Independence

By John Semptin
July 4, 2004

Have you ever noticed how conservatives wrap themselves in the flag and liberals don't? The implication is one side is patriotic... PATRIOTS ...and the other is not. I don't know about you, but that tendency allows both liberals and conservatives to irritate me.

First of all... the flag belongs to everyone ...and, outside of the Gore campaign in 2000, Democrats and liberals haven't exactly made it known they love America in a way the great middle of the country can appreciate.

Of course Patriotism is always selective. Those things you like or support are the backbone of our democracy and the things you oppose... even if they're in the Constitution... come from terrorists, communists, anarchists, Confederates... well pick your boogie man... even liberals. Because as we all know liberals hate America.

I hate labels. As you'll see... I consider myself independent... but I have to say that if you raise dissent... if you challenge the power structure... if you above all ask questions... that you somehow hate America.

Well let me say that you can still love America and still be a pain in the behind. That's why you ask questions and perhaps raise hell... you want the country to be true to its' ideology. You want America to be true to itself.

Is America a great country or what?

In how many places at this hour would Michael Moore be strung up in the basement of a dark prison with a bag over his head and rats at his feet? The answer is plenty. But in America we shower him with millions of dollars.

I saw his screed against the left the Administration when the film opened... and he makes his share of mistakes in the movie but it is his right to make them and if you want to believe them it's your right too. Most of his movie is correct, actually, just don't call it a documentary, please.

But there you go, in some places that movie is an act of no less of treason punishable with imprisonment or death without trial.

How can you not love America?

Moore is just the latest in a series of propagandists who saw to fit to publish their beliefs hoping to achieve justice. Consider Thomas Paine... his pamphlet Common Sense electrified the Independence movement in early 1776... Like Moore's movie... it raised all sorts of questions and made the ruling elite uncomfortable. But also consider this... unlike Moore... Paine refused to put his name on it. Wrote Paine:

"Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the DOCTRINE ITSELF, not the MAN. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle."

What followed then... was a rollicking 56 page denouncement of the British Monarchy and slanders against the King. Citing great theories of leadership... alleged crimes of the King... and a call for Americans to overthrow the government.

If that sounds that sounds like Fahrenheit 9-11 it should... it's the same formula only different for a different era... Moore's movie makes points about leadership... the alleged misdeeds of the President and is strong in the implication we should overthrow this government at the ballot box in November.

Where the two differ, however, is in religion. Paine liberally quotes the Bible in a way Moore does not. Moore is, in fact, critical of conservative religion interfering with the process of governing.

Thomas Jefferson wrote about the firewall needed between government and religion. But as an African parliamentarian noted on World Link TV the other day... you can separate them all you want but they're still part of the same culture.

Religious liberals push for change within their government on the basis of morality they find within their own beliefs. Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, Social Security, certainly all that safety net stuff has roots in many different religious philosophies that call on us who are able to care for those who are not. This is part of that maddening contradiction between religious conservatives and tax cutters who are often the same people.

Both religious conservatives and liberals try to claim Thomas Jefferson. In researching today's service I was surprised to find out the Smithsonian a few years ago did a big deal on Jefferson and actually edited his religious writings to make him more acceptable to conservatives. Or at least more neutral. Galling, isn't it?

There is little doubt where Jefferson actually stood on religion if you go to the source documents. In a letter Jefferson called 'A Unitarian Creed' to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse written on June 26, 1822... Jefferson wrote:

"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.

1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.

2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.

3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion."

These are the great points on which he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.

1. That there are three Gods.

2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.

3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith.

4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.

And in a stab a the concept of pre-determination... number 5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.

"Now," Jefferson asks. "which of these is the true and charitable Christian?"

Jefferson then adds, "I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian."

Well, OK, we're still waiting on the last part. But this is the man's creed... his own personal theology... the man who wrote the First Amendment calls for a "blessed country of free inquiry and belief."

An additional letter to theologian James Smith -- December 8, 1822 -- further elaborates. One in which he finds Unitarianism to be closest to the roots of true Christianity.

"Sir, -- I have to thank you for your pamphlets on the subject of Unitarianism, and to express my gratification with your efforts for the revival of primitive Christianity in your quarter."

He goes on to call the main stream belief in the Trinity to be "the polytheism of the ancients, sickened with the absurdities of their own theology."

And this: ''...a strong proof of the solidity of the primitive faith, is its restoration, as soon as a nation arises which vindicates to itself the freedom of religious opinion, and its external divorce from the civil authority."

He adds (Joseph) "Priestley's learned writings on it are, or should be, in every hand."

I guess conservative religious types can lay claim to Jefferson... but the more I read about him the less I see how.

Perhaps it's his version of the Bible... called the Jefferson Bible... in which he rearranges the Gospels to extract the ethical teachings of Jesus while omitting the dogma and the supernatural. Scholars today would call it a "Sayings Gospel."

Many Christians read the Jefferson Bible... apparently missing the startling heresy of tossing out vast sections of the New Testament and editing the words of Jesus to fit Jefferson's theology.

But as we know... that's very Unitarian. Rock on dude!

But Jefferson was not perfect. He kept slaves and clearly regarded them as property. He failed to give Sally Hemming her due. He kept grudges and wasn't much of a social safety net kind of guy. He signed off on a Constitution that prohibited taxation by the central government and codified slavery. He was, in short, very human.

