Shining City on A Hill

According to the Dictionary of American History, 2003, “The term "city on a hill" was initially invoked by English-born Puritan leader John Winthrop. The concept became central to the United States' conception of itself as an exceptional and exemplary nation.

In 1630, aboard the Arbella before the ship's departure for the New World, Winthrop recited a sermon to his fellow travelers. Drawing upon Matthew 5:14–15, Winthrop articulated his vision of the prospective Puritan colony in New England as "a city upon a hill": an example to England and the world of a truly godly society. According to historian Perry Miller, Winthrop believed that this religious utopia would be acclaimed and imitated across the Old World, precipitating the Puritans' glorious return to England. This never happened; instead, as settlements like Boston became prosperous, material success and demographic change undermined the religious imperative.

Nonetheless, throughout American history a secularized variation on Winthrop's theme has expressed the United States' more general and ongoing sense of exceptionalism—the nation's sociopolitical separation from, and supposed superiority to, the Old World. During the 1980s, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, President Ronald Reagan attempted to recover the image of America as "a shining city on a hill."”

Subsequently to the Puritans establishing their hegemony over New England, there were extensive laws passed restricting the civil and religious rights of Catholics, since Catholics, for the Puritans, exemplified the Old World. Since the Puritans perceived themselves as superior to anything having to do with the Old World, it was perfectly all right, and indeed, righteous to prevent the contamination of this wonderful “City on a Hill” which was to be a religious beacon to the rest of the world.

Thus, even though the original religious underpinnings to this concept have been lost, the concept of “American exceptionalism” was established, and since we were so exceptional and superior, it became the right and privilege of America to tell other nations how to run their business.  Particularly any country that had some resource that we wanted, or who simply stood in the way of our achieving what we wanted.  Examples are the corporate control of Central America by the United Fruit Industry in order for American citizens to have a plentiful supply of bananas.  Or the invasion of Iraq so oil corporations would have control of Iraqi oil supplies.

This idea of American exceptionalism has led some in our generation of Americans to the belief that we need to secure our borders to protect ourselves from, as Ronald Reagan called them, “the brown hordes of Central and South America.”  And Reagan even changed the “City on the Hill” to “The shining city on the hill”.  It has gotten to the point that some people in our country are viewing the unaccompanied children who are coming to the United States for refuge, as an invasion!  What are they afraid of? 

So often when people are really afraid of something, but can’t articulate that fear, another false fear is expressed such as that these children carry diseases (not true), these children are terrorists in disguise (too absurd to comment on), the children are carrying drugs (where on those little bodies?).  It is my opinion that what people are afraid of, and are being made afraid for political reasons, is that there will be new and radical ideas brought with these refugees, and that they will somehow dim the shining city on the hill. 

Come on, folks.  We have feared the Germans, the Irish, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Italians, the Blacks, and are still a really great nation.  Not great in the sense of the Roman Empire, but great in the sense that we still have a modicum of belief in our rule of law, and that all people, whether male, female, brown, black, pink, orange, purple or polka dotted, ought to be equal before that law.  This is such a novel concept to some people in our country these days. These brown people are no more a danger to our way of life than former peoples have been. 

The relatively small number of people coming in to our country from the South cannot, will not, and do not want to, dim that “shining light on the city on the hill”.  The only people who can do that are those of us who are already here.  

In my opinion, those people who are demanding these refugee children be sent back to a really violent environment have at least put a lamp shade on the light. To our shame.

Not a Good Memory Lane

Sometimes I really hate my trips down memory lane, and the news this week brought back memories I certainly wish I didn’t have.  No, I’m not talking about the shoot down of MH17, or the never-ending conflicts between Hamas and Israel.   

No, I’m talking about the looks of hatred on the faces of the anti-immigrant protesters in Murietta, CA screaming at children to go home after the children had risked life and limb to get here.  These are children!  What brought my memories to mind are some events that have happened in the 1980’s up to the present centered around the three Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala where these children are from.   

I will only go back to 1980 shortly after Ronald Reagan was elected President.  He had not been sworn into office yet in 1/1981, so don’t think we can blame him too much for this.  But on 12/2/1980, three Maryknoll nuns and a lay woman, who were in El Salvador working with the poor of that country were attacked, raped and murdered beside a road by soldiers who had attended the School of the Americas, run by our country, where they had learned the art of murder, rape, terror and torture as a political weapon.  Although their names were well known, they were never brought to justice.  I quote from an article from of all places, The Telegram-Tribune (forerunner of The Tribune), reprinted from the Toronto Globe and Mail, 1/14/91. 

