Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-28-16

I was a young boy in 1961 when I heard on my transistor radio that a Russian “cosmonaut,” Yuri Gagarin, had orbited the earth. A few years after the Soviets had launched Sputnik – the first man-made satellite – into earth orbit I remember being amazed at these scientific developments, as I was aware that the American government was scrambling to keep pace.

I was aware because 1957 had been declared the International Geophysical Year, and that all sorts of school programs and textbooks had begun posing the challenge to nervous 12-year-olds like me the rhetorical question: “You don’t want us to fall behind the Communists, do you?” So kids seriously thought of doing their physics and chemistry homework, and dreamed of being astronauts instead of cowboys or G-Men.

In my naiveté, after hearing that radio news bulletin, I scrambled for pencil and paper, as if this moment would be lost to history if I didn’t write the name of Yuri Gagarin. I recall that I could only phonetically scrawl, “Eeuree Gaggarin.”

Ironically, many people have forgotten Gagarin and Alan Shepard, Neil Armstrong, Gus Grissom, Gene Cernan, and many others, including astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders, who read from the Bible to earthlings during a lunar mission. Even President Obama seems to have forgotten a lot of the mission of space exploration, as he transferred many American capabilities to Russia.

There is no more Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Twenty-five years ago many nations of Eastern Europe and the “Warsaw Pact” foreswore Communism, with hardly a drop of blood shed. Other nations have discovered freedom – sometimes with steps forward and back along the way – and the very latest movements are toward nationalist pride, and the rejection of centralized control.

Winds of liberty blow across the globe. Except in spots like North Korea and Cuba.

These memories returned this week when Fidel Castro died, aged 90. He was 90 in human years – some would say “inhuman years.” He kept alive ancient strains of selfish totalitarianism, a regime built on hate and resentments rather than love and constructive fellowship. Democracy might not be the panacea for every society, but you can be suspicious of the leader who cloaks his tyranny in mantles like “peoples’ republic” and “democracy” when self-determination is forbidden.

I was 10 when a TV in the local bowling alley was turned to the news, and the anchor warned parents against letting their children see the disturbing footage… so of course I gazed intently. Black and white movies of Havana streets with dead bodies and pools of blood. “Batista flees” was a headline I remember in the New York Daily News about the dictator, scarcely less brutal or corrupt than Castro would be, whom Fidel routed. My father quoted the New York Times description of Castro as an “agrarian reformer.”

A year or two later Castro declared himself a Soviet-style Socialist and visited a United Nations General Assembly session in New York. He famously stayed in a shabby hotel uptown; trashed his rooms; and embraced Soviet leader Khrushchev. I attempted one of my first caricatures and political cartoons as a budding artist – it was a natural subject because Castro dominated the news in those days. The bay of Pigs invasion. The Cuban Missile Crisis.

Through the years he settled in as the hemisphere’s resident dictator, often shunned on the world stage and frequently accommodated by neighboring and worldwide economies.

My wife, as a girl, had neighbors who fled Castro and had their sugar lands confiscated. I worked summers in college at a factory manned almost exclusively by Cuban émigrés. Many of them – some, doctors and lawyers whose credentials were not yet recognized in the US – told me with tears in their eyes of murders they witnessed at the hands of Castro’s police; and telling me earnestly how they appreciated freedom and loved America probably more than I did. I eventually met Fidel’s sister Juanita, whose shame and abhorrence of Cuban Communism was not matched by the other sibling Raul.

Cuba remained grindingly poor during Castro’s term. He would bleat, and international leftists continue to maintain, that the US embargo was the cause. This was palpable nonsense. It was a policy not to engage in trade: not a blockade. Canada, other Latin countries, all of Europe, and of course the Soviets traded all they could; and provided aid to Cuba.

Three points are dispositive, especially as the media now will be awash in rosy nostalgia for the eccentric guy with the beard.

