The Great Socialism Paranoia of the Right

A fellow blogger left an interesting comment on a post (Thanksgiving Turkey) to The Swash Zone in which he offered an explanation as to why Americans are so quick to cry "socialism" when presented with any programs or policies that seek to provide to each according to her need. He cites one candidate's comments on a Tulsa City Council Questionnaire as indicating the core belief of those who see socialism in every social justice program or policy:

I almost fanatically hate bullies and tyranny; I love individual liberty and the exercise of the individual human will. I am strongly opposed to any form of socialism, since all forms of socialism are based on force and the theoretical superiority of the group over the person. I strongly support the free market and the right of people to organize their own lives and make their own choices in their lives….All Government is based on force or the threat of force. The more government we have, the less liberty we enjoy. The less liberty we have, the less success we enjoy. Freedom just naturally produces success; that's what made America great. As the federal government tightens its coils around us, the nation begins to fail.

The Tea Party is a bold manifestation of the underlying belief that individual liberties are of more significance than the good of all. The reality is that we do cede some of our individual liberties to government in order to promote a civil society in which the rights of the few are just as significant as the rights of the many. Perhaps it's time for the left to stop denying that socialism is an acceptable and even desirable element of a government by the people and for the people, if that government is to truly serve the interests of all of the people.

Social Contract theory as proposed by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau has at its core a belief that individual liberties have to be tempered by government if we are to live in an ordered society where the basic rights of all are protected. I confess that I am Hobbesian in my beliefs. Humankind in its natural state without the controls of government is selfish and each person is focused on his/her own interests. In this state of nature, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. Hobbes argues that leaving us to pursue our own individual interests would lead to a "war of all against all" and lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." To prevent this perpetual state of war, men in the state of nature agree to a social contract and establish a civil society. (A good place to start if you are unfamiliar with social contract theory is with the Wikipedia article; it's not comprehensive but it provides a good intro.)

Where I part company with Hobbes is that he thought the most efficient government was to have an authoritarian monarchy to whom all ceded their natural rights for the sake of peace and protection. Hobbes was a true proponent of authoritative government. Locke proposed a more liberal monarchy and Rousseau advocated that government should be modeled on liberal republicanism (has nothing to to do with the Republican Party). I support a government that makes room for individual liberties but recognizes that those individual rights must be subsumed when they would result in the denial of basic rights to some individuals.

The common good must exceed individual liberties. Over emphasis on individual liberties would result in the strong always being able to exploit the weak. Our government wasn't implemented to enforce the rule of the majority but to protect the rights of the minority. The Constitution that the right babbles on about incessantly has at its core the premise that the government's role is to uphold equal treatment of all under the law. Those founding fathers that Palin, Beck, and Limbaugh claim to know personally, didn't look to the Bible for guidance in determining the governing structure for this country but they did look to the work of Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes. You can hear the echoes of their various philosophical treatises on the purpose and structure of government in the Declaration and the Constitution.

This promotion of self benefits the individual and the common good be damned. It is a philosophy that supports that if people are hungry and without shelter it's because they are lazy. It's an ideology that concludes that people remain unemployed not because they can't find a job but because they would rather not work. It is a belief that concludes that welfare recipients, the homeless, the poor, have no one but themselves to blame for their lot and it's no concern of the rest of us to do anything to provide them with the necessities of life. It is a selfishness that supports denying access to health care to those who cannot afford to pay for it. We have become a nation of nasty and brutish people, and we revel in it.

We are also a nation of hypocrites. The very people who sing the praises of individual liberty and oppose programs designed to help the underclass, deriding such programs as entitlements, also firmly assert that this is a Christian nation founded upon Christian values. What Christianity is there in the philosophy of every person for herself? What happened to the core Christian concept of being your sister's keeper? From what I know of Christianity, Jesus definitely had socialist leanings.

The next time someone accuses me of being a socialist, my response will be, "Yes I am and proud of it."

Sunday Funnies

"Honey, it's for you."

Cartoon created by Ima June Pullet (aka TexasTrailerParkTrash)

Spokesmodels of Stoopid

Thursday, Nov. 25, 2010, Time Magazine Online

"Obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies." --Sarah Palin

The Alaskan governor who quit to be on teevee confuses the two Koreas during a phone interview on Fox News presenter Glenn Beck's radio show. She was quickly corrected before continuing.

• 
  
• 
  

I am pukey sick of reading articles that claim she's electable in 2012. I'll start a grassroots campaign right here and now to put Vanna White up against her in the Republican primary, if that's what the right wants to see in the White House.

And how long have you known about this charming, subversive, slick "Soul of the New South" magazine? S'cuse me? There was a copy of this in the I'm Done With It Basket at Curves and my jaw 'bout dropped when I saw the title.

