ANNUAL VALENTINE’S STORY: The Underlying Meaning of Valentine’s Day…………..

Valentine’s Day Alert, Anywhere USA: A woman punches another woman to seize the last red-flocked candy box at the drug store. Children fear going to school for they might not get as many valentine cards as some other kids. What used to be honorable behavior during an onslaught of the citadel, has become ‘aggression normale’ in Buy-Me-Land. What used to be a place of learning for the kidlettes, has in some places, become a daily injection of the poison called, ‘If I don’t have proof from all others by daily acclamation, I am a nobody.’

Commerce can be admired for advertising many artifacts which help people to better live; those remedios and medicines that are thereby shown within reach of some and the many. But, how can we understand the kind of commerce that $ee$ only it$elf and nothing more… and by so doing, steals the bedrock of our culture by covering over the real stories that sustain us.

Few artists and creators I’ve known have ever brought forth work of depth by strategizing money first, and meaning second. Quite the contrary. Thus I put the ‘Holiday Advertising Behemoth’ on the couch with its Presenting Symptom: Cardboard everything. I listen to its pressured speech, it’s lack of cohesive underlayment, it’s concern with image, and I write in my casebook: Diagnosis: Malignant narcissism. Outcome: Loss of meaning.

Narcissism is not falling in love with oneself; it is falling for ‘the false self”… the one which has no real heart, a cardboard self that can only mimic tenderness and toughness, but has no winged soul.

Thus a culture diagnosed with narcissism is not in love with itself, as suggested by the reductive epithet, ‘me-ism.’ A narcissistic culture is in love with a false self, one that is not real, one this is perceived to have no real issues, no reliable gifts, no real harms and thereby, no real solutions.

But, there is ever hope. Prognosis for an ill culture? It depends…. mostly on cultura cura, how smaller healthier cultures within the ill culture will expand outward to heal the larger society. One of the first ways to destroy a culture and a people, is to destroy their true stories. One of the first ways a culture that has become ill can be restored is by adding back the stories that are sustaining to its people, stories that are real.

Thus, let us speak about other stories underlying Valentine’s Day besides ‘death-by-sugar,‘ and aside from poor St. Valentine hoisted into position over the pre-Christian deity but later unceremoniously demoted to ‘may not have been a real person” and “may never have actually lived.”

And isn’t that the core concern of living in an ill culture that was supposed to nourish us… to not be forced into squandering a life, living as though one had never lived, as though one had not been a real person, as though one had missed what a true heart really meant.

All the more reason to have good news… yes, there is a story about Valentine’s that is a rich one, a story that is neither cutesy nor bitter… and thereby quick and evaporative. Rather, it is a real story that has the red blood of real life in it.

THE STORY OF TRUE LOVE: THE CRIPPLED ONE
In my old country immigrant family, Valentine– also known as True Love, also known as Eros– is the story of a crippled child; one whom no matter how rejected he has been, no matter how spurned, the Immaculate Love inside him simply would not die.

This child Eros, made of True Love, shows up in many forms in our lives, and there have been times when I have been graced to have touched and cared for him several times in my own.

Just this morning I thought I met him again. I was standing on the porch facing the small lake I live on here in the Rockies. Every morning I try to live the Angelus, an ancient prayer said three times a day… literally meaning, ‘The Call to the Angels.’ It is a prayer during which I raise up my loved ones, the loved ones of others, and unknown souls as well, over the lake… so all the great powers of heaven and earth can see them.

Amongst other things, I ask that each person be given what is most needed, whatever will most nourish, most negate fear, most repair, most grant flashes of inspiration.

Often, birds fly right by at eye level as I pray: I could reach out and practically pet them as they go by; black, white and gray Canadian geese so aerobically fit that they sing while they flap, five beats to the bar; the blue herons with their spindly feet straight out behind like chicken-legged outriggers; and the white Mexican pelicans who float through the air with their huge chests puffed out looking like majestic flying fortresses.

Thus, while I was praying this morning, I saw at the water’s edge, a fine young mallard.

But then, I saw that one of his bright orange legs was bent sideways… No matter how long you live in any wilds, no matter how many animals you have had to put down in your lifetime, the wounded innocent still catches your heart.

The mallard’s injury was old. His leg had healed crookedly. But there he was nevertheless, wearing his fine white necklace and his dark green hood. My heart rose to see that he was strutting about on the rocky shore like he was Master of the Universe, even so. Like he had every right. Like he, in some essential ‘mallard heart,’ was ever whole.

Then I thought of the story of ‘the crippled child’ and Valentine’s Day. In ancient Greece, this child called Eros, was a young male who represented what in our family was called, ‘Limitless Love and Unending Courage.’ The Romans called him Cupid.

Eros and Cupid are often portrayed as clean, plump cherubs, sweet as Mazola oil, holding red hearts that have no aortas for supplying blood nor superior vena cavas for carrying it.

But the commercial magnates seem not to remember that Eros, although indeed a child, was not a rosy cherub.

Eros was like the crippled mallard…. and like most of us are in some way or other: he had been hard beset. He had been battered by life.

We’ve seen Eros portrayed in modernist paintings as a little prince in a blue silk suit with blue eyes and pale blue skin that has never seen daylight. However, in our deeply ethnic family, as with the ancients, Eros is understood as a street urchin.

He was likely a dark-skinned child, scruffy, dirty-faced with grimy hands and matted black hair. There’s little doubt that he was often engaged in street scuffles over a bread crust, a dot of rice, a kernel of maize.

Some in our family say that he carried a wistful sense from having been turned away from so many doors… because so many people would not allow Limitless Love and Unending Courage into their hearts. Instead, they were waiting for the shiny clean version of ‘love’ to show up, the sick cultural version of love, one that might look polished on the outside, but is without true heart on the inside.

Thus, we understood that Eros often went hungry, that he was bewildered by those who turned him away, that because he was not given shelter, that Limitless Love was homeless.

It was said that some were unreasonably harsh with Eros and lifted him by the arm or threw him away from their doorposts, and thus injured him so that he limped. I remember my grandmother saying we would recognize true love had come to us, as much by Love’s imperfections, as by Love’s perfect depth.

But, the most miraculous thing about hard-scrabble Eros… was that not only did he endure: the miracle is, that despite the hardships, torments and injuries to his spirit, his eyes remained clear and not hooded … that he allowed his heart to be mended up over and over again… and that Eros continued to love with everything in him… all and everything that he could.

The miracle is that Eros kept knocking at every door, every single door, no matter if the door belonged to a hovel, or to a castle.

‘Here I am,’ he would cry, ‘Limitless Love! Unending Courage! Please, let me in?’

Limitless Love! Unending Courage! Indeed, a cultural cure… the exact words to chisel on every cultural edifice, on the lintel of every publishing house, every theatre, school, temple, every meeting place, every congress, web portal, every home, shelter, over every heart.

The word erotic comes to us from Eros’s name. The words eros and erotic, though they include sensual love, are rooted in a far greater idea– that the instinct to love and to be loved remains alive in souls no matter what else. No matter what doors have opened and shut, no matter which persons have turned away or been turned away. No matter how tiny its refuge now. The heart of Love continues onward with eyes that are clear and far-seeing.

Some people wish each other love on Valentine’s. Some wish prosperity, health and wealth. I would wish all those onto all persons, but one more, the most critical. I would wish remembering.

Remembering that Love is not fancy, to take care to adorn Love carefully, so as to not occlude its humble street origins… that Love does not stay alive by asking ‘how much’ but by ‘how well and how deeply, how kindly, how sweetly, how boldly, how bravely?’

Like the street urchin Eros, the mallard and I, and you too, and our cultures we love: It is true, we have all been thrown down hard somewhere in life, and often more than once in this lifetime.

But, also we are, I think, somehow ever being knitted back up in mysterious ways, often by others, sometimes by strangers, certainly by your cultura cura, those tiny groups that carry the healing herbs and ideas and give them out freely, albeit imperfectly often enough.

We ourselves and our cultures are all left with a scar or a limp that shows we have mangled or managed our way through a great something. And, we are still here. Crookedy here and there. But in some greater self, whole, and with Love.

