. For many years, all Americans heard, “We are the last superpower on the planet.” Power, not people or compassion, our people have been conditioned to believe is our greatest claim to fame.

If Rollo May was correct, there should be no Senator, Representative, or President surprised when various sectors of powerless Americans—who blame their powerlessness on elected officials and the wealthy corporate elites who united in enmity against them—engage one of two kinds of violence.

In the French Revolution, mobs directly arrested and executed both the guilty and innocent they believed responsible for their oppression and poverty. In the election where the Nazi Party was put in power, Germans driven by the devastations of their Great Depression empowered a single man to overturn the struggling democratic Weimar Republic.

My closing suggestion is this. If the members of Congress love the People, then let them stop helping corporations at all, and let them start helping ALL Americans with hungry bellies in fear and despair. The basic instinct for survival, the basic instinct to protect one’s kin and brood, will overrule any propaganda and any law. Let us join together now, to use deficit spending where it matters most, before it is too late.

The power of impeachment, as the U.S. Constitution now dictates, is reserved only to members of Congress. I know why the Founders did that. Nevertheless, history has shown they were wrong in their judgment. There should be a Constitutional Amendment that allows the People to impeach by referendum processes impossible for the Congress, Supreme Court, or U.S. military to stop. This would ensure terms limits when We the People concluded Congress had become our enemies, or aided those who were.

The U.S. Congress: Its Violence Against the Unemployed, And Its Invitation to Violence

2010-06-17T07:56:00.001-04:00

Thank God for Loving People

2010-06-03T16:37:00.003-04:00

This blog is dedicated to all the people in the world, of all ages, creeds, religions, and nations, for every loving thought, word, and deed, you bring into the world. Most blogs follow the news and its negative subjects: the national debt, political corruption, conflicts. Today, however, I want to turn away from all the news items to focus on the millions of "just plain folks" who do one things well: they love their families, neighbors, and nation well.

Love in Every Color and Flavor

People who love come in every color and flavor. They are of all ages. They live in every time zone. Somewhere right now, some loving person is getting up in the morning, and another has put in a full day and is headed for bed. Neither of them speak the same language. They live in different nations. They live in different hemispheres. Some live north of the equator, and some south of it. But these people actually do speak the same language. It's the language of love.

They get up with a smile at the rising sun. They go through the day with a good attitude. They are just basically happy people, glad to be alive. Many of them hear the daily news, which presents 99% negative information. But these people just will not let some news editor's choices affect how they see they world.

They like being alive. They like talking to strangers on the bus and train. They like being polite to the cranky clerk, because they know it's tough working with the public. Though they are well familiar with all the negative, trashy, disgusting stuff going on, they simply choose NOT TO PARTICIPATE! They WANT to have a good day. They WANT to do what they can to help others have a good day. They like being alive and having the CHOICE to make a difference, their difference. So they do!

The really cool thing about these people is they are all over the world. They speak every language and dialect. They have all shades of skin color, from pearly white to ebony black. Some are strong as bulls. Others are weak and need help feeding themselves. Some are quick and others are slow learners. Some eat rice gruel and others eat steak. Some boil their dirty water and others drink boutique bottled water.

But all these people have the same thing in common. They wake up each day in good humor. They are positive forces wherever they go. They just naturally have good attitudes and thoughts. They just like putting their hands out to help others. When they see a really nasty character, they see someone who needs a hug not a slap. These are the Race of Lovers, and there are millions of them all over the world. Without them, the world would not be what it is.

Now There Are Some "Big People" Who Love Well

Now there are some "big name" people, like Dr. Phil on television, and thousands more who have earned their place to express their love and concern in big ways. Then there's that funny guy who had his "fifteen minutes of fame," Dr. Patch Adams and his Gesundheit Institute. And there's that Make-a-Wish Foundation. Where I live, there is a wonderful charity with an impeccable record, the WHAS Crusade for Children. I've even heard of charities that bring dogs, cats, and all kinds of critters to old folks, just to give them something to love!

The very word, "charity," comes from the Latin word, caritas, which means love. So charity is a great thing. We need more of it. That's precisely why Dr. Phil and many, many charities all over the world are popular. Everybody wants to be understood. Everybody wants to be helped. Everybody wants to be loved. Everybody understands the language of love, which is why people donate to good causes.

One of the "down sides" of charities, however, is their costs. Full-time staff, organizational costs, advertising costs, insurance costs, there's plenty of cost for an official charity. OK, OK. I'm not criticizing, just pointing out a fact.

That is why today's blog celebrates "the little people" and not the big names and organizations we all love. If we had to depend on official organizations to spread every daily dose of love needed in the world, we would be in a mess! There is NO organization that exists that can be everywhere all the time. Which brings me back to the "little people" (translate that, you and me).

It's The "Little People" Who Spread the Most Love

In nations all over the world, there are people who are paid to do some pretty nasty jobs. You name the nastiest job you know. Yet it's completely true that many of the people who have these jobs also bring love with them in everything they do. From the nurse assistant who switches out smelly bedpans, to the school janitor whose day is loaded down with cleaning up vomit from the latest cycle of viruses, there are folks who have some "dirty work." Yet the truth is, nearly all these people bring love with them when they come on the job. They love people. They love doing a good job. They are glad to be alive. They bring love to what they do.

My younger daughter, Charissa, is one of these "little people." Though she is absolutely beautiful, she enjoys helping people as a certified nurse assistant. You name it, she's had to do it. But the really great thing about her is that she constantly gets compliments from her patients and their families for one reason. She loves people, she loves what she does. She's one of the "little people" doing big things because of, you guessed it, LOVE.

It's the "little people" who respond to the emergencies and crises in our nation and world. Who are the thousands who volunteer to go to sites of flood and drought, hurricane and earthquake, and much more? We know thousands are there. But we don't know their names. And they did not go there to get their names in the newspapers or pictures on the television. It was LOVE that brought them there. And their love for strangers--got that?--strangers cost them time, money, energy, and sometimes, personal risk to their own lives.

I just love these "little people" who give the so-called "daily news" a BAD name. Why? Because the news never reports on these people enough. The line, "NY Man Kills Family After Armed Robbery," just as easily could be, "11 Million NY Fathers Kissed Children Off to School After Fixing Them Breakfast." The choice as to which is news is arbitrary. Do we want to be reminded some people go crazy, or that millions of good people kiss their children off to school? I don't know about you, but I would rather hear about the 11-million-to-1 shot........

Yes, it's the average person who keeps the world going with daily doses of love, doled out to whomever he or she meets. Maybe it's the kid who put some extra candy in a pocket and passes it to others on the playground. Maybe it's the CEO who orders bonus checks to everybody in the company who've been with the firm more than a year. The stories of love are pretty much endless. Why? When love is in your heart, it just has to get out, and it will.

Now On My Hobbyhorse--the Religions in Conflict

If you've read many of my blogs, you know how concerned I am about religions gone amok. There are plenty of religious people in the world who seem preoccupied with either starting or keeping up some kind of conflict. I'm always concerned with the historically demonstrated fact that the masses can be swayed to do harm through their favorite religion.

But, HEY!, the truth is there are millions of good religious people all over the world--of every faith--who do not do all the bad stuff some of their brothers and sisters do. There are Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, people of every faith who are utterly fantastic at everything they do BECAUSE OF their religious faith. These people love God. They love themselves as God's children. They love their families. They love their local community. They love their workplace. They love, love, love, BECAUSE they have a strong faith in God and dedication to pleasing both God and fellow human beings.

Now most readers know who Mother Theresa was. Most of the world knows who she was. She was a Catholic nun who founded the Sisters of Charity, whose main mission was to love and serve "the poorest of the poor." Now Mother Theresa could be pretty feisty and a little crusty at times, but her heart was sold out to loving all kinds of folks with absolutely a non-discriminating love. What an inspiration to people all over the world. THE WORLD LIKES TO RECOGNIZE LOVE!

Mohandas Gandhi said a profound truth to a Hindu man whose son had been killed by a Muslim, then who killed a Muslim child in retaliation but who felt he was "going to Hell" for his deed. Gandhi said, "I will tell you how to get out of Hell. Find an orphan. Raise him as your own. But be sure he is a Muslim, and raise him as one." I love that quote.

Jesus (Matthew 8:5-13) once was approached by a high-ranking Roman soldier requesting a healing for his sick servant. Jesus did not say, "Oh, darn! I'd like to, but you're not a Jew. I wish you had not talked with me, or that you are so close. The purity laws forbid this kind of contact. Bye." NOT!

And just think of all the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and other healers through the centuries who did same as Jesus--they just saw the need, loved the patient more than any religious credo, and then just loved the person! Sometimes I think that the most hateful religious people in the world really need to get deathly ill--or have their child deathly ill--only to be healed by some physician from the group they hate! And since we are discussing non-discriminatory love for people shared through medical professionals, we cannot fail to note Doctors Without Borders.

Transition to Action

Now we've thought about love in the world, and how many people all over the planet are loving others every day. Let's move from thinking to doing. A few simple suggestions for making this blog useful today.

(1) Think about your life. How loving are you?
(2) Think about someone you know who needs more love, then love that person.
(3) Give more love than worrying about getting more love, and love will come.
(4) Enter in the Comment Box below two things: (a) a person who has loved you and (b) an organization you think loves well.

Let's you and me, be more loving today. God help us to do that. AMEN

On Whether God is Pleased With the Killing of Children: To Jews, Christians, and Muslims

2010-05-31T19:58:00.014-04:00

Children are the victims of wars all over the world. At this time, America is involved in two wars overseas. Our military men and women do not intentionally try to kill or maim children, but children still die or their parents and family members are killed, making them orphans. Our soldiers are killed and then their children are left orphaned without a mother or father.. Other nations are involved in many other conflicts. Good military personnel grieve and are haunted by memories of killing children. The deaths of children often are the causes for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental after-effects in the killers themselves.

Yet there are some in the world who are callous regarding the killing of children, so long as the dead are not their children. The North Vietnamese Army recruited children and women to carry explosives into U.S. camps. The Russians, in their war with Afghanistan, dropped explosive devices attractive to the eyes of little children in hopes they would pick them up and be killed. In Africa and in some Central and South American nations, children have been recruited as soldiers to kill and be killed. In the Middle East wars, children regularly are used as fodder for war, and those not intentionally recruited for suicide missions commonly are killed by other children. And of course, children always are the victims of bullets and bombs in every war.

Americans were outraged that the attacks on the World Trade Center targeted noncombatants, including children. I know for a fact that many Americans are completely insensitive now to the deaths of Muslim children. This is due at least to the vengeance motive in some, as if a child is not a child just because he or she is a Muslim, which means "enemy." And there are some Americans who would be more concerned if our State Department allowed, or if your television networks were inclined, to show the bloodied little bodies of children killed by our bombs and bullets.

Now no sane person kills children; however, military personnel are taught that children are often the necessary casualties of war. The deaths and dismemberment, the resultant emotional damage and mental illnesses of children, are just another factor in the battles between adults. Personnel are taught to ignore the dead children killed as "collateral damage" as best they can, though soldiers who have killed children often return home haunted by the memories of what they have done.

If we look at the role of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, in all the wars past and present, in the killing of children, there have been some rabbis, preachers, and imams--the extreme right in their religions--who have comforted and aided those who kill children. There have been American clergy who, in our past, actively encouraged federal soldiers to kill the savage Native Americans, or later, the godless Communists, and among all these were children. There have been Israeli rabbis who, because of the deaths of Jewish children killed by terrorist bombers, have hardened their hearts against the deaths and suffering of Palestinian children. There are, as we know, now certain Islamic sects whose imams embrace suicide bombings--some to be done by children--in which innocent children are blown to bits by those who believe they honor and serve Allah.

We know that children are killed by other religions and their wars. However, because of the intertwined hatreds and fighting between the peoples of the Book Religions, and the warring of the nations in which they live, I want to focus on the religious element of any of these religious people being involved in the killing of children, intentional and accidental. If the current wars in the world expand eventually into broader fields of conflict, or if nuclear arms ever begin to be used, then not only their children but all the children of the world, or most of them, will become at risk as victims for death and destruction.

As I look at history, I know what has happened to children through the ages. Christian armies have killed children. Muslim armies have killed children. The Israeli army now kills Palestinian children now that the State of Israel has its authority to protect its homeland in this way. For any of these Christians, Muslims, and Jews who have faith in God, all rely on their religious teachers for comfort, if not active support, as they do this butchery against children. So it seems relevant to consider, if religious people are to be engaged in this horror, whether or not God really is pleased by the things they do.

Killing Children as a Religious Duty:
The Texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

In the Hebrew Bible, God told Abraham to kill Isaac, but provided a ram as a substitute. God killed the first-born children of Egypt. The Death Angel would have killed the first-born Hebrew children either make them eager for the blood of innocent children, or enable them to be faithful to their duty despite their antipathies, because whose doorposts were not smeared with the blood of the sacrificial lamb. God commanded Joshua and his army to exterminate every indigenous living person and animal in the Land of Canaan, including children. The deed was done, in several locations, according to the Bible. According to the Torah, God commanded the killing, by stoning, of unruly children. There are other capital offenses given in the Law and, if children were guilty of these, we may presume that children were killed when proven guilty, such as sexual crimes.

Jesus presented a child to his disciples and said of such was the Kingdom of Heaven. Regarding killing, Jesus told his disciples to turn the other cheek, settle with their opponents on the way to court, and even to love their enemies. There is nothing in his teachings or example to suggest killing children or, for that matter, killing anyone is permissible. The same is true in the rest of the Christian Bible, for there is no killing of children or others permitted. Nevertheless, Jesus was a Jew who surely believed the Torah, so he must have approved of the previously commanded killings of children.