First, Cuba was, and remained, poor for precisely the same reason that the citizens of Socialist economies in Latin America, in Africa, and around the world, suffer poverty. Stifled initiative, inherent corruption, and artificial allocation of resources.

Second, there are thousands and thousands of Cubans who had their property confiscated or their businesses shuttered. My wife’s neighbors were sugar growers before they fled the island. Neither Cuban citizens nor American investors ever received compensation, even almost 60 year later. THAT is why Washington refused to “normalize” relations – that, and the righteous rage of hundreds of thousands who emigrated to the US with nothing their lives.

Finally, Castro summarily executed many opponents; imprisoned many more; set criminals and mental defects on boats alongside multitudes who braved the open sea in flimsy boats. His defenders in Noo Yawk and the media point to universal health care and free college in Cuba as glories of Castro’s regime, but have been unmoved for decades by closed churches, spying on Cuban citizens, and the denial of political activity.

Stooges like Jimmy Carter and John Kerry weep tears for Castro; popes like John Paul II and Benedict, surprisingly, visited him, and the current wearer of the Shoes of the Fisherman admired the dedicated Cuban atheist. Other people, the usual gang of leftists, love Castro for reasons of their own (romantic?) but more likely, and frankly, would be in favor of closing Christian churches in America, too; and suppressing political dissent, as in that promised land.

In a sense, Castro had more integrity than his apologists in America: you can trust a Communist to be a Communist. Liberals will excuse any offense if there is lip-service paid to “education,” “health,” or redistribution of someone else’s property (except their own). Castro was a wolf in wolf’s clothing, worse than Jesus’ memorable warning in Matthew 7:15.

And as Kipling wrote,
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins.”

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Click: Komm, Susser Tod

5-9-16

I have been asked many questions these days about the proper attitude and informed decisions to be made by Christians and people of faith about the elections this year. To be more precise, I have been asked the same question by many people: Is Donald Trump someone to be trusted; does he know or understand biblical principles and basic Christian creedal tenets; is he someone who will “make deals” with the devil – so to speak – once in office?

I am asked those questions by a variety of folks, in my putative role as a social critic, political commentator, and Christian writer. I have no special insights, not holy ones I claim, anyway. Among those who ask me these burning questions is… myself.

A crazy political season. A crazy world, crazier and more ominous by the day. If it is not the advent of End Times, we might wish it were. We all should be primarily seeking spiritual, moral, and ethical answers – because our major challenges in America are, and have been caused by, spiritual, moral, and ethical lapses.

I will don another one my hats, my actual training as a historian, and posit some observations. Those who make stark critiques and censure are Jeremiahs. Most of us historians, as Gibbon and Macaulay did, wait millennia to make sense of history, to discern missteps.

There is an aspect of the human spirit that tends to think that contemporary crises are unprecedented, perhaps apocalyptic. It cannot always be true; but someday it will be. Oddly, we occasionally adopt the attitude of Dr Pangloss, that “this is the best of all possible worlds,” and in certain ways it too sometimes is correct.

But has our society, in our days, begun its ultimate dissolution? Is it possible that we are past “sliding down the slippery slope” and, rather, in the maelstrom of the flushing toilet of history, a vortex going “down the tubes”?

I think it is reasonable to think so. Too many of our foundations are crumbling, too many moral traditions are denigrated or ignored. But our political season, as crazy as it is, is not unprecedented.

We can look back at other crises in presidential contests. In 1800 the election was deadlocked – at the time, the House of Representatives, not the general populace, voted for president and vice-president, separate votes for each of two candidates; all later adjusted by a Constitutional amendment. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each had more votes than the incumbent president John Adams, but a secret deal withheld some of Burr’s electoral support and resulted in his defeat. The invective, chicanery, and dirty dealing all led to what history calls the “Revolution of 1800.” A few years later, Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and eventually fled west where he reportedly attempted to organize an uprising against the United States and/or Mexico.