And, finally, Sally Henny Penny sent me this. Apparently, it's an oldy, but ya'll already know how slow I am--it's brand new to me. [Disclaimer: We at Hen's Teeth do NOT endorse the views represented in this video. We just make shameless fun of the ignunt fools who do.]

Drumroll, Please

"He was not very good at drawing teeth, and he liked his patient to be deafened, amazed, stupefied by a thundering in his ears [...] the tooth came out--came out at bloody last, piece by piece--to the howling of conchs, the fire of two muskets, and the metallic thunder of several copper pots."  Dr. Stephen Maturin in Treason's Harbor by Patrick O'Brian

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while Napoleon roiled Europe with decades of war and modern chemical anesthesia was still decades away, surgeons relied on alcohol, on laudanum when they had it, but primarily on distraction and sensory competition to minimize suffering in their surgeries. Aboard warships and on the battlefields a deafening drumroll in the patient's ear could raise the pain threshold effectively (by up to forty per cent, as measured today).  For this post, a bit of self-disclosure that pains me, some news, and a book recommendation. Easy part, first.

The New York Times reports this week that the FDA has pulled Darvon, an opioid drug used for pain for over fifty years, from the market entirely.  They had really good reasons--the drug has been controversial for over thirty years and was banned in Britain since '05 for causing life-threatening heart arrhythmias-- but it was this sentence that struck me powerfully:

 "The announcement ended a 32-year dispute over the safety of the 53-year-old drug. The F.D.A. recommended doctors switch patients to other painkillers, notably Extra Strength Tylenol or acetaminophen."

I don't believe I've ever used Darvon, or Darvocet, as it is commonly prescribed in combination with acetaminophen. Perhaps it was prescribed after a surgery, but I can't recall. Some people have been prescribed it for frequent use to treat chronic pain and have become addicted to it because opioids are addicting, period. It's got nothing to do with a person's character; I expect you already know that, Dear Reader, but I mention it because it is an important point. According to the article, propoxyphene (Darvon), for which 17.5 million prescriptions have been written in 2009, has been shown to have very little effect on pain. I promise you there are lots of people out there this week who would beg to differ with that conclusion and who are scared right this minute. I appreciate that.

The uncomfortable disclosure: I suffer from an aggressive, degenerative osteoarthritis in my spine and larger joints, so pain has declared itself my BFF, riding always in my back pocket, so to speak. The integrity of my right hip is suspect now and occasionally I have to use a cane. Hard chairs, long car and plane trips, stairs are instruments of torture masquerading as elements of normal life. I taught dance aerobics in my forties and walked a fast four miles every morning throughout my fifties, but some days now I have trouble making it down my own hall. My rheumatologist pushes challenging daily workouts, anti-inflammatories, and GABA analogues which leave me foggy. I comply, but my post-workout day is often shot, so it's a struggle to accomplish much of anything else.

I wonder why I have system-wide osteoarthritis when neither of my parents did. At eighty-three, my father was baffled to learn that he was ill, since he noted "nothing hurts me." And then I recall my mother's story of my tiny great-grandfather who sat by the potbellied stove at night, smoking a pipe of marijuana for his arthritis. And that's probably another blog post, altogether.

The favorite tools in my pain management toolbelt are three which Patrick O'Brian's Dr. Stephen Maturin would thoroughly approve: the transcutaneous electrical stimulation system or TENs unit, which I wear in a portable version, is my own private drumroll. And there's my precious iPod piping Maddow in podcast, or "This American Life," or Tom Ashbrook's "On Point," or O'Brian's Treason's Harbor, or Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy into my ears. Sometimes it can be a trick to maneuver around all my cordage--especially when I'm wielding hedge trimmers or pruning shears--but that sensory competition stuff works wonderfully to make life better for me. Writing, you may have guessed, is my third power tool against pain.

I understand there's no cure for arthritis--there's only the full-time job of management--so I'm trying to save the big gun opioids until my last years. Besides, even doctors who are most savvy to chronic pain secretly prefer heroes to victims, so I tough out all I can. Should I do that? How much pain should be tolerated and how much is too much, triggering a worsening chronic pain cascade? Chronic pain sufferers want to know.


So my ears pricked up when I heard NPR's "Talk Of The Nation" interview with Melanie Thernstrom, introducing her new book, The Pain Chronicles. I recommend it in analogue form; sometimes, you need actual pages to turn...with a bright yellow highlighter in hand. The science in the book is up to date--brain imaging, stress-induced descending analgesia, hyperalgesias, nociceptors, et alia--but it is the language  employed here that sang to me and made me feel less alone, for Thernstrom is a writer. She quotes Nietzsche,

 "I have given a name to my pain and call it 'dog.' It is just as faithful, just as obtrusive and shameless, just as entertaining, just as clever as any other dog--and I can scold it and vent my bad mood on it, as others do with dogs, servants, and wives."