Muhammad did not command the killing of children and, in fact, taught mercy to children, women, strangers, and non-combatants, as a general rule. He did command that any who fought against Islam could be killed, so this would include any children who took up arms. He also commanded that, when the land was corrupted (Sura 5:32), people could be killed. Therefore, if Muslims concluded that children corrupted the land, they also could be killed. Muhammad, who held Moses and Jesus to be in the line of prophets, though their followers had corrupted the divine revelations given to Jews and Christians, also surely believed previous commands of God to kill children.

Based on the holy books of these three world religions, Judaism clearly has revelations from God commanding the death of children. Christianity does not, though we fairly may presume Jesus approved previous killings by divine command. Islam does not, though again, we may presume Muhammad also concurred with anything previously revealed by God, including the killing of children.

These Religions' Subsequent Histories

Regarding Judaism, I do not have either records, or interest in finding records, proving Jewish parents obeyed the clear commands given to Moses in the Torah regarding the killing of children. It would be an insult to the integrity of faithful and obedient Jewish parents to assert they failed to obey any point in the Law when grounds for conviction were present. Jewish parents surely joined the community in killing their children, or the children of others, who were guilty of capital offenses. Jewish parents today, depending on their Jewish sect, will hear various interpretations of their rabbis on applications of the Torah concerning the killing of children or other capital offenses. Nevertheless, the commands were given by God to Moses and the religious community, and God has not revoked those duties, whatever current leaders may say.

In the State of Israel, there are Jews who kill the children of Palestinians under the authority of national security. Some also kill under another Mosaic principle, the Law of Retaliation ("eye for eye, tooth for tooth"), since some Palestinian adults have killed Israeli children. To the extent that Israelis kill Palestinian children to preserve a homeland they believe ordained by God, this is variation and extension of the command given to Joshua.

Regarding Christianity, we have many records of Christians through the ages killing children. There are instances where Christian parents, following Moses' command regarding unruly children, killed offspring they believed guilty of the capital offense. The most common examples of Christian soldiers killing children are in times of war, the children of parents who were enemies of the state. Where Christian children have been killed by adults in other nations (including by Christian military in those nations), the Mosaic Law of Retaliation often has been applied, as per above.

There are too many of examples of Christians engaged in all kinds of violence--psychological, physical, political, economic, legal--to cite over the past two thousand years of world history. Christians often have risen to positions of power they could use as they would, and did. Were I as some are in my faith, I would attempt to draw a line between the "nominal" or "true" believers, with the violent in the former group and the non-violent in the latter. But long ago, I decided this cheapened the blood of the innocent who suffered and died at the hands of people who did have Jesus' words and deeds to read, who confessed him as "Lord and Savior," yet who did what they did. And none of the clergy in their churches at these times, nor any later, disputed that the horrors done were done by true believers. The best most can say today is not repentance but, "Yes, what they did was unfortunate they they were children of their times." Inexcusable, I say, is such an attempt to avoid 'historical criticism based in anachronism,' since they had and read and confessed themselves bound to what Jesus commanded and did.

In the United States, Christian soldiers killed the children of Native Americans and African slaves. Christian and Jewish U.S. soldiers (perhaps some American Muslims) have killed children in every American war, from the Revolution, the Civil War, and all others after. Children were killed indiscriminately in Allied fire bombings in World War II, as well as the two nuclear detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. German Christian soldiers killed the children of Jews, gypsies, and all other classes included for Nazi extermination, as well as children in every territory they crossed. Russian Christian soldiers killed children in the Russian Revolution, and how many millions died in Stalin's purges to follow? These are a few notable examples. In all these cases, Christian soldiers have killed children under some nation's need for "national security" or, as stated before, under the principle of national retaliation, if Christian (and other religious or non-religious) children were killed by enemies.

Regarding Islam, I will say less, for one reason alone. Since I have been brutally honest with my own religion, I will allow them an opportunity to be equally honest as to what the Qur'an teaches and what their own people have done to each other, to Jews, Christians, Hindus, and all others. I have yet to hear the Muslims so eager for Jewish and Christian blood be as honest about Islam's own sordid history. And I am ashamed of the other Muslims who know the facts but who apparently fear for their lives, and their family's lives, rather than the judgment of Allah for those who allow lies in Allah's name. So I say this about Islam.

There are many records of Muslims killing their children when guilty of capital crimes forbidden in the Qur'an. This remains true today of certain Muslim sects. Throughout the ages where Muslims have warred against the enemies of Islam, there are many records of children killed. In some cases, the killing of enemy children was retaliation for Muslim children killed by aggressors. The children of Jews and Christians sometimes were killed, along with their parents, based on certain Suras where Muhammad commanded death to them as those who scorned and corrupted divine revelations.

In recent times, notably after the theological interpretations of Sayyid Qutb, which are influential for leaders of Al-Qaeda, children have been killed freely by Muslims following this Islamic sect (or others). From the killing of children in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; to the killing of Israeli children in marketplaces with car or personnel bombs; to the killing of Muslim children of different sects considered "not true Muslims" using various methods, children now are killed with impunity as a religious duty. In fact, some of these Muslim sects actually recruit children to kill other children--Muslim, Jewish, Christian, "Western"--however they do this using the Qur'an as their resource.

Is God Pleased With the Death of Children?

Within each of these three religions, there has been and is a great diversity among believers as to whether or not the nature of God includes human emotions, such as "being pleased or displeased." If we stay strictly within the holy books of Judaism, Christianity, and (to a negligible degree) Islam, then God has emotions, divine ones, but apparently comparable with human love and pleasure, hate and displeasure. In all three religions, obedience to the divine commands is required, regardless of the emotional effects on God (which makes divine responses contingent on human behaviors).

Regarding the killing of children, whoever wrote Psalm 137, verse 9, that writer prays to God, for the Jew who avenges Babylon's harms to God's people: "a blessing on him who seizes your babies and dashes them against the rocks!" (JPS Hebrew-English TANAKH, 2nd ed., Jewish Publications Society, 1999, p. 1584). Since this statement comes from the intention of the Psalmist, not divine command, the only thing one might deduce is the writer believed his statement was not against his religion or his God, if not compatible with divine sensibilities. One thing we do know, however, is the Psalmist held his God was fully capable of killing children--as with the destruction of the world by flood--or of ordering the deaths of children, as in the Torah.

We know that there have been and are Jews and Muslims who believe their inspired writings: that killing children--when this is in obedience to direct divine command--is a duty to God, whatever effects on divine emotions. And since there are holy texts indicating that God is pleased by the death of the wicked, or the things of the wicked, believers can deduce the deaths of the children of the wicked also incite divine pleasure, if somehow babies and little ones have some share in their parents' sins.

In the case of Muslims, the Qur'an emphasizes more obedience and blessing, or disobedience and cursing, than divine emotions concerning human behavioral responses. Allah in fact is not like the God of the Hebrews, or of that of Christians at all, as stated in Sura 114:1-4, "Say, 'He is Allah, the One and Only, Allah, the Eternal and Absolute. He does not beget, nor is He begotten.'" So whether or not the divine command concerns killing children or any other persons, Muslims have no taste for anthropomorphism. Allah is, Allah commands, and Allah responds justly with blessing or cursing, depending on the response of the believer.

Christians, unlike either Jews or Muslims, have neither a prophet or divine commands from him that children must be killed. To the contrary, Jesus seems to have had a tender spot for the children he healed and for their trusting and honest natures, which he used for positive illustration of the Kingdom of God. When he commanded, "Render to Caesar [the state] what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" (Book of Mark 12:17), there is nothing known about Jesus to suggest disciples were to kill children, if the state demanded. There is nothing in the Pauline writings, or in any others in the New Testament, supporting the killing of children.

Short Explanation of Christian Recourse to Killing

How did Christians develop the idea they could kill at all? The Book of Acts (15:22-31) records what often is called the Council of Jerusalem. It was at that meeting that Jewish believers in Jesus as messiah ruled that Gentile converts were bound by only a few rules in the Mosaic Law: "to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality."

In the third century, Christian theologians defined which books and writings they held as inspired by God. There was too much theological diversity based on too many traditions. The majority adopted the books today known as the New Testament, plus the Jewish Bible. Why? Christian theologians remembered Jesus' statement (The Book of Matthew 5:17-19) he did not come to supplant but fulfill the Mosaic Law. In addition, many were educated in Greek and Roman philosophy and sought to maintain what we would call a "principle of non-contradiction"; that is, that God was consistent in revelations to the prophets. Therefore, whatever revelations had prepared for Jesus' appearance, they still had divine truths within them for later use by Christian believers, just as Jesus had read and used only the Hebrew Bible.

Some early Christians rejected this approach, which they considered both a patchwork and denigrating to Jesus' superior and final revelations to the world. Some believed the Jewish Bible was to be excluded from the list of books Christians should study for faith and practice. Marcion of Sinope (died around 160 AD) was the first known Christian who held this view. He was overruled by the theological majority, branded a heretic, and "Marcionism" died with him, though a few in later centuries would resurrect this idea.

The earliest Christians, however, followed Jesus' teachings and example and were pacifistic. Like Jews, they also would not worship the idols in the Roman pantheon, or worship Caesar as God, the Emperor-cult. Persecutions against Christians began, and Christian clergy began to seek ways for Christians to participate in the life of the Roman regime, including military service. It was under these pressures that Christian theologians began to draw upon the Jewish Bible for "previous revelations" Christians could--indeed ought to--use for the purpose of religious killing, or killing with some divine sanctions.

God had commanded wars and exterminations before, and since such Jewish heroes as King David had been great warriors and still been God's favorites, and because Jesus commanded his people to give what Caesar demanded, killing was not only permissible but within the divine economy of ruling the world through secular regimes. This logical sequence led eventually to full Christian participation in the military, not only for Rome but in any nation where they lived.

Regarding Christian killing, therefore, of children as well as anyone else, Christian clergy drew most heavily for their "divine permissions" for killing at large from the "divine commands" read in the Jewish Bible, noted earlier. The Jewish Bible provided, and provides, all of the theological models used by Christians for their killing. It is, of course, completely ironic that the entire history of Christian violence against Jews, or any other peoples for that matter, was and is enabled by theological models provided by the Jewish Bible.

Had Jesus' teachings and model been taken as sole authority, then the kind of Christian religion taught and practiced by Mennonites, Amish, and others in the pacifistic Anabaptist traditions would have replaced what the world has witnessed by the majority of Christians past; what the world witnesses in the present; or, what the world will witness in the future.

Decisions

Anywhere in the world where there are Jews, Christians, and Muslims, who hold the Jewish Bible, Christian Bible, and Qur'an, as requiring, permitting, or justifying the killing of children--not to speak of any other adult victims who neither intended or did any harm to the religious killers--it is in those parts of the world children will be slain under the banner of religion, or with its approvals. Jews can kill Palestinian children, Christians can kill Muslim children, and Muslims can kill Jewish, Christian, and Muslim children, each and all having holy books and theological models for the tasks.

Now killing children does run against nature. No normal and sane human being can kill a child without running up against the deepest antipathies for harming defenseless, harmless, young boys and girls. After all, the adults who do this butcher's work also have children, if not their own, then in their families or in the families of their religious communities and nations. I already have noted the motive for indiscriminate killing of children based in retaliation. And this is one of the most fundamental motives driving all the parties in the world's conflicts today.

The so-called War Against Terror, in which America and its allies now fight, has killed untold hundreds of thousands of children and created terror for millions of other children. Yet the religious men and women who do this killing suspend judgment against themselves because they have religious resources and teachers who tell them to ignore the repugnance of Nature and affirm the Duty of God and Country.

There are religious Jews in the State of Israel who kill and harm Palestinian children, but like their religious American allies--Jews and Christians--they are convinced their killing may be evil but it achieves a greater good in the will of God. Many rabbis, not all, reinforce and console their Israeli congregants who do what is distasteful, but "what God requires for the homeland." And like some of their religious American allies overseas, who kill Muslim children with their bombs, yet religiously justified, there are Israeli Jews also religiously convinced their killing Palestinian children is an unfortunate means to a larger, divinely blessed end: the preservation of the State of Israel, which many nationalists help to confuse with the biblical Israel.

The religious Muslims who kill Jewish children in the State of Israel, or anywhere else they can, do not believe--based on the video recordings they leave--they do anything else except (1) obey and please Allah and (2) remove from this life some Jewish children, somehow the enemies of Islam, whose deaths will mean their brothers and sisters will not need to kill them. The same is true for the Muslims who kill Christian children, whether in Muslim territories, or in any of the Western nations where indiscriminate killings of children are "successful" and thereby will lead to, what they have been told by their imams, is Allah's blessing and paradisaical reward. Most amazing, however, is that, at least after the innovative teachings of Qutb and others, now, in our era of history, Muslims even kill the children of others who believe they are Muslims, but who are not "true believers" according to those who kill them.

The Muslims who are taught to kill the children of Jews, Christians, and even other Muslims, remind me completely of the most vicious and sectarian Christians in certain periods of history whose theologians and priests and preachers told them to kill Jews, Muslims, other Christians-Not-Orthodox, and all others outside the narrow sectarian circle. I know nothing in the history of Judaism that matches precisely the killing of children as done, first, by some who called themselves "true Christians" and, second, by some who now call themselves "true Muslims." Had not the Jews been so marginalized and persecuted by both Christians and Muslims, it is my opinion their original Hebrew Bible paradigms would have led to the same kinds of killing as in the other two Book Religions.

I am not an atheist. No, I am one of the minority Christians who believe Jesus taught and acted as I should, and as those who dominate the world stage calling on Jesus as their Savior should but never will. Yet I refuse to accept that any religion can be true, let alone good, that kills children for any reason. This includes my religion, the mother of my religion, Judaism, and the religion that came after Moses and Jesus, that of Muhammad, the one who so often calls Allah, "Most Merciful, Most Just."