Let us gloss over the social aspects of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, bereft by scandals, charges of “loose women” in the White House kitchen, and White House events where the president invited the general public, leading to shredding of carpets, destruction of furnishings, and theft of property. Jackson’s presidential campaigns led to the “spoils system” of trading votes for jobs.

In the 1860 election, the Republican Party, then only six years old, gained the White House as beneficiary of four candidates in the field. Abraham Lincoln’s nomination was secured by his manager who forbad Honest Abe from attending or knowing anything about their machinations – such as promising the same federal offices and cabinet positions to more than one person. The campaign was dirty (Secession was imminent) and dangerous (Lincoln reportedly travelled through pro-slavery Baltimore on his way to the inauguration in a plaid cloak and Scottish cap to evade assassins).

In 1896 a virtual unknown, William Jennings Bryan, delivered a speech (the “Cross of Gold”) to the Democrat convention that stampeded the delegates to nominate him in a frenzy. Barely old enough to serve as president, Bryan’s radical, socialist agenda split the party in two and had Americans, those who were not seduced by the firebrand, fearful of blood in the streets.

Theodore Roosevelt, wildly popular on his retirement in 1909, went on an African safari and tour of Europe for a year, partly to grant the spotlight to his hand-picked successor William Howard Taft. But during Taft’s term, there were personal slights of TR; reversal of many Roosevelt policies; serious broken promises; and a calamitous decline in the GOP’s popularity, including the loss of Congress. Severe affronts to Roosevelt, and an irresistible demand from many Republicans, persuaded him to challenge Taft for the nomination.

An ex-president versus a sitting president. Friends became enemies. “Liar” and “Fathead” were among the many epithets. There were mass defections from the GOP after the nomination was wrested from TR, who had won most of the new-fangled primaries. The speakers’ platform at the Republican convention had barbed wire under the bunting, in fear that riots would break out. TR’s bolt of the convention led to the independent Bull Moose party, which soundly trounced the GOP; Taft won only two states. A Socialist, Eugene Debs, polled nearly a million votes. In late October, a bartender who had been persuaded against a Third Term shot Roosevelt point-blank in the chest. TR insisted on continuing to his speech; with blood streaming down his shirt, he spoke for almost 90 minutes. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the four-way election.

Another year of the gun, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy, after a primary victory in California, were killed. A sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, was forced from running again when he could not endure widespread protests and a rebellious Democrat Party. Millions in the streets and campuses; a bitter primary; riots outside the convention; the anarchist Yippies; a candidate nominated (VP Humphrey) who had not even run in the primaries; the return of the has-been Richard Nixon; and the amazing grass-roots revolt of third-party candidate George Wallace. The story of 1968.

So… does this year’s election cycle seem tame yet? For all the elements that foreshadowed our current season of discontent, I think the campaign of 1884 has the most parallels. So far. The GOP, in the White House for 24 straight years, was rife with divisions. Factions called “Half-Breeds” and “Stalwarts” hated each other and vied for power. An office-seeker of one faction had assassinated President James Garfield, of another, when he was frustrated in securing a federal job. Bosses continually attempted a comeback for ex-president Ulysses Grant, whom they could control.

Sen. James G Blaine was the favorite for the nomination. A former Speaker of the House, he had been involved numerous. He sold influence; he had solicited bribes. He arrogantly admitted many of these discretions, but he was a magnetic speaker who swayed crowds and inspired devotion. He faced opposition, however, not so much from strong candidates, but a field of lesser names.

The major threat to Blaine instead was from the reform movement in the GOP, a gaggle of veterans and newcomers. Among the former were George William Curtis and Carl Schurz, whose political careers went back to the Civil War. Leaders of the latter group were young Henry Cabot Lodge and 24-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, a major force in the convention. Their efforts to advance reform candidates failed on the floor.

