patrickmurfin

In previous years I have blogged, at great length, I might add, on the predictable outrages of GeorgeW. Bush’s various State of the Union Addresses.  It seems to be required duty if one dare to enter fray of competitive political blogging.  And I meant to do it.  I really did.  I sat in front of my TV—and promptly dozed of minutes into the stultifying performance.  Some how I don’t think I was the only one.

Even the talking heads on network and cable coverage (for which I did wake up in time to monitor) seemed bored by and dismissive of the product delivered by the lamest duck of all Presidents in recent memory—public approval ratings of about 30%, the House and Senate in opposition hands, his own party in disarray and its coalition dissolving, the next president widely assumed to be a Democrat.  The delivery was lack luster and most of the content re-cycled from earlier SOA, including a saber-rattling claim that an evil rogue state—this time Iran—may be developing weapons of mass destruction.

As far as I can tell the only tidbits of “news” came out of the speech.  First was an almost missed aside that after troop levels in Iraq are brought down on account of “victory,” American armed forces will remain on the ground in a new  “protective overwatch mission”—Orwellian code for the long cherished NeoCon dream of maintaining vast military bases in Iraq from which to dominate the entire region.

Second was a somewhat garbled threat to veto funding bills that do not include a 50% reduction in “Congressional ear-marks” and to order cabinet departments not to act on earmarks “not voted on by Congress”—those noted only in memoranda of agreements in the committee stage.  But like many other Bush initatives, he comes to the table week and soft on the issue.  He used complicity with earmarks to buy support of many of his unpopular positions through the years, or allowed his congressional allies to do it for him.  These pay offs contributed to the soaring deficit, albeit not more than Bush’s own out of controle spending on the war.   And the new executive order is of questionable Constitutional legality because final language in most bill includes blanket adoption of off committee agreements on earmarks inseperable from the rest of the legeislation.

But I am slipping into an analysis of the speech, something I swore I would not do.

Instead, like just about everyone else, I was stunned by another development yesterday that seemed to darf the SOU and the shrinking midget who delivered it.  Of course I am refering to the “pass the torch” endorsement of Barack Obama by Senator Edward Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, and Representative Patrick Kennedy.

As usual, the media, always aware of the drawing power of the Kennedy name and legacy, were in hyperbolic overdrive.  Over on MSNBC Chris Mathews was so over the top he needed to be hosed down.  Yet it is almost possible to forgive the over reaction.  This was not just another political endorsement.  It was both a vicious slap at Bill Clinton (pointedly not at Hillary) and an anointment, for the first time, of an heir to Camalot outside the Kennedy family.  Now, by any strech of the immagination, that’s news.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told aids that she was “tranfixed”and “stunned” by the development.  Other heavy weight endorsements have followed and will increase in the days aheard stripping Clinton of her mantle as choice of both “real Democrats” and the party establishment.  The affects of the endorsement are already being seen in Massechusets and California, where Clinton was confident of big leads.  She may still win those states, but Obama will carve deeply into the alotment of Convention delegates from them.

The Clinton camp is said to be in dismay and a bit of disarray over the endorsements.  They are also seething with anger.  Look for Clinton surroates to begin to attack Ted Kennedy—a dangerous game given the Senator’s popularity in the party.  In an early sign of of this New York National Organization for Women (NOW) leader Marcia Pappas unleashed a scathing atack on Kennedy for “betraying women.”  Look for semi-anonymous and/or untraceble reminders of Chapaquidick and the Senator’s marital and love life woes to begin perculating on the web and in this season’s favorite tactic, forwarded e-mails.  No Kennedy foible will be left unturned.  My guess is that the Clintons will accept the risk of blow back—particulary in veiw of Bill’s own past—if they can personaly distance themselves from it.  Even Caroline, the beloved Princes, might find herself under an unflattering microscope.

There is a well oiled “hate the Kennedys” machine out there.  Fueled by generations of conspiracy theorists and a fervant right-wing base, it is always ready to gin up.  The only problem is that most of these same people hate the Clintons even more than the Kennedys.  What is a wing-nut to do?

But of course the bigest drawback to this annointment, remains largely unspoken, but hangs as a dread in the hearts of many.  Just a few days ago Obama spoke at Martin Luther King’s Atlanta church and was pictured as the fruit of Dr. King’s Dream.  Now he lays in the line of John F. and Robert Kennedy.  Can he survive and ascend to the presidency without becoming a new verse to “Abraham, Martin and John”?  Is America—or unseen forces in its elite—ready for either change or hope?