Thus in the spirit of a real and sustaining story that underlies Valentine’s Day…

I lift you up over the lake to ask that you be brought comfort
and encouragement if and as you need it. I mean to ‘remember’ to you
that despite whichever challenges you may have, you were born
with Unending Courage and Limitless Love to use as brightly as you wish
– as deeply as you dare–
during your one precious and wild lifetime on this earth.

So, Blessed Valentine’s Day, from Eros,
from the mallard,
and from me
y un mas… and one more….
puede tu madre ser bendecida para traerle a la tierra…
may your mother be blessed also, for bringing you to earth–
for even despite all struggles to learn this world,
how to tend to it, how to mend it …and ourselves,
…. you and your brand of Love are so needed in our world.

A-Dios.
——————————-

© Dr.CP. Estés, all rights reserved; and creative commons; may be shared… keep intact, cite author, link back to this site. Thanks. Dr.e

_________
CODA
–On the image: I hope you like seeing this rather wondrous ‘nature’ set of stories on arms and torso that are called ‘tattoos.’ I like the ancient heart with its swords, but too the tiny wings at the top of the shoulders. I think often about what it means to be an ‘illustrated man,’ and ‘illustrated woman’ in our cultures today, especially when the tattoos have so many layers of stories behind each one, both archetypal/ semiotic, and personal stories.

• 46 percent of American children enter kindergarten lacking the basic language skills they need to learn to read
• 61 percent of low-income children have no children’s books in their homes

The verbs convey urgency (currency is an intentional affect, as the factoids are used for fundraising, establishing organizational mandates) and imply that the data are current. But are the data points true, for any definition of “truth”?

Oh. And a reminder. When a “factoid” hits all of your emotional buttons, try to engage your mental brakes before hitting RT, Like, Share or Forward. If it seems too good or too bad to be true, chances are, it’s not.

No Children’s Books?

Check it yourself. Whether using Google (2.8 million) or Bing (10.1 million), the search string <61 percent low-income no children’s books> yields millions of results. Conclusion: it’s a widely cited figure by sites such as BooksForAmerica, BookSpring, JumpStart,  ReachOutAndRead and the Wauconda Area Library as well as news stories.

Here’s one manifestation:

61 percent of low-income families have no books at all in their homes for their children. Families living in poverty must use their financial resources to pay for food and shelter, not books. Reading Literacy in the United States

And another:

In fact, 61 percent of low-income families have no age-appropriate books at all in their homes for their children. Reading Literacy in the United States, Findings from the IEA Reading Literacy Study. 

Reading Literacy in the United States, Findings From The IEA Literacy Study (NCES 96-258), was published in 1996 by the U.S. Department of Education. It is based on data from (wait for it) 20+years ago. The Department of Education report focuses on the U.S. data.

I searched for key words:

• 61 percent : AWOL
• Low-income: AWOL
• Books: AWOL

So what do you think? How could the “fact” that jerked my chain have been pulled from this research report?

Note: in the 2006 study (pdf, 44 MB), U.S. fourth graders dropped from #2 to #18 in reading achievement score. So yeah, we seem to have a problem, but let’s make arguments for change based on solid data, shall we?

Poorly Prepared At Age Five?

In a 2011 press release (pdf) for her iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad mobile gaming application, Footsteps2Brilliance, founder Ilene Rosenthal says:

I created this company after reading a statistic that 46 percent of U.S. children enter kindergarten at risk of failure because they lack essential oral language and literacy skills.

Hmmm. We know from the 1996 report that income and education are contributors to literacy. How many low-income, no-high-school-diploma families have an iPhone, iPodTouch or iPad for their 4 year old? Conversely, how many high-income, college graduate familes have one?

But I digress. Rosenthal provides no source for her factoid (either in the press release or in the webinar that sent me down this rabbit hole).

Here’s what I found:

In a Missouri school district study, 46 percent of 191 kindergarten teachers said that half or more kids in their class had trouble following directions. (MyOptimumHealth – no source)

In a 1995 survey of 3,500 kindergarten teachers from across the country, many reported that large proportions of their students lacked important school readiness skills. For example, 46 percent of the kindergarten teachers reported that at least half the students in their classes had difficulty following directions, 36 percent reported that at least half of their class lacked academic skills they needed, and 34 percent reported that at least half of their class had difficulty working independently. (National Institute for Early Education, pdf, cited Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Pianta, R. C., & Cox, M. J. (2000). Teachers’ judgments of problems in the transition to kindergarten. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15 (2), 147–166.)

Here’s a little more from that referenced study (emphasis added):

Teachers [perceived] that 16% of children had difficult entries into kindergarten… Rates of perceived problems were related to school minority composition; district poverty level; and, for certain behaviors, school metropolitan status… Teachers’ ethnicity showed a significant relation to their rates of reported problems.

Hitting a digital brick wall, I changed my search query from <46 percent kindergarten lacking skills> to <enter kindergarten lacking skills>.

Hit number one, and back we go to Jumpstart’s report. Note, Jumpstart exists to solve the “early education crisis” so we know that they are biased towards presenting a problem (emphasis added):

According to a national longitudinal analysis by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), economically disadvantaged children may know only one or two letters of the alphabet when entering kindergarten, while children in the middle class will know all 26. Only half of the children from low-income families can write their own name, while more than 75 percent of children from higher income families can do so. Researchers also estimate that before ever entering kindergarten, cognitive scores for children of low-income families are likely to average 60 percent lower than those in the highest socioeconomic groups, something that remains true through high school. (Jumpstart, pdf, cited Lee, V. E. & Burkam, D. T. (2002). Inequality at the starting gate: Social background differences in achievement as children begin school. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.)

The factoid that Rosenthal uses does not seem to exist, but Jumpstart makes an argument that an unknown number of “economically disadvantaged” children are entering the educational system “behind” more affluent peers. Let me point you to the U.S. Department of Education report (longer analysis at WiredPen) which reminds us that household economics may be a proxy for household educational level.

And let me remind you, gentle reader, that correlation is not causation.

I did find references to one-in-three children entering kindergarten (as well as “nearly half”) lacking necessary early reading skills, but alas, no sources given. One presentation credits (pdf) the 1-in-3 datapoint to unnamed research from 1985. One 1998 report (pdf) quotes then-Gov. Zell Miller (R-GA).

A report from UCLA (pdf) asserts (emphasis added) that “[u]p to one-third of American children enter kindergarten lacking at least some of the skills needed for a successful learning experience.” Their source, a 1998 book: Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.) (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

I’m going to walk out on a limb and suggest that this 1998 book (or maybe the 2007 report) is the initial source for the cannot-be-verified <one-in-three kids enter kindergarten lack reading skills> meme (3.3 million returns on Google).

What we do know is that parental education is correlated with childhood literacy (emphasis added):

Irrespective of whether we are looking at father’s or mother’s education, students whose parents have not graduated from high school have reading comprehension scores well below the U.S. average. Students whose parents have completed college have reading scores above the national average. (Reading Literacy in the United States, Findings From The IEA Literacy Study (NCES 96-258, p 45)

Verdict: 2-for-2 False

I can hear you thinking (laughing):

OMG! Someone is wrong on the Internet!

That’s not my point. It’s not being wrong on “the Internet” that sets my teeth on edge.

It is the use of sloppy/inaccurate/misleading data to craft persuasive messages.

It’s wrong. It leads to bad policy decisions (and maybe inappropriate foundation grant awardees).

And if done with intent, it’s unethical, too.

:: A longer version of this article (more analysis) appears at WiredPen
:: Follow me on Twitter!

For a global business community still experiencing economic pain, Facebook’s humongous $100 billion Initial Public Offering has been an emotional shot in the arm. For French business newspaper Les Echos, columnist Philippe Escande praises the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as being at the heart of what still makes the American business sector the greatest in the world.

For Les Echos, Philippe Escande starts out this way:

It is an improbable story – one that could happen only in the United States. That of a twenty-year-old kid who in 2004 founded his own business just to prove he can, and eight years later finds himself the leader of a business valued at $100 billion. One hundred billion dollars is as much as McDonald’s and two and a half times that of General Motors. All this for a sophomoric prank that today employs no more than 3,000 people.