There was public revulsion against Blaine (“Blaine, Blaine; James G Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine!” street crowds chanted) but a lot of GOP voters fell in line. Grover Cleveland, the Democrat candidate, was “ugly honest,” a good reputation for 1884; but midway through the campaign it was revealed that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child – remember, this in the staid Victorian era. (“Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!” rival crowds chanted.) THAT was some campaign.

As in 2016, a large number of Republican politicians and activists faced moral and practical dilemmas. Many of them sincerely believed that Blaine was toxic for the party’s self-esteem and for its future; and they had made threats – or promises – never to vote for Blaine. Excruciating.

There was, collectively, a Solomonic decision. Reformers like Curtis and Schurz and Henry Ward Beecher, America’s most prominent pastor, whose sister had written “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” left the Republican Party, and supported Cleveland. They were dubbed “Mugwumps.”

Reformers like Roosevelt and Lodge, however, reluctantly remained within the party. Never endorsing Blaine, they “supported the ticket,” stating that the only way to influence the party was from within the party. Young TR, whose wife and mother had died a few months earlier (on the same day), left for an understandable “sabbatical” on his cattle ranch in the Dakotas. For two years he was a cowboy, out of the public eye. He made one or two campaign speeches for down-ticket candidates, including Lodge who ran for Congress.

Lodge lost. He and Roosevelt both considered their political futures ruined.

Both were mistaken, of course. Many of the Mugwumps eventually returned to the GOP, which thereafter always had – has had – a reform wing. Cleveland won, but a dozen years later he and many establishment Democrats boycotted the agrarian radical Bryan. Blaine lost the 1884 election, but by a whisker.

The final detail of the final moments of that crazy 1884 campaign might be relevant if not dispositive to troubled Republicans weathering Hurricane Donald this year: a moral, specifically a religious, aspect.

Just before election eve, Blaine attended a dinner of industrialists and monopolists at Delmonico’s in New York. One of the speakers, a nonentity minister, in his speech described the Democrats as the “party of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” Rum was a smear on lowlife aspects of stereotyped Democrat voters; Rebellion was a reminder of the Democrats’ association with Secession.

Romanism, however, was a word that touched social and religious nerves. It was a direct reference to Catholicism, imputing a congenital association between Democrats and the Pope; and was not meant as a compliment. The consequent furor over the insult (which Blaine had ignored) energized New York City’s Irish immigrants. New York City went Democrat; New York State and its electoral votes narrowly went for Cleveland… enough to tip the national outcome away from the GOP.

The scenario is a different animal than whether to endorse a candidate you distrust or despise in 2016 – but it reminds us that religion is never far from the larger debate. Our civic consciences might still roil over whether to Trump, or not to Trump. Life has gone on in America despite, as Kipling wrote, “The tumult and the shouting dies.”

Myself, I greet with dubiety Trump’s assurances that he is familiar with the Bible, understands doctrine, and has a saving knowledge, as we say, of Jesus Christ. But we are not to judge: I question, however. “God judges the man; voters judge the candidate” is, this year, less of a maxim and feels like more of an excuse.

Many of us have the nagging feeling that things are different this time, that past is less than prologue. The Captains and the Kings may depart, yet we seem closer to our destiny, maybe an apocalypse.

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Click: I Am a Pilgrim

5-25-15
(Memorial Day)

They are special creatures. And rare. They do jobs not everyone understands, but they do understand. They are willing, and often do, “pay with their bodies for their souls’ desire,” as Theodore Roosevelt, whose son Quentin was killed in an aerial dogfight over German lines, said of fallen servicemen.

The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead today,
Is not a rose wreath, white and red,
In memory of the blood they shed;
It is to stand beside each mound,
Each couch of consecrated ground,
And pledge ourselves as warriors true
Unto the work they died to do.

— Edgar Guest

Throughout history there have been many military forces stocked of conscripts, sometimes unwilling, even ignorant of their “cause.” But often – and especially in this era of the volunteer military – service people take their oaths, don their uniforms, and support their missions. Victory is their goal, but they all know that death is an option. Other options include the certainty of family separation and changed civilian lives if and when they return; and, increasingly these days, cruel injuries and challenging disabilities.

