What the Sermon on the Mount Got Right, But What the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Religions Get Woefully Wrong
If the 10 Commandments had been practiced with ALL people and for ALL people, they would have been good,
BUT notice that Jews, Christians, and Muslims for thousands of years
only required that enemies NOT violate those commands and that they themselves only needed to practice such moral behavior within their own select religious group.
In contrast, believing that God had ordered them to do so,
the Jews, Christians, and Muslims regularly
lied,
stole,
and slaughtered their enemies.
And still do so even now in the 21st century.
Read about constant Jewish abuse and theft of land, of water, of resources, in Palestine-Israel, etc.
Jews sometimes massacred every man, woman, child, and infant in the Bible because they believed that God ordered them to do so.
David, supposedly the “man after God’s heart, massacred whole villages, killing every person. And he did this to STEAL their loot.
And in the Jewish Bible in Exodus, if after a Jewish slave owner beat a slave almost to death, yet the slave didn't die in less than 2 or 3 days, no Jewish owner was punished because the slave was the Jew's “property”!
Strange isn’t it, that the Hebrews were so thankful that they escaped slavery, but then they enslaved others.
-
Muhammad robbed caravans, had at least 500 Jewish men beheaded, and then enslaved all of the women and children:-(
And Muslims have been doing likewise, for the most part, ever since.
Some nations of Islam didn't even ban slavery until the 20th century!
Creedal Christians in history constantly lied, stole, abused, slaughtered..
Read what they did in “Jesus Wars” back in the 4th century--see the historian Philip Jenkins famous book, Jesus Wars.
Other horrific examples include the present Christian war by Russia, who has invaded Ukraine, with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church calling for the war, much as devout Christians 1,000 years ago called for the evil Crusades.
Many others show these same immoral and unjust actions by Christians--the English Civil War, the 30 Years War, the American Civil War, the French Religious Wars, the Great War, Vietnam, the British Opium War against China where they forced that nation to take opium!
So ironic the American un-Civil War where dedicated Christians even vandalized, wrecked Southern churches, stabled their horses in them, etc. Heck, one Union soldier even stole a Southern family's Bible and took it back to New England. These devout Christian soldiers after invading, stole clothes, weapons, horses, food, etc. nearly every day.
See, in all of these historic and modern cases, Christians thought it was only wrong to steal from each other, but that God gave them the “right” and “duty” to steal from the enemies, even if the enemies were also Christians.
In contrast, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, states that humans ought to “love their enemies,” do good to their enemies…
This one reason that the secular writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and the Buddhist monk Thick Nhat Hanh, and many other human leaders consider Jesus' Sermon on the Mount an ethical precept of deep truth.
CAUTION: “Love” here doesn’t mean emotionally like or approve of!
As Martin Luther King Jr. so clearly pointed out in one of his speeches, to “love one’s enemies” means one has benevolence toward them. For instance, King certainly didn't like the KKK who attacked him, who firebombed his home, but he chose to have hope that if cared for, these bad people might come to the truth and change.
Moral truths are universal.
If stealing is wrong between my neighbor and myself, it is also wrong for us to do it to civilians and soldiers of an enemy nation.
This is why war is, by far, the most evil of all human actions. Invariably in every war, humans on both sides regularly lie, steal, abuse, rape, and slaughter, as well as violate the other commandments.
Let us hope and act to proclaim Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
In the Light of the Good, the True, the Just, and Altruistic Caring,
Dan Wilcox
Showing posts with label honor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label honor. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Review of The ROAD BACK by Erich Maria Remarque
This incredible starkly vivid realistic novel of the return home of defeated German soldiers at the end of the Great War is the most powerful anti-war novel I’ve ever read. Centrally this is so because seldom does Remarque get on his author’s soap box and preach or lecture and definitely doesn’t harangue (like some anti-war books do).
Add to that Remarque’s realistic sharp poetic prose and many short vignettes about individual soldiers’ horrific experiences, sharp daggers into readers’ emotions.
Often, I felt I was there—the descriptions of the landscape, nature, comrades—in that terrible time. What is so strange is that those German soldiers’ experiences (who supposedly were the bad Huns according to American interpretation such as Billy Sunday’s) are almost exactly like many Americans’ war experiences.
That is a central theme in The Road Back that war itself, and the pro-war lies and propaganda is the evil, not individual soldiers on any side! The latter go off to war convinced they are on the Right side, and that they are doing their patriotic duty, are honorable, and just.
However, after being in the war all of those false claims and promises and hopes are shell-holed obscenities. What is real are the tragic, needless, excruciating deaths of their comrades, and that they ruthlessly shot, bayoneted, hand-grenaded strangers, like unto themselves, who had done nothing against them but just happened to be born in a different nation.
It is qualities such as those for why I give Road Back a 9/A. Then why the 2nd grade, an 8/B? Because for one, there really is no plot, no narrative, no beginning to end story in this famous novel published in 1930.
Rather, as mentioned already, its key feature are vivid real vignettes (most likely that happened to actual individuals that Remarque fictionalized).
These many vignettes describe many different situations, results, activities, etc. of soldiers in the Great War and their alienations when they return at the end. Many of them are exactly the same ones that occur in all wars—loss of loved comrades,
bogus government propaganda (“For the Fatherland”),
the objectification of women, brothels (I was shocked that the German government provided such evils), V.D.,
the brutalization of idealistic naïve young men,
their descent into regularly violating all of the 10 Commandments, especially killing with gusto and stealing constantly,
the lack of food and equipment, the government failing to provide what is necessary,
the blithe ignorance and delusion of civilians back home about what is really like,
cynicism and loss of hope, direction, and purpose for many soldiers, etc.
But where is there a plot and story? Not there.
Repeatedly, while listening to the great audio interpretation by Graham Halstead, I found myself restless to get to the end of the book.
And since Germany for hundreds of years had been very religious, the center of Christianty, theological study, etc., it is vey weird that Remarque never mentions God, Jesus, going to the Lutheran, Reformed, or Roman Catholic services--none at all except to identify a cathedral in a description or to mention he taught his elementary students their catechism!
The novel is entirely secular in theme. The only focus of the characters are on the most superficial of things in life. Constantly women, marriage, values are ignored, mistreated, or objectified!
