Confronting American Apartheid – A Tale of Two Women.

Posted on | January 24, 2025 | No Comments

Mike Magee

This past week, Bishop Mariann E. Budde drew the Episcopal Church into the national spotlight through a single act of courage. She is not the first, nor likely the last from this denomination to do so. There is a history. More on that in a moment.

The Episcopal church is an offshoot of the Anglican Church of England which dates back to 1534 when King Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Pope who opposed his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Two-hundred and fifty four years later, in 1789, Anglican Church leaders who had helped settle colonies in North America, gathered to form a united Episcopal Church, revising their Book of Common Prayer to exclude its blessing to the English monarch.

Though declining in modern times, missionary minded Anglicans spread throughout the British empire, and remain connected to the mother Church as members of the Anglican Communion. For example, British Anglican military chaplains were part of the force that occupied Cape Colony in South Africa in 1795. By 1821, they had established a formal religious foothold. Today, they claim 3.5 million members. In 2012, they elected their first female bishop, Ellinah Wamukoya of Swaziland. And yet, the most influential female Anglican from South Africa is arguably an immigrant to America, an emotional ally of Bishop Budde, and a retired Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

Her name is Margaret Marshall, and her place in American history dates back to June 6, 1966. That was the date this then 20 year old student, who was vice-president of the National Union of South African Students, was asked to stand in for the organization’s president, Ian Robertson (who was under house arrest for speaking out about Apartheid). She met and transported Bobby Kennedy to speak to over 1000 university students packed into the college auditorium at their “Day of Affirmation.”

Much like Mariann Budde last week in Washington, Bobby Kennedy caught his hushed audience by surprise that evening with these opening remarks:

“I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.”

Margaret Marshall, some six decades later, recalled that moment in a conversation with Doris Kearns Goodwin. She said, “There was great tension in the room. People were on edge…As soon as the audience realized what he said, there was laughter and a sense of total relief. It was simply fabulous.”

After becoming president of the student organization the next year, the Anglican woman raised in a religious home in Newcastle, South Africa, emigrated to the U.S., and earned a masters in education at Harvard, and a law degree from Yale in 1976. Two years later, she was awarded U.S. citizenship.

She carried with her to her new country a prior interest in the law, and specifically American Law. In an interview in 2020, around the time of her prestigious Sandra Day O’Connor Award for “extraordinary service and commitment to justice,” she recalled her favorite American law case as a South African student:

“The Massachusetts case, decided in 1783, was a case decided under the new, then very new, Massachusetts constitution, which predates the federal constitution. The Massachusetts constitution opens, or started at the time, with the words, ‘All men are created equal…’ The case was brought by a slave in Massachusetts who challenged his servitude under that provision. . . In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that slavery was inconsistent with the words of the new Massachusetts Constitution. That was the second case of which I knew while I was in South Africa. A court had outlawed slavery. For that reason, the Supreme Judicial Court had always been a revered institution for me.”

It is fitting, therefore, that 20 years after becoming a lawyer, Massachusetts Gov. William Weld appointed her an Associate Justice of that very same Massachusetts Supreme Court. Over the next fourteen years, she wrote more than 300 opinions, most notably Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. The decision affirmed that the Massachusetts Constitution prohibits the state from denying same-sex marriage. In an unspoken link to her childhood beginnings, she wrote, “Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.”

Three years after the decision, Chief Justice Marshall had an opportunity to reflect on the broader law and order implications of her ruling as Trump prepared to overthrow the 2020 election.

She stated on the Judgement Calls Podcast, “Judges are part of our the government. If the United States Supreme Court issues a decision, you can criticize it. Everybody can criticize it. The Massachusetts Governor criticized Goodridge. But the Governor never suggested that he would not obey the order…Think about Bush against Gore, which was one of the closest, most bitterly fought cases. The day after the court decided, was the court’s decision criticized? Of course, it was criticized. But…there were no troops out on the street. That is a privilege that we have in the United States. It is because I come from another country that I feel so passionately about what we have to protect here, what is so important here. But for me, an immigrant, for waves of immigrants, we know. We know.”

It is fair to say that this Anglican daughter of South Africa, who ushered Bobby Kennedy that evening in 1966 to a tense auditorium, exactly two years to the date before he would be assassinated in Los Angeles, has paved the way for another member of the Anglican Communion, Episcopalian Bishop Mariann E. Budde to exhibit her act of moral courage.

