Honest, Truthful, and Virtuous

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

-- Frederick Douglass

Abortion: How About Some Better Questions, Instead of our Common Answers?

AXIOS

Not a treatise, but I do have a few questions.

On the subject of abortion, neither side claiming to represent critical views really seems to ever get to the question of why. It is always a question of whether, but never why.

Why is that?

If you never ask why and just try to manage something with a law, you’re going to retain (if not create) persistent problems of all kinds.

So, what are the underlying issues that drive a person’s desire (or need) for abortion?

When will we collectively ask that question? And, what are we willing to do about the complexity of the answers we would surely get, if we actually asked? It looks like we now have our chance, but why am I not too expectant of much?

For all the social commentary about it, there doesn't seem to be too much true actionability on the causes of abortion. And, both sides of the political versions of the debate seem guilty of not that much interest in causes.

There’s just something too conspicuous about that.

And, besides the 'issues' involved, how much discussion really is there with the woman who often has to walk alone in this process (I think we know the answer)? And, why is she, much of the time, walking alone anyway? So few seem to actually care about her (or her situation). “Just don’t have an abortion” and then we walk away as if we've solved for something — apparently content with leaving everything else for her to deal with. Besides, does a ‘just say no’ approach to such things really work? We’ve seen that approach before, haven’t we? Perhaps this is just another example of trying to treat the symptoms without addressing the causes.

The woman is held automatically accountable, but when is the man? It took two for it to happen, but it’s left to one to deal with (and too many men, in terms of the debate, seem just fine with that). Seriously? Seriously — it’s not just a woman’s problem. Looking around, it's pretty obvious...it's everyone's problem.

...finish here.

Speaks Louder

How we walk with the broken speaks louder than how we sit with the great.

-- Bill Bennot

How We Become Convinced

Ever noticed…how we, as people, become convinced of something? And, how often the dynamic involved is rooted in mere repetition of an idea?

It seems that the truth of something isn't even necessary (to become convinced).

Appeal to the Whole Person

When Jesus of Nazareth prefaced his enigmatic sayings with the words, “let those with eyes to see, see, let those with ears to hear, hear,” scholars tell us he was speaking as a teacher of Jewish wisdom, appealing not just to the head but to the whole person of his listener: heart, body, mind, senses, imagination. Like a lure darting and flashing before a fish, Jesus’s words dance and play before the imagination, breaking open our habitual assumptions about “the way things are.”. . . To be “born again” is to break free of the stultifying womb of conventional wisdom. . . .

-- Christopher Pramuk

Randoms...?

Thank God for scientists — for what they help us understand about the nature of things, how they help us observe the world, and understand what we often don’t realize we’re looking at.

Losing perspective, at times, is critical to our ability to become aware of our need for resources other than the ones we are used to using.

Many people seem to only know by means of distinction (at the very least through contrast) — it is more difficult to engage in mutuality, if not multiplicity.

How much of what I think I need is influenced by what I have?

Prior Randoms...?

The Dark Night (XVIII)

Visual - "Presiding":

'Poem for the week' -- "The Dark Night (XVIII)":

Our love is woven

Of a thousand strands—

The cool fragrance of the first lilac

At morning,

The first dew on the grass,

The smell of wild mint in the wood,

The pungent and earthy smell of ground ivy crushed under our feet;

Songs of birds, songs of great poets;

The leaping of the red squirrel in the tree,

The running of the river,

The commotion of stars and clouds in the high winds at night;

And dark stillness.

It is adorned with all the flowers

That stand in our garden;

It holds the night and the day.

Our love is made

Of the South Wind and the West Wind,

And the soft falling of rain;

Of white April evenings;

It is made of trees,

And of the many-coloured fields on the hills;

Of horizons,

Dark sea-blue of the west, thin sky-blue of the east,

With a yellow road between.

The flames of sunset and sunrise

Mingle in the fire of our love.

-- May Sinclair

Heal the Wounds

Only love can heal the wounds of the past.

-- Bell Hooks

Environments

It doesn’t seem hard to observe that one thing about environments is that the participants in any given environment are pretty adaptable to it. 

I think this might be true across many contexts — it seems to be true for plants. For insects. For animals. Aquatic life. Birds.  ...and polar bears (though adaptability and survivability are still two different things).

Oh, and humans. 

Yes, like many things we also seem rather adaptable to the environment we’re in; especially to the elements that make up our environment.  Look at species all over the world, and throughout time, and notice that creatures have not only learned how to survive, but also prosper.

