President Lincoln Was Wrong

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Abraham Lincoln uttered those words at the Republican State Convention in Springfield, Illinois on June 16, 1858. He was accepting the nomination of his party to run for the Senate. It was a radical speech for its time and perhaps led to Lincoln eventually becoming President. Based on Biblical scripture, it was a simple enough idea: dividing the nation over the idea of slavery would destroy both halves. Union, above all else, was paramount.

157 years later and as I read the speech, then look at the horrible deed done by the 21-year-old Charleston Terrorist, I must point out to Mr. Lincoln that, while a fine speech, it was wrong.

While true, that breaking apart the structure of a house causes damage, the damage can be repaired, if attention is put to the details. A home, otherwise wrecked, can be rebuilt stronger and sturdier for having been heinously damaged or even rent asunder. However, it does no good to reconnect a divided structure, where part of said structure festers with rot and decay.

THAT, is the Union we live in now. A "united" nation stitched together by iron and blood one hundred fifty years ago, that is still shot through with the fetid stink of racism and the rotting timbers of "heritage." The forcible re-connection of the Union seemed a good idea at the time, but recent events lead me to believe that reuniting a home so pervasively rotten simply allowed that disease to spread too far.

It was not enough to so vanquish the Confederacy as to make them feel the pain of their stubborn pride rattling deep in their bones. Crushing armies and torching cities could only leave physical scars that would be easily wiped away; those same crushed armies and burnt cities, would leave deep, resonant scars that simply mingled with that wounded pride, to make a people even more resistant to change. There would be no beating down the South. Absorbed back into the Union, the former Confederate States would not so quietly resume their status as Americans.

The Civil War may have reassembled the map of a nation and its political structure, but could not easily erase centuries of racism. Southerners were not predisposed to believe that Blacks were anything other than property, wrested from them by a pitiless, self-indulgent North. They might no longer have them as slaves, but Southerners would not automatically elevate Blacks to the level of persons. They would make their displeasure felt via the Klu Klux Klan, poll taxes, Jim Crow laws, lynching, and the destruction of Black churches. No loss of a war would tarnish the South to a degree that they would simply drop the matter.

So it goes.

In this day, we still live in a nation divided along lines thought erased those one hundred fifty years ago. The South is still a seething cauldron of hate, a spirit broken but unbowed by a "war of Northern Aggression" it still sees as a fundamental violation of the rights of States. No amount of progress in our world has tapped out the rich vein racism in the core of the former Confederacy. That vein continues to be mined, its products disseminated among the impressionable minds that know only poverty and blame their lot, not on a lack of industriousness or investment, but on Blacks - and other minorities - who seem to be "taking" all that is supposed to be theirs. The same self-indulgent ignorance is repeated as law in households far and wide, sowing the seeds of racism in a new generation.

Invariably, this leads to events like the Charleston Terrorist Shooting, where a young White man, inculcated in the ways and means of hate, takes it upon himself to single-handedly launch a new war, hoping to eliminate the Black race and magically restore the honor of the beatified Confederacy. He walks into a storied Black church, observes the love and tolerance shown there, and still allows the darkness of his soul to envelop the lives of nine innocent people.

This pervasive, systemic racism, this dark stain on the American nation is no longer allowable. It is no longer tolerable. It can no longer be allowed to lie furtively, striking at Black Americans with a singular will. Bigotry can no longer be coddled. We have left it to sink into the foundation of our once divided house, and now the whole house threatens to crumble. A house divided against itself cannot stand, but a house left un-maintained will as surely and as easily fall. We have let the maintenance go a hundred and fifty years and can no longer sit idly by and watch it crumble. It is time to pry up and cut away the rot.

The Hypocritic Oaf

The last thing you need to hear, when your country has been shaken by an earthquake, flattening buildings, destroying infrastructure, and killing tens of thousands, is that it is somehow your fault. Or more precisely, the fault of your ancestors. Yet that is precisely what a "renowned" Christian pastor would have you believe, based on a apocryphal story and his own brand of bigotry.

According to Pat Robertson, host of The 700 Club, the people of Haiti made a "deal with the Devil" in order to throw off the shackles of oppression of their French masters. Apparently, only by employing the forces of darkness, were Haitians able to overthrow the French and declare independence from "Napoleon the Third." Or someone like that; Rev. Robertson was more than a bit hazy on the history.

Actually, the freeing of Haiti from oppression was due, in part, to the French Revolution, which inspired the Haitians to clamor for freedom from slavery and French rule. in 1793, when France and Great Britain went to war, the British invaded and the French commissioners there, to secure the help of the locals, abolished slavery in the territory. It was the beginning of independence for Haiti, and a now distant bright memory against the backdrop of death and devastation.