“The worst fears of El Salvador’s leftist political leaders came true during the week-end when a San Salvador radio station broadcast a threat from two of the country’s death squads to kill opposition and labor leaders, priests and intellectuals…The statement reads, “At this time we are going to talk in all frankness about our philosophical basis and the politics of our movement.  This country’s society is divided into three classes: a superior creative class composed essentially of specialists and large landholders; a smaller class that tries to imitate this superior class; and an inferior rustic class that is made up essentially of workers, poor peasants, students and small businessmen.  Another group exists that we hold in low regard and consider very small – the dangerous intellectual class that tries to contaminate the above mentioned classes…The superior capitalist class in our country is naturally the strongest, and its destiny, without question, is to govern and regulate the inferior classes.  And what is more, it has a duty to exploit, dispose of, conquer and even exterminate elements of these inferior classes when the benefits of capitalism require such…Our adversaries, the subversives and the great inferior mass, must be exterminated, or at least their leaders.”   

The article goes on to quote the then Archbishop of San Salvador Arturo Rivera y Damas lamenting during a sermon of the fear and repression facing opposition parties:  “Of course all of these negative aspects in one way or another limit freedoms and these (groups) should not be found among us.  The death squads should not exist.”  Archbishop Romero was assassinated during Sunday Mass on March 24, 1980. 

In 1985, Jeff Cohen from Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), published in CommonDreams.org, 12/13/2004, an article about Gary Webb, who, while a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, CA, wrote a three-part series concerning the links between cocaine traffickers, the crack epidemic in the Los Angeles area, and the CIA-organized right-wing Nicaragua Contra army of that era.  It was during that time that Ronald Reagan called the Contra’s, “…the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers”.  The article by Cohen quoted from an article by Brain Parry/Brian Barger printed in the Associated Press.   

The sad ending to Gary Webb’s expose was that he was monumentally attacked by the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.  This was the time of the Iran-Contra Scandal where White House aide Oliver North writes a memo outlining plans to use $12 million in profit from drug sales in Los Angeles and from Iran arms sales for Contra aid, and Ronald Reagan was flying high.  He was nicknamed the “Teflon President” because nothing stuck to him.  But back to Gary Webb.  Gary Webb was forced to leave the Mercury News, and had to endure the agony of these attacks.  He was found shot to death on 12/10/04.  He died of two gunshots to the head.  It was called a suicide. 

Printed on Saturday, 1/19/2013, in The Observer, Guatemala’s President, Otto Perez Molina, announced the west’s “war on drugs” has failed and continuing with prohibition will only cost more lives.  “A message should be sent to the leaders of the countries with the biggest drug markets.  They must think not only of… the context of their country, but of what is happening in the world, in regions such as Central America, where this destruction, this weakening of democracy, is happening.  They must be open to recognizing that the struggle against drugs, in the way it has been conducted, has failed.” 

And so the violence in these little countries has escalated to the point where parents are sending these children, most unaccompanied, on this long and dangerous journey in the care of people who are, because of their predatory nature, nicknamed ‘coyotes’.  Think about your own children, for heaven‘s sake.  Think about how awful the human environment must be that parents believe they must do this to keep their children alive.  It reminds me of someone I knew who has since died who was Jewish and from Hungary.  He and his family had made it to the border before being apprehended, but at the last moment his father thrust his wife and two children to safety, knowing he could never make it.  We honor those people who fled from both the Nazis and the Communists, but we scream and yell and shout obscenities at children who are fleeing from similar conditions, but conditions that are of our making!! 

Why hasn’t the radical religious right risen up in righteous wrath at this treatment of children.  The Bible is packed with references to justice, and taking care of orphans, and doing good to those who may not have your best interests at heart.  One would think their cries could be heard across the land.  Or are they like those who, in the King James version, Jesus called hypocrites, “…worse than whitened sepulchers”.  In other words, full of rotting bones.

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy! Just Not Yet!!

Today is the anniversary of our beloved adopted granddaughter Martha’s death.  When she died I, nor anyone else in our family, had ever heard of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).  Although we were smart enough not to go down the dead end road of, “If only we had done this or that”, we still questioned what had caused her, at the age of 11 ½ years of age, to take her own life.

I was at the time a county supervisor, and our public health director talked me into going to Chicago for a workshop some months after Martha’s death.  That is where I first heard the term, learned what pre-natal alcohol and illicit drug use can do to the developing fetal brain, and what we as a county might be able to do. And why Martha simply could not make rational decisions.  Over the next several years our county staff, with me standing on the sidelines cheering them on, and with the help of our county admin officer and a fellow supervisor who went on to become our state district assemblyman, began what I was pleased to be named, Martha’s Place.

Martha’s Place is a diagnostic and treatment center for children 0-5 years of age who exhibit at-risk behavior problems including but not limited to FASD.  Since Martha’s Place opened its doors on January 7, 2007, my last day in office, it has triaged over 1,000 children.  Children are diagnosed for medical problems by a pediatrician, for psychological problems by a trained and licensed psychologist, and either then referred out into the community for treatment if that is available, or the child receives treatment at Martha’s Place.  Martha’s Place also counsels the care giver of the children who are being treated at Martha’s Place.  These caregivers can be anyone from foster parents, relatives, or the adoptive or natural parents of the children.