Yet I stand completely with all the atheists and skeptics of the world who stand against the slaughter of the innocents. I stand completely united with them, arm in arm, in outrage and unbelief against any and all religions whose deities demand the blood of babies, boys, and girls. I find more fellowship with an atheist who loves and fights for the lives of innocent people to live out their natural lives, to die of infirmity and disease and accident, than to die at the hands of people who think they honor their god by stealing away the life given by divine decree.

All three religions discussed here--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--have holy books. Yet one historical fact is common to them all. Not any of their holy books makes precisely the claims for divine inspiration as have rabbis, preachers, and imams. There are allegations that God spoke and commanded. There are a few statements made about the inspiration of the prophets. Yet not one of these religions has stated within their holy books the kind of claims for verbal inspiration as stated by these three religions' most conservative believers.

And surely, surely, there is no prophet in any of their holy books who stated that all the councils and meetings of theologians in later centuries, as they chose which books to include in their religious collections, would be guided and protected by God in their every decision. Nor was there ever any prophet who predicted that each of these religions' textual critics--who compared variant extant versions of the holy writings, then made personal or committee decisions as to which were or were not authentic--would be guided and protected by God in their every decision.

No, none of these things are contained in the holy books. Yet the blood of millions of children, and millions of their brothers and sisters, and millions more of their parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents, has been spilled in a flood of gore, terror, torture, anxiety, and grief, all because some Jews, Christians, and Muslims attributed things to their holy books never stated in them, not as they claimed at least.

And for all the specific things stated and alleged that God commanded to Moses, Joshua, David, or scores more of religious people mentioned in those holy books, again, there is not one necessary proof that God said those things--other than through complex doctrines of verbal inspiration; unstated, but still implicitly believed, doctrines of divine inspiration on the actions of councils, sectarian copyists, and textual critics; and, finally, perhaps the worst insult of all to the prophets who originally spoke in all the languages they used, their alleged statements of whatever may have been divine at one time and place, given to one person but recorded by others, to use for the killing of children or innocent people.

The paragraph above is filled with facts, not opinion. Everyone knows, who knows anything about the transmission of any of the holy books in the world, there is an almost endless chain of human decisions involved in copying, collecting, editing, comparing, choosing, and reconstructing the text. Finally, even translating into another language--which involves "transduction" or reduced meaning--any text to be used for killing is additionally ludicrous and presumptuous, unless we add another layer of "divine inspiration" to ensure (1) the translation committees, and they are plural, select just the right words and (2) the future earnest, sincere readers of the translated texts also have the same meanings of the vernacular words which were in the minds of the committee voters, who were guided by direct inspiration.

After all, whatever the prophets may have heard in primary revelations from God, based on the sequences identified here, if God does intend to convey precisely whatever divine meaning is to be transmitted to later generations, in written words, then inspiration will be needed for secondary, tertiary--and on and on and on through the centuries of the process--meanings until the "inspired message" is preserved, read, and understand or received accurately by the earnest seeker after the divine will.

Nevertheless, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have taken all these thousands of decisions made by generations of their ancestors, then made the final version of their holy books as the perfectly inspired repository of faith and practice leading to the killing of children.

Perhaps they are correct. Yet if they are, their truth nowhere is derived from the clear words of any of their prophets. Everything, everything used by the child-killers and person-killers is by inference, reconstruction, deduction, and even the influences of personality, place in time, and intellectual capacity to reason in an unprejudiced fashion.

There are some clear, universal-sounding statements to kill in some of the holy books. But in light of the historical facts of the transmission of the holy books, in light of the heavy uses of deductive and analogical reasoning--which so often fuel most religious applications of killing--there is one broader, more universal fact that I would imagine ought to stop nearly all killing.

All the holy books teach more about God's will to offer, through the inspiration of the prophets, religions aimed for mercy, restoration, healing, cleansing, forgiveness, covenant, compassion, emotions driven by gratitude, thoughts filled with justice and goodness, and morality that loves the self, family, neighbor, stranger, and, for Christianity, even enemy (at least as Jesus taught and lived).

Majoring On Minors:
The Misplaced Emphases of Three Great Faiths

Now religious killing is very ancient. Indeed, Judaism’s story of Cain’s killing of Abel is our first narrative of religious killing, nor are we told of the ages of either the victim or the killer. Abel was not an unbeliever, but a believer. Abel was not a false believer, but a true one. Yet because his brother both in flesh and in faith was jealous and angry, Abel was slain by Cain. God said to Cain that Abel's blood "cried up from the ground" and surely, based on human religious history, God has heard millions of such cries by the blood of innocent dead slain by religious fervor.

Since religious killing is as old as religion, why should be be concerned much with it? Might we just as well say, regarding religious killing, what Jesus said about the poor, that we always will have it with us? What is so different about today, asks the religious (or non-religious) person whose child has not yet been slain by a bullet or bomb, or by intentional starvation or thirst, or by forced expatriation or disease without medication?

The reason why the issue of religious killing and, in the case here, the killing of children based on religious convictions, is so important today is simple. To use a phrase common in the legal profession, also drawn from Mosaic Law, is that everyone’s ox is being gored, or being threatened with goring, and apparently, forever. If in past centuries religious killers were burdened with the task of moving vast armies over vast territories in order to do their bloody work, in today's situation, even one single detonated nuclear weapon could begin an international war with human and ecological consequences beyond the imagination.

The greatest irony of all in today’s global situation is that not one of the Book Religions had its origins in divine revelations mainly aimed at killing. From Moses and the Prophets, to Jesus and the Apostles, to Muhammad, each of the three religions arose—according to their primary and principal messages of their holy books—by God’s concern to speak and save all who would listen. Their common message is not killing, but fellowship, relationship, restoration, covenant, obedience, holiness, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, better individuals, better families, and better nations to the degree any secular regime honors the revealed will of God. New life and divine rewards were promised far more than death and divine punishment, though the latter were revealed too.

When I think of all the children of the world who are being killed, and when I think of the major emphases in the Book Religions, I ask myself, "Why do not the rabbis, preachers, and imams univocally share common outrage, not merely of their own innocent children being killed, but ANY children of ANY persons in the world, regardless of their religions?"

Yes, I remember the divine decrees to Joshua to exterminate every living man, woman, child, and creature. Yes, I know some holy texts read God demanded the obliteration of all indigenous life in the Promised Land, to clean it for the exiles of the Promise. Though these texts came from the Hebrew Bible, it was my ancestors, Christians, who analogically applied them to the subjugation of indigenous peoples all over the world. Muslims, on the other hand, paid more attention to the Qur'an and its dictates than to Moses or Jesus.

Why Some Religious Leaders Incite Killing

Why do the leaders of the Book Religions not stop, or do all they can to stop, the killing of children--be they Jew, Christian, or Muslim, or of any other faith, or none at all? Are not children the least experienced with life, the most open to learning new and unknown things, the most willing to believe what any LOVING adult will tell them? Are not children, the population with the most open minds, the most easily persuaded? Are not children the most natural candidates for the succor and sweetness of the best that Jews, Christians, and Muslims can teach and show them about who God is and the good God wants for human beings, as revealed by the prophets?

One would think that all the religious leaders in the Book Religions would be united in vying on saving all the lives of little children all over the world just so a new generation could do better with the revealed religions than adults have done for centuries. What true Jew, a truly observant follower of the Torah, can rejoice--or be neutral or numb--to the death of a Christian or Muslim child, or any other child? What true Christian, one who reads of Jesus putting a child before adults as an example of who is most suitable for the Kingdom of Heaven, can rejoice--or be neutral or numb--to the death of a Jewish or Muslim child, or any other child? What true Muslim, one who reads the Qur'an and all Muhammad had to say about women and children, can rejoice--or be neutral or numb--to the death of a Jewish or Christian child, or any other?

God gives life to the child. Every Jew, Christian, and Muslim grieve for their own dead children. Why ought they not also grieve, if they honor the God who created all children, when any of God's little ones are shot, blown up, maimed, driven insane, and rendered--by the act of a human hand, however allegedly "religious"--dead or crippled in body or mind?

Why do some rabbis, preachers, and imams actively teach, encourage, mold, and praise those who kill children in the name of God? Where did they so allow their knowledge of the beautiful heart and core of their prophetic revelations to fall into disuse, to be substituted by the small number of teachings about punishments and killings? Then beyond that, how, in the name of the God they allege themselves loyal to, have those same religious leaders so degenerated from everything we know about God to embrace the death of children?

There are many answers. One answer is that such leaders themselves are false, not by any external person's accusation, nor by any nation's judgment, but because their own holy books condemn the way they have replaced the rule of offered divine blessing, for the exception of the divine curse. One answer is that such leaders are drunk with power, not the divine power to give hope, life, and choice--like that of their prophets--but demonic power to create despair, death, and inevitable destruction.

Yet another answer to explain the bizarre disregard or contempt for the deaths of children is one I have learned only in the past seven years. Perhaps the most callous, the most insensate, the most brutal religious leaders among the Jews, Christians, and Muslims are those who themselves have experienced so much chaos, destruction, and grief their minds no longer are healthy. This is the biological, the psychiatric answer.

I have learned that, while we human beings have the greatest capacities to think, imagine, and create than any other living species in the world (and in that we truly are the "crown of creation," as the old theologians used to say), nevertheless, when we are subjected to prolonged and unrelieved anxiety, stress, fear, anger, uncertainty, emotional and physical displacement, grief and chaos, this is the end of our human glory and the beginning of our worst animal behaviors. We know that under such conditions our highest rational and cognitive capacities, our normal emotional capacities to experience joy and happiness, are displaced by our “reptilian brain" and its defensive mechanisms.

So once we have recognized that some Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders are sinners guilty of egotism and power-mongering, we also must recognize that some quite frankly are mentally unstable, deranged, delusional, and unfit to lead. This is NOT to say that any rabbi, preacher, or imam who quotes or teaches one of their holy texts pertaining to capital punishment or holy war is mentally ill. This IS to say that any religious leader whose ministry becomes so absorbed, centered, and driven only by one relatively small doctrinal area to the general overriding of main areas MAY be mentally ill. And I am unsure whether or not I want to meet any Jew, Christian, or Muslim, leader or led, who spends much time in emphasizing killing in general, or who ignores or approves the deaths of children.

On the Prophets and Their Redemptive Missions

If all Jews, Christians, and Muslims in today's world were to spend more time tabulating all the teachings given by Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, then dividing them into "positive" or "negative," all three Book Religions would be forced to see how their precious faiths are loaded down with the former, and lightly burdened with the latter. While every prophet always appears due to needed reform--that is, within a context of corruption judged by God--the message given to the prophet always is the same. And this is a positive message.

God sends the prophet with correction and redirection, with calls for repentance and return. God does not simply destroy the heretic and unbeliever without first sending the prophet. The very nature of a prophet is to offer hope for mercy, change, and restoration. Therefore, any Jew, Christian, or Muslim who becomes obsessed with prosecution, judgment, and execution of heretics or unbelievers de facto abandons the very nature of his or her religion--which began and takes life from hope for mercy, change, and restoration. God gave the prophets and their revelations precisely to set up boundaries within which believers might find blessing and avoid cursing.

So when we consider, in this case, as Americans, any American religious leaders in these faiths who are obsessed with judgment, retribution, and killing, or whose ministries are characterized more by what is ordinarily, ordinarily, reserved for God's Final Judgment, to the principal exclusion of the very origination of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--as religions aimed at repentance, mercy, restoration, and compassion--in my opinion, such leaders reveal themselves principally as usurpers of God's rule, not as faithful to their religions' core nature and messages.

And when we consider that some religious leaders, here and abroad, either have callous disregard, evidenced by their silence, or openly demonic celebration that "children of the enemy" have been consumed by the fires of war, they are revealed for what they are. Based on the principal and predominate texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, they are heirs of the most false and wicked prophets, not Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad.

God's principal revelations were for the good of humanity--to offer opportunities to hear, believe, obey, and be improved. The threats of divine punishment, in this life or the next, always were reserved for those whose hearts hardened against the extended divine hope for repentance, mercy, and reform. The heart and mind of any truly religious Jew, Christian, and Muslim must be torn asunder in grief and protest by the death of any child slain by the hand of any human being. Based on all we know from the holy books in all three religions, God willed the child to have life. The human being who takes the life of a child for any reason (and I note that some suicide bombers are children, that is, children taking the lives of children, having been taught by adults) seems to me most ungodly and atheistic, regardless of what they imagine.

The present spiraling escalation of killing done in the name of God calls for all the leaders of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims to get down on their knees and put their faces in the dirt in repentance, to seek divine guidance before their followers lead the world into a conflagration of nuclear war into which both the guilty and innocent perish.

Apocalyptic Presumption As Practical Atheism

Most perversely to me, yet true, there are Jews, Christians, and Muslims, who want precisely for the world to end in a nuclear holocaust, and as soon as possible. Why? They are convinced by their religious teachers, or by things they read, including some of their holy books, that they themselves were born to usher in the Age of Destruction and the Great Judgment.

These three religions share revelations, or at least beliefs, that the end of the world will end in a fiery ordeal. If the prophets reported accurately what God revealed, then such an end must come. Nevertheless, there are none of the prophetic revelations that predict, teach, advocate, or otherwise indicate that believers themselves will be the direct or indirect causes of the Apocalypse. There is no holy scripture in any of the Book Religions that commands or insinuates that Jews, Christians, or Muslims are to wage war and kill the innocent along with the guilty as if that somehow does not contradict the nature of God revealed by the prophets.

Is the motive for these religious war-mongers and child-slayers among the Jews, Christians, and Muslims impatience to await the divine plan, whatever it is? Is the motive grandiose delusion by persons so insecure as to their self-identity in God or the world they must wrest and force themselves as historically significant through murder and mayhem in God's name? Is the motive simply sinful arrogance that they can read secret messages conveyed by no literal words of any prophet, and show themselves to have keys of divine knowledge not found in any Hebrew, Greek, or Arabic words given by the prophets?