With intelligence and conviction, seven feet above and 40 feet across from a figure reminiscent of South Africa’s P.W. Botha, she locked eyes with President Trump. She stood tall and erect, buoyed by the Washington National Cathedral’s limestone Canterbury Pulpit, whose central carvings portray the signing of the eight century old Magna Carta, and addressed the man who would later charge that “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”

But her words in our nation’s Capitol were as powerful that evening as Robert Kennedy’s in Capetown. With Margaret Marshall at his side,RFK said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Six decades later, these words of Bishop Budde created a flood of debate across America:

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President: Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.”

“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”

“And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here, Mr. President.”

Moral courage chooses its own time and place. But when it presents itself, it is recognizable by all – including those in agreement and those who stubbornly descent. The final words from RFK enjoin each of us and all of us, across the ages:

“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

Remembering LBJ Who Died 52 Years Ago Today.

Posted on | January 22, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

This is the 52nd anniversary of the death of Lyndon Baines Johnson from his 5th Heart Attack. And two days ago was the 39th anniversary of the first celebration of a new federal holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In signing that original proclamation in 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, “The majesty of his message, the dignity of his bearing, and the righteousness of his cause are a lasting legacy. In a few short years he changed America for all time.”

The MLK federal holiday was not so “Kum ba yah” (“Come by here”) this year. President Trump was in no mood to be tutored on this 60’s phrase derived from an African American spiritual made famous by Pete Seeger. Rather, he took advantage of the convergence of MLK’s day and his own coronation to trash all things DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion).

Of those supporting the 2nd term President, from here and beyond, few could have had a broader smile on his face than dearly departed (July 4, 2008) former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Helms led the opposition to the MLK bill, submitting a 300-page report that labelled King an “action-oriented Marxist” and a communist. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (NY) was so enraged at the time that he declared the report a “packet of filth”, threw it on the Senate floor, and then unceremoniously repeatedly stomped on it.

So, as a nation, we have been down this road before. As history.com reports: “On the day of Nixon’s second inaugural celebration, Johnson watched sullenly as Nixon announced the dismantling of many of Johnson’s Great Society social programs… The following day, while Lady Bird and their daughters were in Austin, Johnson suffered a fatal heart attack at his ranch in Johnson City.”

In yesterday’s Washington Post, George Will provided us all with a much needed reality check by quoting Stanford professor of government, Stephen Kotkin, who in the lead up to the election said, “Who’s the ‘we’? Trump is not an alien who landed from some other planet.”

“This is somebody the American people voted for who reflects something deep and abiding about American culture. Think of all the worlds that he has inhabited and that lifted him up. Pro wrestling. Reality TV. Casinos and gambling, which are no longer just in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but everywhere, embedded in daily life. Celebrity culture. Social media. All of that looks to me like America. And yes, so does fraud, and brazen lying, and the P.T. Barnum, carnival barker stuff. But there is an audience, and not a small one, for where Trump came from and who he is.”

LBJ was 64 when he died. He would be 117 today. The Civil Rights Act that he signed on July 2, 1964, “altered the legal, political, and social landscape of America as radically as any law of the twentieth century,” according to presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. And yet, LBJ defined himself more as a pragmatist than in heroic terms. He said, “I know a lot of people around those Georgetown parties are saying that I wasn’t much of crusader for civil rights when I was in the Senate. On balance, they’re right about me. I wasn’t a crusader. I represented a southern state, and if I got too far ahead of my voters they’d have sent me right back to Johnson City . . . Now I represent the whole country, and I can do what the whole country thinks is right.”

His remarks on that July 2nd evening signing were lofty:

We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment.

We believe all men have certain inalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights.

We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings-not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin.

But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it…Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.

We have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail. Let us close the springs of racial poison.”

That very evening, LBJ speech writers, Bill Moyers and Dick Goodwin, encountered their boss in a pensive mood. This was the anniversary of his massive 1955 heart attack. Asked what was troubling him, he replied, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”

Many years later, Dick Goodwin’s recollections of that night’s events were captured by his historian wife, Doris Kearns Goodwin. He said, “Who would have thought that the testing time that lay ahead would still be with us more than a half century later, that the springs of racial poison have still not been closed?”