Lastly, the weakest part of the novel is its poor conclusion (in the last 75 pages or so). Suddenly Remarque leaves off his hundreds of pages of stark, vivid prose of dark realism and tries to pass off a weak romanticism/nature mysticism as a positive answer for the main character and the others as to how they can find direction again. For that reason, the last evaluation is a 2.5/D.
What the book has done for me is to give me a deep philosophical and political desire to understand on a personal level (not the famous leaders’ historical tomes) why and how the brilliant, highly educated Germans came to such horrible, tragic ends in the 20th century.
Of course, one central factor is that after the war, when there was so much suffering, resentment, hatred, brutalization, loss of moral values, etc., many didn’t choose the ways of Ernst and his comrades, but in that empty/noting chaos, they opted for false utopian visions—many to the Bolsheviks, and many to the National Socialists.
What’s scary is that in many ways—though of course to a far lesser extent—I see the same things occurring in the U.S. now—cultism, propaganda of right and left-wing extremism, injustice, massive lying, superficial media values, the loss of moral vision and civil behavior, etc.
Evaluation: A/B/D
8/24/2022
In the Light,
Dan Wilcox
Often, I felt I was there—the descriptions of the landscape, nature, comrades—in that terrible time. What is so strange is that those German soldiers’ experiences (who supposedly were the bad Huns according to American interpretation such as Billy Sunday’s) are almost exactly like many Americans’ war experiences.
That is a central theme in The Road Back that war itself, and the pro-war lies and propaganda is the evil, not individual soldiers on any side! The latter go off to war convinced they are on the Right side, and that they are doing their patriotic duty, are honorable, and just.
However, after being in the war all of those false claims and promises and hopes are shell-holed obscenities. What is real are the tragic, needless, excruciating deaths of their comrades, and that they ruthlessly shot, bayoneted, hand-grenaded strangers, like unto themselves, who had done nothing against them but just happened to be born in a different nation.
It is qualities such as those for why I give Road Back a 9/A. Then why the 2nd grade, an 8/B? Because for one, there really is no plot, no narrative, no beginning to end story in this famous novel published in 1930.
Rather, as mentioned already, its key feature are vivid real vignettes (most likely that happened to actual individuals that Remarque fictionalized).
These many vignettes describe many different situations, results, activities, etc. of soldiers in the Great War and their alienations when they return at the end. Many of them are exactly the same ones that occur in all wars—loss of loved comrades,
bogus government propaganda (“For the Fatherland”),
the objectification of women, brothels (I was shocked that the German government provided such evils), V.D.,
the brutalization of idealistic naïve young men,
their descent into regularly violating all of the 10 Commandments, especially killing with gusto and stealing constantly,
the lack of food and equipment, the government failing to provide what is necessary,
the blithe ignorance and delusion of civilians back home about what is really like,
cynicism and loss of hope, direction, and purpose for many soldiers, etc.
But where is there a plot and story? Not there.
Repeatedly, while listening to the great audio interpretation by Graham Halstead, I found myself restless to get to the end of the book.
And since Germany for hundreds of years had been very religious, the center of Christianty, theological study, etc., it is vey weird that Remarque never mentions God, Jesus, going to the Lutheran, Reformed, or Roman Catholic services--none at all except to identify a cathedral in a description or to mention he taught his elementary students their catechism!
The novel is entirely secular in theme. The only focus of the characters are on the most superficial of things in life. Constantly women, marriage, values are ignored, mistreated, or objectified!
Lastly, the weakest part of the novel is its poor conclusion (in the last 75 pages or so). Suddenly Remarque leaves off his hundreds of pages of stark, vivid prose of dark realism and tries to pass off a weak romanticism/nature mysticism as a positive answer for the main character and the others as to how they can find direction again. For that reason, the last evaluation is a 2.5/D.
What the book has done for me is to give me a deep philosophical and political desire to understand on a personal level (not the famous leaders’ historical tomes) why and how the brilliant, highly educated Germans came to such horrible, tragic ends in the 20th century.
Of course, one central factor is that after the war, when there was so much suffering, resentment, hatred, brutalization, loss of moral values, etc., many didn’t choose the ways of Ernst and his comrades, but in that empty/noting chaos, they opted for false utopian visions—many to the Bolsheviks, and many to the National Socialists.
What’s scary is that in many ways—though of course to a far lesser extent—I see the same things occurring in the U.S. now—cultism, propaganda of right and left-wing extremism, injustice, massive lying, superficial media values, the loss of moral vision and civil behavior, etc.
Evaluation: A/B/D
8/24/2022
In the Light,
Dan Wilcox
Sunday, January 7, 2018
"Strange...a God..."
"Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones;
who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;
mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness
multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell;
who mouths morals to other people
and has none himself;
who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man,
instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself;
and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!"
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger*
1. This "a God" described by Samuel Clemens is horrific and alien to me--was so even back when I was a young Christian teen growing up in Bible-belt southern Nebraska. We certainly didn't believe in any such deity.
YET I do know--from my having read many tomes of history and theology, and from personally speaking with a few famous Christian leaders--that Mark Twain's "a God" is a fairly accurate view of creedal Christianity, especially of the Augustinian, Reformed, and Lutheran branches.**
2. Here is background for the assertions of Clemens' anti-creed:
A. "a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones;"
It is very baffling why an, allegedly, perfectly good God would intentionally foreordain, before the creation of the universe, that all the many billions of infants be conceived and born totally "sinful" and "in essence, evil."
But remember the famous Puritan, Michael Wigglesworth, in his poem "The Day of Doom" emphasized that infants will get the "easiest room in Hell." :-( Line 370-72, http://www.bartleby.com/400/poem/171.html
No wonder that Twain was so bitter about this ethical obscenity.
B. "who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;"
If you had a dollar for every Christian book which emphasizes that Christians ought to accept, even glory in their suffering because it brings glory to God, you would soon be rich.
Titles will be added here later.
Of course, think of the millions of young children and young adults who suffer and die terribly from cancer and other agonizing and death-dealing scourges which God pre-planned for his own glory and "good pleasure."
One of the last tragic cases that happened shortly before I finally realized that organized Christianity CAN'T be true was a young lady of about 32 in our church who suffered and died leaving her 3 pre-schoolers without a mom.
C. "mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness
multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell;"
Strange as it may seem to many, the sort of Christianity dominating the U.S. where Clemens grew up--and which still dominates some areas--does emphasize that even Hell was created for God's glory.
Heck, one famous Christian theologian said that even the Jewish Holocaust will bring what ever glory to God that he wills!