I am trying not to get overwhelmed by all of this.  To keep my persepective.   To recognize that endorsements or no, a long struggle lies ahead for Obama in a grining state-by-state ground game that will play out largely base on local concerns and on the relative strength of two organizations.  Yet I am a baby boomer.  I recall the thrill of John Kennedy’s works on a cold January in 1961.  They inspired me, as they inspired a generation.  I also know the pit of the stomach dispair of shots ringing out in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Memphis.  These are the foundation events of my life.

I, too, am moved.  And once again dare to hope.

We welcome as guest blogger today a certain Negro minister some of you might recall.  The opinions expressed here were first delivered to an audience at NewYork City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967.  They were so controversial at the time that many of America’s leading white liberals, here to for admirers of the preacher denounced him as un-American.  Condemnation in the editorial pages of the nation’s great newspapers was unanimous.  Many of his allies in the Civil Rights Movement despaired what they considered a loss of focus on their immediate goals. J. Edgar Hoover considered it simply confirmation that the preacher was, in fact, a Communist agent.

We believe that author would concur that much of the speech could profitably be read today by substituting the word Iraq for Vietnam.  It has been edited for length.

Beyond Vietnam
April 4, 1967. New York, N.Y.

...I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
 

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.
 

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
 

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don’t mix," they say. "Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people?" they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church—the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate—leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

THEODORE PARKER                         TYPICAL MID 19TH CENTURY ANTI-IRISH CARTOON

The following is another musing occasioned by a topic posted to the UU HISTORY CHAT LIST.

I have been pondering the charges of anti-Irish bigotry against THEODORE PARKER and more particularly the article in the WEST ROXBURY TRANSCRIPT that inspired your question.

I am not Parker scholar and cannot vouchsafe that he did or did not do as charged by writer DON HUBBARD:

…Theodore Parker who once arrogantly advocated that Irish immigrants be consigned to concentration camps for 31 years because, “certainly it would take all this time to clean a paddy on the outside…To clean him inwardly would be like picking all the sands of the Sahara.”

Deeper scholars than I can investigate it.  My guess is that this or something like it can be mined from Parker voluminous writings.  It reads like it may have been written in private coorespondence or even in a journal.  I doubt if it made it into a sermon, lecture, or published article.  But I could be wrong.

Of course the problem of writing off Parker’s entire career on the basis of this statement is ludicrous.  There are many things to consider—if he did write it.  When did he write it and under what circumstances?  Did it remain a fixed principle? Was it an off-hand comment?  Did he change his opinion?  Did he ever act to carryout out the proposal?  Did he encourage others to do so? 

Then there is the problem of  how Hubbard framed the quote using loaded and inflamatory language, particularly “CONCENTRATION CAMP.”  Whatever Parker may or may not have suggested, it was surely not a “concentration camp.”  That particular gift to humanity was not yet invented or envissioned.  The world owes it to the BRITISH EMPIRE, which created and named it during the BOER WAR.

Hubbard’s insistence that Parker must be erased from history and that his every thought, action, and writing be disregarded is most troubling.  It is an example of extreme dualistic thinking.  One is either all good or all bad.  The slightest sin corrupts utterly.  It is not an uncommon fault.  One finds it in the howling of those who insist that the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE is a sham and a fraud because THOMAS JEFFERSON was a slave holder.

Such thinking ignores the complexity of human life, let alone due respect for “the worth and dignity of every individual.”  In plain fact there are no pure saints or pure devils.  Our greatest contemporary heroes—MARTIN LUTHER KING, GHANDI, NELSON MANDELLA, MOTHER THERESA—sinned at least occasionally.  And our blackest villains—HITTLER, STALIN, POL POT—did not live out their entire lives devoid of occasional acts of kindness or an elevated thought.

All of this is not to let Parker—or us as UU’s off the hook.  We have long had a tendency toward near idolatry of certain of our historic figures.  Blind hero worship invites the idol smasher.

In point of fact if Parker did write as charged, he was only reflecting a very common understanding among his fellow Unitarians and his fellow Bostonians.  Part of it was rooted in the historic Puritan disdain for “Popery” which flourished even through the 18th Century when there were damn few Catholics in Boston to persecute.  Note the annual parades of mechanics and apprentices mocking the Pope on GUY FAWKES DAY out of which grew the political muscle that became SONS OF LIBERTY.