But, there are, of course, participants in any environment that resist it or, at least, adaptability to it. 

So, it also seems observable that another dynamic exists — those participants that resist the environment or seem unable, by choice or otherwise, to adapt to it are often rejected by the environment. At times, there appears to be a kind of dance in any given environment between those that are cooperating with it, adapting to it, and those that are resisting it. At other times, though, that dynamic is not so friendly.  Either way, one could imagine that some of the dynamic is even necessary, for the purposes of environments in general. 

Participants who become entrenched in resisting the environment often end up finding themselves mostly outside of the benefits of the environment.   At the very least, if not outside it all together, unable to join it; both as a function of their choice or of the collective choice of those which represent the features or embodiment of that environment. 

In other words, there are participants at the center of environments who by nature or function perpetuate it and there are participants at the margins of environments which are resisting it.  They, too, provide a function and may, at times, even be the catalysts for the environment itself to adapt.

...finish here.

Gift and Defense

I'm wondering...do all living things have not only a gift (a kind of beauty) to offer the world, but also a unique defense mechanism to help them survive?

What If... defensiveness is a kind of innate self-protection of beauty?

Would this be true for all beings?  

If so, how much of our design can really change...any more than this plant could change its needles?

Juneteenth: Emancipation

https://www.saturdaymornings.net/2022/05/unity-liberty-charity.htmlWhat it is like to be oppressed?

I don't really know; do you?

And, so, I don't understand what the exhilaration of something like emancipation must feel like.  I haven't suffered from what it is like to not have it.  I can only acknowledge that and recognize what I feel as I read a poem like this.  

I can only imagine what kind of joy that kind of freedom must feel like and what a day like Juneteenth represents to those who've been oppressed by slavery...and still are.

'Poem for the week' -- "Emancipation":

Fling out your banners, your honors be bringing,

Raise to the ether your paeans of praise.

Strike every chord and let music be ringing!

Celebrate freely this day of all days.

Few are the years since that notable blessing,

Raised you from slaves to the powers of men.

Each year has seen you my brothers progressing,

Never to sink to that level again.

Perched on your shoulders sits Liberty smiling,

Perched where the eyes of the nations can see.

Keep from her pinions all contact defiling;

Show by your deeds what you’re destined to be.

Press boldly forward nor waver, nor falter.

Blood has been freely poured out in your cause,

Lives sacrificed upon Liberty’s alter.

Press to the front, it were craven to pause.

Look to the heights that are worth your attaining

Keep your feet firm in the path to the goal.

Toward noble deeds every effort be straining.

Worthy ambition is food for the soul!

Up! Men and brothers, be noble, be earnest!

Ripe is the time and success is assured;

Know that your fate was the hardest and sternest

When through those lash-ringing days you endured.

Never again shall the manacles gall you

Never again shall the whip stroke defame!

Nobles and Freemen, your destinies call you

Onward to honor, to glory and fame.

-- Paul Laurence Dunbar

Fathers Day: Humility & Joy

Humility is a signature virtue of the Christian faith. Joy is its signature emotion.

-- Miroslav Volf

Though most certainly not intended as such, I can't quite imagine a more Fathers Day-appropriate description of many good fathers, unless it's someone who  an do this well for their children:

A child will be who you tell them they are.

-- Alan M.

Randoms...?

There is often a problem, if the value of what is observed about life is determined by its popularity.

When a society ends up viewing crisis as opportunity for advantage, something is wrong.

Vulnerability really isn't optional; we are all vulnerable — the issue is our willingness to admit it.

We all have something deep within us — what do we do that covers it up?

Prior Randoms...?

Stoat At Play

2022 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition

It Can Be Delightful

Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage, it can be delightful.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The Ease of Falsehood & the Delight of Truth

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.

-- George Eliot

Without integrity, we have nothing to build on...or with.

And, I’m not lying. But, why do I even need to mention that? Because the value of the truth seems to be in question these days.

There are all kinds of things that require a basic commitment to truth. In other words, indiscriminate lying makes functioning impossible. Do you live at this address? Yes or no. Do you own the house? Yes or no. Did you get a degree? Yes or no. Is your resume all factual? Did you pay the taxes you owe? Or, perhaps more significantly (?), did something of significant consequence really occur? Did you see that man commit that crime? Is your accusation actually true (or, just partially)?