D. "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself;"
and
"who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all;"
This is called Divine Command Theory in the Christian religion, or God's total sovereignty. According to many Christian leaders, God has two separate contrary wills; in one he commands humans to obey certain laws, but in the other will, God's hidden will, God causes every evil including molestation, rape, murder, slaughter, natural disasters, diseases, plagues, famines, etc.
Not a molecule moves in the cosmos but that it is by this "a God's" will.
Because God's ultimate nature is his absolute sovereignty, then whatever God wills, then becomes "good." That is why God could order slaughter, slavery, abuse, lying, stealing, and so forth in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament.
If you question this, Christians will ask you, "Who do you think you are to question God?"
--
"That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence
slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven,
and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing
to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most
dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften
it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame;
but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it;
and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting
about that nigger goes to everlasting fire."
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie-and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie- I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville
and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.
HUCK FINN
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell...
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again;
and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too;
because as long as I was in, and in for good,
I might as well go the whole hog."
--from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
Samuel Clemens on the theme of his book: "A book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience [because of Christian society and the Bible] come into collision, and conscience suffers defeat."
*As a literature teacher for many years, I used some of Clemens' bitter satire and deep ethical insights for a whole unit on the nature of ethics, and the dangers of conscience, duty, and honor.
But I've not written on Twain or his books for a long time.
Thanks to Bruce Gerencser and Infidel753
for bringing up Twain's keen ethical passage this week on their blogs.
**I won't bother with ranting and raving against the bad three, have done that enough in the past here on the blog. And, since encountering their theological and ethical horrors first 55 years ago have virtually driven all my close loved ones to drink;-), especially my patient wife. She, being non-theological and non-philosophical, doesn't worry about what famous leaders and famous Christian denominations teach. Maybe that is why we share a margarita or wine once in a while for dinner. Much better than the bad spirits.
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Friday, August 25, 2017
The Universal Soldier
One of our friends enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17, soon was fighting against the Viet Cong in a lost spot around the globe most Americans knew nothing about.
When this big teen became a battling soldier, not only didn't he know anything about Vietnam nor about Vietnam's history, nor that the U.S. had supported the re-invasion of the French after WWII, none of this was why he was fighting!
This serious soldier was thinking about his own life, and those of his fellow soldiers. Like so millions of other soldiers throughout history, he was in a war NOT
for political,
social, religious,
or historical reasons BUT because he was a young guy who thought that the military might be good for him.
Or consider another friend of mine. When he came back from a year in Vietnam, did he mention politics or justice or even patriotism? NO.
He told me about how his platoon guarded a bridge in the Mekong Delta and smoked weed most of the time.
For millions of other soldiers, they were drafted. Unless they became conscientious objectors (only a very few), these young men (and a few older ones) served out of duty, honor, or because they didn't want to go to prison or leave their country.
Ask most veterans, and they will speak especially of caring about their "band of brothers," NOT about global politics or religious commitment: "God and Country," though all of the German soldiers in the Great War did have that on their belt buckles.
Of course, in the 1800's, the 1600's, and so forth, millions of draft-age men did leave their nations in order not to kill, in order not to be a soldier, not to battle in countless killings. The clearest example are the many thousands of Germans such as the Mennonites and Brethren who immigrated to the United States in the 19th century and before to escape the endless political and religious wars which devastated Europe year after year, century after century.
A perceptive secular thinker on the Internet, Keith Parsons, has spoken to this several days ago on the blog, Secular Outpost, in relation to those who are vandalizing or taking down statues to Confederate soldiers:
"I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1952, the fourth generation of the Parsons family to be born in Georgia. My great-great grandfather Parsons was born in London, England, and in 1844 he settled in Georgia on land only recently stolen from the Creek Indians. On the other side of the family, my roots in Georgia go back at least five generations. Several of my ancestors owned slaves. Several fought in the Civil War; no need to guess which side.
"Am I sorry that my ancestors owned human beings? Yes, of course I am.
"Am I ashamed that my ancestors fought for the Confederacy? Not really.
"Let’s consider just one of my ancestors, the Rev. Enoch Hooten...Seriously wounded...How seriously did my progenitor take that? Was he fighting for slavery?
"I don’t think so. Now, I’m sure he was no abolitionist, and if asked he would have endorsed slavery. But was he motivated to fight by a pro-slavery mania? Was it a die-hard commitment to the “peculiar institution” that inspired him to face shot and shell?
"I don’t think so. Consider a parallel case: Did the average Russian of the Great Patriotic War fight for Stalin? Did he fight for Communism and for the ultimate victory of Marxism/Leninism?
"No, he fought because the Germans had invaded his country. He fought because he hated the invading enemy, whatever he thought of Marxist theory, if he thought about it at all.
--
"Except for Gettysburg, practically all of the major Civil War battles were fought in the southern or border states. For the southern soldier, it truly was The War of Yankee Aggression.
"So, my bet is that my ancestors fought because they felt a threat to their homeland.
" The despised Yankees had marched onto sacred southern soil and had to be sent home...
Southerners perceived the North as another country,
and northerners as a foreign people who had no right to rule them...southerners thought they were fighting for Christian values over the godless, soulless mercantilism of the north.
They sang, “Down with the eagle and up with the cross!”
--
"One can see a cause as very bad while respecting the motivations of the individuals who fought and died for it. Just because you oppose, say, gun control, or abortion, or the death penalty, you don’t have to question the integrity of those who disagree with you on those issues.
"So, I’m not ashamed of my Confederate ancestors. I think that, though grievously wrongheaded, they were doing what they thought that honor and duty required which, really, is all that we can ask of anyone.
--
"...I might be willing to countenance a statue of Robert E. Lee if a statue of Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman, just as big and just as prominent, were erected next to it.
--
"In the end, the ones most deserving of honor are those who were the victims of slavery and of the hundred years of Jim Crow repression that followed slavery.
from "Confederates in the Closet" by Keith Parsons
Secular Outpost
And, let us think back to the millions of 20th and 21st century American soldiers such as our friend who at 17 went off to fight in a place he knew nothing about...
HOWEVER, consider this:
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.
by Buffy Sainte-Marie
As a peacemaking poster states, THERE ARE NO JUST WARS, just wars...and wars and wars and wars...and every nation thinks its particular war is just, and that all their enemies are "unjust."