This was certainly inflamed by the arrival of masses of Irish immigrants which began as a trickle after the failed IRISH REBELION OF 1798 and became a torrent with the POTATO FAMINE.  Not only were these people Catholic, but unlike earlier immigrants from Germany or the French Huguenots, they were not well bred, propertied, or for the most,  part even literate.  They were the starving dregs of a long suppressed Irish peasantry—crude, rude, loud, and disorderly.  They drank, stank, and brawled.   And on Sunday they swore fealty to an alien church.  At least that is how the genteel Bostonians in Unitarian pews saw it.  And that view might have been mild compared to the opinion of the native workers who were suddenly forced to compete with this hoard for rare jobs and depressed wages.  (Almost an exact mirror to today’s hysteric reaction to “illegal” Hispanic immigration.)

The largely Unitarian Boston elite—of which Parker was a member, even if as scandalizing semi-heretic—did indeed do everything in their power to hold the immigrant Irish down.  Our proud BRAHMINS sustained the “No Irish Need Apply” placards that could still be found in shop windows in the 1920’s.  Even some of our cherished reforms were often arrows drawn against the bosom of alien Catholicism—HORACE MANN’S public education being the prime example.  It was finally enacted in the hope of forcing grubby Irish children out of Catholic schools into institutions in which they could properly be dosed with Protestant propriety on the faint chance that they might become civilized.

Anti-Catholicism remained a strain of though in Unitarianism well into the 20th Century.  Beacon Press was still publishing—to great success—anti-Catholic screeds in the 1950’s.

UU’s have worked studiously to forget all of this.  When the topic is brought up, they are apt to stick their fingers in their ears and start humming loudly.  When I have brought the subject up before, I have been attacked for doing so.  And some defend anti-Catholicism as the legitimate aspect of the Radical Reformation heritage of which we are a part.  Others point to abuse scandals and the increasingly authoritarian and rigid posture of the Church with a certain smug “I told you so” attitude.  Now that there are many more former Catholics than born-and-bred UUs in the pews, some of those who feel wounded by the Church have echoed these sentiments.

If we have forgotten, the working class Irish of Boston have not.  Go to any bar in SOUTHIE.  They know who their ancient enemies were both in the AULD SOD and in the New World.  And they include all those fine Unitarians whose statues dot BEAN TOWN.

           At the Murfin estate, down by the funeral home out on Rt. 176 in CRYSTAL LAKE, the little house on the corner—wave when you go by—we celebrated the FOURTH OF JULY, in pretty typical manor.  We set up some tables in the front yard—we don’t have a back yard, patio or deck—and fired up the grill.  Grandpa—that’s me—turned perfectly good ground beef patties into my festive traditional hockey pucks.  The brats (for non-Midwesterners, a fat, gently spiced sausage in every way superior to the lowly wiener beloved by both CHEESE HEADS and FLATLANDERS) turned out better.  Of course I boiled some sweet corn and specially heated up a big-ol’ can of pork and beans.

            Daughter Number 2, HEATHER, and her family came over as usual.  She brought her special sausage-wrapped-in-bacon-baked-with-brown-sugar-on-toothpick (never any leftovers) and tubs of potato and macaroni salads from the store, and a watermelon for desert.

             Just before we sat down to eat we realized that we all had forgotten a cake for Grandma KATHY, whose July 5 birthday is co-celebrated with Independence at our house.  So son-in-law KEN dutifully ran out to obtain one and some wine coolers, a beverage of which my wife is inexplicably fond.           
          MAUREEN, daughter Number 3, was on hand with her beau EVAN.  (Great) GRAMA PAT drove down from HARVARD (the Illinois town, home of HARMILDA the fiberglass cow, not the university, lest there be any confusion.)  That made up the party.  Grand son NICHOLAS was off in Rockford visiting his father.

            Threatening clouds had hung low all morning, but the sun came out just as the meat started to sizzle.  It warmed up, but it was nothing like the steam baths of  past Independence Days.  In fact under the shade of the old box elder and maple trees and when the breeze was up, it was downright comfortable.