Once again, here we are, faced with religious leaders and believers who follow their false interpreters of the prophets, men and women, even boys and girls, presuming to know more of their personal missions for God than revealed by the clear bulk of their holy books. For thousands of years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims faced persecutions, unjust wars, and even centuries of human abuse, surrendered to the will of God and in trust that God would one day make right what men had made wrong. There always were episodic revolts by religious people, and some few were grounded in apocalyptic delusions. Yet the majority of believers, however they viewed those movements, remained faithful to their prophetic teachings that finally it would not be by the hand of man, but by the just action of God, that history finally would come to and end and followed by the Great Judgment.

We need not fear what must come by the will of God, but there is plenty to fear by the hand of men and now, even women and children, who believe they know perfectly well what God wills for innocent children. Despite their delusions, there is nothing in the inspired writings of the three religions to suggest that today's terrorists arise from the prophets, let alone from anything any of them wrote.

Conclusion

Today, Jews, Christians, and Muslims engage in wars--secular and religious--where the lives of little children are taken, sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally, by people who consider themselves godly and within the divine will. As a man who loves God within his limited understanding of God, and who loves all children all over the world, it is my belief, based on the God I know, that the Creator of the all people, the people of one blood—our one genome we now know—does not give life to babies, boys and girls, just so their lives can be cut off by bullets and bombs.

Yes, I know that, compared to all that we know of the planets, their moons, other solar systems, and such things as black holes, existing as far as our telescopes can reach and beyond, the single life of a single child does not seem to be much. Yes, I understand and do accept that any single human life may not be as important as we, the living, view that life to be, particularly if it be ours, or that of one we love.

But to a child who has his or her arms or legs shredded or blown off, or who has his or her eyes put out in a fiery blast, or who has his or her insides scattered about, for this child, I do not see how he or she can do anything other than to cry out to God—if his or her parents and brothers and sisters and family have been killed—and ask, “Why?”

I love that child, unknown by me, unseen, unnamed, of whatever age and size, of whatever innate capacities or talents, be he or she a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or any other religion in the world. And I love that child who also is the offspring of parents who say they cannot believe in any god at all, precisely because of the callous disregard for innocent life seen throughout all previous centuries, and now in our own time.

Surely, God loves the children of the world to whom God saw fit to give life for purposes only to be revealed in the natural course of their time on the earth, uninterrupted nor truncated by others. This is always as it has been. The greatest and the least of all the prophets who ever walked the earth began first as babies and children. The holy books show repeatedly some children grew naturally and easily to their divine appointments as prophets. Yet other children went on circuitous paths far away from God, only later to return broken vessels ready for divine healing and filling. And still other children were raised in godly homes by godly parents. They began well and sometimes lived decades for God, yet fell away to become false prophets, apostates, and most infamously wicked people.

The history of children in the world shows us that God gives life to all, and that no person must presume to interfere with or stop God's plan for every person. The child who seems stupid or lazy becomes the greatest of all. It required seventy-five years for Abram to receive his call from God to be given a new name, Abraham. He was no Jew, Christian, or Muslim, but a nomad from Ur. Whatever God saw in Abram at age seventy five had required seven and one-half decades to ripen before that man would become the father of nations.

Those who are so arrogant they can kill children or, for that matter, people as old as Abraham, insult and offend the God who gives all people life and whose plan must unfold only within the divine scheme of things. Yes, there are some divine commands given by the prophets concerning capital punishment, or how religious people may or may nor war--in the flesh or in the Spirit. But I am absolutely certain that many now among us, in all three Book Religions, have presumed too much in nearly all of their killing, regardless of what their rabbis, preachers, or imams told them contrary to the express, general will of God.

These same killers--and they appear in all the nations--often proclaim their great eagerness for the Apocalypse, the end of time, the Great Judgment, their imagined rewards, and the imagined punishments of their enemies they call God's enemies., in the eternal fires of Hell. It is my belief, based on what I read in all the prophets, that these overeager warmongers and self-deluded servants of The End will have to face those whose lives they unjustly and sinfully took.

I imagine, in my mind's eye, the possibility of a great shock when one of the children they killed gives them a sad message. They had been sent to earth to save the killer's children from being led straight into Hell by parents who were false teachers. That is, the killers of children will be judged not for their help, but for their harm, in the divine plan that never unfolded in the truncated lives of the murdered young. These are merely my imaginings, but my underlying belief is true: God will hold accountable those who presumptuously take any human life against the divine will revealed in the prophets. I recall how Jesus said many would come to him on the Day of Judgment, claiming great deeds done in his name, and he would reply, "Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness! I never knew you!"

The nations need to be brought together by the main emphases of these three great religions, not split apart into factions and destruction by the exceptions to their principal callings and purposes. This is not the case now. With the past and present to chasten our hopes, neither does it appear the future bodes much different from what we see now, and potentially much worse.

So I take my stand here now, repudiating the killing of children in the name of God. I stand here now, condemning what some false religious teachers say, not based on my own ideas, but because the prophets themselves provide the basis for condemnation. Because the subject of this essay defends an idea no sane person would want to oppose--that no child ought to be killed by anyone, let alone a religious person--surely I have gained some good will by speaking up for the majority.

One friend has warned the essay will engender hate in someone. I surely hope not. I have sought to gore all oxen equally, that is, those of the religious child-killers. I have sought to reveal the wolves in sheepskins. And I have endeavored, as Jesus commanded Peter, to feed God's sheep and God's lambs, in whatever pasture they graze.

On Human Nature, Killing, Soldiers, PTSD--and Our Ethical Duties

2010-05-28T01:00:00.001-04:00

No one is born a soldier. Everyone is born a helpless, dependent little baby. Our mothers, most of them, nursed us at their breasts, holding us close, keeping us warm and clean. There is an intimate bond between our mothers and us tied by the cords of tender care. By nature, we are weak and helpless at birth. We were conceived out of the love between our parents, then brought into the world completely in need of daily tender love. We respond with smiles, our little hands holding on to the index finger of our parents. We make our baby noises as we hear our Moms and Dads speaking words of love. We are not born soldiers.

Openness to Death and Killing

Because of how we were born--completely dependent and surrounded by love--the idea of killing another member of the human family is an inconceivable, monstrous idea to us. That is, this is true for normal children raised up to adulthood in a normal way. But not all children grow up normally.

Some are slapped around and screamed at. All over the world, children are born into families who live in ghettos of poverty, or who grow up in daily terrors from drug lords, war lords, tribal enemies, and even vicious law enforcement puppets. The natural, biological story of growing up surrounded by loving parents and family is only a dream for too many millions who childhood is torn apart by anxiety, fear, and even mental illness created by unnatural, human being-created instability, destruction, and ever-stalking Death.

Familiarity with Death-As-Normal, and unfamiliarity with Love-As Normal, surely create psychological conditions where killing is more natural than unnatural. The child who is slapped and beaten regularly well may look forward to removing the cause of terror by killing the abuser. A small or even a very large group of people terrorized by another group can do the same. Killing the source of fear is considered self-defense, self-affirmation, against the oppressor. If you, Reader, are or have relatives in any group persecuted and terrorized by another, you understand how someone's imagination can dream of killing, to remove the source of fear.

Teaching People To Kill

Patriotism, love of country, which includes the desire to love and protect one's family and neighbors, is the most common motivation for learning to become soldiers. The "enemy"--which actually are millions of people who are parents, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles--is depersonalized and demonized as deserving death by the weapons of war. There are real enemies, real people who truly want to kill. And those enemies have learned to depersonalize and demonize those they wish to kill.

Habit and practice help the willingness and capacity to kill on command. The new recruit or volunteer may, and likely has, the innate reservation against killing anyone. Yet day in and day out, the "normal" person is saturated with intellectual, physical, and emotional reinforcements and repetitions, to become prepared to kill. Centuries of military methods have been polished and refined to cope with any individual whose natural resistance to killing remains intransigent. Very few people have so much natural resistance they finally are drummed out of the service.

There may be many who complete their training, yet who still have inner misgivings as they go into combat. Some of those may be the most vulnerable to mental instability and disorders, once they have used the tools of war on people they see as innocent and undeserving of the horrible deaths they inflicted. To have been raised in a healthy and loving family, then to have fired rockets and missiles into residential areas "inhabited by the enemy," may be the perfect conditions for insanity.

One definition of insanity may be a mind so unhealthy it is detached from reality, temporarily or permanently. The person who grew up knowing only goodness and love, then who became a perfectly trained soldier who accepted the task of inflicting fire, explosions, terror, destruction and death, is a candidate for some form of post-combat insanity. During or after the battle, as he or she looks at the human butchery created by his or her own hand, the soldier knows--by nature--he has done something against nature, as he or she looks at the charred, exploded, bloody, living and dead. By nature most soldiers know the people called "enemies" actually were, or are, members of the human race, not demons or non-persons.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a Symptom of Sanity

PTSD is a mental disorder now recognized more and more widely as common, not uncommon, among combat veterans, as well as personnel who supply and serve them. Unfortunately, military leaders have a vested financial interest in releasing combat veterans from service with a clean bill of psychological health. PTSD, when diagnosed--and symptoms often are manifested months and years after combat--requires long-term psychiatric treatment, supplemented by pharmaceutical therapies.

Veterans of all wars throughout not only U.S. but other nations' wars have suffered psychological harm and scarring, though PTSD used to be called "combat fatigue," "mental weakness," and other incorrect euphemisms. The combat warrior tradition has tended to ridicule, discount, and demean the effects of war on those who wage it. There is a growing, persistent movement in the U.S. military psychiatric establishment to change, and understand that PTSD may be considered more common than unusual.

Though the symptoms of PTSD are severe--including deep depression, nightmares, suicidal thoughts, behavioral violence and withdrawal, and many others--in one sense, PTSD is a sign of sanity's struggle to oppose the unnatural, insane nature of war. People who were raised in healthy and loving families, whose view of life and the world were loving and good, naturally react violently to what they have been put through by military training and experiences. PTSD, horrible as it is, is an affirmation of their deep, inner, healthy nature in revolt and revulsion against all the unnatural horrors that war truly brings on combatants and those they kill and injure.

The truly insane soldier, I would argue, is the one whose pre-military life was so distorted and disordered that the tasks of war were natural and normal. Depersonalization and demonization of the "enemy," psychological and moral detachment from blanket killing of innocent people, these are the traits of the sick mind and personality. The military is most pleased and most commendatory when combat soldiers are released from duty showing no symptoms of PTSD, nor ever being heard of again for treatment in a VA center. Yet how many people can be called normal and healthy who, after killing and maiming thousands, many who were noncombatants, without adverse mental consequences?

It seems to me PTSD must be considered a sign of fundamental sanity for those who suffer its horrible symptoms. PTSD is a sign, not only that war has harmed those who wage it, but also that those who wage war originally possessed normal, healthy, loving, beautiful mental outlooks given to them by their parents, siblings, and families. War at times is necessary, we know that. Yet there are military traditions of training that create false ideas of what is "necessary," such as "not letting collateral damage get to you." For the normal human being, for the healthy human being, for the loving human being, knowledge that one has engaged in killing innocent people--who were precisely like the family back home, wanting only to live, love, and be left alone--there is no other option than to have one's deepest inner values, and emotional structures, cry out in agony, and that agony is expressed as PTSD.

Killing Is Against Human Nature

Now I am a historian and am, quite frankly, more familiar with the perennial facts of global conflicts and wars than I am with perennial facts of global movements for understanding, restraint, and peace-seeking and peacemaking. Much has been made by many anthropologists, theologians, and philosophers--and by political warmongers--that human beings seem destined to be warmakers, war victims, and killers of their own species. I confess that much of my life has been filled with the darkness of, as the Psalmist wrote, "walking in the valley of the shadow of death."

Nevertheless, I reiterate the truths stated at the beginning of this essay. We are born babies. We are born dependent on the milk from our mothers' breasts. We are born and continue for some years completely dependent on survival by our biological nurturers and caretakers, our parents. This is our universal experience as human beings--being loved, fed, cleaned, held, protected. Learning to kill, therefore, is not part of our nature, for all of our beginnings teach us love, support, and care.

Yes, there are real enemies in the world. Some of them apparently are so dedicated to the destruction of the innocent--who they have depersonalized and demonized, denying the common humanity they share with them. Some enemies will not stop until they are killed. Killing can be a defense mechanism, a result of the survival instinct. But killing is not natural, not normal, not innate, not a natural resource to be harnessed for nationalistic purposes.

And when the nations of the world persuade their healthy-minded citizens that killing is normal, necessary, and good, and when those trusting citizens complete military training to go on into combat, let us not call them "sick" when their fundamental goodness refuses to succumb to the real insanity that war always includes. To the contrary, let us do for them what their parents taught them was real. Let us feed, nurture, care for, and be patient with them, as we embrace the goodness within them that refused to accept the simply false things they were told.

And like their parents, let us be so loyal, faithful, and true, that we will love, defend, and protect these people who have been harmed by loving their families, neighbors, and nation so much they acted against their own nature learned from birth. Let us leave no one behind on the battlefield.

The Ethics of the Documentary, "Winged Migration" (2001)

2010-05-26T01:08:00.000-04:00

I purchased the DVD documentary, Winged Migration, released in 2001, because the jacket stated it had been nominated for an Academy Award as "Best Documentary" in 2002. I was unprepared for what I saw. This film documents many species of birds migrating through 40 countries, over seven continents. The filming, up close to these wondrous animals as they flew through the air over many terrains and bodies of water, was breathtaking. Throughout the film, I kept asking myself, "How did these people achieve such a feat?"

