These can’t wait till Sunday

James Wigderson names his political idiot of the week.

I go to two posts of Jeff over at Five Points. On voter ID he gives some doable common sense ways to avoid disenfrancising voters and says, if these were put in place,

The only people it would disenfranchise are the lazy people who refuse to get their ass down to the DMV to get a state-issued ID.

I agree that what he suggests should be put in place before we even think about instituting voter ID.

Jeff also gives his thoughts on the Great Lakes Compact. Good points here also, for example,

I think that Michigan is going to be the state that is going to be a thorn in everyone’s side because they have nothing to lose. The entire state falls within the Great Lakes Basin so they need permission from nobody. Illinois is also a concern because they have an exemption in place that allows them a very large daily diversion via the Chicago River.

I’m looking forward to John Schoenknecht’s column’s in the Freeman. I, too, have his Spring’s book and history fascinates me.

December 7th

For most people, December 7th summon thoughts of Pearl Harbor. For me, it’s mom. Mom would have been 82 today. She was 16 when Pearl Harbor happened. Some birthday present, eh?

Mom had already been working to support her family after her father had passed away 3 years before. During the war, she was a “Rosie the Riveter,” helping to build ships at the Baltimore shipyards. She met Dad when he was stationed there for a time during the war.

Mom’s been gone for several years, now. Mom always made Christmas for me. I love the season, the songs, and the snows (Yes, I know I’m strange), and she was the one who made sure we got gifts, even when we were on the other side of the world.

Speaking of the war and particularly artifacts of that war, I’m reminded that artifacts are still being unearthed by floods and other things, and a search for the remains of soldiers continues. In fact, here’s a satellite picture of Wewak airport (on the north coast) where you can see the bomb craters from over 60 years ago. (I couldn’t get the pic to embed in this post).

Declarations of Faith

Edward J. Larson, author of A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign, led off his article in TIME magazine this way,

The narrow margin of the last presidential election left those on the losing side second-guessing themselves. Many of them blamed the loss on the opposition’s appeals to Christian voters and their own candidate’s failure to answer basic questions about his personal faith. Determined to win the next election, party strategists mapped plans to neutralize the religion issue. Those plans included buffing their candidate’s image as a believer, condemning the other party’s ties to evangelical extremists and hailing their side’s devotion to religious liberty.

But the election wasn’t 2004, it was 1800. An interesting look at the role religion played in the 1800 election.

I have looked at another book about that election here and here.

More on Adams vs. Jefferson

About half the book deals with events leading up to the election of 1800. The personalities that played a part, the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, getting the new national system (the Constitution) up and running, the last few years of Washington’s second term, the election of 1796, and “the partisan inferno” preceeding the mid-term elections in 1798.

The rest of the book deals with the election and the last chapter is the epilogue entitled “The Revolution of 1800.”

A couple more quotes from the book,

Both parties engaged in what now would be termed negative campaigning, an assault on their adversary’s program and leadership rather than an emphasis on their own platform. Federalists, for instance, left no stone unturned in their attempts to link the Republicans with the bloody excesses of the French Revolution. Jefferson and his adherents, they charged, embraced the same “cant of jacobinical illiberality” as their radical friends in France;… (page 151)

Is this what Burkee and Walz refer to in their Pact (fixed the link, my apologies)? How about this?

Jefferson was subjected to ceaseless obloquy. As a young attorney he was said to have gulled his clients. His wartime conduct after 1776 had been deplorable. While others sacrificed, he had lived comfortably, “secure in his retreat . . . from the fangs of a blood-thirsty foe.” Or so he had thought. When the enemy approached Monticello in 1781, he had run like a jack-rabbit, abandoning his post as governor in the great emergency.

And that’s not all. The founding fathers seem to be a lot more like candidates today, it seems.

In conclusion, the election of 1800 was a pivotal point in American history. Jefferson and Adams were adversaries during a passionate decade. Politics is a full contact sport and anyone entering should know that in advance.

Book review: Adams vs. Jefferson; the Tumultuous Election of 1800

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. History, politics, election intrigue and the founding fathers’ recorded thoughts all appealed to me.

The author John Ferling is a professor emeritus of history at the State University of West Georgia. He’s written several other books, all about persons involved in the creation and development of the American republic, including biographies of John Adams and George Washington and the first three presidents in the American Revolution.

Published in 2004, one interesting note was that the author used “blogger” in reference to pamphleteers in early America. A short preface, fourteen short chapters, 215 pages makes this a very readable book. I finished it on my vacation this year and still had time to start my Andrew Jackson biography. The book also has a list of abbreviations, end notes and an index.

The author’s statement in the preface is the same reason I was drawn to this book,

But one thing above all pulled me toward writing this book. The prevailing sense for some time has been that politics in the eighteenth century was substantively different than modern politics. Supposedly, public officials were different as well, tending to be more detached and disinterested, more above the fray. That was not what I found…. (page xviii)

Indeed, the partisanship I found was quite surprising. Bitter invective, innuendo, outright falsehoods, propagated in the hope of gaining election. Again from the preface,

Politicians then, as now, were driven by personal ambition. They represented interest groups. They used the same tactics as today, sometimes taking the high road, but often traveling the low road, which led them to ridicule and even smear their foes, to search for scandal in the behavior of their adversaries, and to play on raw emotions.

I wonder what Burkee and Walz would say to that.

One other thing I want to touch on in this post is the author’s sense of the passion of the time.

Indeed, the 1790s was one of America’s most passionate decades. It was kindred in warmth and fervor, and especially in rage, to the 1770s, 1850s, 1930s, and 1960s, for activists of all persuasions understood that colossal choices in foreign relations were to be made that would dramatically shape the nation, if in fact the infant republic survived those choices.

More later because I think this book is instructive for today’s politics. In fact I would add this decade to the ones the author enumerated above. Both sides in today’s debates believe the stakes are high.

“I have a dream”

According to Dane101, today is the day Martin Luther King made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Courtesy of American Rhetoric, which also has video and mp3 recordings, here is the beginning of the speech,

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

Read the rest here.

Then comes the final crescendo,

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”²

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day – this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

It still gives me goosebumps.

Rosa Parks Dies at 92

All Rosa Parks did was refuse to give up her seat to a white man. Little things can make a difference.