Sections include Pain As Metaphor, Pain As History, as Disease, as Narrative, and as Perception. Some people who suffer chronic pain merely want it to go away; Melanie Thernstrom and I insist on understanding it, a trait that drives specialists crazy and sometimes causes them to label us Problem Patients. For me, knowledge has always been power and I like my knowledge best when delivered in a literary vein, so The Pain Chronicles might have been written just for me. It was hard to choose an example, so I opened the book to one of my bottom dog-eared, highlighted pages, at random:

Physical pain changes the body in the same way that emotional loss watermarks the soul. The body's pain system is not hardwired, but soft-wired (what neuroscientists call "plastic"), and it can be maladaptively molded by pain to increase its pain sensitivity. Ordinarily we think of neuroplasticity as being a positive trait: as the brain adapts to its circumstances and learns new things, new nervous pathways are laid down and old neural pathways disappear, the way the forest reclaims an untrodden path. But in the case of persistent pain, neuroplasticity is negative.

This is not a cover-to-cover read for me. Instead, I pull it out and read a few chapters as one of the tools in my pain management tool belt when osteoarthritis and secondary fibromyalgia are playing particularly hard on me.

I am always amazed at people my age and much older who do not experience unusual pain--there are more of us who do not than those of us who do--but most of us know someone of some age who struggles with trigeminal neuralgia or rheumatoid arthritis, an aging athlete whose knees must be replaced, or someone like me who never slowed down until they had no choice. They may feel that no one can possibly understand and that no one wants to hear one more time how frustrated and sorry they are that they cannot keep up. If you know someone, I can't think of a kinder gift to that person than Thernstrom's book.

Today is a Stieg Larsson in my ear, TEN's unit cranked up, Thernstrom chapter kind of day for me and there is a fence waiting to be painted. Drumroll, please.

Dancing with the Mama Grizzlies

"I don't care if Bristol did advance to the finals. 

You're not getting out the shotgun."

Cartoon created by Ima June Pullet (aka TexasTrailerParkTrash)

Their Last Hurrah and Hallelujah

Star Trek: The Next Generation. "Make It So"

One night last week in Nashville, while waiting in a state of punchy exhaustion for our chain restaurant suppers, my husband and I suddenly waxed profound on America's quandaries. It was one of those punchy but pithy conversations where one insight led us naturally to the next until a vision emerged that seemed new to us. Of course, if an ordinary pair of frustrated liberals can view the variables and arrive at obvious conclusions, our betters will have beaten us to it. Nevertheless, here's what we suddenly knew: This next few years--perhaps a decade, tops--is the last hurrah for conservatives. From here on out, for years to come, they do not have a shot in hell...

Because there will be no one left who remembers institutionalized segregation or Jim Crow. My Class of '66 was the last all-white graduating class in my little high school in North Carolina. We remember with wonder that such a thing was ever allowed to exist.

My Class of '70 was probably the last graduating class at my all-woman, liberal arts school to forbid slacks in class, even while training the generation that would, within mere weeks of graduation, leave its bras and panty-girdles and up-tight conventions at home in the back of the closet. All that happened so long ago that Spanx have come to seem like a modern invention. There will be no one left who remembers when a woman's college was the best bet a girl had of leading a heated discussion in a political science class. Or any science class.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

For a little over a month now I’ve been volunteering in a reading program for kindergartners at our local primary school.

Since my grandkids are in school pretty much full time now, and my daughter has either been working from home or at her new office digs during school hours, I found that after eight years “on the job” my services as child caregiver were no longer required.

I knew all along that day was coming, but it arrived a little sooner than I’d bargained for, leaving me with feelings akin to being told by a supervisor to pick up my severance pay from human resources and it’s been nice working with you.

Even though I’m essentially a creative, “free spirit” (cough) Gemini, I’m still a creature who needs some structure in her life in order to feel grounded.

To me, one of the worse things that can happen to an otherwise healthy person who’s retired is not having a reason to get up in the morning.

I know too many people who have taken to tippling during the day (and night) after retirement because they don’t have someone or something that needs them; something that requires their attention on a regular basis.

So my “something” has become five kindergartners, four days a week, in a one-on-one reading session that usually lasts twenty minutes each. I have two girls and two boys on Mondays and Wednesdays, and one teeny, tiny little ESL (English as a second language) girl on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

If you want to maintain a young outlook on life, go no further than a bunch of kindergartners.

They are a hoot.

Today, one of my boys was regaling me with a description of a picture he said he’d seen at the library of a horse giving birth. (I’m thinking he must have seen it at the public library, not the school library which has books just for Pre-K through kindergarten.)

Needless to say, it involved some very inventive thinking about horses’ butts and things that emerge from them.

I don’t know who was getting more of an education—him or me.

But when it comes to inventive thinking, today’s prize has to go to my first little girl of the day. She and the other girls came twirling into the reading room decked out in construction paper Indian headdresses and macaroni bead necklaces in honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

As I admired her get-up I murmured something about how clever the necklace was, being made entirely of dried macaroni of various colors.