Let us seek the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
When this big teen became a battling soldier, not only didn't he know anything about Vietnam nor about Vietnam's history, nor that the U.S. had supported the re-invasion of the French after WWII, none of this was why he was fighting!
This serious soldier was thinking about his own life, and those of his fellow soldiers. Like so millions of other soldiers throughout history, he was in a war NOT
for political,
social, religious,
or historical reasons BUT because he was a young guy who thought that the military might be good for him.
Or consider another friend of mine. When he came back from a year in Vietnam, did he mention politics or justice or even patriotism? NO.
He told me about how his platoon guarded a bridge in the Mekong Delta and smoked weed most of the time.
For millions of other soldiers, they were drafted. Unless they became conscientious objectors (only a very few), these young men (and a few older ones) served out of duty, honor, or because they didn't want to go to prison or leave their country.
Ask most veterans, and they will speak especially of caring about their "band of brothers," NOT about global politics or religious commitment: "God and Country," though all of the German soldiers in the Great War did have that on their belt buckles.
Of course, in the 1800's, the 1600's, and so forth, millions of draft-age men did leave their nations in order not to kill, in order not to be a soldier, not to battle in countless killings. The clearest example are the many thousands of Germans such as the Mennonites and Brethren who immigrated to the United States in the 19th century and before to escape the endless political and religious wars which devastated Europe year after year, century after century.
A perceptive secular thinker on the Internet, Keith Parsons, has spoken to this several days ago on the blog, Secular Outpost, in relation to those who are vandalizing or taking down statues to Confederate soldiers:
"I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1952, the fourth generation of the Parsons family to be born in Georgia. My great-great grandfather Parsons was born in London, England, and in 1844 he settled in Georgia on land only recently stolen from the Creek Indians. On the other side of the family, my roots in Georgia go back at least five generations. Several of my ancestors owned slaves. Several fought in the Civil War; no need to guess which side.
"Am I sorry that my ancestors owned human beings? Yes, of course I am.
"Am I ashamed that my ancestors fought for the Confederacy? Not really.
"Let’s consider just one of my ancestors, the Rev. Enoch Hooten...Seriously wounded...How seriously did my progenitor take that? Was he fighting for slavery?
"I don’t think so. Consider a parallel case: Did the average Russian of the Great Patriotic War fight for Stalin? Did he fight for Communism and for the ultimate victory of Marxism/Leninism?
"No, he fought because the Germans had invaded his country. He fought because he hated the invading enemy, whatever he thought of Marxist theory, if he thought about it at all.
--
"Except for Gettysburg, practically all of the major Civil War battles were fought in the southern or border states. For the southern soldier, it truly was The War of Yankee Aggression.
"So, my bet is that my ancestors fought because they felt a threat to their homeland.
" The despised Yankees had marched onto sacred southern soil and had to be sent home...
Southerners perceived the North as another country,
and northerners as a foreign people who had no right to rule them...southerners thought they were fighting for Christian values over the godless, soulless mercantilism of the north.
They sang, “Down with the eagle and up with the cross!”
--
"One can see a cause as very bad while respecting the motivations of the individuals who fought and died for it. Just because you oppose, say, gun control, or abortion, or the death penalty, you don’t have to question the integrity of those who disagree with you on those issues.
"So, I’m not ashamed of my Confederate ancestors. I think that, though grievously wrongheaded, they were doing what they thought that honor and duty required which, really, is all that we can ask of anyone.
--
"...I might be willing to countenance a statue of Robert E. Lee if a statue of Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman, just as big and just as prominent, were erected next to it.
--
"In the end, the ones most deserving of honor are those who were the victims of slavery and of the hundred years of Jim Crow repression that followed slavery.
from "Confederates in the Closet" by Keith Parsons
Secular Outpost
And, let us think back to the millions of 20th and 21st century American soldiers such as our friend who at 17 went off to fight in a place he knew nothing about...
HOWEVER, consider this:
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.
by Buffy Sainte-Marie
As a peacemaking poster states, THERE ARE NO JUST WARS, just wars...and wars and wars and wars...and every nation thinks its particular war is just, and that all their enemies are "unjust."
Let us seek the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Honor, Duty, Memorial Day--Only One Defensive War in 500 Years
We seek to live in memory--to remember--those who served, suffered, and died in the past that we might not forget...
Let us honor those who went to war, not to kill, not to slaughter, not to conquer, but to defend, to protect, to rescue.
Tragically, too often in our nation's past, the U.S. began and/or supported unjust wars.
Of the 100 or so wars and conflicts, ONLY one of all of our wars was defensive!
We humans, seldom, are angelic, but always seem to find new angles,
or recycled propaganda from wars of yesternight, so many dark nights of the 'sold.'
However, even in those offensive wars, there were many Americans who served though they passionately opposed their country's immoral actions.
Let us honor, today, all men and women who sought to limit, to change, to rescue others in the midst of the destructive evil of war.
That is the true duty.
That is the true honor.
Secondly, let us forgive our nation and those millions of us who chose so wrong--who engaged in, or supported, killing in wars which were immoral and unjust. Soldiers of the past who caused so many countless woundings, sufferings, and killings such as Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Jackson, Chamberlain, Alvin C. York...
They killed for God, killed because of war fever, because they had been misinformed by their leaders.
We need to forgive them.
Of course, there are always millions of people who claim their country isn't wrong, or even worse the ones who declare, their country right or wrong.
Shall I list each unjust war by name, and how we were so deceived?
Not today...but
We are slow learners, we humans.
Let us on this Memorial/Remembrance/Decoration Day, then also, remember not to forget.
Let's stop repeating the past.
Forget about political bombast and intentional lies and empty slurs such as "defending our freedom" and the bombings that those empty slogans always begin to destruction.
Vote to end our warring in Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and our support of dictators, warlords, and Islamic jihadists.
Please work instead for peace.
And remember those men and women who fought to defend, to protect, to rescue, but not to kill...
They are the noble humans for whom Memorial Day ought to be.
Thirdly, this Day of Remembrance ought not to be an honored memory of war in general, of nationalism.
The basis for the first Memorial Day was tragically that--about memorializing those who invaded, attacked, and destroyed.
Let's seek a change of heart--those of us who have gloried in our country's past wars. There is nothing glorious or heroic in going off to war, even a defensive war.
On the contrary, war is the greatest evil we humans commit.