That is the magic of the U.S. financial sector, which is now being so widely criticized. To all those who think that the stock market serves only to accommodate rapacious speculators who enrich themselves while asleep, getting richer whether the market rises or falls, the Facebook story is a reminder of the two basics of investing: the long-term and risk. The long-term, because the value attributed to Facebook, the profits of which are minimal but the cost of doing business for which is still modest, is an anticipation of future performance. It is the idea that this company, which has quadrupled its revenues in two years, can in a single decade become a giant worth tens of billion of dollars. Which is precisely the gamble Amazon’s stockholders have made over the last ten years, and who are concerned about its weak returns but fascinated by the explosion in sales. For Facebook, as for Amazon and Google, growth potential seems unlimited.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

The French version of the fashion magazine Elle recently posted an article about ‘Black Power Fashion’ that has triggered a wave of indignation. The article, which has since been pulled off the Web, appeared to belittle Black people and their fashion sense by implying that thanks to the Obamas, African Americans have learned to ‘dress White’ while retaining their ‘Blackness.’ This open letter from France’s Le Figaro, signed by some of the country’s movers and shakers in fashion, the arts and journalism, contains excerpts from the Elle article, and sharply criticizes the employees of the magazine for being clueless to the world outside their glass-covered tower.

From Le Figaro, the open letter to Elle starts off this way:

Elle magazine has permitted us to grasp: In 2012, the ‘Black-geoisie’ has adopted all the White fashion codes.” ["Geoisie" is French slang - an offshoot of the word bourgeois - for something unfashionable that has become "chic."] What’s more, “in this America led for the first time by a Black president, chic has become a plausible option for a community so far pegged to its ‘streetwear’ codes.” That’s right – while Blacks have dressed like hoodlums in hoodies for decades, they have finally understood – thanks to the tutelage of Whites – that they should pay more attention to their appearance. That was the tenor of an article published in the January 13 issue of the weekly magazine so favored by housewives of the “White-geoisie” (since apparently, we now divide the bourgeois by race as well) entitled Black Fashion Power, which sought to analyze the red-carpet success of African-American personalities.

It’s simple: if Blacks are now chic, it’s because they finally have an icon worthy of the name – Michelle Obama – who sets the tone by, “revisiting Jackie O’s wardrobe in a jazzy style.” Yes, because even though she is first lady, Michelle Obama herself had to be inspired by a White role model; and since she has natural rhythm, of course she added a touch of jazz.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

If that’s the real reason this sudden reversal came about, (potential loss of sponsors) the sudden reversal by Komen wouldnt be an honest and dependable representation any more than the bungled previous attempt to be opaque about the real reasons PP was defunded to begin with. There is much more scoop to what’s going on inside Komen than they are saying, which only adds to reasoned minds wondering what’s to hide there, and in this decision to defund and then “allow PP to apply” again

…whose ox got gored that such a stentorian announcement about defunding became a whimper to allow PP back into the ‘good graces’ of Komen again. As the oldtimers say, there’s something fishy about this. But, it will all come out soon, I think. There are investigative reporters at work on it as we speak.

The operative words in Komen’s newest statement reversing themselves, are that Komen “will allow” Planned Parenthood “to apply” to them for grants. (while funding the existing grant for now). But Brinker’s statement says nothing whatsoever about commitment to help fund these programs within PP. There is no funding future in this sense. Only “permission” to apply. Big difference. The application by PP could be turned down in a heartbeat. I’d say to keep one’s eye on those words, for they surely can be weasel words, and many will be keeping an eye on Komen to see exactly how they fund PP, or not, past this funding period.

and also keep an eye on what Shaun Mullen brought up in his post below, about Komen defunding to the tune of many millions of dollars also, medical research at several big research centers, regarding cell research. That defunding still, for now, stands as a done deal in Komen’s eyes. A huge blow to the research centers, and smells again of politics in that defunding also, as there is a long history, save Nancy Reagan, of utter resistance to cell research on the part of the GOP now dominated by the far right religious groups.

Brinker has far far more acumen to know how Komen’s words defunding PP would affect much of the populace. There’s far more going on behind the scenes at Komen than is being said, I think, for Brinker was an ambassador and also the equivilent of ‘hostess’ for visiting dignitaries for a sitting president. To say that they are ‘distressed’ that anyone would imagine anything negative about Komen’s motives, seems entirely either disingenuous or being asleep at the wheel big time. Being an ambassador and ‘hostess’ to dignitaries from across the world, means having to know, in order to fit the job description the utmost in tact, diplomacy, decency, propriety, always watching to see who is going to like and and who is going to rail against any potential pronouncement, and a priori… and utter discretion being the greater part of valour.

Thereby Brinker’s wording in her “retraction” is doubly incomprehensible. Brinker is supposed to be the master at handling ‘people matters.’ Yet, she said as though this was just a little trip up: “We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” president and founder Nancy Brinker said in a statement today. “We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.”

Rather than her statement being about the suffering and anguish caused to poor women who heard of this defunding, and rather than speaking about PP wondering what they would now do to make it up $$-wise( and they seem to have, but only temporarily) and rather than speaking to people who were caused to suffer over this whole matter, it’s about Komen and Brinker being ‘misunderstood.’ My questions remain, whose ox got gored to bring this reversal around… whose heads rolled and why? And especially, how did this public non-profit, HOW did this truly happen that they put so many through so much and now say ooops.

Here is an excerpt from the WaPo article:

By Sarah Kliff, Friday, February 3, 9:41 AM

The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation Friday announced it would revise a controversial new policy that barred the organization from funding Planned Parenthood.

The foundation said that Planned Parenthood would now be eligible to apply for grants. It did not, however, address other reasons Komen has cited for why it might choose not to approve such grants.

“Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation,” a Friday statement said. “ We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities,” the statement continues.

The statement left some ambiguity, however, because it did not mention a second reason Komen has given for ending Planned Parenthood’s funding: That the group did not provide direct mammogram services, but instead referred patients out to other locations.

On Thursday, Komen President Elizabeth Thompson told reporters that the funding decision was unrelated to the Congressional investigation into whether Planned Parenthood was illegally using federal funds to pay for abortions.

Komen founder Nancy Brinker said the organization wants to support groups that directly provide breast health services, such as mammograms. She noted that Planned Parenthood was providing only mammogram referrals.

Planned Parenthood celebrated the news as a victory.

“We are enormously grateful that the Komen Foundation has clarified its grantmaking criteria, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Komen partners, leaders and volunteers,” said Planne d Parenthood president Cecile Richards in a statement. “What these past few days have demonstrated is the deep resolve all Americans share in the fight against cancer, and we honor those who are at the helm of this battle.”

Duke, a progressive university with a strong med school may have ‘a problem, Houston.” They’ve invited Brinker along with four other notable people to do 2012 commencement. Problem may rise up with parts of vocal student body and profs, as they now realize Brinker just cut off Planned Parenthood from Komen funding for breast cancer screenings and breast cancer education for poor and needful women.

Brinker says she and her board convened some new ‘rules.’ That PP got cut off because of new stringent funding rules that preclude any org that is being investigated from receiving funds from Komen… even though, as I read it, Brinker says they fund in over 50 countries worldwide.

. My question would be then, so how do you know if clinics in other countries are being investigated or not? and would you trust third world and dictatorial or faux democratic or corp run governments to ‘investigate’ in all truth and justice? Really?

Here in the US, a republican congressperson began an ‘investigation’ into Planned Parenthood that sounds more like harrassment… “to see if PP is living up to the federal rules for abortion.”

I’m a woman who is a pro life person for myself and my daughters. Meaning I will do all I can, and have, to bring life to fruition, even though the circumstances have been far far from ideal. And for me, that was right. But/and, in no way will I try to pressure all others about what they ought do, especially in cases of rape and incest, abject poverty and being with abusers. If I’m asked, I will say/ offer my thoughts on what I see as precious life in utero, but knowing that most women find that so, even if they think/ feel they cannot continue the life of this embryo. That is why they suffer often with their choices.