My little Pocahontas wanna-be laughed at my patent cluelessness and said:

“That’s not macaroni! That’s dead food!”

I stand corrected.

Although, it could have been that the teacher had told them it was "dyed" food.

And, more likely, it could have been, with my diminished hearing, that I misheard entirely what Pocahontas said.

Either way, a good time was had by all.

I can’t wait to get up tomorrow morning to see what the day brings.

Sunday Funnies

"This is where the new GOP senators line up to kiss Jim DeMint's butt."

Cartoon by Ima June Pullet (aka TexasTrailerParkTrash)

Veterans Week, Part III: V-Day +1 +1

I cannot say a word of this better than my friend, Robert, did in his November 12th blog post at Plead Ignorance. I haven't yet obtained his permission to re-post his article, but, just this once I conclude that it is, indeed, "better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission." It's that good.

Veterans Day +1

Yesterday was Veterans Day, in some places, Armistice Day; a day when we are supposed to remember and honor the men and women in uniform who serve, and who have died serving, our nation in times of war and peace. And today, the day after Veterans Day, we can then return to forgetting those sacrifices and ignoring the unequal price they pay to ensure the comforts we enjoy.

Since the Conservatives recently regained their section of Capitol Hill turf the news media has been awash in championing their agenda; which is to cut government and reduce taxes (aka: foster unfettered expansion of moneyed interests). Example: CBS news anchor Katie Couric (who I believe has no more stature as a journalist than the kid who delivers the daily paper) touted all the ways in which the Conservatives plan to reign in government and runaway spending. With no fact checking or journalistic inquiry, she parroted the “facts” about the Social Security System being in “red ink” and on the brink of collapse and being a major cause for the burgeoning deficit. That fact is, that is NOT true!

So now the new prevailing and perceived shining path toward restoring America’s Greatness reads as follows: Ending tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of our elite is off the table. Targeted instead are the costs of supporting the poorest of our citizens; Social Security, Medicare, Welfare. It will be an ironic twist of fate if any Tea Baggerson unemployment voted Republican – unlikely UC benefits will be further extended, these folks might be the first to realize how they just voted to cut their own economic throats.

But among all the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over concern for our increasing national debt, the absence of the cost of our unnecessary and fruitless war in Afghanistan is the overlooked Elephant in the Room. We are borrowing close to One Billion dollars A DAY from China to maintain this war which has no expectation of any positive outcome whatsoever. Instead, we will continue to pay for it off the backs of people perceived as too lazy to go out and get jobs… which, incidentally, don’t exist. Large segments of our nation are apparently thirstily drinking the Kool Aid being served up by our political leaders.

The cost to our country for this war, and the Iraq war, have been deftly shielded and sanitized for our consumption. This has not always been true in our history. During World War II our nation sold bonds to finance the war. Everyone paid taxes to fund the war and few complained. It was necessary for all citizens to participate in one way or another in the defense of freedom. Everyone felt the pinch; consumer items such as sugar, coffee and materials like rubber and gasoline were rationed. No one was exempt, if you were not serving in uniform you were, in some way, supporting the soldiers who were. We were pulling together.

Again taxes were increased during the Vietnam War. In some sense, the cost to the taxpayer for Vietnam was but one of many pressures the public felt, in addition to the photos of caskets being shipped back home, which forced the government to yield to the growing outcries to bring that war to a close.

That is not the case today. Only recently the Obama administration has lifted the prohibition of pictures being released of flag-draped caskets being returned from the Middle East. But these images seldom make it into the consciousness of the news media; apparently more newsworthy: a Tea Bagger in a three-cornered hat with a misspelled sign calling the president a Socialist is the media’s primary focus.

Those in power have taken great pains to insure that this war costs the American taxpayer nothing; unless, of course, it happens to be YOUR child or loved one who has chosen to serve in the active military. I have not heard one public official suggest taxes be increased to pay for the War on Terrorism. And now it is quite clear that they neither want to factor in the cost of the war anywhere into the incendiary discussions about the rise of our national deficit.

I find it tragic that every day men and women go out on patrol in desolate places of the world based on pointless strategies, facing death and/or injury; while at home, Americans stop but one day a year to honor their commitment with parades and plastic flags made in China. Well hey… they volunteered to be in the service, didn’t they? I wonder who’s on “Dancing with the Stars” tonight?

Further reading:
1. "Bush-Era Tax Cuts Depart From History of America War Finance" Urban Institute
2. “The history of America’s tax system can be written largely as a history of America’s wars.” and Taxes, by Steven A. Bank, Kirk J. Stark, Joseph J. Thorndike."

Good work, my skeptical friend.