In the Great War, 16 million people were killed and 21 million people were wounded or disabled.
And contrary to what government and religious leaders promised-- that the war would end war, the Great War only led to World War ll and more wars, including the wars at present. See The Great and Holy War: How WWl Became a Religious Crusade by historian Philip Jenkins and Preachers Present Arms by Ray H. Abrams.
When we choose war, inevitably, all the other Commandments also get violated.
Try to think of a war without any lying, without any stealing, without any cursing, without any profaning, without any fornicating, without any destroying, without any killing of civilians,
Without any suffering for the innocent...
It can't be done.
So let us, today, remember those multi-millions of humans who have fallen in the past to this most destructive and unjust of all acts.
Particularly, I think of my own father who went to war to protect and defend. He hated violence, even movie and gaming video violence.
We bow today to those who sought to serve and protect.
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Let us honor those who went to war, not to kill, not to slaughter, not to conquer, but to defend, to protect, to rescue.
Tragically, too often in our nation's past, the U.S. began and/or supported unjust wars.
Of the 100 or so wars and conflicts, ONLY one of all of our wars was defensive!
We humans, seldom, are angelic, but always seem to find new angles,
or recycled propaganda from wars of yesternight, so many dark nights of the 'sold.'
However, even in those offensive wars, there were many Americans who served though they passionately opposed their country's immoral actions.
Let us honor, today, all men and women who sought to limit, to change, to rescue others in the midst of the destructive evil of war.
That is the true duty.
That is the true honor.
Secondly, let us forgive our nation and those millions of us who chose so wrong--who engaged in, or supported, killing in wars which were immoral and unjust. Soldiers of the past who caused so many countless woundings, sufferings, and killings such as Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Jackson, Chamberlain, Alvin C. York...
They killed for God, killed because of war fever, because they had been misinformed by their leaders.
We need to forgive them.
Of course, there are always millions of people who claim their country isn't wrong, or even worse the ones who declare, their country right or wrong.
Shall I list each unjust war by name, and how we were so deceived?
Not today...but
We are slow learners, we humans.
Let us on this Memorial/Remembrance/Decoration Day, then also, remember not to forget.
Let's stop repeating the past.
Forget about political bombast and intentional lies and empty slurs such as "defending our freedom" and the bombings that those empty slogans always begin to destruction.
Vote to end our warring in Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and our support of dictators, warlords, and Islamic jihadists.
Please work instead for peace.
And remember those men and women who fought to defend, to protect, to rescue, but not to kill...
They are the noble humans for whom Memorial Day ought to be.
Thirdly, this Day of Remembrance ought not to be an honored memory of war in general, of nationalism.
The basis for the first Memorial Day was tragically that--about memorializing those who invaded, attacked, and destroyed.
Let's seek a change of heart--those of us who have gloried in our country's past wars. There is nothing glorious or heroic in going off to war, even a defensive war.
On the contrary, war is the greatest evil we humans commit.
In the Great War, 16 million people were killed and 21 million people were wounded or disabled.
And contrary to what government and religious leaders promised-- that the war would end war, the Great War only led to World War ll and more wars, including the wars at present. See The Great and Holy War: How WWl Became a Religious Crusade by historian Philip Jenkins and Preachers Present Arms by Ray H. Abrams.
When we choose war, inevitably, all the other Commandments also get violated.
Try to think of a war without any lying, without any stealing, without any cursing, without any profaning, without any fornicating, without any destroying, without any killing of civilians,
Without any suffering for the innocent...
It can't be done.
So let us, today, remember those multi-millions of humans who have fallen in the past to this most destructive and unjust of all acts.
Particularly, I think of my own father who went to war to protect and defend. He hated violence, even movie and gaming video violence.
We bow today to those who sought to serve and protect.
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
The Ways of War
Consider the motivations and ways of and for war:
1. War for Excitement and Profit
(Allegedly the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Great War,)
2. War is Our Nature
(War according to Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Realpolitik, etc.)
3. War for Revenge
(The Trojan War, Nazi War,)
4. War over Land
(Palestine/Israel, U.S. War Between the States, usually called the American Civil War though it really wasn't a civil war, Mexican War of Conquest by the United States, Attacks against Indian lands by U.S., Seven Years War at least in its North American part--the French and Indian War, a battle between Britain and France of which will own North America.)
5. War for Duty, Honor, and Patriotism
(Robert E. Lee, etc.)
6. War for Victory
(General George Patton, General Curtis LeMay, General Ulysses Grant, etc.)
7. War for Liberation
(American Revolution, French Revolution, Marxist Wars of Latin and South American countries against despotic rulers of the late 20th century)
8. War for Peace and Justice
(Acclaimed by nearly all opposing participants in all wars such as the current one in Syria.)
9. Total War
(Another name for total war is terrorism; a government intentionally attacks, plunders, harms, destroys, and usually slaughters many thousands of civilians including children, firefighters, doctors, etc. Examples include the French Religious Wars, the 30 Years War Sack of Magdeburg by the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic League, General Sherman's "March to the Sea" in the American War Between the States, the French Revolution, the Blitz against Britain and many other civilian attacks by Nazi Germany, the bombing of Dresden by the Allies, the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities by the United States.
"There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders." General Curtis LeMay)
10. Holy War, War for God, Crusade, Jihad
(HAMAS, ISIS, the Crusades of the 1000 to 1200's, the Muslim Conquests from 623 to 1683 C.E., etc.)
11. War as Self-Defense
12. Limited War for Justice
(Examples include the famous rules of war organized by Augustine of the Roman Catholic Church; another is the Geneva Conventions of War, 1864, 1906, 1929, 1949.)
13.Opposition to Particular War
(Barack Obama is the best current example of this. He strongly opposed the Iraq War, but in contrast supports war in general, even 'first-strike' war.)
14.Non-violence within War
(Medic, Non-combatant; examples include many Seventh Day Adventist such as the WW 11 medic Desmond Doss, who received the Medal of Honor for rescuing over 70 wounded Americans from a cliff.)
15.Vocational Non-violence to War
(Some conservative Mennonites and other religious groups take this view. They themselves oppose participation in war, yet they think other humans are to soldier because war by the government has been instituted by God.)
16.Non-violence for Peace, Love, and Justice
(Conscientious Objection, Civil Disobedience, Protecting Enemies, Protesting; Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, Badshah Khan,)
17.Non-resistance for Religious Belief
(Some say they aren't pacifists, but that they don't participate in human wars; Jehovah Witnesses.)
