WWJD

What would Jefferson do?

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine’s administration forced the resignation of five Virginia State Police Chaplains because they prayed publicly “in Jesus’ name.” The State Police Superintendent created, then enforced, a strict “non-sectarian” prayer policy at all public gatherings, which excluding Christian prayers.  Five chaplains refused to deny Jesus or violate their conscience by watering down their prayers, and had to resign.

My question is:  if the state police has chaplains, what else are they supposed to do but pray in Jesus’ name?  If they are not allowed to do so, why have them at all?

Jefferson argued in favor of religious freedom.  I doubt he would have approved of these firings, but perhaps he would have advocated not having the chaplains at all.

Facing an Identity Crisis

 

NEWS RELEASE

June 3, 2008 Contact:xSteven Hofman 301-520-1306 or 970-871-4551 press@bradleyproject.org

The Bradley Project
Releases its Report, “E Pluribus Unum.”
Calls for National Dialogue on America’s National Identity.

Report Finds that America is Facing an Identity Crisis and is in Danger of
Becoming not “From Many, One” – E Pluribus Unum – But its Opposite,
“From One, Many.”

Sixty-Three Percent of Americans Believe our National Identity
is Weakening, and One in Four Believe the Nation is So Divided That a
Common National Identity is Not Possible.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Washington, D.C.    The Bradley Project on America’s National Identity today released its Report, “E Pluribus Unum,”the product of a two-year study involving a number of our nation’s leading academics, public figures, journalists, educators and policy experts.  The report examines four aspects of American life crucial to American identity: historical memory, civic education, assimilation, and national security.

The report finds that America is facing an identity crisis and calls for a national dialogue on America’s national identity.  According to James Ceaser, professor of politics at the University of Virginia and a participant in the project, America’s understanding and appreciation of diversity is important but must be balanced by an emphasis on what we share.  “In selecting the title E Pluribus Unum, the Project embraces the conviction that plurality and unity are not necessarily in tension with one another, but are supporting ideas of the same national experiment,” Ceaser said.  “Plurality is only made safe when it when it is grounded in a deeper commitment to national unity.  Unity is the precondition for healthy diversity.”

To inform its work, the Bradley Project asked HarrisInteractive to conduct a study on Americans’ views on national identity.  The good news is that most U.S. citizens believe there is a unique national identity that defines what it means to be an American.  The troubling news is that over six in ten believe our national identity is getting weaker.  And “even more troubling is that younger Americans – on whom our continued national identity depends – are less likely than older Americans to believe in a unique national identity or in a unique American culture.” Indeed only 45 percent of 18-34 year old Americans believe that the U.S. Constitution
should trump international law in instances where there is a conflict.

According to Professor Ceaser, “The weight of all this evidence suggests mounting confusion about the meaning of American national identity and a loss of commitment to its promotion.”

“The findings from the report are sobering and significant.  They raise subjects that are vital to our future, transcend partisanship, and clearly resonate with the American people,” said Rick O’Donnell, Executive Director of the Bradley Project.  O’Donnell continued: “Our intention is that the report be the starting point for a national conversation on these important issues.  Silent Spring in 1962 started a conversation that brought about significant changes in our environment.  A Nation at Risk in 1983 launched an ongoing national conversation that continues to reshape American education.  It is in that tradition that we release E Pluribus Unum.”

A number of notable scholars have already joined this conversation and commented on the Bradley Project report.

Walter A. McDougall, Pulitzer-prize winning historian and professor at the University of Pennsylvania calls the report: “An eloquent defense of America’s intellectual, civic, and moral identity that deserves wide circulation, especially among American youth.”

Harry Lewis, former Dean at Harvard College, says of the report: “A stirring reminder that America is more than the union of our differences, and a rational program for preserving the nation by passing American ideals on to the next generation of citizens.”

Amy A. Kass, of the University of Chicago, writes: “The Bradley Project’s report addresses the urgent problem of American identity in our global and multicultural age, and its wise recommendations for promoting civic consciousness and civic understanding couldn’t be more timely or more fitting.”