The answer was found in the additional features. The director and crew, all French, had raised up many species of birds from chicks and, following the work of Konrad Lorenz and Nicolass Tinbergen on geese and imprinting, this visionary group created a biological bond--an attachment--between their birds and themselves. These patient Frenchmen gradually trained their birds not to fear the various flying machines, and to fly alongside them. They then would take their animal friends all over the world to film them most intimately in flight and on the ground. I highly recommend both the film and the added features.

I decided to write this blog because this wonderful documentary contains ethical lessons of great value for Americans in our current situation, which is embedded with so many kinds of uncertainties and fears.

The Natural Order Can Teach Us

There are so many new electronic gadgets for sale every year by every manufacturing firm. Each promises some new convenience, some intriguing features, that promise to make life easier, faster, better. And so the American and global marketplace generate more billions in profits as citizens around the world purchase these devices for status, and the hope of a more "connected" life in our societies. But every year, new devices appear, the cycle starts over, and more purchases are made of the latest offerings.

The visionary, caring, sensitive Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who created Winged Migration (Fr., Le Peuple Migrateur) did not know completely what they were in for when they began their project. Yet what they learned along the way shows us, if we will consider and learn, that Nature has thousands and thousands of gentle reminders that life is filled with wonder, symmetry, cooperation, interdependency, and even love.

One of the great problems in our society, and in others like ours where technology's presence is so strong, is that people do not establish and develop biological attachments to each other. From the time children are born, their little lives are filled with noise, lights, movement, and all too little time being just held, fed, and hearing their parents' loving voices. Many are quickly shuttled off to infant daycare, or soon, to preschool care. Millions of children in American and other "highly developed" nations never get the chance to bond, to imprint deeply with their parents, as they are passed from hand to hand from their earliest years. For this reason, many children grow up having had thousands of "interesting and privileged" experiences, yet more than we suspect have neural networks deprived of the deepest needs for love, trust, peace, and natural growth into emotionally healthy persons.

In the film, the 450 human beings involved in this project exercised the greatest gentleness, patience, respect, respect, and care for their "stars," the birds. They fed, talked to, caressed, carried, and showed genuine love for their charges. At one point, some geese joined wild members of their species and began to fly away. The movie crew wondered if their friends would listen to the call of the wild. They did not. The trained geese fly for a while, then turned and returned to those with whom they had imprinted through a thousand days and nights of tender human love. While in Vietnam during a delay, the humans slept with their birds to comfort and protect them.

Betrayal and Trust in America

We live in a time of broad and deep betrayals. Manufacturing companies have sought higher profits by shipping jobs overseas, regardless of the traumatic financial and emotional effects on fellow citizens left behind. Banks and financial institutions have engaged in high-risk speculation, and manipulation, by gambling with the pensions and retirements of millions of "anonymous" strangers, not people to them, only account numbers. Government leaders for decades have promised their friends and constituents whatever they wanted, in order to remain in power and accumulate vast wealth. Now Americans everywhere suffer from thousands and thousands of decisions based on self-interest, not any concern for other human beings affected or destroyed by them.

It is my opinion--not as a professional biologist, or a self-appointed expert on imprinting or the psychiatric effects of attachment disorders--that our many betrayals in America are due to some extent because of how our society and culture have developed. From a biological point of view, may we say, "how our society and culture have degenerated"? For is it progress when our parents, generations of them, have conceived and birthed millions of little people only to deny them the essentials of daily and nightly gentle care, feeding, nurture, quiet words of loving comfort, environmental stability, the conditions required to become healthy, caring, well-adjusted, normal people?

From the cans and bottles of artificial "milk," to Mozart CDs played for infants, to wind-up distractions hung up over cribs to "keep baby occupied," to the millions of homes where babies are allowed to cry themselves to sleep amid the wild noises of some domiciles, the most essential things taught by Nature are too often neglected. And when little babies grow up into small children and adolescents, some parents take their children to pediatricians and child psychologists asking, "Why is my child manifesting these strange behaviors?" Then they leave, prescription in hand for Ritalin or some other psychoactive drug, and expect that psycho-pharmacology will correct what they themselves have created, good parents they imagine themselves to be.

Yet it is my firm belief that all the decades of our cultural affluence, which has generated goods and services to capture whatever excess money people have had to spend beyond their necessities for life, have purchased the biological betrayals of millions of innocent children. It is in our nature to love and be loved, to grow up surrounded by true meaning: those who gave us life love us more than life itself. We have a deep need to be attached to our parents and siblings, and we want to reciprocate love to them, which we know is part of our role in the natural order of things. Our materialistic society has purchased the illusion, which is a delusion against our biological nature itself, that the generation of money and the purchase of things are a principal end of life itself, what we call the American Dream of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

We have betrayed ourselves when we have betrayed our biological nature. So today, when we look at the millions of betrayals scattered across our land, so many look around and wonder, "What has happened to us? Why are we doing to each other what we do?" The fundamental needs to love and be loved, to be able to trust our closest biological kin more completely and know we are valued most highly and cherished by them, have been betrayed from these innumerable social and cultural habits, which themselves can do nothing to engender, protect, or nurture deep psychological trust and the capacity to love.

What Must We Do?

Some might say, Nothing can be done at this time. We are bound in the matrix of our materialistic habits and must only endure what we have created against our nature and ourselves. I say, NO.

The millions of Americans who have been stripped of what they have become accustomed to can learn from Nature again. Only insane people, that is, abnormal and unhealthy-minded people, would deny they want to be loved and want to be able to love. When the means for affluence, for "American normalcy" are stripped away--jobs, insurances, retirements, homes, and the fundamental belief that we can trust others to act in our interests--we can turn again to Nature itself.

Let us, as we used to see in some of the old Western movies, "circle the wagons" within our families. Parents, begin loving each other, loving your children, loving your grandchildren, loving your neighbor, loving the stranger, who also is just like you in his or her deepest needs. Look at your kin, look at the people you meet, and see people who need to be loved. And as you begin to love, be assured that your love offered will be returned back to you. No, it will not always be returned quickly. Why?

The Culture of Betrayal has seeped into the psyches of your kin and neighbors. Many who experience love ask themselves, consciously or unconsciously, "WHY is this person doing this? WHEN will this be withdrawn?" But do not be angered by the first question. Do not withdraw love, though rebuffed or doused with skepticism. Give love. Give love. Give love. Human nature responds to love, even what that nature has been deformed temporarily by other habits. Love will be returned to you, and sometimes immediately, within the very minute and hour you offer it.

There also is another biological transformation that occurs in the giving of love. We begin to change. We begin to feel the joy and satisfaction of being true to ourselves. We begin to have more love returned to our own lives, and then we feed upon that. A cycle of growth begins as we begin to love. We begin to feel ourselves becoming healthier, happier. We begin to see our lives take on new meaning and joy, as we become living vessels of love pouring out life-giving love on the parched ground we call our kin, friends, neighbors, and strangers. We begin to become human.

The sweet symbiosis between the French creators of this film and their bird-stars are a reminder of what can happen within the span of three years between people and animals not known for a very high intelligence, though gifted instincts. If three years can produce such a tender and true cooperation and trust between such diverse species, imagine what only three years can and must do in your own life, if you only will refuse the patterns of the past, and embrace the present and future of the love calling deep within you to be nurtured and expressed?

The birds nearly were swept away by their wild kin, and for a time flew on, forgetting their human family looking on below. There are now strong winds blowing across our nation. We are surrounded by wild kin, and we may be tempted to fly with them, people who never knew us, who never loved us, and who are urging that we follow them. But your true course lies within you, in the genetic compass to love and be loved. Fly not according to the times, but remember your inner call--and return to love those who need you most.

The Harvard Business School Ethics Oath - And Why It Will Fail

2010-05-24T09:57:00.000-04:00

I read a news article, 'Do no harm' ethics pledge urged for MBAs-Goal: Put employer, society before personal ambition, by Oliver Staley with the Bloomberg Press. The title caught my attention for obvious reasons, since I am very concerned about ethics and ethical leadership. I then went to the Internet and researched Harvard's website to find a copy of the text, which is copied after the main point of this blog entry.

My immediate reaction to this "news" was a mix between interest and humorous skepticism. I thought, "Well, how appropriate for someone to try to sprinkle ethical water on these budding sprouts, these Harvard MBAs, about to enter the workforce." My second thought was immediate. "Yet how fatuous and naive." I will be brief as I dispatch this well-intended but just as surely ineffective sop to our current conditions.

Perhaps there will be one or two Harvard MBAs who will look back on their ethics pledge and receive some kind of moral guidance in years to come. This is possible in a Leibnitzian "best of all possible worlds." There may be some man or woman who, in months and years to come, will look back to the day when the oath was presented and discussed, and some epiphany of morality appeared to inspire. This is possible, for people can do amazing things, for people are people, after all.

But in the real world, the world of going in debt on five bedroom homes, Mercedes, and golf club memberships, the world of ski trips and globe-hopping junkets and $1000 dollar suits, memories do not last long regarding idealistic pieces of paper signed when one was about to leave the vaunted climes of Harvard Business School to enter the world of work. This is particularly true when those Harvard MBAs go to work for some corporation with a stable of in-house attorneys who assure them that the latest, right-on-the-edge-of-legal means for profit will produce bonuses in the millions of dollars.

Self-interest is the name of the game for most Americans in the marketplace. History shows us that most people who believe they can make as much money as is legally possible, with least unmanageable risk, will go for the money. Pick any corporate scandal over the last thirty years--arbitrageurs, savings and loans, scams, banks and financial institutions, insurance, automotive makers.

The mature and seasoned executives who made these decisions were not wickedly bad people. They were not uneducated, ignorant people. Were we able to gather their college transcripts, all probably had to take a basic course in philosophy, which always includes classical discussions of ethical systems and issues. They probably, at least some of them, had memberships in some religious organization. Every religious organization teaches divine laws and principles on what is required to please God. It is safe to assert that the principal architects, and the lower employees, of the causes of these scandals and crises all had some real measure of ethical and religious education.

So should we simply abandon efforts at ethics education, the creation of oaths, discussions of their importance, and encouragements to sign them, as if these creations will create the ties between executives and potential innocent victims of corporate misbehaviors? No. Perhaps there will be one or two people who will be affected. But let no one believe that such attempts will be very successful.

For every five seconds required to sign some piece of paper encouraging public responsibility, there is a daily, endless number of commercials, ads, conversations, and other communications in our society emphasizing that materialism, money-making, and acquisition of things is the goal of American life. The bonds between citizens grow weaker and weaker every year. The strongest biological bond of all, that between parents and children, is not strong enough to make many Americans do the right thing. Aging parents are shuttled off to nursing homes out of sight, out of mind, away from interfering with busy schedules and career schedules. Why would anyone believe that a Harvard ethics oath should have any effect on behaviors towards strangers when behaviors towards parents or children demonstrate a lack of human compassion or love?

The ethical problems we face as Americans are fundamental and deep. So long as children are born to parents whose values and point of view about the meaning of life are defined and guided by a culture saturated in materialism, then we can expect little loyalty to people, and more loyalty to money. Scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, and other scandals in Protestant communions--concerning sex and money--illustrate that not even God's teachers have obeyed in their personal lives the standards they teach to others.

No Harvard MBA ethics oath is going to have any impact stronger than the bonds either of biology or religion. And as I have argued here, in America, both the fundamental bonds of biology and religion are demonstrably in deep trouble. God help us!

Harvard Business School’s MBA Oath

As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can build alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. I recognize my decisions can have far-reaching consequences that affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and in the future. As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies, I will face difficult choices.

Therefore, I promise:

I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.
I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers, and the society in which we operate.
I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.
I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.
I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.
I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.
I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.
I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath.

This oath I make freely, and upon my honor.

U.S. Code, Title 33:40:I:2704:(a):(3)--On the Immorality of the $75M Liability Cap

2010-05-11T16:23:00.002-04:00

The BP Oil Spill, Exxon Valdez, and "Tort Reform"

I remember how pleased I was on February 5, 2005, when I heard President George Bush advocate for tort reform in his State of the Union speech. It was and is a fact some lawsuits are argued so well that juries and judges award damages far in excess of what is just. Such excessive awards lead to higher insurance premiums for all affected by those damages. Insurance companies always will try to protect their profit margins, for they are in the business of profit.

In the current case of the BP oil spill, we now learn of the arbitrary ceiling on liability damages of $75M. That upper limit is the result of the Exxon Valdez spill which, at the time, had a much lower limit on liability damages. Now some Democrats are calling for a higher ceiling due to the as yet unknown total costs of the current oil spill. And, of course, the three corporations involved--the platform owners, BP, and Halliburton--are preparing their cases on how to blame each other, to limit their respective liability.

I have been thinking the past several days about all the fishermen and other business people and this arbitrary limit. Let us say there are 75 fishermen, each who draws from the ocean $1M worth of shrimp or other fish. Let us exclude all the thousands of other businesses harmed or ruined. Once the liability questions have been answered, as to who will pay, the money still be stopped when the $75M is paid.

I have heard stories that attorneys for the corporations have been circulating among some of the people affected, asking and insisting they sign liability limit releases. Some persons live along the shores, others work for the corporations. Some have signed in order to get the small amount of money promised, because their families are under financial pressures due to no income. I am sure that every corporation doing business already had limited their risks, before the spill, by obtaining signatures from everyone they could who might later bring a suit against damages.

Seeing Tort Reform in a Moral Light

I now see that the "higher insurance premium" argument, which seemed and seems good to Americans, actually was backed by President Bush, Sen. Mitch McConnell, and others, including some Democrats, to help protect their corporate friends. I am rather ashamed I did not see this before. All the talk--by people well-connected with corporate financiers--was and is intended to control risks of financial payouts. When the federal government passes laws that put an arbitrary ceiling on liability, this frees corporations from paying any more than the laws allow, regardless of their harms to the American people.

