The Uncivil War Begins

It is interesting to note that this year marks one hundred-fifty years since the start of the American Civil War, April 1861. What began with the bang and flash of cannon at Ft. Sumter, led to a wholesale change in the country that had formed not too far in the past. The sleeping dog of slavery, lying as it had at the feet of the Founding Fathers, tore loose from its chains, and wreaked a might vengeance upon the country. Families were divided and decimated. The poor fought for the rich. There was privation and disease, poverty and decadence. Dirty men fought and died while nattily dressed men harrumphed over the conduct of the war. A President, reluctant to end slavery, but given no choice but use it as a unifying cause, swept his foes from the field, only to have them exact final vengeance upon him. The last true shots would not be fired until the age of President Lyndon Johnson, who would enact sweeping Civil Rights legislation. Even today, the skirmishes are not truly over.

So as the anniversary day approaches, it is unsurprising that we find America at odds again, though the battle lines are not so neatly drawn as North and South. This pending war is being fought in the halls of legislation, in the medium of television, across the breadth of the planet via The Internet. It is a war that incorporates all the worst of human behavior, and at the same time, all that is forthright and true within our hearts. The sides are once more polarized, though it cannot be tied succinctly to one group. It is, instead, a confusing whorl of passions and prejudices, with battle lines so fluid as to be a jumble. If there is a constant in it, it is a fight between those who would look ahead to our destiny, and those who look behind, to pine for days passed. The tug of war between these forces may yet determine the continuation of our nation as the one conceived in freedom and liberty.

Societal Myopia

There is a movement afoot – and when is there not – to get the Ten Commandments placed in every courthouse in Georgia, as if the mere presence of this Biblical coda can somehow imbue all those who read them with the moral fiber they lacked previously. Strangely, these commandments have been around for centuries, but they do not seem to have made much of an impact despite the number of adherents to the faith from which they spring. It could be posited that these words contain no power, save where the individual who reads them chooses to incorporate them into their life as precepts to be followed. Other than that, they are simply relics of an ancient time, like hieroglyphs on an Egyptian tomb.

It would do no good, really, to go about putting such holy inscriptions on government edifices or government-supported public buildings, even were it not a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. For, to have any impact, these words would have to be seen, interpreted, and incorporated by those exposed to them, and they could be written on every wall and sidewalk and building, and have no greater affect than they do now, sequestered between the covers of a religious tome. Our society has developed myopia, a collective short-sightedness that does not allow us to see the true nature of the world around us, and therefore, we do not recognize what is put before us.

A Body In Motion

Newton's Laws of Motion were the first definitive set of rules that allowed humanity to understand its relationship to the universe. He was the first scientist after Galileo to determine how the inimical forces of nature acted upon things in their environment in a systematic way. Others had nibbled around the edges of the problem – Newton boldly set forth his bible of science, a cookbook for God's works, as it were.

One of the most interesting of the laws states that “a body in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external force.” In the Newtonian world, rolling a ball along an infinite and frictionless floor meant that once imparted with motion, the ball would continue on forever in a straight line unless it encountered something with which to exchange energy (another ball, a bullet, a dip in floor, etc.). A profound bit of thinking, to which Albert Einstein would apply corrections later on to account for all manner of forces unknown at the time of Newton. But this simple rule would provide a deep insight into how the world worked, and prove the driver for scientific inquiry right up to this day.

What To Do With A Law Like Sharia

It is ridiculous to think that any group could simply come to America and impose its will. Americans are a proud, stubborn, and above all suspicious lot, who are not liable to take well to anyone trying to make wholesale changes to their law and culture. Given how the United States is run, from local all the way to federal governance, there is little chance that laws could be changed sufficiently to create a fiefdom in the middle of the country which is subject to some other law. When groups have attempted to create their own laws outside the rubric of the normal avenues of governance, these attempts have usually ended badly.

So it is a bit puzzling, this wave of ballot measures in various states and municipalities, seeking to ban the imposition of Islamic Sharia law, as if there were some epidemic of it spreading throughout the land. It is, in part, fear-mongering, taking a queue from the waves of anti-Muslim sentiment that roll through the nation on a regular basis. More subtle than that, though, it is a reflection of the creeping ignorance that permeates the fabric of the Unites States, and is perhaps a poor reflection on our own educational system, that so many do not know enough about law and jurisprudence in our nation to realize that it would be virtually impossible to simply write Sharia law into the books.

Pay No Attention To The Money Behind The Curtain

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has a small problem – the curtain has fallen away, and the citizens  of Emerald City are getting a good look at the “wizard” ruling over them: The Monied Powers. His strings are being deftly pulled by those who seek to gain the most from the economic nightmare, the financial vultures that pick over the carcasses of Middle America. Three weeks in, and his shadowy masters commanded that he end the stalemate in the State Legislature by whatever means necessary. And so, on March 9th, 2011, Governor Walker set aside consensus building, government by and for the people, and prudent governance, by relying on a parliamentary trick to pass the bill he has been trying to get through for so long, stripping it of all financial materials, leaving the naked ambition to break the unions behind, and passing it quite easily in the State Senate. The bill, already passed in the House, will now wend its way to his desk for signature.

In one fell swoop, Governor Walker has undone the compact – first lain down by our Founding Fathers and the reason for the blood spilled during The Revolutionary War – that stated that he was enjoined by the people of the State of Wisconsin to uphold, protect, and defend the State's Constitution and the citizens of Wisconsin. He has, instead, thrown his weight around, directed by those who hold his purse strings, the ones who can lend him the nearly unlimited funds to continue his Governorship. There is no longer any pretense; the people of Wisconsin have been sold to the highest bidder.