Trump clearly wants his own Kennedy, if only a junior. But on this 52nd anniversary of his death, I’m “All The Way With LBJ.”

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: Civil Rights > Daniel Patrick Moynihan > dei > George Will > Jesse Helms > LBG > LBJ > MLK > Pete Seeger > Stephen Kotkin > trump

Message to Mike Lindell: Sleep Is The Brain’s Rinse Cycle.

Posted on | January 14, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

For many Americans, the first image that pops in their heads when they hear the word “sleep” is that of 2020 election denier, and uber-Trump supporting/MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell.

With a different election result, Mike and his 40 million shredded foam pillows would be in the rear view mirror rather than generating headlines once again this week. But here we are. His lawyers in 2023 informed various judges that they were severing their relationship with their non-paying client. That left him riding solo to defend himself against $1 billion in damages from multiple claimants, including a court order this week to pay DHL shipping $777,000 in back payments.

Lindell (described in a 2022 New York Times article as “a 61-year-old recovering crack cocaine and gambling addict who previously managed a string of bars in suburban Minneapolis”) has been losing sleep since Walmart pulled his pillows off their shelves on June 17, 2022.

This couldn’t come at a worse time for his business since “sleep” is all the rage, and increasingly labeled “the brain’s rinse cycle.” The brain, protectively encased in an unyielding bony casing, lacks the delicate lymphatic system that transports used body metabolites to breakdown and extraction sites in all other parts of the body.

But in 2012, neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard, identified a unique network of delicate channels (“tiny passages alongside blood vessels”) inside the brain that collect and discharge brain metabolites and waste materials including amyloid. This system, or “ultimate brainwasher” as some labeled it, was formally titled the “glymphatic system.”

That same study also suggested that flow through the glymphatic system is enhanced during portions of the sleep cycle. Now 12 years after the original research, the same team, in a study in mice published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA journal, found that regular contractions or oscillations of tiny blood vessels in the brain, stimulated by adrenaline cousin, norepinephrine, generated the brain scrubbing liquid flow through the channel system. The focal contractions, normally occurring ever 50 seconds, speed up the pump to every 10 seconds, in sync with peaks of norepinephrine release during sleep.

Sleep deprivation appears to not only interrupt this cycle, and allow harmful wastes to accumulate, but also disrupts other mental health functions that scientists are just beginning to understand. For example, researchers in 2021 established that “sleep deprivation impairs people’s ability to suppress unwanted thoughts.” They were able to identify a special location on the brain cortex responsible for storing away memories, and suppressing and delaying their future retrieval. They further demonstrated enhanced activity at the site during REM sleep. As the lead investigator noted, “That’s interesting because many disorders associated with debilitating intrusive thoughts, such as depression and PTSD, are also associated with disturbances in REM.”

The new work may help explain Mike Lindell’s destructive recycling of the ill-advised claims and choices he has made over recent years. As the authors concisely reported in the December, 2024 publication, “The functional impairments arising from sleep deprivation are linked to a behavioral deficit in the ability to downregulate unwanted memories, and coincide with a deterioration of deliberate patterns of self-generated thought. We conclude that sleep deprivation gives rise to intrusive memories via the disruption of neural circuits governing mnemonic inhibitory control, which may rely on REM sleep.”

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: glymphatic > Maiken Nedergaard > mike lindell > MyPillow > PNAS > sleep > the brain's rinse cycle > trump

Voices From The Grave: The Trump Whisperers.

Posted on | January 9, 2025 | 3 Comments

Mike Magee

For those many, many millions of viewers who tuned in to the live coverage of former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral today, they were rewarded with two hours of intriguing video images, and moving words and song, including a recounting of the beginnings of environmental advocacy as Los Angeles burns, and John Lennon’s “Imagine” performed by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

Five former Presidents and four Vice-Presidents were in attendance. And there were notable firsts, like the first greeting and handshake between incoming President Trump and former VP Pence since January 6, 2021.

But perhaps the most striking events of this carefully staged national funeral were the two especially haunting posthumous eulogies delivered by the sons of a former president and vice-president. Presented by Steven Ford, son of former President, Gerald Ford, and Ted Mondale, son of former Vice-President Walter “Fritz” Mondale, they appeared to be directed to America itself, and its’ soon-to-be 47th president.