I took a little time to read existing federal laws with liability ceilings in several areas. The numbers look impressive to average Americans. Most would be ruined if they had to pay $250,000, let alone millions. So when the news is released that their government has passed laws "raising the stakes against harmful companies," most citizens are impressed their lawmakers have legislated "harsh warnings" on their behalf.

Yet the current limit of $75M was raised only after the Exxon Valdez spill. Why? Public outcry demanded some kind of governmental response. Public pressure, not government conscience, empowered the change. Now that we think about 75 fishermen example--and do not consider the thousands of people whose careers and lives have been destroyed--Americans can see how the arbitrary ceiling has no connection with actual damages done.

All the corporations involved in this harm will fight even paying their portions of the $75M. Their corporate legal teams will succeed, in some measure, in reducing whatever will be paid out. There is little doubt all their expertise will produce something good for their owners. Yet even if public outcries result in awards up to the liability ceiling, there is no doubt, no doubt, that the corporations will walk away in gratitude for the U.S. Congress's cooperation in setting a ceiling in the first place.

A damages ceiling guarantees that justice--if justice calls for the complete restoration of harmed parties--will never be done, if justice requires payments exceeding a liability ceiling.

Again the American People are Fodder

In the past several years, the American taxpayer was strapped with the burden of paying for corporate excesses in the banking, automotive, and insurance industries. Bailout money was loaned, with little or no accountability for where or to whom it went, by the U.S. Congress. And Americans were told this all was necessary for the "good of the nation." The average American knows only what he or she is told. The average American actually trusts what elected officials tell him or her. So millions, who were worried their banks would fail, swallowed hard and accepted what they were told, though with some grumbling and with some protesting in the streets.

The recent oil spill is one more illustration that national and transnational corporations control the U.S. Congress's laws when they apply to corporations and corporate harm to average people. If we look at the history of federal laws in the U.S.--including the laws concerning Indian nations, African slaves, child and woman labor, workplace safety, products safety--we see a consistent pattern that today's problems run throughout our nation's history.

Why have average people allowed centuries of such laws in the "land of the free and home of the brave"? Why have they accepted whatever their leaders have told them of "the protections" put in place for their good? The first answer is basic. The majority of Americans always are unaffected directly by harms and abuses. So long as they themselves are not harmed, corporations and the federal legislators they control and influence know they can write laws within the boundaries of majority experience.

Therefore, I do not expect that the results of the current oil spill, just like the results of the current financial debacle on Wall Street, will produce justice for the people actually harmed. If hundreds of millions of Americans could be duped into accepting that their children and grandchildren ought to pay for corporate abuses against themselves, they will accept anything offered in the future related to this last oil spill.

The one thing I think about all the time is how corporate owners and federal legislators sleep at night. They do these things--just as their forebears did to previous generations--to their fellow citizens, as well as to innocent wildlife in the case at hand. And then I also wonder, as I imagine that most of them are not atheists but have some religious membership somewhere, what their God must think of their crimes.

But being a former clergyman myself, and knowing how comforting and consoling my clergy colleagues can be to their members, who pay their salaries, I also know how few clergy actually tell their congregations exactly what the Bible teaches against such crimes and sins. No, they give a lying and false comfort to their people, since they want to offend no one who might walk away with their money. And then, there also are a majority of "conservative" clergy who themselves are the naive dupes of politicians they trust, whenever the clergy hear the sacred mantra, "God and Country" or "Free Market Enterprise."

The only consolation I myself take, with the faith I have, is the important distinction I learned several decades ago. There is a difference between theoretical atheism and practical atheism. A person can believe in his or her "heart and mind" in a God--the theoretical belief in God--but then go on to disregard every divine teaching ever given against harming and plundering the poor, the widow, and the stranger. A person's behavior can reveal practical atheism; that is, deciding and living directly against God's will. And when the clergy in any religion mainly emphasize "love and grace and forgiveness" and ignore "divine punishment and wrath" against sins that harm the innocent, they too have their share in practical atheism. For they are false prophets.

Be you Jew, Christian, or Muslim, or have some other religion teaching moral accountability and love for the neighbor and the innocent, whether you are a business owner or a victim of business, perhaps there is something in the essay above that is constructive. Yet I have no delusion that whatever has been written will change the story of history, how the rich exploit the vulnerable, in every nation, including the United States of America. JDW

A Mother's Day Reflection - On the Importance of Mothers

2010-05-07T13:17:00.007-04:00

Mother's Day is one of the most popular celebrations in our society. The reasons are natural, in a very literal sense. Mothers have an incomparable advantage over Fathers.

They carry us in their wombs for nine months. They give us birth. Their breasts feed us, several times a day, several times a night. Their faces they hold close to ours. They smile and kiss us. Their voices coo and say gentle loving words, and are pleasant to our ears. Their hands they use to hold us, play with us, and also clean us up when we make a mess. Mothers do these things and more, throughout our lives.

We could write something about mammalian behaviors, about healthy emotional attachment development--which affects our capacities to trust and love. But only biologists and psychologists are mainly interested in those aspects of Mothers, and their effects on their children.

When it comes our mothers, we really have no interest in anything except loving them, not analyzing them or putting them into some kind of biological behavioral class. No, we have thousands of our own special feelings, thoughts, and memories about our Mothers. When we think of Mom, we may think of lovingly prepared food, a recipe she only cooked for us, or our siblings. To think, Mom, may be to have a memory of how she took care of us when we were sick. To think, Mom, may be remembering we could talk to Mom and trust her with anything. To think, Mom, may be knowing that--of everyone else you ever knew or loved--she was the one person who was forever loyal and true in her love for us.

My Mom is dead, and has been for two years. I told her I loved her, I showed her I loved her, for many years. When I was a teenager, I had a disrespectful smart-mouth with her, though I feared my Dad's hand and did not do that to him. It would not be many years that I remembered how badly I treated my wonderful, loving Mom. I apologized to her, and to Dad, for being such a teenager at times. Mom and Dad were not grudge-bearers, by nature, let alone with their own sons. Oh, they remembered some very trying times raising up three boys. But they accepted the apologies (which were made periodically over the years), with a smile, hug, kiss, and command, "Now stop that! You were a kid like anyone else."

Several years ago, I was driving after work on the interstate and, as I often did, would call my Mom and Dad just to talk on my way home. One evening, Mom answered with that sweet voice of hers (and she had one, such a singer she was). I choked up and said, "Mom, you know, one of these days, I will call 502-xxx-xxxx and there will be no answer. I just want you to know that, when you and Dad are gone, I will be the loneliest orphan in the world. I love you so." She paused a second and said, "Oh, John. You always are saying something like that. I KNOW you love us." And then we went on to talk about whatever was on our minds.

Now some readers did not have loving, good mothers. I know that. Some of us were abandoned. Some of us were abused and removed from contact with our mothers. Some of our mothers had substance problems. Some of our mothers cursed and slapped us. Some of our mothers humiliated us by the things they did. Some of our mothers, or our fathers, never behaved like those of our friends. When I was a Christian minister, I have seen some children glad to see their mothers dead. Those adult children were bitter and angry with years of memories of mothers who had been selfish, abusive, manipulative, and unloving.

The main reason, I think, for their strong negative emotions is not so much that they adults had suffered whatever they did. I believe they suffered more because it was their mothers who had done the harms. Nature itself--from rabbits and squirrels, to bears and whales--shows that normal, healthy mothers love and care for their children. When our mothers betray and harm us, they are acting against Nature. And that knowledge, that we have been denied what is an almost universal childhood of nurture and support, makes many of us angry and bitter.

The Women's Liberation Movement worked hard to obtain equal rights for women in the workplace and in society. Since World War II, from the Rose-Riveters to today's Supreme Court Justices and Secretaries of State, great progress has been made. But I completely resent and condemn the disrespect and mockery the Women's Liberation Movement gave to "stay-at-home" Moms. And I also have my own contempt for the arrogance that makes any distinction between the work done by stay-at-home Mothers as work and whatever "career Moms" do at the corporate office or factory.

Raising children, personally guiding children every hour of the day, thinking about and cooking healthy nutritional meals, gathering and sorting and washing and drying and ironing clothes, serving as preventive health care worker and in-home nurse, and the thousands of detailed jobs a mother must do is work. And frankly, if you ask me, once a child is born, the work of mothering is much more important, much more satisfying, and much more life-changing and life-meaningful, than being in a corporate boardroom.

There are millions of women who do BOTH very well, work outside and inside the home--and too often with little appreciation or help (which is more important than words or flowers on Mother's Day) from their husbands. While I do not want to romanticize women, or put women against men, it is my experience that many mothers are more reliable, work harder, sacrifice more, than fathers. Again, I am not wanting to be too harsh with my gender, but my observations of my own kind seem to put most women above most men when it comes to caring for children, juggling multiple responsibilities, and still managing to put love and care in them all.

I have seen some Mothers--rural and urban, educated and illiterate, rich and poor, of all races--who have been self-absorbed, selfish, emotionally unavailable to their children, and sometimes, physically absent as they allowed their children to raise themselves, and at their own risks. Now the middle and upper classes love to look down their noses and point downward at the parental failures of mothers raised in the ghettos or backwoods. Well, we surely should not blame people for being what they were taught to become, or what they grew up to believe was normal or permissible.

As a member of the middle class, and as one with some experience socializing with the upper class, I have other observations. I have seen more than enough middle-class and wealthy, well- and highly educated mothers emotionally neglect their children while they filled their social calendars with everything that would get their picture in a newspaper or a newsletter. Their kids were basically "perfect in every way" from a purely physical point of view. They wore designer clothes, had perfect teeth, had every popular toy, had the latest technological innovation, had plenty of ballet and piano lessons. Yet inside, most of these children with over-scheduled, egocentric mothers are emotionally starved and neglected. Take a look at the Columbine killers. They were not from the wrong side of the tracks.

And as a former youth minister, who once had a church in the mountains of Central-Eastern Kentucky, I also saw, first-hand, some "white trash" children. Let me introduce you to two, who were often shoeless, somewhat dirty, crooked-toothed, wild-haired, rags-dressed kids. They lived in what ought to have been an uninhabitable, windows-broken, bare-plank floor, wood stove-heated house, fronted and sided by abandoned and dead old appliances, broken concrete blocks, and trash. Those two kids proudly showed their young pastor their "bedroom." It was a narrow pantry, modified for "bunk beds," which actually were two wide planks nailed perpendicular to the wall, with pallets on them.

Guess what? Their mother really, really loved them. They Pa was a drunk, but their Mom, really, really, really, really loved them. And they were not "putting on a show" when they smiled and laughed and carried on. Those kids knew their Mother loved them. She really was embarrassed--the first time--to have the youth minister get out of the van and come in. But not after that. She knew I loved her kids, her, and her drunken husband too.

I have seen wealthy mothers who neglected to love and nurture their children, and the kids grew up to become wild and embarrassing. I have seen mothers use their political influence to get "their" kids quietly off from a criminal charge, because she was a friend of the mayor or police chief, or the head of a local political party. That was a real lesson for the kids--which, by the way, never was done "for the kids" but to save the "family name" from public embarrassment. But even connected Moms (and Dads) cannot always keep things quiet. So when things have gone public, I have seen those wealthy mothers tearful before the cameras, holding their heads high, wondering "how such a thing could happen," and the adoring media supportive and kind. Many know the real story, but no one dares tell.

They were horribly, emotionally neglectful Mothers who did not intentionally raise monsters. They just were too busy to notice. So their children grow up emotionally empty and behaviorally wild. Then those Mothers have scheduled more visits with their physicians for more pills, and doubled their normal psychiatric visits per month. Those poor Mothers needed help "for what their children did to them." They should have spent less time on the golf course, at the country club, attending lecture series, going to symphony, taking trips to Aspen and Cozumel, and years of "Girls' Night Out." And they probably made a mistake by having a medicine chest full of prescription drugs by which they "managed and coped." That was a lesson too.

I am not an anthropologist or psycho-biologist, or a prophet. But I know scholars in many fields attribute the explosion of personal, familial, social, and political problems in Western industrialized societies to the gradual erosion and breakdown of our most basic emotional needs, known by instinct: to love and be loved, to experience trust and loyalty, and then have experiential capacities to be trustworthy and loyal, and many others. Why would anyone be surprised that a human being--who never was loved by his or her own mother, or who was abandoned by his or her own father (another kind of loss)--should grow up to be an adult who does not love, who betrays, who believes these are normal, even if illegal?

I was fortunate and blessed, indeed, to have had a Mom who was completely devoted to her three boys. In fact, sometimes her maternal instincts for us overrode her awareness that she really ought to have paid more attention to our Dad. But he was not, nor is today, a complainer on all that. He was so pleased to be married to such a woman of character, beauty--inside and out--and devoted love for both her own and his family, and for their three sons. Mom is dead now. And I must tell you, this 57 year old man sometimes thinks about his sweet Mother, has a sob rise up in his throat, and says, "God, how I miss my Mother."

So, Mothers, think about who you are. Would-be mothers, think of who you would become one day. And for all who have Mothers alive today, consider the following suggestions.

Today is all you have. Use today to express love for your Mother. Tell her you are thankful she carried you. Tell her thanks for any good memory you can think of. Tell her you are sorry for having caused whatever troubles you gave her. Tell her how much she means to you, even now, even if she is lying in a bed in a nursing home. And if she did something to you no natural, healthy mother ought ever to have done, take her in your arms, and tell her, "Mom, I want you to know I forgive you for what you did. I ask your forgiveness now, for having been angry and bitter, and for not having known how better to react or love you, despite what you did to me, until now. I am sorry, Mom."

The wonderful thing about love is that you need no suggestions on how to express it! Love is a creative and dynamic force! Turn it loose!