Veterans Week, Part II: Adam's Table

We got into Nashville late yesterday and checked into our motel, exhausted. The rush hour traffic from BNA was swollen by folks arriving for the Country Music Awards this weekend and slowed by the unaccustomed total darkness at 5:30 p.m.; on this easternmost edge of the Central Time Zone, darkness falls fast and early when Daylight Savings Time ends. We were weary, aching from sitting all day in cars, airports, and planes (oh, the wacky routes we fly to save a dime!), and starving. We settled for the chain restaurant within walking distance of our motel.

Our handsome young waiter, with the fast-talking, Yankee ways, was unexpected in this most Southern of southern towns. And much too much for a couple of fagged out seniors. Mr. Razzle-dazzle, high energy, hard sell. I hate that even when I'm at my best. He was Adam and he would be HELPING US OUT!  He moved like Tony Manero headed onto the dance floor on Saturday night. I wondered if he was hopped up on something or just manic.

Of course, we should know that the bottle was a better deal than the glass and the premium wines were so far superior to the cheap ones that he hated to even discuss them with us. We could do this or that or some other unintelligible thing...But, hey, it was obvious that the choice was hard. He'd make it easy for me; let's start with White or Red!  I quietly and wryly told him we'd start with the crappy Blackstone Pinot Grigio, for me only, thanks...and clamped my mouth in a way that spelled STFU, Adam.

And he did, briefly. He brought the wine and tea and water with barely a beat in his step and left us alone for a few minutes. We hardly noticed how much time had passed, because we were past tired and into punchy. I think we jointly analyzed America's entire problem, and from a unique perspective--which I can no longer remember, but it was sublime.

And then Adam was back, empty-handed. He squatted and rested his elbows on the edge of our table in a way that said, "Now that we've become so close...," and informed us that he 'd screwed up with our order, had failed to push some button or something and our food would be up as soon as humanly possible and he was abjectly sorry. And, somehow, he mentioned a son. And that lots of regular "guests" asked for him when they came in. He offered us free salads and slipped away.

DH was waxing a tad sarcastic by this time, mugging to me, comically annoyed and impatient, blood sugar bottoming out. I was laughing at him, promising that I would personally ask for Adam each and every time we returned to his restaurant and we WOULD return, since it was right next to our motel. And the food came. It was surprisingly good. We felt much better. And Adam refilled DH's tea glass after each sip.

When we were ready for our check and feeling so much more human, thank you, and the place was clearing out for the night, Adam settled in for some serious talk. He asked where we were from, heard our standard answer, "We're from the Air Force, originally." Adam said he'd once had no respect for the Air Force, buncha pampered wusses, but he'd changed his mind. And then the story that Adam had been waiting all day to tell--the story that, we sensed, so often inserted itself into his days--came tumbling out.

Adam wasn't used to Tennessee. He was an Ohio boy and was only here for a few months to take care of his mother. The girls in the South were hell-bent on getting married from Date Number One and it was freaking him out. He'd taken the wait job just until the end of the month, and then he had to head back home. He had a young son, but was never married. He'd been in Afghanistan and, after 9-11, in Iraq as part of the 10th Mountain Division.

His group was IED'd in Fallujah and combat disabled, having lost at least two-thirds of their number. They were under ambush attack and he was hit twice, one in the chest that his body armor stopped and one upward from his armpit through the shoulder. He found himself trying for the first time to call in an air attack. He asked an A-10 Warthog to drop ordinance within 300 yards of his position, a range the Warthog questioned. When he got agreement and the Mark-82 was dropped, the concussion blew him backwards. The Warthog circled back to use its Gatling gun to pick off the one machine-gun mounted Toyota pick-up that almost got away. Warthog pilots saved his life.

We shook his hand and thanked him for his service. We honor the warriors despite condemning the war. And we'll be asking for Adam's table.

Veterans Week, Part I: The Sunken Road and The Angel of Marye's Heights

Headstone, Civil War Veteran, Fredericksburg, VA

Veterans Day falls in this week. My head is full of America's conflicts, present and past. We are a warrior nation, a fact some of us only regret in the aftermaths of our actions. I have two bits of American history to share that I believe are instructive right now to remind us that America has known harder times than these. There are responses to national stress that are to be avoided at all costs, recourses that were suffered pitifully and should not be forgotten. Reasons to find solutions rather than escalate rhetoric.

One story comes from Fredericksburg, VA, which we visited last week, and the other from near Franklin, TN. (I'll be visiting Franklin this week and will tell that story in a second post).

Fredericksburg, VA: A perfect little college town, walkable and so packed with Revolutionary and Civil War history and livable charm that I was pricing housing...again. We made some beautiful shots of the charm, but Fredericksburg is a town with a job and that's what I want to convey: it works to preserve America's stories so that we may be informed by them, so that we may not repeat them. The story of The Battle of The Sunken Road haunts me.