That a "Christian" minister would not only base his premise on apocryphal and false information is nothing new; the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trails, the death of Jean d'Arc... throughout history, it has always been easier to look on those considered "different," and fear them for their difference. This is, at the root, bigotry and discrimination, neither concept being anything new. Haiti is an 80% Catholic nation, and perhaps because they hew so closely to the mother church, upon which many a Christian sect looks unfavorably, it is easy to take up the "they got what's coming to them" screed.

Of course, Reverend Robertson is merely taking advantage of the First Amendment, which protects his hateful and hypocritical speech, as well as providing him the ability to worship whatever way he chooses. It could easily be said that had he made his remarks anywhere else, there might have been a greater swell of indignation. Perhaps it is because he has made such remarks in the past; perhaps the American people are simply used to people doing this and have become a bit blasé.

I suspect that Reverend Robertson has not read his Bible lately, or he might have come across this, from Luke 13:1:

"Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

And it will require repentance for Pat Robertson to see the gates of Heaven, for to claim to worship Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior, on the one hand while ignoring his teachings on the other, is to incur a penalty most grave. While Jesus wanted people to follow his way, he knew it could not simply be imposed. First, the weakest amongst us had to be brought up from the gutter. The most wicked amongst us must be reformed. The richest amongst us must help the poorest; the wounds of the sick and the dying must be tended. Jesus knew that for anyone to be able to believe in God, his father, they must first know that his followers were earnest, nonjudgmental, and willing to extend them kindness and compassion. There must be a uniting of humanity.

So let preachers and pundits and purveyors of anger and hatred peddle their wares, for they alone are responsible for the stain it places upon their soul. We, who believe in higher purpose, greater good, and human duty, do not need their ilk, for we shall rise up and reach down, to take the hands of the hungry, the tired, the sick, the destitute, and the devastated, and raise them up, too. In the end, we will represent humanity, long after the words of the wicked have mixed with the dust on the ground.

Pretty's Pervasive Evil

If it is true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the society's eyesight must be atrocious. I say this as the father of a 4-year-old daughter, who is frightened by the idea that society will be the arbiter of my daughter's worth, the self-same society which cannot avoid the perils of war, poverty, and disease, despite the wherewithal it possesses.

My daughter is beautiful to me, just as any child is beautiful to a parent. I daresay others have found her attractive since her birth, as people never fail to remark on it when we are out in public. And while, when she was a baby, that a source of pride for me, as she grows older, I wonder what these people are really driving at. I'm sure they see her and apply their standard of "beauty" and it concurs with mine to some degree. Yet, at what point does this go beyond the good-natured acknowledgement of "beauty" and enter the realm of impropriety? When, as she grows older, will what is said or not said impact her self-worth? When will she begin to see her father's adoration of her beauty as just "Daddy being Daddy" and place more importance on the opinions of strangers?

I see the toll that the modern concept of "beauty" takes on women every day. The physical "ideal" of womanhood shrinks further as seasons pass, forcing women into making compromises in order to keep up with what society deems appropriate for a "beautiful" woman. Such is the constant cacophony and clamoring, that a woman cannot know from one second to the next if she is beautiful. Advertisements and fashion magazine covers tell her that she is not good enough as she is, but must become thinner, taller, more voluptuous. She is told that she must go beyond the physical gifts she was born with if she is ever to be society's ideal woman.

How else to explain a disease where a woman allows herself to waste away to a condition which a concentration camp survivor would consider svelte? That she would eat food willingly, only to vomit it back up, as if it were poison? Or worse, simply not eat at all? How does a society that rails at the idea of innocents dying in wars, children going malnourished, or babies not being born justify the undue pressure it places squarely upon the shoulders of women, telling them they need to "be more beautiful?"

Worse yet, the messages this idiotic roller coaster ride imparts on young girls, who are inculcated with the same weird and twisted ideas at an age where they should be allowed to be free from the weight of the world. Instead, they too are made to feel they are inadequate, and not just academically or socially. The evil is incubated and bred in the teenage girl, to be borne by the woman she becomes, who feels she cannot fulfill each person's expectations adequately, and seeks solace in driving herself to the knife's edge of health, determined to be "beautiful." The ride careens toward self-destruction, and only a unguarded moment or the love of others can drag her back from the precipice. Too often, it is too late.

Vanity is not the sole province of the woman though, for Narcissus was a man who thought himself so beautiful that he could not tear himself away from his reflection. Unlike a woman, a man is driven to be taller, stronger, beefier. He must build himself into a mass of chiseled flesh, to do combat with his fellow men on any field called for. Modern Samson's, men are rendered impotent should their heads not be covered in a thick mane of hair. And so men are just as easily poisoned by society's ruinous conception of beauty.

We will not truly evolve until we can put aside the outmoded belief that there is a template to desirability, a pattern that states unequivocally that a person is worthy of our affection. Until we do, we are no better than many of our animal brethren, who put on elaborate displays for the sole purpose of mating. We must look past the beauty without, which is ephemeral, and look to the beauty within, which is ageless.