As the speakers explained, Jimmy Carter, some years back, asked both Ford and Mondale if they would be willing to present eulogies at his funeral. Both agreed, and put pen to paper in anticipation. But as it became evident that Carter might very well outlive them, they each asked their sons, in that event, to read their remarks at his funeral. And today they did.

Both President Ford and Vice-President Mondale’s words (voiced by their sons) deserve a full viewing when time allows. But in the meantime, let me share the closing remarks of each, prescient and timely now, at American democracy’s hour of need.

Steven Ford, son of former President Gerald Ford (7/14/13 – 12/26/06), reciting the president’s written words posthumously:

“…Now is time to say goodbye, our grief comforted with the joy and the thanksgiving of knowing this man, this beloved man, this very special man. He was given the gift of years, and the American people and the people of the world will be forever blessed by his decades of good works. Jimmy Carter’s legacy of peace and compassion will remain unique as it is timeless…As for myself, Jimmy, I’m looking forward to our reunion. We have much to catch up on. Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome home, old friend.”

Ted Mondale, son of former Vice-President Walter “Fritz” Mondale (1/5/28 – 4/19/21) reciting the vice-president’s written words posthumously. Ted prefaced his reading with this sentence – “My father wrote this in 2019, and clearly he edited it a number of times since then, but here we go.”

“…Two decades ago, President Carter said he believed income inequality was the biggest global issue. More recently, in a 2018 Commencement Address at Liberty University, I think now the largest global issue is the discrimination against women and girls in this world. He concluded that, ‘Until stubborn attitudes that foster discrimination against women change, the world cannot advance, and poverty and poverty and income equality cannot be solved.’ Towards the end of our time in the White House, the President and I were talking about how we might describe what we tried to accomplish in office. We came up with a sentence which remains an important summary of our work. ‘We told the truth. We obeyed the law. And we kept the peace.’ That we did, Mr. President. I will always be proud and grateful to have had the chance to work with you towards noble ends. It was then, and will always be, the most rewarding experience of my public career. Thank you.”

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: Donald Trump > Fritz Mondale > Gerald Ford > jimmy carter > VP Pence

President Jimmy Carter: Challenged the Moral Majority and Defended the Bill of Rights.

Posted on | January 5, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

Today was frigid in Washington, D.C. But inside this sacred dwelling on the corner of 16th and 0 Streets NW, marked by soaring 58 foot ceilings supported by gothic arches, smiles and gratitude filled the air at the 6 p.m. prayer service in memory of former President Jimmy Carter.

Carter was an extraordinary devout Christian who once admitted that on some days of his presidency he “might pray up to 25 times.” When he chose to pray more formally those years (1976-1980), First Baptist was where he went – often – in fact over 70 times during his 4 years as President. His love for this community was obvious, once declaring that his and Rosalynn’s choice was among ‘the finest things that ever happened to us, personally.”

When he died last week on December 29, 2024 at age 100, the Washington Post headline highlighted his “brilliant post-presidential career as a champion of health, peace and democracy.” But one would have to search far and wide these days for a major Christian evangelical leader, especially of the Southern Baptist tradition, who is unaware that during the lead up to the 1980 Presidential election Jimmy Carter was widely considered a religious turncoat and “Enemy #1” to the former Conservative Christian cause.

A bit of history:

In 1976, the year that President Ford went up against this Baptist peanut farmer from Georgia, Pat Robertson and his new Christian Broadcasting Network, supported by state-of-the-art direct-mail solicitations, was all in on mixing religion, politics, and entertainment.

That November, 55 percent of Baptists voted for Jimmy Carter, a gain of 22 percent on the previous Democratic presidential nominee. Carter prevailed, and the triumvirate that included Robertson, fellow televangelist, Jerry Falwell, and Heritage Foundation CEO Paul Weyrich, rushed to the White House, expecting to be met with gratitude and open arms.

But Carter made no effort to pack his cabinet with evangelicals, and Billy Graham never even got the call to come pray in the Oval Office. Moreover, while Carter didn’t like abortion, he refused to support a constitutional amendment to override Roe v. Wade, and he didn’t think homosexuals threatened the moral fabric of America. He also got along with Catholics.