Particularly in our county which has become a prime vineyard and wine center, wine is a very socially acceptable drink, and there are numerous wine clubs where people get together at various wineries to taste, and just enjoy the good times.  And all of this is really great, and much to be delighted in.

However, and I really emphasize this point, if any woman who is pregnant and is a member of one of these fun groups, she should not drink the wine!  Some women metabolize the alcohol very nicely, but the problem is that you don’t know if you are one of these women or not until after the damaged baby is born!  In fact, whenever you see a pregnant woman who has a drink in her hand, be terribly rude and tell her not to drink it!  This is one of those times when rudeness is not only acceptable, but practically mandatory. 

Also, this is not being against drinking alcohol!  It is only about drinking alcohol if you are pregnant.  A motto that we should all carry with us at all times is: If you are pregnant, please let that wine age an extra 9 months.  Then, if not nursing, enjoy it to the fullest, knowing that you have protected that little stinky, noisy, demanding bundle of joy to the fullest. 

Remember: Let that wine age an extra 9 months, at least.  Then enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!!!

 

 

Aaarrgghh!!!!

Last week I couldn’t think of anything to write about, but this week there is plenty!!  But first off, I want to wish a very Happy Fourth of July to all of those who believe that our freedoms are for all of us – not just for some! 

Of course anyone who knows me knows what I will be writing about – the Supreme Court’s decision this week re: Hobby Lobby and birth control, which stemmed from the court’s decision that corporations are people.  The first two of these next three statements I have purloined from other places, and the third from my husband.  I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one; when one of them gets Baptized, or when one of them gets pregnant!  Until then, there needs to be a really strong country-wide grassroots effort to get that silly decision about corporate personhood overturned.

But there were another two incidents, not getting nearly as much media coverage, but in my mind they should have.  Does anyone remember during the 2012 Presidential race when Rick Santorum had an interview with someone, it makes no difference who it was, and Santorum brought up the fact that birth control was somehow immoral and needed to be done away with?  Now I know that Santorum is a very, very conservative Catholic, and that he has every right to be that.  At the time, most people simply thought that Santorum was a real nut job to be even discussing something that was so set into law.  After this last week’s court decision, it occurred to me that we had better start listening to what Santorum is saying.  And then later in the day I saw another current interview with Santorum and Tucker Carlson, to be viewed by just googling Rick Santorum and voting: 

 “Were we ready for an election when the United States was formed to have everybody in the United States vote? Well, our Founders didn’t think so. They limited the people who could vote in an election. Now, you could say, ‘that’s horrible, that’s terrible.’ Well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But it was a decision that was made to make sure that there was some continuity and stability within the government that was consistent with the values the government was founded upon.” 

The big question then becomes, who defines the values the government was founded on.  According to the radical religious right it was founded on fundamentalist Christian values, even though those fundamentalist values didn’t surface until the early 20^th century!  Is Rick Santorum the bell wether (sheep) for the radical religious right in the sense that he goes first with their current radical notion they want to get into the public consciousness gently, but then eventually becomes what the radical religious right works for overtly?  This combined with the efforts in all Republican states to limit access to the polls by minorities and the elderly, who tend to vote Democratic, gives me the chills.  Will the religious radical right attempt to extend its obsession with political power to only land owning males, preferably white, and radical right Christians?  It is my belief that this is something that all rational people need to really keep an eye on.  I would hope to the high heavens that I am wrong, but still with the history of that bunch, their obvious denigration of women and minorities, I think we need to be very aware.

But getting back to the Supreme Court’s decision this week and the contention by some that it only applied to some forms of contraception thought to be abortifacients (which they are not), the following day the court confirmed that they were referring to all forms of birth control.  And with that, lining up to claim religious belief sensibilities, are corporations who don’t want to hire or serve LBGT people, and who don’t want to provide birth control.  Please don’t think this will stop with one case!

I don’t know about you, but as an adult, intelligent, rational and sane woman, I am really p@$#%& over this decision.  Not only has it violated the religious liberty of Hobby Lobby employees who disagree with this policy, it has placed what a corporation wants over the medical needs of its women employees, and placed the concerns of corporations before the needs of any woman anywhere, and that includes me at some future point in my life.  Any woman who votes for anyone but a Democrat in the next election needs to have her head examined!!  Oh, wait!  Emotional health can only be provided by an acceptance of the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior according to the religious beliefs of some, so getting needed mental health therapy is a violation of some other people’s religious beliefs. 

Aaarrrgghh!!!!