Morning in Paradise

The Breakers

Gift From China

I didn't write it

     I condemn in the strongest possible terms the media for refusing to investigate [the Obamas], as they did President Bush and President Clinton, and for refusing to label them for what they truly are. There is no scenario known to man, whereby a white president and his wife could ignore laws, flaunt their position, and lord it over the people, as these two are permitted to do without challenge out of fear for their color.       /s/ an African-American Reporter

A Defense of Abraham Lincoln

      [To a syndicated columnist]  Sir, I have read your columns for years and have corresponded with you several times before.  I am on your ideological wave length and generally agree with you, finding your columns interesting, informative and well-written, and I have heard some of your broadcasts as a substitute for Rush Limbaugh.

     I do, however, find myself at odds with your evaluation of Abraham Lincoln.  That era, Lincoln's place in it, and the issues leading up to the Civil War, are not only very complex, but raise the great difficulty which a modern person has with any attempt to place himself in the mind-set of a mid-nineteenth Century American.  A fair evaluation of  Lincoln's life and work requires more than space allows here.  Many books have been written about him by such recognized historians as Doris Kearns Goodwin, and the television pundit Bill O'Reilly.  This is a summary of the views of those who, like myself, admire Lincoln. 

     First, Lincoln was opposed to slavery all his life as any reading of his Cooper Union or First Inaugural Address makes clear beyond doubt.  Refer also to the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858.  Lincoln's anti-slavery position strengthened when he saw the effects of slavery first-hand as a young man working on a barge going from the North to New Orleans.  He had been a loyal Whig until the 1850s, and an ardent admirer of the party leader Henry Clay, but left the Whigs in 1854 to become affiliated with the then recently-formed Republican Party because of his opposition to slavery.  On that opposition there was never any doubt or vacillation or temporizing at all.  He was flatly opposed to slavery as a great moral wrong.  The suggestion that he blew hot and cold on the issue depending on changing political requirements is simply wrong.

     Lincoln believed, however, that slavery could not simply be abolished by an act of Congress because it was recognized as implicit in the Constitution.  He did, however, oppose the extension of slavery into the territories and that was the principal difference he had with Stephen Douglas, who advocated "popular sovereignty", which allowed the territories themselves to decide the issue.  His fear was that if slavery were allowed to spread the South would become a slave empire and then detach from the Union.  If it could be contained, however, he thought it would wither away over time because of economic contingencies.  However, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1857, caused the whole issue to become immediate and critical.  Lincoln lost the senatorial election in Illinois to Douglas in 1858 but, of course, won the 1860 presidential election.  The stage was then set for secession and war because eleven Southern states were adamant on secession and Lincoln would not accept the dissolution of the Union.

     No one ever doubted that the Emancipation Proclamation was a Civil War measure.  It allowed Union troops to seize and liberate slaves at will as new lands were conquered.  Where slavery already existed in the border states, however, it was unaffected.   Lincoln believed that he had no right to abolish slavery completely but, aside from that, he was a skillful politician who understood that if he had purported to do so Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland, which were perched on the edge of secession, would have seceded from the Union immediately and the Union would have lost the War.  At the end of the War he insisted on complete abolition by the thirteenth amendment, and that is what the movie Lincoln was about.  With minor exceptions it is historically accurate.     It is admittedly true, however, that he was not interested in social or legal equality with  the "Negro" race, as it was then called.  A Lincoln enthusiast can argue that he was not opposed to social and legal equality but knew that there was no chance at the time that it would be widely accepted.  It is worth noting that Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was among Lincoln's friends and was, in fact, the first African-American to be socially entertained in the White House at Lincoln's invitation.  It is apparent, however, that Lincoln doubted whether social equality would ever be a viable arrangement and it is probable that he did not favor it.  But in fairness it should be remembered that those were very different times, that with few exceptions such as Douglass himself the newly-liberated slaves were uneducated and that it could appear, at that time, that full equality was not practical.  That has obviously not been a defensible position since Lincoln's time and the end of legal segregation in the United States, but people are not perfect and do not always have the gift of prophecy.  Lincoln's heart was always in the right place but his precognitive powers were limited.

     Lincoln was a great man, one of the greatest there ever was in this world.  He was a kind and tolerant man and did not seek harm or disadvantage to anyone.  He was not perfect but that hardly justifies dismissing him as undeserving of the eternal gratitude of Americans.

                                                                                     

     

Three Metaphysical Questions Without Answers (maybe)

Three Metaphysical Questions Without Answers (maybe)

     There are three questions which have vexed me for most of my life.  I am a retlired lawyer, living on Sanibel Island, Florida with my wife of 44 years.  First, I wonder why I am me and you are you and Joe Shmo is Joe Shmo. Consider:  Billions of people have been born in the world, and most have died.  At conception you have two cells merging into one and later dividing to become a person, a bunch of stuff called DNA, chemicals, and all that.  And all this adds up to what I call 'me' and you, you.  But how did this consciousness which I call 'myself' connect with --- reside in --- my brain rather than in one of the other billions of brains in other bodies, now and all the way back in time and all over the world?  All the other billions of bodies and brains belong to others.  How and who decided that this particular brain and body would house this particular mind, soul and consciousness that I call "myself". 

     Second, Am I the same 'me' that I was yesterday, five years ago, 10 years ago?  How do I know?  If we assume continuity of personality, as I do, isn't that a straw in the wind indicating that there is some Great Mind behind all this?  Otherwise I could be a robot remembering the past, not a person who was actually in the past.  I would not think that a brain would require the inhabitation of a continuous personality to serve as an instrument of biological survival.  Why would it?  From the standpoint of evolution, the soul, personality and consciousness would seem to be surplusage.  We could still have memory, as a computer does, but a computer has a kind of memory, but not the kind which fondly and nostalgically recalls  Thanksgiving at Aunt Edna and Uncle Stu's farm.

     Third:  The brain is physical --- a bunch of cells arranged in a complex way.  You can dissect it all you want without finding any person --- any 'me' --- there.  Yet we know that the physical world and the mind are intimately related.  A blow on the head, alcohol, anesthetics , Alzheimers, arteriosclerosis --- all these alter thought and personality.   How do we  explain something which is obviously immaterial and yet altered, even radically, by material, physical events and things?  William James, the philosopher, agreed with materialists that thought is a function of the brain, but he went beyond that to maintain that, yes, thought is a function of the brain but it is more than that. It is a transmitting function, like a radio or TV transmitter and receiver.  In other words, his difference with materialists was that he did not believe that thought is only a function ot the brain.  It is words like 'only' or 'merely'  which separate a materialist philosophy from a spiritual or religious one.  That is how William James believed that he was able to combine the functional physical brain with a limited life and an immaterial soul which may be capable of surviving death.

    

Thirsty? Try catching raindrops.