We are asked to tell the truth all the time; even expected to.

At some level, there has to be reality that is based on this expectation,  On facts; not on conjecture, not on how we wished they were, not with significant pieces left out (or added).

Society depends on it — on our telling the truth.

When truth is merely a presentation or a characterization, designed to achieve some desired end, the whole system starts to break down. If I don't have to tell the truth, then lying is legitimized (because of the purpose it proports to serve) and actually needs to be perpetuated. But, when that particular end becomes more important than what happens along the way, the along the way starts to not matter. In fact, it is always along the way that matters the most, not some simply imagined end.

Besides, truth is not subservient to its efficacy. It just doesn't work that way. It doesn't really care how you use it. And, while falsehood can; in the end, truth can’t be bought and sold. Perhaps that is why we should always be wary of those trying to profit from so-called 'truth' — that means something significant about it has probably been altered.

...finish here.

Never Exhausts

Learning never exhausts the mind.

-- Leonardo da Vinci

Defects

I’ve noticed…that the defects I think I see in other people often times seem unapparent to them. 

Accordingly, some of mine must not be apparent to me. 

And, so, I first have to note that this is likely.

I've also noticed that I tend to forgive myself more for the things I don’t see in me ("that's just me"), than I do with others for what they don’t see in themselves (well, then, "that's just them").

I have to note this, too.

Besides, keeping track of such things is such unsatisfying business — the only satisfying feature of it is having to do more of it, which....

Healthy Religion

Healthy religion is always humble about its own holiness and knowledge. It knows that it does not know. The true biblical notion of faith, which balances knowing with not knowing, is rather rare today, especially among many religious folks who think faith is being certain all the time — when the truth is the exact opposite. Anybody who really knows also knows that they don’t know at all.

-- Richard Rohr

America has a scorn problem

In the Bible’s Book of Luke, there’s a parable about a religious person, who has all the right opinions, and a tax collector, who is culturally despised. To paraphrase the religious person, he prays, “Thank you, God, that I’m not like those others, the immoral people.” But the tax collector beats his chest in sorrow and prays for God’s mercy. The parable is about the need for humility. The “sinner,” the tax collector, not the religious person, turns out to be the righteous one. Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable “to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else.” That appears to be a lot of us in 21st-century America.

A Scientific American report on political polarization noted that Americans increasingly hold “a basic abhorrence for their opponents — an ‘othering’ in which a group conceives of its rivals as wholly alien in every way.” It continues, “This toxic form of polarization has fundamentally altered political discourse, public civility and even the way politicians govern.” A 2019 study by Pew said, “55 percent of Republicans say Democrats are ‘more immoral’ when compared with other Americans; 47 percent of Democrats say the same about Republicans.”

We find one another repugnant — not just wrong, but bad. Our rhetoric casts the arguments of others as profound moral failings.

Those who are sympathetic to the Florida legislation dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill don’t just want to leave lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity — with all the inevitable values-laden presuppositions they entail — to parents until kids are around 9 years old; they are “homophobic” and “transphobic.” Those who oppose the bill don’t simply think it wise to acknowledge the reality of multiple sexual orientations and gender identities in a pluralistic society or worry the bill may force gay teachers into the closet; they are “groomers.”

Those who want to roll back Covid restrictions are not people who, given the effectiveness of vaccines, are concerned about other social problems caused by Covid precautions; they are “ableists.” Those who take a more cautious approach are “alarmists.”

Those who think that balancing the rights of a pregnant woman with the rights of a fetus is difficult enough that decisions about whether to abort are best left to individuals, not the state, are smeared as “baby killers.” Those who believe biology makes it clear that a fetus is a human being who deserves protection from lethal violence are deemed “misogynists” or even, as one representative email I received after last week’s newsletter on abortion said, “full of hate, racism and white supremacy.”

Our tendency to adopt polarizing and moralistic patterns of speech is turbo-boosted by a social media architecture that encourages animosity toward outgroups.

But this hatred toward our opponents and the accompanying habit of moralism is destroying us as people. To be clear, I am not saying that I find all the brief arguments I’ve listed above equally valid or true. And I’m certainly not saying that they don’t really matter or have enormous cultural ramifications. I’m saying that we cannot flourish as individuals or as a society if we cast all those who differ from us as moral monsters.