The Sunken Road And The Stone Wall

The Army of The Potomac (114,000 engaged) met the Army of Northern Virginia (72,500 engaged)  at Fredericksburg in December, 1862. Union troops under Generals Burnside, Sumner, Hooker, and Franklin and Confederate troops under Lee, Longstreet,  Jackson, and Stuart, combined in Fredericksburg to comprise the largest armed engagement of the Civil War.

From the movie "Gods and Generals"

On the northern end of the battlefield, Union troops under General Sumner charged a low ridge called Marye's Heights. They moved up a long plain that rose very gradually to about 45 ft. at its crest. Near the crest of Marye's Heights, a narrow lane, known as Telegraph Road and later called The Sunken Road, crossed the plain, set in a declination behind a 4-ft. stone wall. Behind the lane, the ground rose sharply to the crest. Under cover of fog, the Confederate troops, under Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws, were dug in behind the stone wall. 7000 Confederate reserves were hidden behind the ridge. Massed Confederate artillery guns were placed on the rise behind the wall, aimed low to rake the enemy, skimming just over the heads of their own men. The Union Right Grand Division attacked across that long sloping plain directly toward the wall, the sunken lane, and the guns massed on Marye's Heights.

It was Pickett's Charge, in reverse. Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander promised General Longstreet, "General, we cover that ground now so well that we will comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open [fire] on it."  And so it was.

Restored home next to the Sunken Road, nearly cut to timber by
bullets. Some inner walls are original and bear the damage today.

Seven Union divisions were thrown at the the Sunken Road, one brigade at a time for a total of fourteen charges. All of them failed. Between 6,000 and 8,000 Union soldiers and 1,200 Confederate soldiers died that day. Longstreet later wrote that, "The charges had been desperate and bloody, but utterly hopeless." Through that long December night and all the next day, Confederate fire prevented the Union troops from attending to their wounded.

The Angel of Marye's Heights
 by Felix de Weldon

Sergeant Richard Rowland Kirkland, with Confederate Company G, 2nd S. Carolina Volunteer Infantry, could no longer bear the cries for help from the Union wounded. He asked and was granted permission from his commander to provide aid. Kirkland gathered canteens and, in daylight, with neither a cease fire nor a truce flag to protect him, brought comfort to the enemy lying on the open plain. Known as The Angel of Marye's Heights, Kirkland was memorialized in a statue.

I found Fredericksburg so dear and, at the same time, so sad. It's residents live in an idyllic American town and they tend their stories as tenderly as Kirkland tended the Union wounded and dying. We love our history in this country. We honor and cherish it. But we thereby live in danger of romanticizing its battles and its armies--an error that contributes to the ease with which those who call themselves patriots tossed off threats of "second amendment solutions" to our troubles during the recent mid-term campaigns.

I am nervous to hear hawkish rhetoric from the newly elected congressmen like Rand Paul and from old hawks whose numbers are reinforced. On the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, Paul stated, "I think we need to have more discussion on it, but it doesn't sound like I'm probably going to be in favor of that." And Lindsay Graham of SC, who needs to read up on Kirkland's story, told Time Magazine,“the likelihood of a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq has gone down.” Mr. Graham will be hearing from me. 


Some of my friends are so distressed, so disgusted by the changes in The House of Representatives and the rhetoric of some voices on the right, they are moving to emigrate. Some are so angry, they sound like the tea party gone progressive. Certainly, I can imagine conditions under which I would consider leaving my country, but I do not think those conditions prevail today. I believe there are no answers for America in those responses. The harder thing is to stay, to remain calm, and to work, heeding the lessons of history.

Civil War Cemetery, Fredericksburg, Maryland 

The Absence of War

I believe in compromise and bipartisanship. We have to live together; we can't separate ourselves into liberals, lefties, progressives, conservatives, tea partiers, libertarians etc. and each group stake out their own territories. As righteous as I think my beliefs are, I cannot force my neighbor to share them nor can persuade them to do so by telling them that their own beliefs are stupid and so are they.


Spinoza wrote in the 17th century, “Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.” I don't know that humankind has ever been at peace. We mistake rationality and thoughtfulness for weakness. Liberals are as bad as conservatives although all I read lately are protests to the contrary. I also read words that hold nothing but contempt for others, a massive disdain for those whom we determine to be less intelligent than ourselves. I'm not talking about blatant lying which is so often the modus operandi of the right. I'm not even talking about the public voices on the left. I'm talking about the blogs of the left; we regular folks who decry all who haven't reached our level of enlightennment to be virtually unworthy of existence. Those of us who refuse to recognize that most of the people who are swayed by the Tea Party rhetoric are just angry and scared and feeling adrift, and the Tea Party offers them a convenient anchor. They aren't the enemy; provide them with another anchor and they might even jump ship. However, that's sort of impossible to do while you're calling them stupid. Most people just don't listen when you start the conversation with an insult.