            We ate.  We talked. We watched the traffic go by on 176—some times someone would wave or honk and we would try to figure out if it was some one we know or just a friendly toot.  Grand daughter CAITLIN—CATY BUG to her grandmother—set off some daytime “fireworks” that were mostly colored smoke that filled the air with distinct odor of rotten eggs. 

And that was just about it.  That’s the way the Murfins have celebrated the Fourth—and Memorial Day and Labor Day—for more than twenty years.  There used to be more kids—they’ve mostly grown now or are living far away--and a kiddy pool used to be set up for heat relief.  Various friends and more distant family might stop by some years.  Eldest daughter CAROLYNNE--now in California with her two youngest children—would bring a rotating cast boyfriends/husbands/lovers.  We have kind of got down to a core group, but you get the idea.  Chances are, you did something pretty similar yourself.

Now all of this excitement unfolded in front of a house with an American Flag on it.  Most years I put the flag out for Memorial Day and it stays up until Veterans Day—or if it hasn’t gone to shreds and the weather isn’t too miserable—until Thanksgiving.  Some of my old Chicago friends—the few who have ventured way out here to the edge to the known universe—are  shocked that an old rebel like me, a WOBBLY and a draft resister, a street corner soap-boxer and habitual protestor, would drape his home in the symbol of oppression.

HOWARD ZINN summed up their point of view in a widely circulated essay that I found on ALTERNET just before the holiday:

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

It is an argument he, and many others, have been making for a long time.  I understand it.  I really do.  I hold no truck with simple nationalism.  I know my history as well as Professor Zinn.  It is a short jump from jingoism to jackboots.  And I can sing the dark litany of massacre and oppression that has accompanied the twisted notions of American Exceptionalism through the years, as well as any human.

         But oppression and blood lust are not just American phenomena.  We have just given it our own peculiar twist.  They are part and parcel of the human condition and exist everywhere.  To paraphrase a hymn beloved by peace folk:

My country’s streams run redder than the cardinal,

And soldiers  boots tread every hill and vale,

But other lands have bloody streams and carnage.

And soldier’s boots trod ever where  the frail.  

 (adapted from THIS IS MY SONG by LLOYD STONE)    

            This is not an excuse.  All peoples must come to grips with the particular burdens of their history.  Humanity demands that we all atone for our sins and—much more importantly—strive to prevent their reoccurrence.

            But the reason I fly the flag, the reason I could read the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE the other day with absolutely no intent of irony or condescension, is because there are elements of our common heritage worthy of celebration.  The words of the Declaration, what ever the personal failings of its slave-holding author, still challenge us to be better.

            And those words stand not alone.  They stand in a great tradition of utterances and documents, official and insurrectionary, which mark what ABRAHAM LINCOLN once called, “the better angles of our nature.”  Tom Paine, Madison, Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, Fredrick Douglas, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony, Emma Lazarus, Eugene V. Debs, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and a hundred more  stand in this tradition.

            It is this peculiarly American call for equality and justice, these impossibly lofty goals that lure us onward despite the disappointment and the contradictions, that I honor when I put out the flag.

            Oh, and one more thing.  I REFUSE TO LET THE BASTARDS HAVE IT.          

MUSIC FOR MARTIN: IN REMEMBRANCE AND HONOR OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. will be a celebration of the life and teachings of the civil rights leader.  The program will be presented at Grace Lutheran Church, 1300 Kishwaukee Valley Road3:30 pm, Sunday, January 28th. at

            Now in its fifth year, the program is the Woodstock area’s tribute to Dr. King.  Most of the participants are young people drawn from District 200 schools and local churches.

            According to program coordinator Ken West, “Each song reflects a facet of Dr. King’s philosophy.  For example there’s a song about the need for non-violent solutions and another about standing strong for one’s beliefs.”

            The program will also include spoken biographical sketches of individuals who have lived their lives consistent with the values Dr. King expressed.

            The program is free and open to the public.

As we observe the holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. we may once again forget the whole of his legacy.

Dr. King articulated his opposition to the Vietnam War in a speech at the Riverside Church.  He was castigated in the press, vilified by white liberals who had been his allies on civil rights, and even abandoned by the NAACP and much of Black leadership.  His position earned him the enmity of the FBI and may have led to his murder.

As we mark his birthday in the midst of another war, we should remember his words.  Surely he would repeat them today substituting Iraq for Vietnam.

“Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.  If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read ‘Vietnam.’  It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.  So it is that those of us who are yet determined that ‘America will be’ are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.”