To do so is a self-defensive move, and one that is ultimately self-defeating. If others’ views are simply morally indefensible, we don’t have to defend our own. We don’t have to consider complex arguments or where we might be shortsighted or biased. We certainly don’t have to be open to persuasion, since to change one’s mind is to join “the dark side.”

Furthermore, seeing those with whom we differ as morally contemptible makes us bitter and less joyful. We become sneering, intolerant and bombastic. Like the obnoxious guy in Luke’s parable, we scorn everyone else. We delight in the callout and the pile-on. Assuming the worst about everyone else ultimately makes us become the worst versions of ourselves.

So before we disagree with others, we have to make a decision about who our ideological opponents are. Are they like us or wholly other? How should we think of people, especially people with whom we have deep differences?

For me, the answer to this question is rooted in two ideas. One is that every single one of us is, as described in the book of Genesis, made in the image of God. With this core identity comes indelible dignity and worth. In practice, this means that I must assume that people I interact with, even those with whom I disagree, often have things they love that are worth defending and perspectives that I can learn from.

The other idea that informs how I see people is that they are fallen. The idea of human depravity or sinfulness means that every person — including me — is myopic and limited, their thinking faulty and subject to deception and confusion. This should humble us all.

One way to repair our social discourse is to begin with the assumption that we are not wildly better or worse than anyone else. Each person who disagrees with me (and each who doesn’t) is, like me, a complex blend of insight, neurosis and sin, pure and impure motives, right on some things, wrong on others.

There are, of course, limits to this. Essays like this inevitably meet with a response of, “What about Hitler?” or “What about George Wallace?” Charity doesn’t consign us to relativism. There are clearly times when one side is entirely right and one side is entirely wrong.

But these kinds of clear moral lines are the exception in history. If we endow every issue with the moral clarity and urgency of the Holocaust or Jim Crow, we will not be able to adjudicate those many issues that are far more complex, where people of good faith can strongly disagree yet remain good neighbors. If we refuse this kind of good-faith argument, we cannot practice democracy. If our opponents are simply moral monsters, we will assume that they cannot be persuaded — only shamed, silenced or dominated.

Beyond that, if we refuse this kind of good-faith argument, humility becomes impossible. If our ideological opponents are equivalent to the vilest villains of history, then we, of course, are squarely on the side of the right and true. The Yale theologian Miroslav Volf said, “Humility is a signature virtue of the Christian faith. Joy is its signature emotion.” Humility, he says, births joy because it rescues us from endless recriminations and allows us to see goodness — in ourselves and in the world — as a gift to be received and celebrated. I’d add that it teaches us to find common humanity with one another. It’s what makes the religious person and the tax collector able to live as neighbors.

Thinking the best of the other will inevitably mean we sometimes think more highly of others than we should. We will assume their motives are purer than they actually are. But if we must err, this is the right way to err. It’s easy to think that when we consider the strongest argument and most charitable motivations of others we are doing them a favor. But we are actually doing ourselves a favor as well. Not only does dealing with steel men, as opposed to straw men, help our own arguments grow sharper, it also helps us continue to have a posture of learning, of growth, of curiosity, of compassion and of joy.

-- Tish Harrison Warren, NY Times Newsletters

Randoms...?

1 out of 4 people will believe nearly any lie, if it’s simply repeated.

When democracy and capitalism become bed-fellows to incorporate the monetization of lies, something is wrong.

Yes, I think there is often more to learn from the question than the answer.

What If…half of expression is the need to express, in addition to what to express — how would that change your response to expression?

Prior Randoms...?

America is pushing teachers to the brink

Teaching has become one of the most draining jobs in America. Today’s teachers are navigating the threat of school shootings, a pandemic and intensifying political interference in their lesson plans — all while their wages remain stagnant.

Why it matters: Teachers are asking themselves whether shouldering those burdens is still worth it, and many experts warn of a looming staffing crisis.

“I’m really worried about the profession in general, the amount of people leaving, the quality of the applicants who are out there,” said Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified School District in Vermont. “We have roles open with no applications, and it’s not just our district. It’s every district.”

The big picture: Teaching has long been an underpaid profession, but in the last two years, America’s demands on its educators have mounted.  Continue here....

-- Erica Pandey, Alison Snyder

This Unveiling

'Poem for the week' -- "This Unveiling":

This is

the pressing question

of every age:

            What is it that we cannot see?

For life is hiddenness,

as is God,

and we have been given

the gift of searching.

The unseen works on us, always.

            Waves pulsing through our flesh, unfelt.