The idea that some denigrators of women throw about… that women who come to the heavy decision to terminate the pregnancy are monsters…. reminds me of the spewers of propaganda against the Chinese in WWII [for a US secret at that time: horrible counter-moves against targeted segments of the Chinese in order to provoke rage and ramp up their support to fight Japan], creating posters showing deep yellow skin, slanted eyes and yellow buck teeth, with Chinese soldiers gutting babies on bayonets (this image was used for any Asian who was considered ‘enemy.’ And it is similar bloated propaganda re women. And, this attack on women insisting despite facts (such as I’ve heard in my consulting room for more than 40 years now, often many many years after a woman’s had an abortion and is still in sincere regret and sorrow) that women so choosing to end a pregnancy dont give a good g-d dang, makes no sense for most women I know… So, if I’m asked, I can gently say my piece which is mainly about not panicking, and seeking many means of support if one can, even from strangers if need be … but otherwise, I keep my own counsel.

I despise seeing anti-abortion groups standing on street corners screaming and screeching and bellowing like rutting animals at women who are entering a clinic, projecting onto her, most often falsely, that she’s on her way to go have her 20th abortion as idle entertainment. That projection onto strangers is egregious and in most cases, the bearing of false witness…which is completely antithetical to the premises of the religion the screamers say they follow.

But, I digress. Back to Duke’s invite to Brinker. We’ll have to wait to see what happens next. Brinker is a careerist woman, who has climbed the ladder of influence. Her organization has exploited to the max her sister’s dying request. I dont say that negatively, but with several books by Brinker, tours, speaking engagements, fund raising, putting in to be nominated for awards of all kinds, it appears that every avenue to raise money –and be recognized– has been hit and hard.

I see that the Komen org is 30 years old and claims it has given 2 billion dollars away in 30 years. For some reason, I’d thought it was far, far more than that per year. I’m still going to look at annual report, and also see about FOIA on line item budget for Komen for the Cure. I’d like to know how much the execs get paid, what perks the board gets, where they trim the budget, and most of all, where they dont.

As for Duke, we’ll see who’ll cut off whom, if/when.

Here’s more about Brinker’s life: Brinker in 1982 founded Susan G. Komen for the Cure after promising her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, that she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer. Komen for the Cure says they have invested almost $2 billion to research, community health, advocacy and global programs that serve hundreds of thousands of women in more than 50 countries.

Brinker, herself a breast cancer survivor, was U.S. Ambassador to Hungary (ambassadorships can come from having an ‘in’ via a president, and sometimes by having made a huge monetary contribution in support of that president or just be one of the in-crowd) from 2001 to 2003 and U.S. Chief of Protocol (which is like hospitality charge nurse, offering social times for foreign mission folks, and visiting leaders, and ensuring their time spent in the US is “positive and productive.) from 2007 to the end of the George W. Bush administration.

In 2009, President Barack Obama named Brinker a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for her work to end breast cancer.

She serves as the World Health Organization’s Goodwill Ambassador for Cancer Control and has written four books, including the New York Times best-seller “Promise Me,” about Komen’s growth from a promise made to her sister to the global organization of today.

See also: Shaun Mullen writes about the Komen debacle above the fold today, and Taylor Marsh’s article calling out the liberals for being asleep is farther down the TMV stack.

Mike Keefe, Cagle Cartoons

Mom, Dad: The “Choking Game” Must Be Stopped
by Danny Tyree

Columnist’s note: Let’s get the “But seriously folks…” disclaimer out of the way first. This column’s satirical tone is an exercise in “whistling past the graveyard.” Asphyxiation “games” are deadly serious. Parents must be watchful. The DB Foundation has posted warning signs online at http://chokinggame.net/chokinggame.htm.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a recent survey showed that one in seven students at an unnamed Texas college had participated in “The Choking Game” at least once. The goal of the game is to reach a point where blood flow to the head is cut off and the participant feels tingly and euphoric for a few seconds before passing out.

Either alone or in groups, the participants seek this lofty goal by placing plastic bags over their heads, wrapping ropes or other ligatures around their necks, strangling with bare hands or in extreme cases following tuition into the stratosphere.

A Texas school was used in the survey, but the phenomenon is going on across the entire United States. It is not something students discover in college while away from their parents’ watchful eyes; the average age at which the survey respondents started the practice was 14! And it is not just a harmless fad; four years ago the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported at least 82 deaths among youths up to age 19.

Young people call the game by a lot of names, including “Pass Out,” “the Fainting Game” and “Space Monkey.” Adults have their own name for a brief period of euphoria followed by disappointment, remorse and revulsion. It’s called “Inauguration Day.”

The game is widely known among teens, but most grown-ups (including parents, teachers, and physicians) remain blissfully ignorant. (“The Choking Game? Wasn’t that the one with Gene Rayburn and Charles Nelson Reilly? Fun-eee.”) Parents have a hard time accepting that their shaving, driving teens can revert to six-year-old behavior; give them 500-channel cable, give them iPods, give them Xbox — and they play with the plastic bag!

Both males and females participate in the game, but males made up 87 percent of the fatalities in the CDC study. Apparently girls are more interested in being liberated from male chauvinist attitudes than being liberated from their earthly existence. I mean, you never heard Helen Reddy sing, “I am woman, hear me *GAG* CHOKE *SPUTTER* …in numbers too big to ignore!”

If the underground game goes mainstream, the effects on society will be devastating. The time-honored position of club-hopping “wing man” will suddenly be a buddy who smothers you with his armpit. Gold traders will send world financial markets reeling by dumping the precious metal and putting their money into eBay purchases of “G.I. Joe With Kung Fu Grip.” And I don’t think we really need a new Bravo channel reality show in which judges decide whether a victim’s face is more mauve or fuchsia.

Parents, do not let your precious children be swayed by the “advantages” of this pastime. Yes, it’s cheaper than illicit drugs, but only in the short run. And unlike casual sex, it doesn’t lead to unplanned pregnancies. But if your child’s luck runs out, you may never have grandchildren at all!

Research it. Discuss it. Before you’re choking and sobbing in a funeral parlor.

©2012 Danny Tyree. Danny welcomes reader e-mail responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades”. Danny’s’ weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate and is licensed to run on TMV in full.

Milt Priggee, www.miltpriggee.com

by WALTER BRASCH

Gov. Tom Corbett (R-Pa.) praised Joe Paterno and ordered flags on all state buildings to fly at half-staff for four days.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who had said he was “personally disappointed” in Joe Paterno for not doing more to alert authorities in the Jerry Sandusky case, while acknowledging that Paterno did nothing illegal and followed university rules for conduct.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who, as attorney general, assigned only one investigator to the case in 2009, while devoting almost innumerable personnel and financial resources to prosecute high-profile cases that could help lead him to the governor’s office.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who had the authority to order the arrest of Jerry Sandusky as soon as the claims were made, but who allowed the investigation to drag two years.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who stepped up the investigation only in the third year, after he was elected governor.
That would be the same Tom Corbett who accepted about $200,000 in campaign donations from trustees of Sandusky’s Second Mile foundation and then danced around questions of why, as governor, he authorized a $3 million grant to the Second Mile.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who as an ex-officio member of the Penn State Board of Trustees, with the power to increase or decrease state appropriations to the university, big-footed his presence to demand that the Trustees do something to Joe Paterno.

Now, let’s look at the Board of Trustees. On Jan. 22, the day that Joe Paterno died from lung cancer, the Board issued a honey-dripped PR-laden written commemoration.
That, of course, would be the same Board that, influenced by the harpies of the media and a horde of the public who knew everything about everything, except people and football, had wanted to terminate Joe Paterno’s contract after his teams had losing seasons in 2003 and 2004. He was too old, they said. He was getting senile, they claimed. His coaching strategy was too conservative, they declared with the shrill cry of a wounded hyena. But, an 11-1 season in 2005 quieted their panic. And so they stewed, knowing that a football coach, educator, philanthropist, and humanitarian had a greater reputation than all of them combined.

That would be the same Board that violated every expectation of due process, listened to the other sanctimonious hypocrites who were quick to condemn someone without knowing the facts, and by a cowardly and impersonal phone call violated four levels of the chain of command and fired Joe Paterno hours after he had announced his retirement. It was their pathetic way to make people believe they, not the most recognizable person in Penn State history, were in control. The reality, of course, is they botched the firing in a feeble attempt to protect themselves, not Penn State and, certainly, not the rights of a tenured full professor, who had given 61 years of service to the university.