18.Removal from War (Many thousands of young men immigrated to other countries such as the United States to avoid serving in various European wars for various reasons.)
19. Passive Response to War
(For instance, many civilians neither support a war nor resist it, but just try and avoid the belligerents of both sides. Even when attacked, passive civilians sometimes don't fight back--the Amish, many Jewish people in the 1930-40's, etc.)
20. Cowardice in War
21.?
22.?
Take your pick. What way will save people from suffering and destruction and death? What is the most humanistic way to respond?
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
Saturday, November 8, 2014
How the Bible Is Like ISIS and HAMAS or Vice Versa
In the Middle East, the tragic news keeps getting worse and more of the same (Is that insane?!).
Consider how so many of the current horrific stories are very similar to stories in the Hebrew Bible of thousands of years ago!
This morning's reading was Genesis 34. Check especially verses 25 to 31, the story of Simon's and Levi's slaughter of a whole town of male civilians, then their theft of all the town 'loot'--including flocks, cattle, donkeys,children, women, etc.
Sound familiar?
And the central reason for the slaughter by the 2 sons of Jacob has to do with honor versus dishonor and sexuality (a rape by one individual).
Sound familiar?
Oh, there are a few differences between then and now:
while the Genesis narrative was an oral tradition which finally got written down after hundreds of years about 700-500 BCE, all the gory daily news at present is posted immediately on Twitter, the Internet, YouTube, and so forth.
Of course, I suppose all of this really is old hat if we remember as kids hearing many sermons about the suicide-bomber, Samson, who slaughtered a whole temple of civilians--men and women.
Still that was at least 1100 BCE. A long time ago. Why is HAMAS still killing civilians--such as driving cars into innocent Jewish civilians, murdering Jewish hitchhikers and then celebrating their killers as martyrs?!
The Israelis, also, are doing their part with lying, stealing, and slaughter. But at least they didn't glorify the Jewish individual who murdered the Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem several months ago.
Etymology from Latin: "in-turned position"
Vice in Latin means "a change..."
No change from thousands of years ago that I can see.
Or in the modern word: vice
"moral fault, wickedness," c.1300, from Old French vice "fault, failing, defect, irregularity, misdemeanor" (12c.), from Latin vitium "defect, offense, blemish, imperfection," in both physical and moral senses (in Medieval Latin also vicium; source also of Italian vezzo "usage, entertainment"), from PIE *wi-tio-, from root *wei- (3) "vice, fault, guilt."
Online Etymology Dictionary
What happened to the new millennium?
Why are we drowning in an Ocean of Darkness?
Daniel Wilcox
Consider how so many of the current horrific stories are very similar to stories in the Hebrew Bible of thousands of years ago!
This morning's reading was Genesis 34. Check especially verses 25 to 31, the story of Simon's and Levi's slaughter of a whole town of male civilians, then their theft of all the town 'loot'--including flocks, cattle, donkeys,children, women, etc.
Sound familiar?
And the central reason for the slaughter by the 2 sons of Jacob has to do with honor versus dishonor and sexuality (a rape by one individual).
Sound familiar?
Oh, there are a few differences between then and now:
while the Genesis narrative was an oral tradition which finally got written down after hundreds of years about 700-500 BCE, all the gory daily news at present is posted immediately on Twitter, the Internet, YouTube, and so forth.
Of course, I suppose all of this really is old hat if we remember as kids hearing many sermons about the suicide-bomber, Samson, who slaughtered a whole temple of civilians--men and women.
Still that was at least 1100 BCE. A long time ago. Why is HAMAS still killing civilians--such as driving cars into innocent Jewish civilians, murdering Jewish hitchhikers and then celebrating their killers as martyrs?!
The Israelis, also, are doing their part with lying, stealing, and slaughter. But at least they didn't glorify the Jewish individual who murdered the Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem several months ago.
Etymology from Latin: "in-turned position"
Vice in Latin means "a change..."
No change from thousands of years ago that I can see.
Or in the modern word: vice
"moral fault, wickedness," c.1300, from Old French vice "fault, failing, defect, irregularity, misdemeanor" (12c.), from Latin vitium "defect, offense, blemish, imperfection," in both physical and moral senses (in Medieval Latin also vicium; source also of Italian vezzo "usage, entertainment"), from PIE *wi-tio-, from root *wei- (3) "vice, fault, guilt."
Online Etymology Dictionary
What happened to the new millennium?
Why are we drowning in an Ocean of Darkness?
Daniel Wilcox
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Tragic Nature of Duty, Honor, Country, and God
Duty, honor, country, God...aren’t these sacred nouns of what dreamed ideals are made?
What every good human seeks or should quest after?
How could such great exemplars possibly be the source of tragic, unmitigated evil?
In my childhood and youth, duty, honor, country, and God meant nearly everything to me. I still remember standing tall to receive my God and Country Award in Boy Scouts--months after many hours of preparation and achievement to earn the medal--then wearing it, proudly, on the green khaki of my Boy Scout uniform on important days.
The award hung there next to my merit badge sash emphasizing exactly those virtues of duty, honor, country and God. And hard work, reverence, etc., all those ethical characteristics of the Boy Scout Oath and Law: “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
But then all hell broke loose…
But before I explain what happened, wind back to one section of the past in U.S. history to get a more generic overview of these vaunted words—duty, honor, country, and God.
Consider the complicated, convoluted, tragic American Civil War in which two dutiful heroes stand out--Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant.
Take the latter first. Grant joined the war effort to keep Southerners from leaving the Union. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, Grant didn’t think Americans have a right to leave a government they oppose. Strangely though, he had previously violently supported Americans taking land from another country, Mexico, helping kill many for that right!
Oddly, also, Grant's family owned slaves and he worked them. From 1854 to 1858, Grant used the slaves of his wife’s father on the family farm. And Grant bought a slave in 1858, only three years before the Civil War but sold her in 1859.
His view of slavery may have been changing. However, his family didn’t free their slaves until after the Civil War ended and Missouri abolished slavery. So ironic that Grant was killing many Southerners when his own family back in Missouri still owned slaves!
While Grant gave partial support slavery, he seems to have been committed to an almost mystical vision of country, the United States. Like Lincoln, he didn’t think states had a right to democratically leave. “There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter…”
So, like Lincoln, he was willing to abandon slavery if it would stop states from seceding. Grant said, “If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go.”