James C. Rees, Executive Director of Mount Vernon, said: “This report confirms what we experience at Mount Vernon every day – that most Americans know precious little about their own history.  George Washington’s face is still familiar to most Americans, because we see it each day on the dollar bill.  But when asked about Washington’s character and leadership, which made all the difference in the world to the founding of our nation, the average citizen is rendered speechless.”

The report makes clear that we didn’t get to this point overnight, and that addressing our challenges is a long-term imperative.  In addition to its call for an immediate and comprehensive national dialogue on America’s national identity, it recommends:

	■	a renewed focus on the teaching of American history,
	■	embracing America’s heroes and historic landmarks,
	■	affirming the benefits of diversity, but not adopting policies that perpetuate divisions or compromise our national identity,
	■	inaugurating an initiative to ensure immigrants learn English, understand democratic institutions, and participate fully in the American way of life,
	■	and creating an annual Presidential Award for American Citizenship for students and new citizens who demonstrate exemplary understanding of and commitment to American ideals and institutions.

Professor Ceaser concludes: “The report speaks of a nation ‘founded not on a common ethnicity,’ but ‘on an idea.’  And it argues that ‘a nation founded on an idea starts anew with each generation and with each new group of immigrants.’”  “Knowing what America stands for is not a genetic inheritance,” said Ceaser.   “It must be learned, both by the next generation and by those who come to this country.  From this premise follow many of the recommendations to strengthen the serious study of American principles and the American founding at all levels of education, including college.”

Forget 1066 & all that

Children should not be taught to remember key historical dates such as the Battle of Hastings but should instead learn “life skills”, teachers have claimed.  This from the UK’s Association of Teachers and Lecturers.

Mary Bousted, general secretary, also said:

“Is the world going to collapse if they don’t know ‘To Be, or Not to Be?’ Our national curriculum should be far more focused on the development of life skills and ways of working than whether or not we teach the Battle of Hastings.”

Dems go back to their roots with race

Race seems to be quite factor in this year’s election, but only for Democrats.  But wait, I thought it was the GOP that was full of racists!  What gives with the party of segregation and Jim Crow??

See stories about Obama’s “interesting pastor,”  and the Geraldine Ferraro resignation.  The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. said:

“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said. “Hillary would never know that.  Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger.”

Name trivia

These are the top 10 names for boys and girls in the 1880s:

Boy’s Names	Girl’s Names
1.  John	1.  Mary
2.  William	2.  Anna
3.  Charles	3.  Elizabeth
4.  George	4.  Margaret
5.  James	5.  Minnie
6.  Joseph	6.  Emma
7.  Frank	7.  Martha
8.  Henry	8.  Alice
9.  Thomas	9.  Marie
10.  Harry	10.  Sarah

These are the top names in 2006:

Boy’s Names	Girl’s Names
1.  Jacob	1.  Emily
2.  Michael	2.  Emma
3.  Joshua	3.  Madison
4.  Ethan	4.  Isabella
5.  Matthew	5.  Ava
6.  Daniel	6.  Abigail
7.  Christopher	7.  Olivia
8.  Andrew	8.  Hannah
9.  Anthony	9.  Sophia
10.  William	10.  Samantha

Here are the top 10 boys names in Ireland for 2005:

1. Jack

2. Sean

3. Adam

4. Conor

5. James

6. Daniel

7. Cian

8. Luke

9. Aaron

10. Michael

Not as many overtly Gaelic names as I would have suspected….

Enlistment–not fair?

It is always interesting to me to read news reports of current events, and to see reporters failing to bring in historical perspective that might go a long way to contextualizing modern concerns and further explaining them.  This makes for many news stories that are skin deep.  One example from the Telegraph is a good story to use to demonstrate this.