That, of course, would be the same Board that should have known for at least six months, and probably longer, of a grand jury investigation into Jerry Sandusky’s conduct, but apparently had no crisis management plan to deal with what would become the greatest scandal in its 156-year history.

That, of course, would be the same Board that had operated in a culture of secrecy that regularly violated the state’s Sunshine law and enjoyed its status as receiving state tax moneys while not having to be under the glare of the public right-to-know law.

That, of course, would be the same board that includes the CEOs of U.S. Steel, Merck, and a major division of the Bank of New York Mellon; and an assortment of senior executives from insurance, investment, and education. Even a retired assistant managing editor of The New York Times is on the Board. And, yet, this Gang of 32, which should have known better, bumbled, stumbled, and proved that malfeasance and incompetence is what it should be best known for. For the most part, they acted like undergraduates struggling to earn a grade of “C” in a course in human relations, having already decided they didn’t need the course in business communications.

Now, let’s turn to the new president. The Board forced the resignation of a respected 17-year president for not doing enough to investigate the Sandusky allegations. By most accounts, the new president, formerly the provost and executive vice-president, is a decent person with a good academic reputation. But, is it credible that if the No. 1 person should have known more and done more, how could the No. 2 person be ignorant of the allegations. Nevertheless, the Board sent the newly-minted president out on nothing less than a belated PR field trip to calm the rising storm against the Board for its incompetence and insensitivity in firing Joe Paterno. At three meetings with hundreds of alumni, the new president, facing alumni wrath, did little to alleviate their anger. But, he promised the university would do something—he didn’t know what—he didn’t know how or when—to honor Joe Paterno.

Of course, since the Board was so inept, secret, and hypocritical in its own actions, it had no idea what it was going to do. The Board statement the day of Joe Paterno’s death merely stated the university “plans to honor him,” and is considering “appropriate ways.”

The greatest honor will not come from the Board, the administration, or even the Legislature, many of whom sought the media spotlight to pander to certain voters by condemning the coach. At the statue by Beaver Stadium, thousands of students, staff, faculty, and community residents are coming to pay their respects. Hundreds had met him, for he was one of the more accessible persons in the community, often walking home alone from practices and games; his phone number was in the book; his home was in a quiet residential area not a mansion on a hill reserved for the wealthy. Most of the mourners had never met him, but they all knew him.

On Tuesday, about 27,000 people from all over the United States stood in line up to three hours to walk past the body of Joe Paterno, guarded by past and present scholar-athletes. NFL super-stars and football fans, academics and those who never went to college, all were there to honor the man who was an outstanding quarterback and cornerback who earned an English literature degree from Brown University, one of the more prestigious in the country; a man who later created the “Grand Experiment” to develop and promote a winning football program that would make education and citizenship more important than sports, and would make “success with honor” more than words.

On Wednesday, thousands stood shoulder to shoulder and lined the streets of Penn State and State College, an honor guard as the hearse carrying Joe Paterno slowly moved from the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, past Beaver Stadium, and to a private funeral.

On Thursday, more than 12,000 packed the Bryce Jordan Center for a memorial service. The first 10,000 tickets were claimed within 10 minutes on Tuesday.

Sue Paterno need not have worried when she quietly asked some mourners at the viewing to keep her husband warm. When journalism turns into history, it will be written that Joe Paterno had done more than was expected, in every part of his life. The people, not the governor or the trustees who will quickly be forgotten in the cold, will keep Joe Paterno warm.

[Dr. Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist, former tenured full professor, and author of 17 books. His current one is Before the First Snow: Tales from the Revolution.

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

A Sikh ready for the holy bath at Golden Temple in Amritsar in northern India.

Ever heard of a place where you can enjoy live Western classical music round-the-clock? Perhaps there is none. However, if you are interested in attending a non-stop Indian classical music concert round the year, then the place to visit is the Golden Temple (or Harmandir Sahib) at Amritsar in northern India. This place is the rallying point of the followers of Sikh religion worldwide. Music wafts across with different musicians (Ragis) taking turn to sing … The acoustics are superb and BOSE speakers dot the huge complex.

The total number of Ragas (melodic modes) used in Sri Guru Granth Sahib is 31. At the temple, one can feel the atmosphere charged with a remarkable sense of service and humanity. A huge constant flow of people, nearly 100,000 every day and night, offer prayers at the sanctum sanctorum and partake free food at the Golden Temple complex. It is a unique sight, and experience, not seen anywhere else in the world.

One can lounge anywhere in the area surrounding the Darbar Sahib (the sanctum sanctorum) and the Sarovar (the pond). We enjoyed the Kirtans/Ragas from different spots…even right inside the Darbar Sahib where the holy Guru Granth Sahib is kept (and where you can also see the Ragis), and also from the first and second floor of the sanctum sanctorum.

The generous use of gold at Darbar Sahib is well-known in the world (donated by Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab/Lahore). The floral and decorative art work on the walls, domes and doors is exquisite. No deity or human form … but the best from the Hindu and the Islamic art has been displayed.

On the second floor of the sanctum sanctorum, I could see an inscription in Urdu on one side of the marble floor. I asked those present if anyone knew Urdu so that I could understand the meaning. No one knew this exquisite language (once the language of undivided India’s elite class) that is now becoming extinct.

Later I learnt that most of the art work was done by Muslim artisans, mainly from Agra (home to the Taj Mahal). Many well-known Muslim musicians used to sing kirtans at the Golden Temple before India got divided and Pakistan came into being in 1947. The highly universal and accommodating nature of the Sikh faith is reflected in the Guru Granth Sahib, as also the Golden Temple and other gurdwaras.

In many cities of the world I have seen newly-arrived Pakistanis and others enjoying free board and lodging for days at the gurdwaras.

Every state in India has thousands of holy places and temples belonging to different religions. They have their magnetic pull and beauty. I visit only a few selected ones. I am not exactly excited at the thought of visiting religious places because of the general confusion, noise and lack of sense of cleanliness and hygiene… …

My visit to the Golden Temple was an eye-opener … Such devotion, cleanliness, good free food, music, peace and tranquility. And with no one in particular enforcing order or discipline!!!

Someone asked how we live with uncertainty – we do it every day and have done so since 1948.

Keeping in mind what Iran has done without nuclear weapons, can you imagine what Iran will do with them?

We want Bashar Assad to go. We would like all of our neighbors to be peace-loving democracies.

We face many challenges but are far from helpless.

We have signed onto the Iran sanctions for the last 2 years.
Combined with a credible military threat, sanctions may dissuade Iran.

We are meeting our challenges every day and embody the resilience of the Jewish people. We are even exporting wine to France!

You can be certain of our resilience!

Q&A Session:

There are tactical disagreements with the Obama administration but our security cooperation is excellent!

The greatest threat to peace is Iran’s nuclear program.

As I understand it, Apple’s restrictions are on the sales of iPad-specific books – not PDFs – that are created with the free Apple publishing tool. (I guess I’ll finally have to update to Lion permanently.)

Given that these “books” are unlike any other ebook you’ve seen (except maybe Al Gore’s book or Wired’s iPad edition) — it seems to me that each book is something like a stand-alone application. It’s the thing that I don’t like about the mobile model. But. It’s the model. And it will be until there is a standard.

I’ve played around with the sample from the Biology book, and I like it, as far as it goes. It’s interactive in a somewhat meaningful if unimaginative way. And it’s a “touch” product, for sure. It’s not as interactive as I’d like — for example, it asks you to describe mouthparts and digestive systems …. but where? with pencil and paper? Oh, with the standard “note” feature, I guess. No essays for these answers. Or drawings.

I didn’t see anything that looked like it would encourage collaboration – nothing about class projects or experiments. Nothing that makes the book (it’s biology!) come alive. This is gripe about the content, not the form.

Would love to see lesson plans or the teacher version. Maybe that’s been thought out (I won’t hold my breath).

I don’t have a problem with Apple saying “if you use our free tool to make an interactive book, you must sell it in our store.” If I’m wrong, and Apple is saying that you can’t sell/distribute the PDF version anywhere else, then I will have to revisit this. In the meantime, it’s an interesting baby step with an industry loath to change.