Previously, Grant had served in the U.S. Army invasion of Mexico. New American immigrants to the area had wanted to bring slavery into its portion of Mexico, but slavery was outlawed in Mexico. Isn’t that the beginning of irony—that this Union which Grant so valued, was actually born of land theft, and that the U.S. had supported the importation of slavery into Mexico by Americans who had recently immigrated into Mexico!
Already, 15 years before Secession, duty is again shown to be morally twisted.
Isn’t it strange that Grant warred to support rebels who supported slavery against the Mexican Government, but opposed democratically elected states, who supported slavery from leaving the United States? What a moral tongue twister!
And Grant, himself, later recognized the wrong nature of the Mexican War. He called the latter war “unholy.” And said, the “Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War. Nations, like individuals are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment..”
But as always with so many well-meaning humans, duty calls: According to Grant, “Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life and history.”
I suppose some people will say, ‘At least in the Mexican War, U.S. soldiers fought dutifully against people in another country, who believed differently, and even looked different. But when duty called in 1861, it called for brother to take up arms against brother. Like the story in the Jewish and Christian Bible-- the senseless murder of Abel by his brother!
But, in the case of the Civil War, both sides were Cain, though, as the defender against invasion, the Confederacy less so, since they only wanted to go their own way, not invade the North. In fact, technically, the Civil War wasn’t a war about who controlled the nation, but about the North refusing to let Southern states leave after they had voted to do so.
Striking ironies. The Confederate general protecting Vicksburg from the invasion and assault by Grant’s troops from the North, General John Pemberton, was himself actually a Northerner. Two of his brothers, in contrast, joined the Union army, supporting the Northern invasion of the South! How tragic!
The rector at Vicksburg’s Christ Episcopal Church, the Reverend W.W. Lord, had also moved from New York 10 years before. He and his wife, also, supported the Confederacy!
So, hopefully, it is clear, that while a small group of Southerners, the ruling class of plantation planters, owned slaves, most didn't. Furthermore, most Southerners fought against the Union, not mainly because of slavery but because the Yankee army had invaded their homeland, their country.
This was exactly the case of Robert E. Lee. Known as the soldier’s soldier, Lee was admired even by his enemies. As a Christian and a Southern he followed duty and honor and country and God, enlisting in the Confederate Army even though he himself opposed Secession.
During his time at West Point, he got NOT one demerit, a very unusual achievement. For him, duty, honor, God and country were most important.
Lee had, at first, been offered command of the Union forces set to invade the South, but he said he wouldn’t attack his own state of Virginia. No, he would instead go back to defend his home.
Like Grant, Lee and his family owned and used slaves. Like his opponent Abraham Lincoln, Lee supported the freeing of slaves and having them emigrate to Africa. He did recognize slavery as a social evil that, hopefully, would eventually be ended.
Lee wrote to his wife in 1856, “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any Country.”
Lee chose to obey the state government of Virginia (and other Southern states, rather than the northern states who had a monopoly in the U.S. government) He stated, “Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character." But weren’t he and his state rebelling against lawful authority?
Wasn’t Lee one of the “traitors” that Grant railed against? Not according to Lee and millions of other Southerners. They weren’t rebelling but withdrawing from a democratic voluntary association, just as Thomas Jefferson, also a Southerner, had said everyone has a human right to do.
Unlike many a human when violently attacked, Robert E. Lee didn’t hold to revenge. He even emphasized forgiveness. “We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them.” Not the usual image of the battle-hardened soldier in either historical tomes or popular media is his famous statement?
Yet here is the tragedy, the moral evil: Lee ordered hundreds of thousands of Americans into battle to kill other Americans, Christians to kill other Christians.
By following duty, honor, country, and God, Lee was directly responsible for multi-thousands of deaths. Of what use is it to pray for your enemies, and to forgive them, if you order them killed?
Keep in mind that some of his opponents in the Union Army were also Christians who believed in prayer, forgiveness, duty, honor, country, and God! Yet they invaded and killed countless numbers of Southerners, stole their produce and animals, confiscated and burned their homes and factories, causing untold suffering and anguish that lasted for many years!
Furthermore, many Northerners were racists, even in the Union army, and opposed Black equality. After the Civil War, racist Black Codes came into being in the South.
But racist codes were also evident in places in the North. And there were"Sundown towns" such as Hawthorne, California which had a sign outside its city limits in the 1930's which read, "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne."
So much for honor and that God loves everyone, "red and yellow black and white..."
What came of all this high-sounding moral code of duty, honor, country and God? Over 800,000 needless deaths, millions of wounded, the ravaging of half of America, untold suffering to civilians, unjust and immoral laws for over 100 years against Negroes, and die-hard racism.
One major secular philosopher, Immanuel Kant, emphasizes how duty shines above all, how duty is the highest call of humankind—the one true ethical act.
But not in the case of the very unCivil War.
The one good side effect of the war was the emancipation of the slaves, though when Lincoln emancipated slaves, he did so only for states in the Confederacy. Most historians say that Lincoln did this primarily as a war measure.
Slaves in the North continued to be enslaved until the end of the war! Lincoln's Emancipation didn't apply to them. So strangely, Lincoln freed slaves where he didn't rule, but enslaved Negroes where he did rule!
Then Lincoln also advocated that freed slaves should leave the United States. In March 1861, Lincoln said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
He further stated, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it…”
“I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” Etc.
Of what strange things are duty made, and the slaughter of others, and the hypocrisy of religion.
To be continued…
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
What every good human seeks or should quest after?
How could such great exemplars possibly be the source of tragic, unmitigated evil?
In my childhood and youth, duty, honor, country, and God meant nearly everything to me. I still remember standing tall to receive my God and Country Award in Boy Scouts--months after many hours of preparation and achievement to earn the medal--then wearing it, proudly, on the green khaki of my Boy Scout uniform on important days.
The award hung there next to my merit badge sash emphasizing exactly those virtues of duty, honor, country and God. And hard work, reverence, etc., all those ethical characteristics of the Boy Scout Oath and Law: “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
But then all hell broke loose…
But before I explain what happened, wind back to one section of the past in U.S. history to get a more generic overview of these vaunted words—duty, honor, country, and God.
Consider the complicated, convoluted, tragic American Civil War in which two dutiful heroes stand out--Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant.