            Forces pulling at our bodies. Forces

            putting black bodies in cells en masse.

Each one underneath a veil of opacity that we call law.

All that is hidden

is meant to be

revealed, 

yet revelation cannot be achieved.

It comes when it comes,

when it wants to unearth itself—

fall from the heavens like light

to those who have insisted it lay itself bare.

This unveiling,

daring us

to live differently.

-- Drew Jackson

He Who Has A Why

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

What We Have vs What We've Lost

Somehow, we all get to the point where we shift our perception of what is important, from what we have lost to what we still have.

Whether it is a relationship or a job, general fulfillment or health or material things, across the spectrum of life, we are gaining and losing something all the time.

Disruption of that coming-and-going of daily living, by something more intrusive or dramatic, thrusts us into assessment of that gain or loss, particularly at the beginning and especially regarding what we’ve lost. But, in time, those that find a healthy way forward seem to invariably turn towards what they still do have — the focus shifts off of what isn’t, to what is.

I can be having a crappy day or even a crappy week (ok, year), but invariably I can also get put, either by my choosing or by some other force of circumstance, into a context where I notice something else — something that also exists...and not particularly touched by my crappy day.

We tend to think of these things in big categories or as big ticket items, but I suspect we are negotiating this dynamic all the time, in even the smallest ways. I may begrudge the fact that I can’t have ice cream whenever I want (and, therefore, at this very minute!). Perhaps I have diabetes and can’t eat sugar indiscriminately anymore, but that doesn’t mean there is no food available that can still be enjoyed. And I suspect, not being a diabetic, that that is one of the biggest challenges — that shift from from focusing on what I can’t have…to what I do still have. 

In my case, I can no longer run because of my knees, but I can still walk. I am jealous of that runner who just gallops along right beside me on the road (that was me), but I have learned that there is just something about a long walk, too…which I can still do. I can’t climb to a summit of most mountains anymore (maybe I never could), but I can still enjoy the perspective that those who can offer.

There is some risk here, in this observation.  For one, loss is loss; and that loss can be both real and significant (sometimes, even more than we know we can bear).  We should not by-pass loss by simply overlooking it, in favor of something else — something some faith-communities are often guilty of.  And, I’m also well aware that such shifts are easier said than done. Often, it happens to us more than it is a result of our own agency.

But...

…finish here.

True Collaboration

We know true collaboration happened when the idea can no longer be traced to one person. 

-- Simon Sinek

What We Look Through

Ever noticed...how looking at things in too small a frame often makes you smaller, too?

The path to 'size' is a little counter-intuitive.

When our frame of reference is too small, we seem to feel the need to become bigger — often bigger than we are actually are.  And, trying to become bigger nearly always makes us smaller.

Conversely, when we look at things through an enlarging frame, we tend to see our size more accurately...relatively small.  It is often out of our relative inconspicuousness that we offer our most significant things.

Giving Up On Christianity

Today many people talk a lot about people leaving churches, giving up on Christianity, and rejecting Jesus. In reality, they have given up on the white supremacist brand of Christianity that cares more about power than Jesus.

-- Danté Stewart

Following

Instagram: kat_armas

Randoms...? (from Others)

All that you’ve loved is all you own.

-- Tom Waits

See all human behavior as one of two things:  either love, or a call for love.

-- Marianne Williamson

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love — outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion. 

-- Thomas Merton

[Love is] the greatest mystery of all. Not love as a warm and fuzzy feeling, but love as the animating force that holds us together.

-- Barbara Holmes

...any thread?  Prior Randoms...? (from Others).

Mess of Life

Visual - "Mess of Life":

Winona Lake, IN

Margaret Chase Smith

Today, with the radical right the most loyal voting bloc in the party, Republican leaders refuse to call out even the most extreme statements from their followers. But once upon a time, Republican politicians were the champions of reason and compromise. Famously, on June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine, stood up against Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin and his supporters, who were running roughshod over American democracy. 

Born in Skowhegan in 1897, the oldest child of a barber and a waitress, Smith was a teacher and a reporter who got into politics through her husband, Clyde Smith, who was a state legislator and newspaperman. Soon after they married in 1930, she was elected to the Maine Republican State Committee and served until 1936, when Maine voters elected Clyde to Congress.