For your reading pleasure:
+John Gruber

• http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/01/19/unprecedented
• http://daringfireball.net/2012/01/apple_education_scope

+Tim Carmody

• http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/01/engage-apple-books-ipad/

+Arnold Kim

• http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/19/a-closer-look-at-ibooks-author-textbooks-and-exclusivity/

When I read Reverend King’s letter from Birmingham jail, I know he was in a defeatest mood for he could not get the support he needed (as you see in the letter) and yet… he hung in there, and along with his very sharp premises dedicated to principle, he eventually succeeded to summon enough others– not all others– but enough others so as to turn the racist tides of his day.

When I read his letter, and its armature for success that he held everyone in the movement to, I see why some movements– no matter their initial worth– fail, devolve into petty complaint, ‘me me me’ and other trivia… and why some succeed for they have a designated leader they believe speaks for them, spiritual self-purifying practices beforehand and during, a clear set of goals and demands, willingness to meet with respect to negotiate, and if need be, to engage in non-violent protest.

One of the things about MLK’s success and other movements lack of success, is that he never deteriorated into making it about himself, about how he was being treated unfairly, about how governments and cops everywhere were bad and wrong. He pointed out abuse he witnessed firsthand, and it was against children and elders and more. He spoke up. But, he did no global condemnations.

Instead, he kept his focus on the Promised Land.

To me, that was why he was a great leader of a movement. He did not devolve into whining, harrassing, or grandstanding egotistically. Even though he could have. He didnt. That to me is the bright proof, that despite whatever foibles and imperfections– MLK had extraordinary discipline of the soul.

Same as some others we know: Mandela, Chavez, Dorothy Stang, Milk, Oscar Romero… all murdered except for one, for being in one’s soul is so very very threatening to some, and often precisely so to those in illicit power or those wanting such.

It is a long letter. I hope you will take the time to read it, as it is a tender, tough manifesto filled with bewilderment, hope, criticsim and yes the most brilliant strategies that lay out the past, present and so possible future for any soul in bondage still.

Lao Tsu and von Clausewitz arent the only ones who ought be studied for tactics and strategy. Add Mahatma, add Lech, add Aung San Suu Kyi, and from Birmingham jail, add MLK.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King, Jr.

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates.

Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?”

We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking.

But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham.

While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.”

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.

Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law.

Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom.

I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.

Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses.

The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible “devil.”

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies–a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place.

The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.

And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”

Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .”

So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it.

They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle–have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Let me take note of my other major disappointment.

I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment.

They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers.

But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood.

We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.”

They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Published in:
King, Martin Luther Jr.

8.5 percent! Wow!!

Perhaps we should take a real good look at the real numbers.

The rate of unemployment was 7.8 percent when you took office, and look how much money you have spent since then trying to improve it. Remember that before you took office our deficit was about $400 billion. Now it’s well over a trillion — $1.5 trillion, more or less, and the national debt totals $15 trillion. Can you even begin to count to 15 trillion, much less deal with that number?

Mike Keefe, Cagle Cartoons

Moreover, as of December there were 6 million fewer jobs than there were in December 2007. You know, when the younger George Bush was president. Oh, and by the way, using the best-case scenario, Mr. Obama, you will end up 4 million short at the end of this year.

By the way, let’s not forget that the Congress was controlled by your party from January 2007 to January 2011. And they held the purse strings!

There are also 170,000 fewer people looking for jobs now, and 42,000 of the new jobs end up being temporary jobs during the Christmas season only.

Also while you are touting the unemployment numbers remember that they are national numbers and elections, even though they are national, really take place at the state level; there, Mr. President, it doesn’t look so good.

Let’s look at the unemployment numbers in some key states:

Florida: 10 percent

Ohio: 8.5 percent

Pennsylvania: 7.9 percent

Michigan: 9.85 percent

Do those numbers worry you, Mr.President? They should. Let’s look at some more, shall we?

In Illinois, your home state, the unemployment rate stands at 10 percent. In Nevada, it is 13 percent. And California, the Bluest of the Blue, it is at 11.3 percent. Do you really think you can’t be beaten with numbers like that?

Even Ron Paul’s chances of winning the White House look good against these numbers!

Republicans need to take a good look at these numbers and run against them, not against each other, and if they do they will win.

Remember, it really is the economy, stupid, and when that’s faltering nothing else matters.

Oh! And let’s not forget that unemployment in the black community is at a whopping 15.8 percent — that is a full point higher than when you took office. Do you expect that black voters will ignore the damage you’ve done to the economy and to them?

Fat chance.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press, 2011). He is the founder and chairman of The Reagan Group and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his website at www.reagan.com, or e-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. ©2012 Mike Reagan. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate and is licensed to run on TMV in full.

That bill is formidable:

* About 800,000 veterans are jobless and many newly discharged veterans worked in depressed industries like manufacturing and construction prior to enlisting.

* Nearly 1.5 million veterans live below the poverty line.

* One in every three homeless adult men is a veteran.

* The veteran population, like the general population, is living longer, and the number of veterans aged 85 or older is expected to grow by 20 percent in the next decade.

Then there are less visible obstacles to reentering civilian life: The inordinate number of veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and severe neurological and other injuries that probably would have killed them in earlier wars before the extraordinary advances in battlefield triage, evacuation and surgery techniques.

Meanwhile, there is good news and bad news when it comes to veterans benefits.

The good news is that although there have been some small fee increases for veterans covered by the military health-insurance program, significant cuts to veterans’ benefits are unlikely and efforts largely led by Republicans to chip away at them won’t go anywhere.

The bad news is that the enormous growth of the Veterans Administration’s budget, which more than doubled over the last decade, will not continue and the VA will feel the impact of the mandatory defense cuts that kick in because the budget deficit supercommittee failed to reach agreement.

The numerous government programs designed to get veterans back to work have been less than successful.

With the exception of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, signed into law by President Bush and which helps more veterans go back to school, is working, but President Obama’s Council on Veterans Employment is not despite the fact that the federal government hired over 70,000 veterans in both 2009 and 2010. This is because employers are doing little hiring, veterans or otherwise.

In November, Obama signed a bill offering tax credits to employers who hire unemployed or disabled veterans, but it is much too early to tell whether this will improve the jobs picture.

However, so many of the reports coming out of that country about the government’s corruption, the incompetence of its military and the continuing barbarism by some of its people have made me pause and, yes, reconsider several times recently.

Take the barbaric — there’s that word again — acts perpetrated against a poor, defenseless 15-year-old girl by her own flesh-and-blood because she refused to go into prostitution.

There have been so many other instances — too many — of similar atrocities and human rights violations, that one sometimes must wonder: Is this what we are spilling our blood for and wasting our treasure for “over there”?

Some will say, we are still there because of 9/11. I thought we had killed its mastermind and have decimated al-Qaeda.

Some will say, we are fighting over there for our national security. Show me how.

Some will say we are fighting there to bring some democracy and human rights over there. Are we?

Yes, we do sometimes see similar barbaric acts in our own country. However, such exceptions, such aberrations in our culture should not be a straw man to shoot at in this tragedy.

CODA:

So, given the interest and since it has been more than three years since I wrote about it here, let me try it again, with a different title and a few minor updates.

One of the most difficult-to-answer questions bi-lingual people are asked is, “What language do you dream in?”

Even if you speak only one language, think about it: Do you remember words from your dreams?

For me, however, the cat is out of the bag. I must dream in Spanish.

You see, although it doesn’t happen that often any more, there are still times when my English-born wife gently, and sometimes not so gently, awakens me in the middle of the night to tell me that I have been talking in my sleep again — in Spanish.

Invariably, she will ask me in the morning with a tinge of suspicion what I was talking about. Invariably, my answer is that I don’t remember, which most of the time is the truth. Needless to say, at my age of nearly 72 she need not worry — not even about my dreams.

Dreaming in Spanish is sadly one of the last vestiges that Spanish was once my native language, my mother tongue. Just as sad, the last time I was truly fluent in any language was 62 years ago, when I was 10 years.

That is not to say that I am not proficient in English or in other languages. It is just a shame that I am so rusty at my native language, that I am no longer fluent in my first acquired language, Dutch. If one listens closely and reads carefully, one will detect a slight accent in my spoken English and may notice some unusual constructs in my writing.