But they volunteer, these special creatures. Sacrifice and Service are what their loves become. Gen. George S Patton is supposed to have said: “War is not dying for your country. It’s making the other bastard die for his country.” True as far as it goes, even a brilliant distinction; and a great motivational aphorism on a battle’s eve. But discordant on Memorial Day.

Heroes of old! I humbly lay
     The laurel on your graves again;
Whatever men have done, men may,—
     The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

— Austin Dobson

We don’t have to agree with the “cause” of a war or the decision to put a nation’s young men and women into battle in order to admire the fallen. I dissent from many adventures of recent years – or at least their strategies and tactics – but I am in awe of those who serve, sacrifice, sustain wounds, and die. They do not hate, for the most part, as soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen have been taught throughout history. Rather they love.

The motivations of those dead military souls whose we honor this weekend was more love of country than hatred of enemy. Not killing a foreign leader but protecting their families. Not focusing on distant spoils but venerating their spouses, kids, friends, and lives back home. Not against “them” but for “us.” Paying with their souls for their hearts’ desires.

To slightly parse another popular phrase, as I did with Patton’s above, the military man or woman did not bring us our freedom. Only God can do that, and has done that; and such a proper perspective has nurtured America for centuries, in war and peace alike. I am tempted to say that the service members might preserve our freedoms… except for this New Day and Age where civilian politicians and judges erode liberty faster than our military can “defend” it.

All we have of freedom, all we use or know–
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

— Rudyard Kipling

It saddens me that in recent American wars – let me say, larger, in recent generations – disputes rage not only over grand causes. But behind the battle lines, at home, wars claiming thousands have been undeclared, by politicians afraid of committing themselves as members of the military do, to the ultimate point. The public is often disunited, and too frequently dismissive of military service per se. Orders are countermanded; war aims abandoned; world and national politics subsume military goals.

Military families are neglected and often live in poverty, on welfare benefits. Veterans organizations and private charities care in innovative and effective ways – but their every success is a blot of shame on a government that should thus care by itself for its valiant. Scandals in military hospitals and veteran’s administrations are many, and continue.

… It is this situation – an America far different than the nation’s previous soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines fought for – this situation for which our uniformed heroes are willing to die. And an America where their chaplains are being denied the freedom to share Christ. Where the values many of them cherished or desired to defend, have changed or been perverted by courts and bureaucrats.

Yet they die, and are willing to die.

Because you passed, and now are not,—
     Because, in some remoter day,
Your sacred dust from doubtful spot
     Was blown of ancient airs away,—
     Because you perished,—must men say
Your deeds were naught, and so profane
     Your lives with that cold burden ? Nay,
The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

— Austin Dobson

Special creatures, these fallen heroes. Let us honor them in our minds and hearts, in ceremonies public and private. A flower, a flag, a prayer. Prayers of thanksgiving for such as these – in all humankind, special men and women admirable for their amazing devotion and sacrifices – and prayers that their kind may not perish from amongst us.

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Music vid: I had the pleasure once to meet the legendary singer/songwriter Bill Carlisle, in the course of writing one of my books on country music. He was part of a “brother act” with Cliff, and famous for leaping high on stage, guitar in hand, during one of his trademark novelty songs. I was not aware at the time that he was the writer of one of the great gospel songs, “Gone Home.” He was reluctant to perform it often because he was identified as a comic singer – so Flatt and Scruggs, GrandPa Jones, Ricky Skaggs, and others made it part of their repertoires. Another singer who revered the song, and sang it often, was Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who enjoyed bluegrass and gospel music. Here is his acoustic version – appropriate here because its lyrics have become identified with fallen soldiers, brave family members, and missing friends, on Memorial Day: those who have Gone Home.

Click: Gone Home