According to the report, a study conducted in the UK regarding the British Army’s recruiting methods concluding that said methods were unfair and misleading.  Many soldiers agreed to enlist “without fully understanding their legal obligations” and “recruiting literature failed to mention that unless they left within six months of enlisting, they had no legal right to leave for four years,” says the article.  Here’s the real whopper:

The report – Informed Choice? Armed Forces and Recruitment Practice in the UK – accuses Army recruiters of failing to inform youngsters about the risks of a Forces career. It says the military “curtailed recruits’ rights” to resign and recruiters targeted “the socially and economically vulnerable to enlist for negative reasons”.

This would have been a perfect time to explain to the reader that targeting the socially & economically vulnerable has LONG been a method of filling up the battalions, in many countries.  In the 18th century, for instance, British regiments were typically completed by luring displaced farm workers and landless tenants into the ranks, men who were forced off their rented lands by the enclosure movement, and by the industrial revolution.  This is to say nothing of the convicts placed on the rolls – real social misfits vulnerable to the recruiting sergeants. 

This should come as no surprise to military historians or those of the 18th and 19th century.  Readers would have been well-served to have known this as well.

Hitchens on Mormonism

 

At Slate, Christopher Hitchens, an avowed atheist to be sure, provides a narrative of what Mitt Romney holds to be true.   The tone of the piece is, to be sure, not what one would call “pro-Mormon,” as this excerpt demonstrates:

In March 1826 a court in Bainbridge, New York, convicted a twenty-one-year-old man of being “a disorderly person and an impostor.” That ought to have been all we ever heard of Joseph Smith, who at trial admitted to defrauding citizens by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also to claiming to possess dark or “necromantic” powers. However, within four years he was back in the local newspapers (all of which one may still read) as the discoverer of the “Book of Mormon.” He had two huge local advantages which most mountebanks and charlatans do not possess. First, he was operating in the same hectically pious district that gave us the Shakers and several other self-proclaimed American prophets. So notorious did this local tendency become that the region became known as the “Burned-Over District,” in honor of the way in which it had surrendered to one religious craze after another. Second, he was operating in an area which, unlike large tracts of the newly opening North America, did possess the signs of an ancient history.

One of the interesting comments made by Hitchens is that for historians, the actual story of Joseph Smith’s shenanagins ”is almost embarrassing to read, and almost embarrassingly easy to uncover.”  The records for the most part are all there, in court documents and newspaper reports.  

“This has nothing to do with free speech”??

As I noted here, two contoversial speakers were to speak at the Oxford Union yesterday, one of whom is David Irving, noted (and previously jailed) Holocaust denier.  The BBC tells us that “hundreds of protesters besieged the Union Society, furious at the decision to invite the leader of the far-right British National Party to speak there, along with a historian who has denied that the holocaust ever happened.”   Ultra right winger Nick Griffin was the other scheduled speaker, and he was “bustled in surrounded by a group of skinheads to protect him.”  As if that isn’t going to get folks ticked off, eh?

Still, where do we draw the line between unpopular opinions and preventing controversial people from speaking?  “This has nothing to do with free speech,” argued one protester, “it’s about giving credibility to fascists, making them appear to be part of the mainstream.”  Who decides that?  Its got everything to do with free speech, contrary to what this naive student shouted, but that does not mean everyone gets 30 minutes and a mike.  Leftists on American campuses routinely shout down conservatives such as David Horowitz, Jean Kirkpatrick, etc., and steal copies of right-wing student newspapers.  (Click here for example) That is surely wrong, although most of the time university officials do nothing in response.

The BBC goes on to report that “banners were draped over the walls surrounding the Union Society, bearing anti-racist slogans,” while chants reverberated through the narrow streets outside: “BNP – off the streets” and “Nazi scum – go home.”  Others, however, took a different tack:  One group supporting the event held a banner aloft bearing Voltaire’s famous dictum: “I disapprove of your views, but would fight to the death for your right to express them.”

Even then, the organisers decided to break it into two groups “for safety reasons.”  So the BNP’s Nick Griffin spoke in one room, while David Irving addressed students in another. Nonetheless, the Oxford Union Society is insisting the event was a success, albeit a qualified one.   President Luke Tryl said: “I think fascism is awful and abhorrent, but the way to take on fascism is through debate.