Some will say that this is a small price to pay for speaking several languages. Perhaps. But, when it comes to languages I feel like an orphan in language land. Let me explain.

When I was small, living in my native Ecuador, I spoke Spanish with the fluency that any 10-year-old has in his or her mother tongue. Spanish was the only language I spoke, with the exception of a couple of English and Dutch words I picked up from my Dutch father.

These were words and phrases the meaning of which I did not necessarily know at the time, such as “such is life,” which my father mused when he got into a philosophical mood, or the Dutch verdomme! (damn!) during other less reflective occasions.

It was at that young age that we moved to Curaçao, in the Netherlands Antilles. Living in a Dutch “company town” and attending a Dutch school, my sisters and I became fluent in Dutch in less than a year.

After four years of “total immersion” in Dutch, and after picking up some “choice” words in the local Papiamento (a delightful language derived mainly from Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, and West African languages), our family moved to the Netherlands, where I finished high school.

By then, my acquired Dutch was already better than my native Spanish. Since Dutch is hardly a universal language, Dutch high school students received two to four years of solid education in English, German, French and/or Spanish. Having three languages under my belt and with knowledge of other languages, the reader may ask, what is the problem? Well, I am not finished yet.

After graduating from high school, I immigrated to the United States and joined the U.S. Air Force a year later. The military must have been desperate for new recruits, because my English at the time was, at best, “broken.” Amazingly, and much to my delight, my first assignment was as an “airborne radio operator,” flying radar patrol missions over the North Atlantic. One of my most important tasks was to communicate, by “voice radio,” essential military and flight information to ground-based units. Since the ground radio operators could barely understand my thick accent, I soon became the best Morse code radio operator in the U.S. Air Force!

Because I virtually stopped learning Spanish at the youthful age of 10, my Spanish vocabulary does not include adult, “X-rated” lingo. This made for some very awkward situations during my early years in the military, when I gravitated to groups of Latino troops and could not understand half of their very “folkloric” conversations.

Today, I find that this particular folkloric gap in my Spanish is no longer such a big problem, but I am still paying for having lost command of the Spanish language. For example, when I am at a loss for a word in Spanish, I often resort to “Hispanicizing” an English word. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

During a recent trip to Ecuador, I had to laugh aloud when I read in a local newspaper that an American Airlines flight had been forced to make an emergency landing in Miami with 25 Ecuadoreans on board “con intoxicación.”

When I showed my relatives the headlines and explained that I visualized the pilot requesting an emergency landing because he had 25 drunken Ecuadoreans on board, it was their turn to laugh.

They explained to me that the Ecuadoreans were not intoxicated, but rather suffered from food poisoning. When I then told them that I was “muy embarazado” about my poor Spanish, they did not know whether to laugh or to cry at the news that I was very pregnant, especially since they had always considered me to be quite an upright, male member of the family.

Nevertheless, my orphan days in language land may be coming to an end. One of the most promising signs that English may be finally becoming my new “mother tongue” is that I now think that I think in English — except for when I “lose it” in stress situations and blurt out to my grandson “¡Cuidado!” (Watch out!), or my PG-13 “¡Caramba!” and everyone stares at me.

Now, if I could just quit speaking Spanish in my sleep …

Happy New Year and be careful of what you dream — and in what language.

Graphic via shutterstock.com

Heaven, detained once before at an Occupy rally in October, says her rap sheet is like lines on a résumé (“It shows that I’m active with the community and that I care about people’s opinions”) and that she plans to run for president in 2036 after a stop brief in the Senate.

Ms. Chamberlain (no descendant of Neville, by all evidence) takes me back over seven decades when I was her age and preparing to become a foot soldier in World War II, but my teen-age rap sheet was different.

College had become unreal, unbearable, so I signed up for a summer in the Maine woods on a Federal Youth Project, an odd choice for a kid who had never been away from city streets or held a shovel or an ax.

It was a fiasco, of course. I rode all night on the Boston & Maine Railroad, drank coffee on an empty stomach, threw up at 3 A.M., arrived in camp for a checkup by a gaunt woman doctor who sent me into a panic by fingering my scrotum and, after a day in the woods that is now a merciful blank, I was put back on a southbound train. So much for a would-be Paul Bunyan from the Bronx and, all in all, no preparation for going into the Army a year later to train for hand-to-hand combat.

But if I was afraid, and I certainly was, I was also restless. I couldn’t concentrate on classes so that fall, when the Daily News had lost enough Irish Catholic copy boys in the draft to start hiring Jews, I left school and took a job there in some blind urge to meet what was coming head-on, an eager lemming packing his bags for a seaside vacation. If I was going to be shoved into the world, I wanted to take some experience with me, even if it meant being drafted before my college exemption ran out.

In four months, I learned a few things. While waiting to run errands, I taught myself to touch-type. Each day I carried gallons of coffee in cardboard containers to rewrite men with headphones while their fingers flew across keyboards and copy editors who sat around a horseshoe-shaped table pushing thick pencils, smoking and gossiping. (One of them, a nasty man who never let a copy boy keep the change, was later charged with treason for failing to stop moonlighting as a flack for the Japanese government after Pearl Harbor.)

MORE.

That’s what the buycandy buywine buybeer folks would have us believe.
But those are degraded images.

Long ago, there were far brighter symbols for this ending of one revolution and beginning a new revolution of earth around sun…

Long ago, the child of ‘the new year,’ was named Dionysus; and as an infant he was carried about by the old men Silenus and Hermes.

Back in that day, the child Dionysus, was born at this time of year …when the dark is lifting and the light of day is growing and remaining with us longer…

Long ago, the child represented bright new life, fresh imagination, sunny impetuosity, joyous spirit without end.

Though in late forms, Dionysus was degraded into the ‘God of drunkenness,’ in earlier times, the way I would put it, is it seems he may have stood for the kind of psychic intoxication– that comes from knowing what could be called the et Deus, the God in all things.

And the old man who carried the child in his arms, represented the senex, that is, the old wise man; the one who had lived long, who knew the preciousness of new life, the locations of the ‘trip and fall-down’ places, the detours and long-cuts, the underground pathways through…
and the old man was the child’s protector.

New Year is a Time of Mending and Melding: The Elders Need the Young, and The Young Need Their Elders
Long ago, the child and the old man were not separate ideas, but one. The older one did not die in order to be replaced by the younger. Instead, they represented a hieros gamos of sorts, a sacred union… two critical aspects of inner nature, that when melded together by inquiry, plans laid, and actions taken, created a third: a more conscious and awakened psyche.

If one were severed from the other, that is, wisdom separated from joyous potential… than disorder would follow. Ennui, self-centeredness, immaturity of outlook, not seeing oneself accurately, defining oneself as ‘always right,’ or ‘always oppressed by others,’ peevishness, loneliness.

One without the other, creative life without the long view, wisdom without action of invention, could cause each to falter, eventually go awry, then sicken and die… for lack of their life’s work in balance with one another… enthusiasm and a reliable over-and-inner sight.

In our time, in reality, many older persons remain in high spirit by creating deep friendships with the very young, and/or with ideas and attitudes that carry fresh vitality.

In our time too, many of the young feel they are living in the shelter of a mountain, because they are near the heart of an elder who is reasonably aged and wise in love, loyalty, praise and prescience.

The ancient mythos of the very old and the very young, is not just a nice story. Both wiser consciousness and the energy of youth are strong in each individual’s psyche…if both are allowed room and nourished, by inquiry and actions…

As a pair, the wise old one and the newly born potential are the essence of creative power that can make ideas manifest through deliberate actions… much needed in our world, so that decent wishes can become manifest in progressions through ‘inspirited’ and focused actions.

In each person’s psyche, regardless of spare number of years lived, there is a senex function too. This is sometimes symbolized by ‘the wise old man’ in mythos.
Even in the very young, there is a source of wisdom, uncanny and reliable, if it is sought out and acted upon… it tends to increase.

In the psyche too, despite a person’s slim number of years lived, or many gathering decades, there is also an eternally young spirit, one that never, ever, grows old.