For those and other reasons, four years later the now highly organized “Moral Majority” leaders listened intently to then candidate Ronald Reagan in the summer of 1980 address the Christian Coalition’s annual policy meeting and say, “I know you can’t endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.”

The Moral Majority got “their man” (a divorced, completely secular product of Hollywood and corporate America) into the White House. Whereas 61 percent of conservative Christians had voted in the 1972 presidential election, 66 percent voted in both 1976 and 1980, and they voted overwhelmingly Republican. That was enough for Jerry Falwell to confidently claim that the Moral Majority had elected Jimmy Carter and, when Carter had displeased them, replaced him with Ronald Reagan.

But another three years would pass before the real tidal wave of evangelicals in politics would hit, and the seismic force that created the wave was the financial survival of Christian nonprofit schools that promoted racial purity.

In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that Bob Jones University, often called “the buckle on the Bible Belt,” could not receive federal funds so long as it continued to discriminate on the basis of race. The university’s namesake and founder had been an early-20th-century evangelist with such Bible-pounding zeal that he was said to have at least once shattered a pulpit…Twenty years on, he bequeathed to Bob Jones Jr., his son, the Greenville, South Carolina school, which, until 1971, would continue to exclude black students.

When at last it relented under federal pressure, it still required that black students be married to attend the school. After 1975, it opened the door to single blacks as well, but still prohibited interracial marriage and dating. This relative “enlightenment” was still not enough for the IRS, which on January 19, 1976, rescinded the university’s tax-exempt status for failure to comply with federal civil rights regulations.

In the hands of the Heritage Foundation’s Paul Weyrich, this dispute over taxes and compliance with laws banning racial and gender discrimination became not only a David-versus-Goliath battle, but a direct attack on Christian teachings.

The Supreme Court ruled against Bob Jones and its racial policies on May 24, 1983. By then, lily-white “Christian academies” had proliferated throughout the former Confederacy, all of which now felt threatened. Their health curricula were already infused with bans on contraceptive information and abstinence-only values education. The merger of health and education conservative priorities gave Weyrich confidence that he now had an explosive and powerful force that could rile the Southern electorate and ensure Reagan’s (and Republicans for years to come) future success.

That was then, and this is now, you say. Well, not so much. Take for example the life of Sarah Weddington. She was Texan through and through, part of a group of notable women achievers of the time, sometimes referred to as the “Great Austin Matriarchy”which included Barbara Jordan, Sissy Farenthold, Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, and Liz Carpenter.

Weddington served as Carter’s special assistant from 1968 to 1981. The daughter of a Methodist minister, she died nearly 3 years to the day of Carter’s passing on December 26, 2021. Her obituary noted her expert legal service to the President, but focused heavily on the fact that she was one of two lawyers who argued and won Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court in 1970.

Humble and self-effacing as a law professor at the University of Texas, she told her students in 1998, “A lot of people together won Roe v. Wade. We give it to you proudly it can be passed down to other generations.” But by 2017, she foretold the future, stating in an interview, “If Gorsuch’s nomination is approved, will abortion be illegal the next day? No. One new judge won’t necessarily make much difference. But two or three might.”

As Jimmy Carter is laid to rest, beside Rosalynn, how should we remember him? First Baptist senior pastor, Julie Pennington-Russell would certainly say, as a man of deep personal faith, and committed to “acts of service” and “the power of kindness.” Others might note his courage in standing up to Robertson, Falwell, and Weyrich in defense of the Constitution and especially the first clause in the Bill of Rights stating: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Both Sarah Weddington and Jimmy Carter believed in an afterlife, and looked forward to reuniting with their heroes. For Sarah, Texas Gov, Ann Richards was a lifelong colleague and friend. In 2012, she said, “My gravesite is about 50 feet away from hers. Hopefully, when I call the Texas State Cemetery home, we will have great late-night conversations, remembering our battles of the past and celebrating the victories that live after us.”

Jimmy Carter now can rest in peace at his wife’s side. On her death at age 96 on November 19, 2023, he gave us all a glimpse of how he managed to rise above the hatred of Christian Conservatives by focusing on his gratitude for a life with Rosalynn. As he said of her: “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: Bob Jones > Christian Coalition > Jerry Falwell > jimmy carter > Moral Majority > Pat Robertson > Paul Weyrich > Ronald Reagan > Rosalynn Carter > sarah weddington > Separation of Church and state

Glory Be To 2025

Posted on | January 1, 2025 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

More than once in the lead up to the launch of 2025 I have heard friends and colleagues express a range of sentiments that circled around the general notion that “This is too much to take.”