A True Story of Murder and Its Aftermath

2010-05-05T03:55:00.011-04:00

A Man Who Studied Violence

From around 1978-1989, I studied much in the history of violence. My interest in violence was motivated by my religious faith. My own religion, the religion of Jesus Christ, has been responsible for much violence done in his name, in the name of God. I selected the sixteenth century and its wars of religion--when Protestants and Roman Catholics tortured, killed, and drove each other out of their territories, and then, after they had their fill of harming each other, they both united to slay the Anabaptists. I sought to understand what these violent people thought Jesus meant when he commanded, "Love your enemies," and how they could do what they did with that and other related texts, such as "Turn the other cheek. I found the answer, but it not my point to tell that here.

March 2, 1992

In the late afternoon on this day, my brother, Bruce Willis, was approached on the street by a drug dealer who asked him if he wanted to buy drugs. Bruce said no. The man then said, "Give me your money anyway." Bruce had been robbed before, and decided to run. He did, and the drug dealer chased him. Bruce tripped, the man was close behind him, and he stabbed him to death. My brother bled to death in a pool of blood on 16th Street N.W. in Washington DC.

March 3, 1992

It was early the next morning, I was called at the office of the church where I was a minister, and asked by my wife to come home. She had anxiety in her voice, but would not tell me what was wrong. When I arrived at the house, she met me at the door in tears. She said, "Bruce is dead." I asked, "Was he in an accident?" She cried out, "He was murdered." I came into the house and my mind shut down. Tears poured. I literally could not think. All I can remember is a cascade of horrible emotions, but no thoughts. Finally, when I could think again, I blurted out my first words: "I do NOT ask, Why? I ask, Why NOT?!"

There were two reasons for those first words. I already had studied enough violence to know that what happened to Bruce, and what was happening to his family, was not unique, but universal. I later said that the Willises joined the rest of the human race--Innocent Victims--when Bruce was killed. But also as a pastor, I had been with families who had their own tragic stories of chaos. I knew what some people had had to go through, as I went through it with them. And, unlike so many, I was NOT going to ask God, "Why has this happened to us?" God did not kill my brother, a man did. And I knew from many, many years of study that God has allowed innocent people to be murdered, and not even my brother, or my family, was exempt from such horrible events. I was not going to ask God why the Willises had joined millions of others who were victims. My brother was precious to me, but he was no more precious than any other brother ever murdered. Jesus himself was murdered, and his brothers and sisters knew their own pain.

I had to drive to the DC Morgue to identify Bruce's body. My wife sent our 13 year old daughter, Alethea, to ride with me. All the way down from Rockville to the morgue, I was crying, saying what I now cannot remember. When we arrived at that isolated and forbidding place, I told Alethea to stay in the van. I did not want her to see whatever it was I would see. I went in, identified myself, and the man went somewhere for a few minutes, then returned. He showed me black and white snapshots.

I saw Bruce's poor dead face, turned to the side, and blood ran from his ear and mouth. One photo showed his hands had cuts all over them. He had put up his hands in self-defense. For a long time, those pictures played in my mind. I imagined the terrors my beloved brother went through before that knife finally stabbed him in the heart and lungs. I identified Bruce as my brother, and left.

The Next Days and Weeks

I had to call my parents in Kentucky, and told them. I can barely remember all the emotions I heard from my poor Mother and Father, but what I heard was awful. That day they drove to Rockville, and I cannot remember what happened to us when they arrived. Bruce's body was prepared by a local funeral home and I determined to preach his funeral. The church was packed, and I remember how caring and loving all the people in the congregation were, and the many faces of Bruce's coworkers in Alexandria and in Washington. I do not remember what I preached, but I tried to bring comfort to my grieving parents and surviving brother, Robert; to my wife and children; and to everyone else.

Mom, Dad, and Robert, drove back home a few days later. There would be another memorial service for Bruce when they could schedule with their church. Bruce had expressed a wish to be cremated, so we had his ashes in one of those little boxes they provide. In a few weeks, my family and I drove to Kentucky where we went through everything again.

It was a rainy Spring day, and what Heaven was sending down mingled with the tears we shed. We set up a picture of Bruce, had his cremains sitting next to it, and hundreds filed by in unbelief, grief, and consolation. This was good especially for Mom, Dad, and Robert, and for me too. Things like murder still do not happen often in Shelbyville or Shelby County, so the entire story stunned everyone.

I preached again, wanting to be the one who tried to frame our tragedy with all I knew that was appropriate and might provide some consolation. I was not going to sit and hear some preacher say, "God called Bruce home," as if somehow a drug dealer's decision had been orchestrated in the background by a God I surely did not know, let alone love or worship. So I did my best.

I said that God's son had been murdered; that God understood our feelings; and that scripture promised that, on the Last Day, God would wipe away every tear from our eyes. I said emphatically, perhaps with some anger in my voice, that God did not do this thing, but a man had. And that the Good News included God's love for a world like ours. I knew that Bruce had told me he was an atheist--mostly because of the very horrid behaviors of Christians through the ages, the subjects of my academic studies. We had discussed these things, and I knew Bruce's heart was purer than some Christians I had known. So I left out Bruce's position on God, and told my family and friends that God knew the human heart, and that Bruce was in good hands. And everyone knew that statement was true.

After the service, our immediate family drove to Grove Hill Cemetery. I held an umbrella over Dad, and cried and watched as he cried and took a spade and dug the hole where he would put what was left of his second son. He and Mom had purchased a headstone, put their names side by side, with Bruce's underneath. I gently placed the gray box down into the hole, while Dad watched and cried, then I covered it over. I put my arm around Dad, held the umbrella with the other, and prayed some prayer for God's mercy to Bruce, us, and our suffering world.

We drove back to the house where everyone was waiting, and we had a very painful post-funeral meal. My cousin, Kenny Bennett, was Bruce's age and they were close. I remember him saying, "I think we need to load our guns and drive to DC and kill some niggers." Neither the Willises nor the Bennetts were racist families, but Bruce being murdered by a Black drug dealer brought out the worst. I immediately told Kenny, and the group listening, that this was not a race-crime, but a robbery. And I told them that Black families in DC also were having their loved ones killed every day by drive-by killers and murderers. That seemed to help at the time, and it helped more later. But the N-word would be repeated over the years.

My family and I drove back to Rockville, Maryland, and I went back to work at the church. People in the congregation recommended that I take time off, maybe go to some counseling, but I would not. I would ask, "What am I supposed to do? Bruce is dead. I must keep going." This was a mistake. It would be years before I would look back and see how dysfunctional Bruce's murder had made me, and how it had made this man, who devoted his life to becoming a Peacemaker, into someone who developed a hair-trigger temper and many other dysfunctional behaviors for a Christian minister.

Bruce was Gay and single, so I volunteered to pack his things, and take care of estate matters. I wanted no stranger to do this, and I did not want my parents to have anything to do with it. So I would drive to his apartment and pack. I cried all the way there. I cried the whole time I was there. I drank the liquor he had there as I worked. I cried all the way home. I cried for weeks and weeks when I was home, or when I went back to my church office.

One night, I had drunk Bruce's Stolichnaya, and had been thinking about the man who killed him. Bruce was gentle and never ever harmed a fly. I, on the other hand, was the oldest brother and did not have his disposition. Before I left home on that day, I brought with me a razor-sharp survival knife "for protection." But when I left his apartment to go home, the alcohol fully released my desire for revenge. I went to the van, took the knife out of its sheath, put it up my sleeve, and went into the federal park where the confrontation had occurred weeks before. I wanted somehow to meet Bruce's killer, and then kill him. Bruce may have been a victim, but his brother wanted to kill his killer, if I could.

One by one, I approached men and came up close to them asking, "Where you here on the night of March Second? My brother was killed that night." I stood within a foot of them. My hand was on the hilt of that knife. In my drunken rage, I looked them in the eyes and hoped one would somehow reveal he was the killer. One by one, they said they were not there, they did not know who did it, and turned away. I would walk to another and confronted him. I remember seeing people begin to move away from me. I did this several times, then gave up. I walked back to my van, drove off, and began to cry again. I began to think of my four sweet children, asleep at home, and what I almost had done. I asked myself, "What if I had killed someone? My children would have no father. They would have their Dad in prison."

I had no thought at all that I might have killed an innocent man, or of any guilt at wanting to take the law into my own hands. I surely took no thought that what I had done was improper for a minister. All I could think of was Bruce's horrible death, and that I wanted to suspend everything I had learned to avenge his death. The vodka had unchained my worst emotions, and unhinged my morality. Worst of all, I also realized that Bruce, a gentle and kind man, never ever would have approved what I had set out to do. He did not have a violent bone in his body. He would have corrected his big brother, though he would have understood and hugged me for my real motivations, made so insane by his own vodka: my deep love for him, and my grief he had been taken away so horribly.

DC was infamous at that time for being the "murder capital of the U.S." and every day had news of someone being murdered. For months after Bruce's death, our family would see the crying, grieving families on camera, and I would start crying. I knew how they felt. And my mind would go over again all the details of Bruce's pictures in the morgue, the thoughts of what he went through in his last minutes, and all my love for him. My wife and children would comfort me, and I remember their hurt faces as I went through those times. Never, ever again would I see another news report of murdered people and their families as I had before. Only victims know what it is to be a victim.

Bruce's Killer--The Enemy

I have said that my PhD dissertation concerned Christian violence in the sixteenth century. Its title was, "'Love Your Enemy': Sixteenth Century Interpretations." I was invested deeply, intellectually and emotionally, in the historical cycles of religious people committing violence against others. I had learned that some people used and manipulated their faith and the scriptures for violence, while others actually were taught, and drew upon, theological paradigms for violence in the scriptures. The Jewish Bible provided paradigms for physical violence. The Christian Bible provided paradigms for rejecting heretics and expulsions from congregations. Later Christians had combined both Jewish and Christian traditions to do what they did, willfully manipulative or in what we still oddly must call, good faith.

The man who killed Bruce was a drug dealer. He surely was not a religious enemy of mine. But he had become my enemy by slaying my brother. Through all the days, weeks, months, and years afterward, in the natural sense, of being a person who harmed by kin, he was my enemy. This never was lost on me and I thought about Jesus' command to love my enemies, and how Jesus had commanded me to do many things as his follower: love, do good, pray for my brother's killer.

During the first days and weeks, I was in constant contact with the DC investigator in charge of the case. I asked if I could help find the murderer, and was told I could not help. Weeks went by. I then began to call every week. Months went by. I began to call every few weeks, and finally, just occasionally. In the first days after Bruce was killed, I tried to prepare my parents that the killer never would be found. I said, "DC is a jungle and they never will find him." At that time, DC was the infamous "murder capital" of the nation.

Close to the first anniversary of Bruce's death, Mom called me and asked what was happening to Bruce's case. I reminded her of what I had said at the beginning, that we ought not expect ever to find the killer or have justice. She said, "I think it is awful that I have lost a son and do not even know what is happening. I want the name of someone to write a letter to." I found the name of the Inspector of Homicide and gave her the address. Several weeks passed, and I got a call from the detective assigned to the case. He said Bruce's case was being assigned to the Cold Case Squad.

Months passed and I got another call. The detective said they had re-interviewed all the witnesses and potentially had a break. He said I had volunteered to help and now they could use me. He asked me to go to the DC Jail to speak with an inmate who knew the killer. I immediately agreed. I later went to the Jail to meet that man. They had him in a small interrogation cell and had given him a hamburger, fries, and a soft drink. He began to tell me his friend, Eric Hill, was a crack dealer who carried either a knife or a gun. Eric, he said, was a crack-head, and liked to threaten people. He had warned Eric, "One day you are gonna hurt somebody." He said, a few days after Bruce had been killed, Eric had told him, "You know that white guy killed in the park? I did it and it's tearing me up."

Eric Hill had committed an armed robbery a month after he killed Bruce, and was serving twenty years for that when he was charged with capital murder--murder with a deadly weapon. More months went by. Every time there was a hearing, I drove down to DC alone. None of my family would go, so I went, crying and feeling dark clouds within me as I crossed over the DC line on 16th Street. I drove by the place where Bruce died, on my way to the court building. I would sit alone in that courtroom when they brought out this handsome African American man who did not look like a murderer. He wore an orange jump suit, came out in chains, and sometimes looked at the lone man in the seats.

The family wrote victim letters to the judge before sentencing. We asked for the maximum sentence. Eric had been diagnosed with AIDS and medical care was better in federal prison than in the DC Jail. So he agreed to tell everything that happened, if the judge would place him in the prison at Lorton, Virginia. He said he did not premeditate Bruce's murder, but he flew into a rage when Bruce had the audacity to run from him. So the charge was reduced.

On the day set for sentencing, Mom, Dad, and Robert, had come from Kentucky to hear the verdict. My wife attended with them. We sat together and and cried quietly. I remember seeing a very distinguished-looking African American family--Eric's family, I guessed--sitting in another area of the room. They brought him out. He spoke to the judge. He turned and apologized to us. Then the judge sentenced him to another twenty years, concurrent, without parole. He would die from AIDS in prison.

There was some sense of relief after the conviction and sentence. But I still thought about Jesus' commands regarding enemies. I frankly neither rejected my duties, nor did I live up to them. I lived for some time in a kind of middle place, where I knew what I was told to do and where I was unresolved to do it.

One day, and I think it may have been around three years or more after March 2, 1992, I had a sense of peace about Eric Hill, and a desire to reach out and write to him. I think part of my motivation was Jesus' command to love my enemy. But another part was the realization, which had come more and more over time, that Eric Hill once had been a little boy before he became a killer. He had been raised by a family who loved him. There had been a process by which he had left his innocence and turned to drugs. And then there was that night he killed Bruce. I really knew nothing about Eric Hill. What he did to my brother was a wicked thing, but I had come to realize he was a man like me. And a single wicked thing does not make a wicked man, not necessarily. And he had told his friend, "This thing is tearing me up." Eric had had a conscience.

I resolved to write to him at Lorton, to say to him what I had in my heart. I contacted the detective in DC. He gave me the address and inmate number. I wrote a short but sincere note to Eric in my office at the church. I will try to reproduce it here as I can recall it.