Thus, even in those older, even in the frail elderly, there is a source of leaping in spirit, of laughing, of creating anew daily, each according to their own capacities.

New Year’s was once a time when people turned to consciously ‘remember,’ reclaim these dual aspects of themselves once again; The wiser, patient self, and the ever-leaping inventive one.
They strove to rejoin this duality of the senex and the puer (the eternal boy) (puella, the eternal girl—both positive in terms of energy, but can become negative in those adults who want to remain as child only, eschewing all long term responsibility, for instance) in themselves… after a long year of being worn down and away from center… having been in some ways ‘parted out’ from true self…

But even now, we can still find the old rituals being encacted amongst agricultural people who marry the old seed to the new seed, who honor the ancestors while welcoming new life… there is a time of year at winter solstice, when human beings, since time out of mind, have sought to join one valuable aspect of the core self, to another venerable aspect of human dignity… and some postulate that this sudden ‘reassembling’ oneself, is prompted by the sunlight staying longer and longer with us… that we are affected, just as the earth is affected, moved, to bloom again.

Thus, the rituals are in preparation for the year ahead… This time, at the New Year’s turn is, literally, the setting of intention in stone, rather than all watery a set of wishes for the New Year that runs out all over the place.

Thus, we make rituals and prayers and repasts and such that recall and help us to be rejoining the steady to the spontaneous;? the more arid to the empathic; the thoughtful to the impetuous; ?the longing for life, to the life spark itself…

The home which in some part, we have all come from… that we are in some part striving to return to now at the turn of the year…
In the tiny semi-rural village I grew up in long ago, population 600, just a very few weeks from now, you’d tramp way out into the fields with us in preparation for disking new ground. You’d clean and then open the sluice gates on the creek, letting the new water join the old water

…and you’d see how the metal spades of the diskers opened the dry gray earth down to the moist black-rich-black earth that has always lain underneath?… and you’d see how cleaning the weeds and detritus out of the sluice gates made the old water leap?… and you’d see how this let the new water join the old water, and create currents never realized before …

May you hold this idea—the ever young spirit in yourself… and the true wisdom you carry… all in your heart, together, throughout the entire year.

dr.e
————-CODA
The symbols of scythe and hourglass (later additions) and the baby sometimes carrying ‘first flower’ of the fields, and other objects including ‘new light’ surrounding the turn of the year… carry also many roots in ancient religions and mythos, Greek, Asian, Middle Eastern, Africa, North Countries, Teutonic, Celtic, Mezo-American, Roman, Slavic, Polynesian, Native, old, old tribal groups that are now in modern guise, and many more.

The breaking apart of the wiser psyche from the energetic psyche, and the repair, remelding of same, appears to be a deep archetypal pattern that appears to surface in many diverse persons across the ancient world without disparate groups ever having had contact with one another.

As you see, it rises in us too, near the time of winter’s sunlight returning to us… as in ancient times. Often we ritualize this time in the ancient ways without ever realizing it… with New Year’s resolutions.

Think of it, most of those are aimed toward a new melding of the child spirit with the wisest force of the psyche in order to bring certain matters closer, do good in the world, enjoy oneself from time to time, and to create anew, and… to FINISH what creative endeavors one has started if it carries meaning, and to discard it if it does not.

Prescient and precise. Since time out of mind.

In January 2009, with a new president about to be inaugurated, we wrote a column about the stories we preferred not having to write, but knew we would. Three years later, we are still writing about those problems; three years from now, we’ll still be writing about them.

We had wanted the U.S. Department of the Interior to stop the government-approved slaughter of wild horses and burros in the southwest, but were disappointed that the cattle industry used its money and influence to shelter politicians from Americans who asked for compassion and understanding of breeds that roamed freely long before the nation’s “Manifest Destiny.”

We wanted to see the federal government protect wolves, foxes, and coyotes, none of whom attack humans, have no food or commercial value, but are major players in environmental balance. But, we knew that the hunting industry would prevail since they see these canines only as competition.

We wanted to see the Pennsylvania legislature stand up for what is right and courageously end the cruelty of pigeon shoots. But, a pack of cowards left Pennsylvania as the only state where pigeon shoots, with their illegal gambling, are actively held.

For what seems to be decades, we have written against racism and bigotry. But many politicians still believe that gays deserve few, if any, rights; that all Muslims are enemy terrorists; and publicly lie that Voter ID is a way to protect the integrity of the electoral process, while knowing it would disenfranchise thousands of poor and minority citizens.

We will continue to write about the destruction of the environment and of ways people are trying to save it. Environmental concern is greater than a decade ago, but so is the ignorant prattling of those who believe global warming is a hoax, and mistakenly believe that the benefits of natural gas fracking, with well-paying jobs in a depressed economy, far outweigh the environmental, health, and safety problems they cause.

We will continue to write against government corruption, bailouts, tax advantages for the rich and their corporations, governmental waste, and corporate greed. They will continue to exist because millionaire legislators will continue to protect those who contribute to political campaigns. Nevertheless, we will continue to speak out against politicians who have sacrificed the lower- and middle-classes in order to protect the one percent.

We will continue to write about the effects of laying off long-time employees and of outsourcing jobs to “maximize profits.” Until Americans realize that “cheaper” doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” we’ll continue to explain why exploitation knows no geographical boundaries.

The working class successfully launched major counter-attacks against seemingly-entrenched anti-labor politicians in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states. But these battles will be as long and as bitter as the politicians who deny the rights of workers. We will continue to speak out for worker rights, better working conditions, and benefits at least equal to their managers. We don’t expect anything to change in 2012, but we are still hopeful that a minority of business owners who already respect the worker will influence the rest.

There are still those who believe education is best served by programs manacled by teaching-to-the-test mentality, and are more than willing to sacrifice quality for numbers. We will continue to write about problems in the nation’s educational system, especially the failure to encourage intellectual curiosity and respect for the tenets of academic integrity.

Against great opposition, the President and Congress passed sweeping health care reform. But, certain members of Congress, all of whom have better health care than most Americans, have proclaimed they will dismantle the program they derisively call “Obamacare.”

During this new year, we will still be writing about the unemployed, the homeless, those without adequate health coverage—and against the political lunatics who continue to deny Americans the basics of human life, essentials that most civilized countries already give their citizens.

We had written forcefully against the previous president and vice-president when they strapped on their six-shooters and sent the nation into war in a country that posed no threat to us, while failing to adequately attack a country that housed the core of the al-Qaeda movement. We wrote about the Administration’s failure to provide adequate protection for the soldiers they sent into war or adequate and sustained mental and medical care when they returned home. The War in Iraq is now over, but the war in Afghanistan continues. The reminder of these wars will last as long as there are hospitals and cemeteries.

We had written dozens of stories against the Bush–Cheney Administration’s belief in the use of torture and why it thought it was necessary to shred parts of the Constitution. We had hoped that a new president, a professor of Constitutional law, would stop the attack upon our freedoms and rights. But the PATRIOT Act was extended, and new legislation was enacted that reduces the rights and freedoms of all citizens. At all levels of government, Constitutional violations still exist, and a new year won’t change our determination to bring to light these violations wherever and whenever they occur.

The hope we and this nation had for change we could believe in, and which we still hope will not die, has been minced by the reality of petty politics, with the “Party of No” and its raucous Teabagger mutation blocking social change for America’s improvement. We can hope that the man we elected will realize that compromise works only when the opposition isn’t entrenched in a never-ending priority not of improving the country, but of keeping him from a second term. Perhaps now, three years after his inauguration, President Obama will disregard the disloyal opposition and unleash the fire and truth we saw in the year before his election, and will speak out even more forcefully for the principles we believed when we, as a nation, gave him the largest vote total of any president in history.

We really want to be able to write columns about Americans who take care of each other, about leaders who concentrate upon fixing the social problems. But we know that’s only an ethereal ideal. So, we’ll just have to hope that the waters of social justice wear down, however slowly, the jagged rocks of haughty resistance.

[Dr. Walter Brasch is an award-winning social issues columnist, former newspaper investigative reporter and editor, and journalism professor. His latest book is Before the First Snow, a social issues mystery novel. Rosemary Brasch is a former secretary, Red Cross national disaster family services specialist, labor activist, and university instructor of labor studies.]