But throughout history, and into the current period, there are more than a few examples of human courage and resilience, and even a hopefulness that defies logic and reason.

One can hope, for example, that the long war between the Ukraine and Russia will be drawn to an end in 2025. President Zelensky’s address to the Parliament of the European Union in 2022 from a war bunker, did not mince words.

“I don’t read from paper, the paper phase is over, we’re dealing with lives. Without you, Ukraine will be alone. We’ve proven our strength. We’re the same as you. Prove that you’ll not let us go. Then life will win over death. This is the price of freedom. We are fighting just for our land. And for our freedom, despite the fact that all of the cities of our country are now blocked…We are fighting for our rights, for our freedom, for our lives and now we are fighting for our survival, Every square today, no matter what it’s called, is going to be called Freedom Square, in every city of our country. No one is going to break us. We are strong. We are Ukrainians.”

In those words, Ukraine’s president was mirroring the emotions of other leaders facing an impossible foe in uncertain times. Poets, politicians, and religious leaders have tread this path before. Rome’s 1^st century CE intellectual, Seneca, stated with confidence that “Injustice never rules forever.” Was he really sure of that?

In his Inaugural Address on January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy, expanded on this theme. “Now the trumpet summons us again – not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

St. Augustine understood well the interlocking nature of human justice when he wrote, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.” And the Talmud cautions that timing is of the essence with this passage, “Three things are good in little measure and evil in large: yeast, salt and hesitation.”

As Shakespeare reminded, one person, large or small, can make a difference. “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world,” he wrote. Goodness in the human world requires as much light as possible from every corner of society. Reality is real, as the Irish repeated often enough till the words “All sins cast long shadows” became a proverb.

Back in 2022, Zelensky closed his remarks to the European Parliament with this appeal, “Do prove that you will not let us go. Do prove that you indeed are Europeans. And then life will win over death and light will win over darkness. Glory be to Ukraine.”

But at the end of the day, it comes down to this, do you believe in the fundamental goodness of human nature? Walt Whitman did. He wrote, “I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.”

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: 2025 > european parlaiment > glory > goodness > Human nature > Ukraine > Zelensky

A Message From Elizabeth II This Christmas Day

Posted on | December 23, 2024 | Comments Off on A Message From Elizabeth II This Christmas Day

As the New Year approaches, Hcom offers this piece for your quiet consideration and contemplation.

Mike Magee

Hanukkah, the Jewish communities 8-day Festival of Lights begins this Wednesday on December 25, 2024. This is a rather rare calendar coincidence, one that will not repeat again until 2052. Those who witnessed the conspicuous Trump and Musk-induced infighting last week over shutting down our government will have to agree that “enlightenment” couldn’t come soon enough.

Bad behavior is especially glaring at this time of year. Our holiday music is incredibly optimistic. Think of the phrases ingrained in our minds and hearts since childhood: “All is calm, all is bright,” “Good tidings we bring,” “Making spirits bright,” “Oh hear the angels voices,” “Sleep in heavenly peace,” “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” “Comfort and joy,” “Do you hear what I hear?” “The stars are brightly shining,” “Let your heart be light.”

And that is why David French’s headline this week was so shocking, timed as it was. The headline asked, “Why are so many Christians so cruel?” French and his wife and three children have experienced the cruelty first hand since he openly expressed his opposition to Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential campaign. That resulted in threats to his entire family by white supremacists who especially targeted his adopted Ethiopian daughter. Ultimately, he was “cancelled” by his own denomination, the small, Calvinist “Presbyterian Church of America.”

The entire article is worth a read and careful consideration. But to cut to the chase, French suggests the core problem is religious certainty. As he states it, the “answer often begins with a particularly seductive temptation, one common to people of all faiths: that the faithful, those who possess eternal truth, are entitled to rule. Under this construct, might makes right, and right deserves might.”