That Constitution he helped write gave the right to vote to rich white guys and no one else.

So when Jefferson died in 1826... A nation changing wave of Free Thought was on the horizon... that of abolition and women's rights. The two were intertwined and spearheaded by religious liberals.

Women's rights was predictably controversial as it still is today. The conservative religious movement which believes in literal biblical interpretation finds equal rights for women galling. And they successfully imposed their beliefs on the government and out laws. Just imagine the group think when the women's rights movement was first getting started.

The landmark "A Declaration of Rights and Sentiments" issued in the summer of 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, was widely derided at the time. And it's interesting to note now the progress that's been made' and the progress that still needs to be made...

A Declaration of Rights and Sentiments
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men--both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming to all intents and purposes, her master--the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women--the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation--in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

You know... like all great empires... our nation cloaks itself in it's own mythology.

My favorite myth of the 18th century comes from the founding days comes from Ben Franklin.

Does anyone really believe that story about Franklin and the kite? If I stand here and say the kite story might be a total fabrication does that make me a bad American?

Let's review the facts... Ben and his son went out on a hillside near Philadelphia in a thunderstorm. Ben flew a kite, it was stuck by lightning causing a key to glow... and proving lightning was electricity.

It might surprise you to learn the only surviving written account of the incident comes from our own Joseph Priestly and he sets the record straight. Priestly reports that during the thunderstorm no lightning struck the kite... but fibers on the string stood upright. When Franklin touched the key, he got a tiny shock... from static electricity. Fortunately, Franklin ended the experiment after only a few trials having satisfied himself that lightning was electricity and thus avoiding incineration.

But we have a lot of myths about America. Does that make me a bad American to want to find out the truth? Of course not.

We're told about Paul Revere's ride... but not told he only went a quarter mile and the balance' some 20 odd miles... was finished by a Boston dentist.

That our country was founded on the principles of democracy and liberty while ignoring that all the rights and freedom from central taxation went to the white land holders and the President was picked by the Electoral College... the elite of the elite of the white and rich. Put in a contemporary light it's almost as if the revolution was fought for the benefit of the Republican National Committee.

We're told of Washington's cherry tree.

And we're told Washington was our first President. Anyone who lives around here should know that's a howler... our first elected President was John Hanson of Charles County, selected in 1777 by the Continental Congress.

Why doesn't Hanson get his due... well alright... we named a highway for him... but even still... Could it be what a contemporary noted about Hanson? That he had "curiously dark skin?" Is it possible our real first President came from African heritage? We still don't know... but I find the prospect electrifying.

Of course denying Hanson his place in history because of his potential blackness is just one of many shafts given black Americans over the years. In a macro sense you probably can't innumerate them all.

Yet one of the greatest victories for religious liberals is slavery's abolition. When the Republican administration issued what we call The Emancipation Proclamation... we are taught this freed the slaves.

Enter the American mythology... the actual title of the The Emancipation Proclamation is U.S. Navy General Order No. 4 of 14 January 1863 and helpfully issued through the Naval Secretary, Gideon Wells. Don't you find that a bit odd? Does it make you wonder what the first three were?

The President wrote:
I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day first above mentioned, by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and hence forward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

The Proclamation freed slaves in territories taken by the Union from the day forward.

It failed to include the border states... Union states or even the southern areas back under Union control since the attack on Fort Sumter. Some would argue it only covered areas outside the Union since what Lincoln ordered should have required an act of Congress.

I'm sure the Navy did well enforcing it in Tennessee.

How long do you suppose it took to get the word to all those Union naval ships off the coast enforcing the blockade of the Confederacy? This was in the days before even radio. Not only that, it was written in September, 1862, went into effect January first of 1863 and not transmitted to the sailors until a couple of weeks after that.

News in those days could be spread instantaneously you know. The Lincoln administration made effective use of the telegraph in war time.

Thus perhaps the second or third greatest political document in all of American history contained still more hidden shafts for African Americans.

But yet it was enforced and slavery ended eventually because it was the liberal religious who spent all those decades laying the ground work.

Still... a lot of careful ground work can be undone quickly. At least that would be opinion of many religious liberals in our current difficulties.

Presently we lack the clear unambiguous mandate we once held for the country... as we did on December 8, 1941.

"Infamy"
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
 
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.
 
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces.
 
Very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
 
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaysia.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
This morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area.
 
The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
 
As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.
 
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December seventh, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

How ever you feel about the moral ambiguities of the post 9-11 world... the world we contemplate every day... both conservative and liberal alike have much to be proud of today. Not only in our history and our institutions... but in our religious faith, too. And ours is liberal.

After watching Michael Moore's movie... more than one person left that theater thinking about how much nicer America would be if we all thought about justice and freedom the same way.

I don't think that's right. The best analogy I can find for America comes from Ikea.

That's right. What can a Swedish housewares dealer teach us about ourselves? I own some chairs from there. They call them Em chairs. Unlike most furniture from Ikea these aren't assembled with an allen wrench. In fact, they have no fasteners at all. They're hammock like chairs held together by a series of pipes and a whole lot of tension. Break the tension at any point and the chairs instantly collapse to the floor.

To welcome all views and people to the American table, as U.U.s do theologically means to invite tension by definition.

Do you happen to love America? I think it's a darn comfortable place to sit.