Don't get me wrong, I'm no saint. I get angry and frustrated, and there are days when I really want to slap somebody. However, I'm not proud of my irrationality and I work to let the anger go and focus on what I can do to make the society in which I live a better one.


I've been an activist ever since high school when I refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn't feel that the final part about "liberty and justice for all" was even close to true. I still refuse to recite the pledge or stand when it's recited by others. I suspect that I may well go to my grave still having my personal little protest. I believe in taking a stand, being involved, doing something rather than just thinking about doing something.


I grew up in an age when being subjeted to blatant racism was just the norm for a black child growing up in America. My memories of racial discrimination, bigotry and cruelty from the larger white culture are intact but I let the anger go a long time ago. There was a time when I thought that white people in general were evil because my experiences had revealed the evil inside of far too many. But as I grew older, I recognized that humans are complex creatures and evil is an oversimplication of the motivations for any human action. Spending my life hating and mistrusting white people seemed an incredible waste and I chose to exhale and let my anger go.


My point is that holding on to hurts, no matter how real, is not productive; it's crippling. Anger is a temporary release and it can serve a purpose. However, holding on to and nurturing anger and despair only eats away at you until you become a bitter shell of a human being.


There is nothing wrong with disagreement. I do not accept racism. I challenge it whenever I encounter it and I have no qualms about calling people out on their bigotry. I am neither naive nor Pollyanna's twin sister. However, I do believe in working to find common ground and I don't think that we can give up because the ground is rocky.


We are at a crossroads as a country. We have had one civil war when competing ideologies grew until there was no chance for common ground. The aftermath of that war was the end of slavery but it was also the inception of more than 100 years of Jim Crow. Our unrest as to race relations in this country continues and is at the heart of much of the current Tea Party fervor.


Do not mistake my call for rational responses as a willingness to lie down and roll over. It's a given in my world that one speaks out loudly, and with clarity against injustice of any sort. When necessary, direct attack is appropriate. However, anger must be tempered with reason in order to develop an effective strategy for change. I don't have any admiration for the Tea Party. They have no idea what they really want. They have some vague platform about taking their country back, a meaningless concept. Ask them what it is that they need to accomplish in order to take back their country and about the only concrete action that they have is to remove Obama as president. So hopped are they on their irrational anger and fear that they don't even recognize that they have channeled all of their anger into a personal animosity for one man--Obama.They state with all sincerity that it is not about race but about his corruption of the constitution but cannnot articulate one specific action that constsitutes the aforementioned corruption.


My concern is that we need to think rationally and determined precise goals and methodologies for achieveing those goals. I've never advocated being nice because it's important to be nice. I have been consistent in speaking of reasonableness which is not a synonym for nice.


We have fallen into the trap of responding rather than intiating. The Tea Party comes out with some far right position and we decry their beliefs and pronounce them stupid. It accomplishes nothing. Those who are already TP supporters are just further convinced that tehy are correct in their beliefs. But those who are not so sure about the TP haven't been provide with an alternative path by us, instead they are left confused and looking for guidance.


We have to devise an action plan. We have to present a platform that refutes the TP and proposes an alternative view of the world. We have to understand how the political system works and how to effectively use the system to promote a progressive agenda. We can't do that while we're caught up in anger and frustration. It takes cool heads to strategize.


I have no problem with progressives bitchin' and complaining in house, but to the opposition, we need to present a united front. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I do have a problem with bitchin' and complaining and failing to offer any concrete steps that we can take to effect change. If that makes me a moderate, so be it. I'm also an activist and I never sit any battle out.

Me, An Optimist?!

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."

"And freezing."

"Is it?"

"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."

Nobody has ever called me an optimist. Not once in my entire Eeyorian life. So, by all accounts, I should be slumped into my soup on this gray, chilly, post-Midterm Elections day. And I'm not feeling gloomy at all. Not at all! "And why not?," you naturally ask. What's got me feeling positively excited today? I'm not sure, really, and maybe I'm nuts, but these things come to mind:

The Republicans did not take the Senate, thanks to the horrible/laughable candidacies of Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle. O'Donnell was just silly, but Angle was malignant and I'm glad I won't be stumbling across her in the news for a while. It's a relief. Yeah, we have to deal with Rand Paul, but there's just something so squirrelly about the guy, I can hardly wait for the scandals to start rolling in! That's a prediction.

The House doesn't have the muscle to wreck Obama's foreign policy all by itself.  Despite Marc Lynch's hand-wringing over the message the election sends to foreign leaders--his fears that Netanyahu will be emboldened to hang tough, that Iran may conclude that Obama can no longer bargain in good faith--there's hope in the tea party's fiscal agenda when it comes to troop draw-downs in Afghanistan and more targeted uses of foreign aid. It's possible, as John Norris points out at "Foreign Policy" that the tea party's insistence on spending cuts could work to the benefit of Progressive foreign policy.