Protests over Holocaust Denier

Is it right or appropriate for a major university to invite a convicted Holocaust denier to debate on its campus?  Many say no at Oxford.

In the face of angry protests, the Oxford Union debating society went ahead on Monday with plans for an evening debate featuring David Irving, a British author jailed in Austria in 2005 for denying the Holocaust, and Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, acquitted by a British court last year of stirring racial hatred.

The invitation to the two rightist speakers plunged the Oxford debating society into one of the fiercest controversies in its 184-year history. In 1933, it stirred anger in Britain with its notorious “king and country” debate, in which members voted they would in no circumstances fight a war against Nazism.  Although an independent body with no formal links to the University of Oxford, many of the union’s members are Oxford students, and many of the union’s leaders have gone on to prominent roles in British politics.

D. Irving

See also this follow article from the BBC.

New War Video Game Controversial

 

From the IHT:

A new video game that invites players to rewrite the course of Spain’s devastating civil war has touched a nerve in a country that is often reluctant to revisit its past, let alone play with it.

“Shadows of War” bills itself as the first video game based on the 1936-39 war, which erupted after right-wing forces loyal to Francisco Franco staged a coup against the elected Republican government. It went on sale in Spain on Thursday in the midst of a bitter debate about how to deal with the country’s past, prompted by a new law that would authorize reparations to civil war victims and ban monuments to Franco.

Even before it hit the stores, the game drew criticism from both sides of the political spectrum as a divisive trivialization of a war whose wounds, for many Spaniards, have yet to heal.

More here…..

The game description per a gaming review on-line is:

Europe, 1936. The Old Continent is still recovering from the wounds inflicted on its territories by the worst armed conflict Humanity has ever witnessed. In the meantime, a new shadow is rising to threaten the newly-established balance of power. Should nobody stop it, the consequences could change the path of history for ever…

Rely on five heroes of different nationalities, each of them with their own background and agenda, and with a future which depends upon your abilities as strategist. Thanks to the unique skills of your commanders, you will be able to decide the fate of the German and Italian armies or the vast Russian troops, among others.

You are Europe’s only shadow of hope. Don’t let the World be engulfed by the Shadows of War!

“All the white kids come to the front…”

“All the white kids come to the front, mixed race in the middle, and dark-skinned at the back.”  Is that any way to line up school kids for a class picture?  One teacher in London thought so.  Story here.

Religion & the Founders

 

[GW Praying at Valley Forge-True?]

A few weeks ago, I posted on Christianity and the Founders, a subject that has been receiving lots of attention in the form of many books, articles, etc.  Now John McCain has weighed in, and says that the U.S. was founded on Christian principles and that these should be emphasized today.  Bold words from a presidential contender.  Related to this theme is an opinion piece in the Boston Globe, by James Carroll, which is here.  I include a snip of it below.

One of my proudest boasts as a schoolboy was an ability to both identify and spell what my teacher insisted was the English language’s longest word: antidisestablishmentarianism.

I had, of course, no idea what it meant. Now I know that it defines America’s political third rail onto which John McCain threw himself when he recently said that the United States was established as a “Christian nation.”

No, it wasn’t! Or so answered a chorus of critics, heading off an inevitable denigration of minority religions – and no religion. The disestablishmentarians always point out that the U.S. Constitution nowhere mentions God, and that the founders were Deist gentlemen whose God was so impersonally detached from history as to be not recognizably Christian at all. The framers of the American political system, appalled by what “establishment” had led to in Europe, took pains to set their government on a religiously neutral path.

But government is not nation. Just because McCain’s assertion is dangerous – as I believe it to be – does not mean it is untrue. For one thing, what the founders intended may weigh less than how the nation developed over the next two centuries. The Constitution created “an open national space,” in the scholar Mark Noll’s phrase, but, Noll says, instead of it being filled with Alexander Hamilton’s economic planning, Thomas Jefferson’s yeomanry or John Adams’s communalism, that space was seized by unexpected 19th-century “awakenings” of evangelical fervor.

[Another, cheesier version]