Once in Washington, Margaret worked as her husband’s researcher, speechwriter, and press secretary. When Clyde died of a heart attack in April 1940, voters elected Margaret to finish his term, then reelected her to Congress in her own right. They did so three more times, always with more than sixty percent of the vote. In 1948, they elected her to the Senate with a 71% majority.

When she was elected to Congress, the U.S. was still getting used to the New Deal government that Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt had ushered in first to combat the Great Depression and then to fight for victory in World War II. Smith’s party was divided between those who thought the new system was a proper adjustment to the modern world and those determined to destroy that new government. 

Those who wanted to slash the government back to the form it had in the 1920s, when businessmen ran it, had a problem. American voters liked the business regulation, basic social safety net, and infrastructure construction of the new system. To combat that popularity, the anti–New Deal Republicans insisted that the U.S. government was sliding toward communism. With the success of the People’s Liberation Army and the declaration of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, Americans were willing to entertain the idea that communism was spreading across the globe and would soon take over the U.S.

Republican politicians eager to reclaim control of the government for the first time since 1933 fanned the flames of that fear. On February 9, 1950, during a speech to a group gathered in Wheeling, West Virginia, to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, an undistinguished senator from Wisconsin named Joe McCarthy claimed that he had a list of 205 communists working for the State Department and that the Democrats refused to investigate these “traitors in the government.” 

The anti–New Deal faction of the party jumped on board. Sympathetic newspapers trumpeted McCarthy’s charges—which kept changing, and for which he never offered proof—and his colleagues cheered him on while congress members from the Republican faction that had signed onto the liberal consensus kept their heads down to avoid becoming the target of his attacks.

All but one of them did, that is. Senator Smith recognized the damage McCarthy and his ilk were doing to the nation.

On June 1, 1950, only four months after McCarthy made his infamous speech in Wheeling, Smith stood up in the Senate to make a short speech.

She began: “I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.”

Referring to Senator McCarthy, who was sitting two rows behind her, Senator Smith condemned the leaders in her party who were destroying lives with wild accusations. “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” she pointed out. Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were stifling these basic American principles. “Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America,” Senator Smith said. “It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”

Senator Smith wanted a Republican victory in the upcoming elections, she explained, but to replace President Harry Truman’s Democratic administration—for which she had plenty of harsh words—with a Republican regime “that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation.”

“I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.”

“I doubt if the Republican Party could do so,” she added, “simply because I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.” 

“I do not want to see the Republican Party win that way,” she said. “While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican [P]arty, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican [P]arty and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system.”

“As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist,” she said. “They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”

Smith presented a “Declaration of Conscience,” listing five principles she hoped her party would adopt. It ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”

Six other Republican senators signed onto Senator Smith’s declaration.

There were two reactions to the speech within the party. McCarthy sneered at “Snow White and the Six Dwarves.” Other Republicans quietly applauded Smith’s courage but refused to show similar courage themselves with public support. In the short term, Senator Smith’s voice was largely ignored in the public arena and then, when the Korean War broke out, forgotten.

But she was, of course, right. Four years later, the Senate condemned McCarthy. And while Senator Smith was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, McCarthy has gone down in history as a disgrace to the Senate and to the United States of America.

-- Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American

[Photo from U.S. Senate Historical Office.]

Can Help Us All

Helping any of us can help us all.

-- MacKenzie Scott

Mental Health - What About Mine?

How do we think about mental health, in a personal way?

Like many things, it is often easier to consider mental health in the abstract or for a group of people.

But, what does it look like in the day-to-day for you?

Have you, for example, identified the kind of mental care you need to give yourself — like you do, say, for your physical health? Do you think about or organize for your mental health differently? Or, does it seem like your mental health is something closer to the bottom of your health-priorities list than the top?

I recently woke up feeling pretty stressed. I was worn out from some pretty active dreams. I was flat, energy-less, reactionary. I didn't feel good — like sometimes when you just don't feel good physically. This has been happening, not regularly, but also not never recently. It's got me thinking.

Do I believe that I'm not being affected by all that is going in my life? Do I compartmentalize things — associating this feeling with that thing and confining it accordingly? Am I imagining that things do not accumulate or aggregate for me, like they do for other people? In other words, I am fooling myself?

It's not like I don't live in the same context as everyone else, that I don't have some sometimes overwhelming concerns about those I care about, about my well-being, about the future, about the surrounding narratives of our country and world, about...the nature of my own existence.

I can suddenly realize — wow, there's a lot going on for me. What am I doing to care for myself?

...finish here.