Of course, the notion that “might makes right” has been a recurring theme over human history. Notably, European empire building (and Royalty in lock step) aided by organized religions have unleashed centuries of death and suffering which arguably continue into the very present. Marshaling fear and worry, and targeting vulnerable “others,” often accelerated by new technology-induced societal turmoil, arrived long before the emergence of Trump and Musk. It is as old as human history.

Consider King George VI, Queen Elizabeth’s father. His nickname, “Bertie,” derived from his given name, Albert Frederick Arthur George. The name was not a casual choice. He was born on December 14, 1895, which by poor luck happened to be the 34th anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert (“Bertie’s great-grandfather). As you might imagine, this was not the aging Queen’s happiest day of the year, and bonding with her new grandson was not a foregone conclusion, in fact the new parents were informed that the Queen was “rather distressed.”

The suggested solution was to name the child after Victoria’s dead husband. It worked exceedingly well. A few days later the Queen wrote, “I am all impatience to see the new one, born on such a sad day but rather more dear to me, especially as he will be called by that dear name which is a byword for all that is great and good.”

Through a series of improbable happenings (including the abdication of his older brother, Edward, who served only from January to December 1936, so as to be free to marry commoner Wallis Simpson) Albert became King George VI on December 11, 1936.

Aside from his skill at collecting stamps (over 250,000 in 325 volumes during his lifetime), and overcoming a crippling speech impediment, he is best remembered for managing a short, inspiring Christmas message aired worldwide by a new technology – radio – in 1936. His lasting legacy however was having helped create Queen Elizabeth, his daughter and successor to the throne on his death from cancer of the lung on February 6, 1952.

Ten months after assuming the throne, but prior to her formal coronation on June 2, 1953, the 27-year old Queen Elizabeth II delivered her first Christmas message on December 25, 1952. It too was heard around the world thanks to radio. In that address, she began by paying tribute to her “beloved father.” But she finished that morning by humbly acknowledging her youthful inexperience and insecurity personally requesting that on the date of her formal coronation, “You will be keeping it as a holiday, but I want to ask you all, whatever your religion may be, to pray for me that day.”

Five years later, she delivered her 1957 Christmas Message for the first time using another new technology, television. expressing the hope that day that it would be a “more personal and direct” connect to her people. Direct she was, acknowledging that Christmas morning that, “It is inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure for many of you.”

Ten years later, on Christmas Day, 1967, she had clearly grown into a world leader, speaking to an increasingly troubled world of “have’s” and “have-not’s” (this time on color television) with these words, “No matter what scientific progress we make, the message will count for nothing unless we can achieve real peace and encourage genuine goodwill between people and the nations of the world.”

A quarter century later, on November 24,1992, Queen Elizabeth II, in an uncharacteristic moment of despair, labeled 1992 “Annus Horribilis,” referencing worldwide turmoil, a fire that had destroyed a portion of Windsor Castle, and the divorces of three of her children.

Encouraging “public scrutiny” of the government and the Monarchy, she said aloud, “criticism is good,” and uttered these words that now, thirty two years later, seem to be directed to our incoming President.

“There can be no doubt, of course, that criticism is good for people and institutions that are part of public life. No institution – City, Monarchy, whatever – should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don’t. But we are all part of the same fabric of our national society and that scrutiny, by one part of another, can be just as effective if it is made with a touch of gentleness, good humour and understanding.”

Twenty-eight years later, in the midst of the pandemic, and with her lifelong companion, Phillip, now 99, failing, she reminded those who had lost love ones, “You are not alone,” and thanked caregivers worldwide for “joyous moments of hope and unity despite social distancing”. But in the end, as she said, “We need life to go on.”

In her 2021 Christmas Message she deflected concern for herself on the prior year’s loss of her husband, saying, “But life, of course, consists of final partings as well as first meetings; and as much as I and my family miss him, I know he would want us to enjoy Christmas.”

In what would be her final message, before passing on September 8, 2022, the aging Queen, now 96, chose to focus on the promise of children and rebirth. She said, “I am sure someone somewhere today will remark that Christmas is a time for children. It’s an engaging truth, but only half the story. Perhaps it’s truer to say that Christmas can speak to the child within us all. Adults, when weighed down with worries, sometimes fail to see the joy in simple things, where children do not.”

Her final words that day, resonate this Christmas Day in America, “As the carol says, ‘The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight’”.