With the Blue Dogs' muzzled, December might bring a more productive Lame Duck Session.  I expect to see Don't Ask; Don't Tell shot down permanently. Michelle Bachmann is worried about the Bush-era tax cuts...and I love it when she's worried. A renewable energy standard that will require utilities to source 15% of their energy from renewable sources by 2021 has a chance now, I hope. Social Security recipients may get that one-time, $250.00 they need. And another extension of unemployment benefits is likely to pass. And the DREAM Act, which Harry Reid pledged to push in this session regardless of the outcome of his own election, should finally be put to the vote.

Most of all, I'm chomping at the bit for 2012. I've been reading the pundits' predictions all day--some Eeyores, some Tiggers--and here's the one I like the best, from David Von Drehle of Time Magazine,

What comes next is anyone's guess. Can we take heart from the fact that Florida's mouthiest Congressman, freshman Alan Grayson, was trounced after calling his opponent "Taliban Dan" in an egregious television ad? Can we find hope in the fact that a surging politician — the early Tea Party adopter Marco Rubio — can still get away, in this climate, with calling his campaign-trail foes "gracious ... worthy opponents"?

Probably not. The election of 2010, momentous as it was, marks the beginning of a bigger battle — not the end. It presents, in the words of Rubio, who won Florida's Senate seat, "a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago." That is, the party of smaller solutions and lower spending.

It also presents Obama with a fresh opportunity. The Republican Party has won the midterms by moving to the right. That leaves the rest of the spectrum wide open. If Obama can settle his differences with moderate voters and seize ownership of the middle ground, he will find a lot of the electorate waiting patiently for him.*

You see, the story of huge midterm losses is shelved in the library of political campaigns right next to the tale of presidential comebacks. Barack Obama just lived through the first edition, and starting today will try to create the sequel.

 *Emphasis, most emphatically, energetically mine.

Old News Really Fast

DC: Glad to sit down at last

Thank you for your patience, Dear Readers! Our journey to the Stewart/Colbert Rally For Sanity was a six-day trek to the most happening (some say, irrelevant) event of last week, via the distant past. The day after this weary shot, our hostess led a tour for us of Fredericksburg, VA--a charming little town that has more Revolutionary and Civil War history per square foot than any other I've ever visited.

I'm watching MSNBC moments before the polls close on the East Coast, wondering if sanity even has a shot tonight. The Rally was fun, both relaxed and energizing. There were either 215,000 (CBS) or 6 Billion (Stephen Colbert); whichever, there were more people than we'd been led to expect. Well-behaved, nice people with great senses of humor. Okay, there were some kids who didn't hear the cop say to get down from the wall (see first picture), but that was the only misbehavior I saw.

More sane humans than I'd expected

This was not my first Washington rally, so I knew the drill: you focus on the people you came with, try not to lose them, try not to trip, say "excuse me" a lot, be satisfied to add your presence to the whole, and don't drink much before or during. I couldn't see the stage. Frankly, my hearing is going and it was hard to differentiate the amplified program from the ambient noise, so I can't say I heard a lot. But I was deeply gratified by the turnout. And the reliability of my bladder.  Let's face it, when it comes to marching on the Capitol, I've still got it.

Captain America loved our sign!

I met a nice man about my own age who carried a sign that read, "Bob" with a big arrow that pointed down. He really needed to sit down, so he borrowed some time in one of our lawn chairs and seemed reluctant to give it up. The sign was to help his wife find him if they got separated; apparently she was prone to leave him behind. We were both amazed to find someone else from South Carolina. In fact, our sign drew Southerners to us: Texans, Carolinians, Floridians, and one woman from Kentucky. Dozens of people wanted pictures of The Sign. Some wanted their picture made with our sign...without us. Would the kind of people who'd gone to the trouble of attending The Rally To Restore Sanity actually claim our sign for their own on Facebook?  I don't think I want an answer to that question.

We left early for a lovely late lunch...four old people who felt lucky to be in D.C. on such a beautiful day and lucky to avoid the exit crush. We caught a cab back to our car and learned more about being American from our Sudanese driver than from the Rally. And we didn't feel the least bit shortchanged.

Very clever, but bad for American voters

We found this sign the cleverest...clever being the order of the day...but I fervently hope that Democratic voters overcame their apathy today. Right now, I'm signing out to devote myself to the tube and the returns, so I'll post the pictures of Historic Fredericksburg tomorrow or the next day. Depending on the mood. If you're reading this, I know you voted and good for you, good for us. As of 8:05 p.m., Alvin Greene has gotten 40% of votes counted against Jim DeMint's 54% here in SC. I call that a statement of some sort, but I have no idea what the hell it means.

The Rally Take-Away: A marvelous example of Americans enjoying First Amendment rights.

P.S. Looking forward to catching up on your posts.