Take the latter first. Grant joined the war effort to keep Southerners from leaving the Union. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, Grant didn’t think Americans have a right to leave a government they oppose. Strangely though, he had previously violently supported Americans taking land from another country, Mexico, helping kill many for that right!
Oddly, also, Grant's family owned slaves and he worked them. From 1854 to 1858, Grant used the slaves of his wife’s father on the family farm. And Grant bought a slave in 1858, only three years before the Civil War but sold her in 1859.
His view of slavery may have been changing. However, his family didn’t free their slaves until after the Civil War ended and Missouri abolished slavery. So ironic that Grant was killing many Southerners when his own family back in Missouri still owned slaves!
While Grant gave partial support slavery, he seems to have been committed to an almost mystical vision of country, the United States. Like Lincoln, he didn’t think states had a right to democratically leave. “There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter…”
So, like Lincoln, he was willing to abandon slavery if it would stop states from seceding. Grant said, “If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go.”
Previously, Grant had served in the U.S. Army invasion of Mexico. New American immigrants to the area had wanted to bring slavery into its portion of Mexico, but slavery was outlawed in Mexico. Isn’t that the beginning of irony—that this Union which Grant so valued, was actually born of land theft, and that the U.S. had supported the importation of slavery into Mexico by Americans who had recently immigrated into Mexico!
Already, 15 years before Secession, duty is again shown to be morally twisted.
Isn’t it strange that Grant warred to support rebels who supported slavery against the Mexican Government, but opposed democratically elected states, who supported slavery from leaving the United States? What a moral tongue twister!
And Grant, himself, later recognized the wrong nature of the Mexican War. He called the latter war “unholy.” And said, the “Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War. Nations, like individuals are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment..”
But as always with so many well-meaning humans, duty calls: According to Grant, “Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life and history.”
I suppose some people will say, ‘At least in the Mexican War, U.S. soldiers fought dutifully against people in another country, who believed differently, and even looked different. But when duty called in 1861, it called for brother to take up arms against brother. Like the story in the Jewish and Christian Bible-- the senseless murder of Abel by his brother!
But, in the case of the Civil War, both sides were Cain, though, as the defender against invasion, the Confederacy less so, since they only wanted to go their own way, not invade the North. In fact, technically, the Civil War wasn’t a war about who controlled the nation, but about the North refusing to let Southern states leave after they had voted to do so.
Striking ironies. The Confederate general protecting Vicksburg from the invasion and assault by Grant’s troops from the North, General John Pemberton, was himself actually a Northerner. Two of his brothers, in contrast, joined the Union army, supporting the Northern invasion of the South! How tragic!
The rector at Vicksburg’s Christ Episcopal Church, the Reverend W.W. Lord, had also moved from New York 10 years before. He and his wife, also, supported the Confederacy!
So, hopefully, it is clear, that while a small group of Southerners, the ruling class of plantation planters, owned slaves, most didn't. Furthermore, most Southerners fought against the Union, not mainly because of slavery but because the Yankee army had invaded their homeland, their country.
This was exactly the case of Robert E. Lee. Known as the soldier’s soldier, Lee was admired even by his enemies. As a Christian and a Southern he followed duty and honor and country and God, enlisting in the Confederate Army even though he himself opposed Secession.
During his time at West Point, he got NOT one demerit, a very unusual achievement. For him, duty, honor, God and country were most important.
Lee had, at first, been offered command of the Union forces set to invade the South, but he said he wouldn’t attack his own state of Virginia. No, he would instead go back to defend his home.
Like Grant, Lee and his family owned and used slaves. Like his opponent Abraham Lincoln, Lee supported the freeing of slaves and having them emigrate to Africa. He did recognize slavery as a social evil that, hopefully, would eventually be ended.
Lee wrote to his wife in 1856, “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any Country.”
Lee chose to obey the state government of Virginia (and other Southern states, rather than the northern states who had a monopoly in the U.S. government) He stated, “Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character." But weren’t he and his state rebelling against lawful authority?
Wasn’t Lee one of the “traitors” that Grant railed against? Not according to Lee and millions of other Southerners. They weren’t rebelling but withdrawing from a democratic voluntary association, just as Thomas Jefferson, also a Southerner, had said everyone has a human right to do.
Unlike many a human when violently attacked, Robert E. Lee didn’t hold to revenge. He even emphasized forgiveness. “We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them.” Not the usual image of the battle-hardened soldier in either historical tomes or popular media is his famous statement?
Yet here is the tragedy, the moral evil: Lee ordered hundreds of thousands of Americans into battle to kill other Americans, Christians to kill other Christians.
By following duty, honor, country, and God, Lee was directly responsible for multi-thousands of deaths. Of what use is it to pray for your enemies, and to forgive them, if you order them killed?
Keep in mind that some of his opponents in the Union Army were also Christians who believed in prayer, forgiveness, duty, honor, country, and God! Yet they invaded and killed countless numbers of Southerners, stole their produce and animals, confiscated and burned their homes and factories, causing untold suffering and anguish that lasted for many years!
Furthermore, many Northerners were racists, even in the Union army, and opposed Black equality. After the Civil War, racist Black Codes came into being in the South.
But racist codes were also evident in places in the North. And there were"Sundown towns" such as Hawthorne, California which had a sign outside its city limits in the 1930's which read, "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne."
So much for honor and that God loves everyone, "red and yellow black and white..."
What came of all this high-sounding moral code of duty, honor, country and God? Over 800,000 needless deaths, millions of wounded, the ravaging of half of America, untold suffering to civilians, unjust and immoral laws for over 100 years against Negroes, and die-hard racism.
One major secular philosopher, Immanuel Kant, emphasizes how duty shines above all, how duty is the highest call of humankind—the one true ethical act.
But not in the case of the very unCivil War.
The one good side effect of the war was the emancipation of the slaves, though when Lincoln emancipated slaves, he did so only for states in the Confederacy. Most historians say that Lincoln did this primarily as a war measure.
Slaves in the North continued to be enslaved until the end of the war! Lincoln's Emancipation didn't apply to them. So strangely, Lincoln freed slaves where he didn't rule, but enslaved Negroes where he did rule!
Then Lincoln also advocated that freed slaves should leave the United States. In March 1861, Lincoln said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
He further stated, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it…”
“I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” Etc.
Of what strange things are duty made, and the slaughter of others, and the hypocrisy of religion.
To be continued…
In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox
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