"Dear Eric: I am the man you saw sitting in the court room when they brought you out at the hearings. Bruce Willis was my brother. I want you to know that I forgive you. I do not speak for my family, but myself. I am a sinner as you are. I am a minister. I encourage you to turn to the Lord, seek forgiveness from God, as you live the rest of your life. In the Love of Christ, John D. Willis."

I never got a response. I am unsure now if I expected one. Perhaps if he had written back, I would have visited him in prison. I know I had that in me. But all I had was silence, and I felt I had done all I could. Over the years, I checked the federal register of inmates. The last time I checked Lorton, there was no Eric Hill, but there were several by that name scattered over the United States. By this time, perhaps he has died of AIDS, I do not know. But I take no pleasure either from the fact he may be dead, or that he had to suffer, if he did, with such a horrible wasting disease. I do sometimes wonder, however, whether or not my little note was welcome, for it may not have been--since I did not know him, perhaps he was a hardened and mean individual. But it was sent to him in genuine cleanness of heart, with good intentions, and I have prayed from time to time it did some good.

I can say I did not write that letter with some sense of religious duty, as if that was what I had to do to please God or have a clear conscience or "bring closure." For some reason, I really had love for Eric Hill as a human being who once had been a little boy, raised by loving parents, and yet a man who had made a series of bad choices. He did use drugs, and his mind surely was as clouded with temporary insanity as the night I had drunk Bruce's vodka, whether or not he was high that night or not. Eric really was a man like me. Any number of times in my life, when I had considered doing bad things but for some reason did not, I might have made choices with horrible consequences.

So my love for him was real. And my feelings against him were gone. Yes, I still had those memories of those photographs, of standing and looking at Bruce's bloodstain on the pavement. But there was no more misery and grief in me, just a pervasive feeling that the Willis and Hill families had been brought together by an entire series of bad choices, including that Bruce himself had chosen to live in an area where violence was known to be prevalent.

Years Since

My Mom, Dad, brother Robert, and everyone else in the family, continued to grieve and suffer for many years. Bruce's death aged my parents and took years off their lives. When the subject of Bruce's murderer came up, and it regularly did for a long time, they would alternate between grief and hate. I tried to help them appreciate that Mom's letter had resulted in Hill being convicted. I told them that many victims never ever had any justice, only loss and questions. So I said we had to be grateful for what we had, all due to a grieving mother's hand-written letter. My years of academic reflection and years of pastoral experience were of great help to my parents and brother, Robert, though he was angry for far longer than I was. For a long time, Mom and Dad were unhappy, stressed, and unable to have any joy. Then came a time several years later they they began to smile and even laugh at the antics of their grandchildren.

I never told them I had written to Eric Hill. They never forgave him. I knew they would not understand, appreciate, or accept that such a note was right. They would have seen it as a betrayal of Bruce. They neither had studied what I had learned, nor had they seen what I have seen as a pastor, and their own Christian faith was more undeveloped. Some people may say I did the wrong thing, that I ought to have encouraged their faith, their capacity to forgive, their reliance upon God to enable that capacity. But I continued to say things to them about Eric Hill that I wrote above. I reminded them his father was a postal worker, that he had come from a good home, and that he may have been high the night he killed Bruce. And they finally came to nod their heads in agreement. They finally saw him as a person, not just a killer.

Mom is dead now. Dad is weaker. I visit him a few times a week and cook meals for him. We still talk about Bruce, laughing about good memories of that good-natured boy. But occasionally Dad will say a harsh word about the man who killed his son. I remain silent most of the time, for I am not a father who lost his beloved son, only another son who never can fully understand what a father can feel. Robert lives not far from me and he still has very hard feelings about the man who stole away his brother's life. I still try to help him understand what he will hear, and sometimes get through, for a time.

I have written that, after Bruce's death, I refused to take time off or seek counseling. Looking back now, that was a bad mistake. I began to become more impatient and harsh with some difficult personalities at the church. I began to have a more easily triggered anger. There is no doubt I did not respond appropriately to various stresses in my ministry in Rockville. A fraud occurred there two years after Bruce was killed, and I fought the perpetrators nearly on my own for four years. I look back now and see how, had I been healthier, I surely would have treated those people with more compassion, not the vitriol to which I subjected them.

I had one more ministry, reported an abusive foster parent to the State of New York, the children were pulled from the home, then I was asked to leave. Yet I wonder now whether I acted too quickly, or whether the emotional damage I had in me made me less able to see better solutions. That was my last ministry. My family and I returned to Kentucky where I resolved, regardless of God's will, to serve congregations no longer, I stewed in bad memories, and went downhill spiritually and emotionally.

Eight years after Bruce's death, my wife and I divorced. Our marriage had serious troubles throughout our many years. We had considered divorce after our first three months of marriage. Yet the birth of our children, and constantly serving people in congregations, kept us together as a team for many years. After I left the ministry, I surely was less of a Christian man, had acquired more impatience, and was less loving. She had her own personality dysfunctions, but I know for sure they were aggravated by the fact she had a more difficult man to live with after Bruce's death. So I still believe Bruce's death, and how I refused to accept the advice of good people in seeking psychological assistance, contributed to the issues I brought to our divorce.

My commitments to understanding violence and human conflict continued, for they are part of me, my nature, my calling. I enforced civil rights law for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. I created and administrated a masters degree in conflict resolution for a university. In designing a course to prepare students to understand their personalities and triggers, so they could be more neutral in working with others, I studied much in personality theory, and many mental disorders, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That phase of my career was a revelation for me. I began to see how Bruce's murder--followed by a fraud in a congregation--had changed my emotional processes. So I began to study more in neural processes, emotional trauma, and went deeper into the dynamics that had poisoned me, as I then saw and see.

I will never know how things might have gone differently, had I sought healthy ways to cope with Bruce's murder. All I know for sure is that this man's high religious commitments and intellectual development were insufficient to keep me from being human, from having completely human responses to a horrible event. I also know certainly that my original response, of seeking to be strong for my family, of refusing psychological resources, was a grave mistake for which many people have had to pay. Yes, I know that other people I have met in my life, since Bruce's death, have brought their own personality and behavioral problems with them, as I have had to deal with them. But the sad but true fact is, they also had to deal with a man like me, who has a good heart and intentions in his core being, but who has within him emotional and behavioral scarring and dysfunctions only a murder victim's surviving brother can have.

Learning From Life for the Academy

I have not written this true story, with all its admittedly subjective interpretations and assertions, for catharsis, healing, and self-help. I feel no relief, no added benefit, at least for myself, in this narrative. One wise thing I did do, from the beginning and throughout all these years, is that I always openly talked about how I was feeling, thinking, and behaving. Whatever perspectives I have offered are not new to me, and none have arisen in the course of writing.

It is the world's present condition for which I write. I have taken the time to record my painful journey in the hope that some reader will find something of personal value towards better coping, healing, if needed. I know there are many victims out there in the world. There are not just victims of murder. There are victims of rape, robbery, domestic violence, child abuse. There also are millions who have experienced emotionally traumatic life events where no hand held a knife and stabbed the life out of a loved one. There are emotional knives, nevertheless, that just as surely stab and inflict mortal wounds within the psyches of people who then go through life unaware of the emotional damage they carry entombed in their heads.

One thing I have learned about emotional trauma. It may or may not be related to a physically violent event, but emotional violence always creates an entire spectrum of intrapsychic reactions below the level of consciousness. Victims continue to be victimized by their own natural defense mechanisms--hormonal reactions in the brain, altered neural functions--which, if untreated or unhealed, become pathological penalties for as long as they operate unabated. The truth is, most people in the world have no access to professional psychological care, and the kind of care related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is long-term and expensive. So I see no use in hoping for interventions which will not occur.

My real motive for writing, therefore, is For the Sake of the One, that unknown reader who may stumble upon this story and find something good and healing in it for him or her. I post this on the Internet, and pass it along to my friends and colleagues in conflict resolution in that hope that they, or someone they forward it to, or some stranger who stumbles across it, will gain something for understanding and healing. In that sense, what I have written comes out of my core being as a man who still wants to do something good with what he has learned and suffered, for the benefit of others. This comes from the minister of Jesus Christ still left in me.

When I began earnestly to study the sixteenth century wars of religion, I tried not to see them only events related to differences in doctrine and the dynamics of politics. I read victims' stories, like Theileman van Braght's Martyrs Mirror (1660). But I had read, and later continued to read, victims' accounts from the history of Anti-Semitism, the Crusades, the Inquisitions. I wanted to read history from the victims' side, as well as the victors' side, the latter perspective from which so much history is written. The effect of these studies was a deep and grave sorrow. Perhaps I developed even a kind of disposition of grief, as I saw a world so full of "man's inhumanity to man." Yet all the vicarious empathy that grew within me, it was not until Bruce's murder that I would experience the conditions for real empathy: lived experience.

Now I have read, and still read, many true stories of how people all over the world have been tortured and murdered. I am a realist in that I know that Bruce's terror and and death lasted only maybe twenty minutes, if that is how long it took him to bleed to death there on the pavement. He was not flayed alive, or buried in an ant hill. Still, his terror and his horror were real. And the relatively short time he experienced them do not diminish what he felt, or that he is dead, or that his family and friends continued, and continue, to experience the traumatic impacts of March 2, 1992.

But as I look at the world today, I see a virtually complete ignorance and disinterest, concerning the general public and concerning nations, in what violence does to victims. There are primary victims who suffer what they do. There are secondary victims, like survivors, who love their dead, but who go on to live dysfunctional lives, creating another class of victims, what I will call tertiary victims. I am a secondary victim, but have created a number of tertiary victims.

I know how I felt, with or without vodka, towards Bruce's killer. I know what pain and suffering did to a man with deep religious beliefs, a man serving as a clergyman, a man filled with technical knowledge about violence, but also a man who was a brother, who knew the victim for who he was, not as a statistic for the news. I know feelings of blinding grief, desires for revenge and justice--which are not the same. I know, at least in my case, that my religious and moral sanity returned and I had the capacity to forgive from my heart.

Yet I understand, and will not condemn, someone who seeks revenge. I know how they feel. To desire to take revenge is, for most of us, rather human. But I can say from personal experience that had I taken revenge on the night when I was intoxicated with both vodka and hate, even if I had found Eric Hill himself and he bragged to me about what he had done, I would have been wrong to have killed him, even if a court ruled me innocent of murder. I do not believe my parents or brother would agree with me.

I think now of the possibility that one of my children or grandchildren could be murdered. I fear such an experience. I know what is latent within me. But I also have lived long enough to see other people with horror stories of their own who have managed their grief better than me. There are those Amish families whose five girls were shot several years ago by Charles Carl Roberts IV. There are those many people who agreed to go through Truth and Reconciliation commissions, first in South Africa, and then elsewhere. There are millions of people who have refused to allow pain, grief, and tragedy to drive them to seek personal revenge. And the world has taken note and learned, though surely not as much as is needed all over the globe.

The desire for revenge is natural. It is based in love for the lost victim. It is based in anger from pain. It is based on a desire for justice, to punish the wicked. Yet violence unleashes the deepest mixture of irrational and rational motives, and it almost always drives good people to want to do bad things. Our minds are filled with pain and turmoil, we think of our loved ones lost, we think of what happened to them, and we want to lash out for the old, ancient law, the lex talionis, the Law of Retaliation.

In my case, my religious faith had motivated me to walk, for decades, in the valley of the shadow of death, filling my mind with blood-soaked information to I might have the tools to become some kind of peacemaker. My intellectual development was both religious and moral, with good purposes of understanding and prevention. Yet the murder of my dear brother, Bruce, dragged me from vicarious suffering into personal suffering. There was no way academic studies on Jesus' command, "Love your enemies," could prepare me for what I eventually would live through.

I am thankful to write this story from within the framework of one who is healed, and who desires even more to be a maker of shalom, of deep inner spiritual peace with God and others in the world. Yet because of my personal experience, such as it was, incomparable though it is with some of the worst horror stories in the world of survivors, I now understand how important my religious, moral, and global concerns are.

Some Americans literally called for using nuclear weapons and killing all the people of Afghanistan after September 11, 2001. Some Muslims were involved in that horror, and now millions more seek to kill the innocent, because Americans and Westerners generally are disinterested in their real, living memories of seeing 500,000 innocent Iraqi women and children destroyed by an oil embargo, or in the suffering of innocent Muslims elsewhere in the world. Pick any historic cycle of violence and revenge in the world--and there are too many to list here, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, African nations, Asian nations. The world is full of murderers and victims, has been, and always will be.

Nevertheless, the cycles of retaliation and revenge, while generated by nature, are false. Nature never will tell our tortured minds the truth: blind bloody revenge is not justice, though justice must be sought. I know that, as a Christian minister, I had deep spiritual experiences and teachings to chain my natural emotions. Without them, knowing how I loved and love Bruce, I can foresee how this older brother might have cooled down after a time, then become mentally focused on revenge, which could have taken any number of harmful directions for me, my family, and those victims I might have created.

So I think I understand something about murder and victims and how they feel. But I do hope, and I pray to God, that someone reading this story, whose life now is filled with poison, will consider what this fellow sufferer has said in my reflections. Yes, there is a desire for wrath and revenge. Yes, we all want justice. But if the history of the world teaches us anything, we can see that completing the cycle of violence with more violence, is potentially and usually endless.

If we resist the temptation to honor our dead by following our worst instincts--which are temporary--there is better hope, healing, reconciliation, and resurrection for better things, if we remember the mercy of God to us. For we all are sinners. We all are capable of the worst. I can remember times of youthful rage when I might have become an Eric Hill. As Jesus said and as I believe, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Let let us not foreclose the possibility of that comfort by becoming judge, jury, and executioner, which must be left finally to the Last Judgment.