The North Coast times-eagle., October 01, 2005, Page 7, Image 7

N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , OCTEMBER 200S
Our founders were deeply spiritual and also deeply
secular — a well-balanced condition of the mature mind that
eludes today's political fundamentalists.Our founders respected
human freedom and the urge toward greater equality. Over the
centuries, we have tried to make this nation a better expression
of their intent, so that there would be no second-class citizens,
no arbitrary authority that limited our life, liberty or pursuit of
happiness. And the better angels of that Revolution stand yet
upon our shoulders as we oppose the clan of authority, that cult
of death, whose cloak of human oppression has cast its shadow
over our children’s future.
What must we do?We must bring the light of conscious­
ness to people who are enslaved by the darkness. We must
show them — make them see — the clear links between the
Taliban and the American fundamentalists. It is about power,
male power, and subservience. Why can't a young girl in trouble
get an abortion in the preferred world of the fundamentalists? It
isn’t because of the sanctity of life, or the fundamentalists would
be acting to preserve life by getting medicine to Africa instead of
impeding it. They would be halting executions and building up
our institutions of peace.
The desperate attitude of the far right toward not only
the unborn baby but even brain-dead people on life support
reveals something about their true religion: they have little.
There is nothing in their actions that reveals a belief that life is
eternal, that there is no death except as a doorway to something
better. Their brand of Christianity simply does not relate to the
teachings of Christ. The worst of the hate-mongers who misuse
the Bible to make million-dollar church incomes and push a
political agenda of male domination and hate are easy to spot,
for they cherry-pick Bible passages to suit their purposes. They
disregard any turning of cheeks, they disregard the fact that
Jesus never mentioned the homosexuality that they so fear.
They seem not to fear that, as very rich men, they themselves
might have a hard time driving their Hummers through the eye
of the needle into heaven. They claim that every word of the
Bible must be followed, but if they really believed that they
would have stoned themselves to death years ago, as they are
as sexually frisky and full of covetous looks as anybody else.
They forgive themselves freely, of course, even when they
promote the murder of foreign leaders.
They refuse a young girl an abortion for the same
reason they would refuse her birth control: because in either
case she would be exercising power and control over her own
future — and such power and control is reserved for the author­
ities; male authorities — below whom she is to cower and serve
and reproduce. It is all about that, and we have to start saying
so, so that the far right will no longer have the women marching
in its toxic ranks — at least the smarter women.
If I ran the Democratic Party, I would lay it all out in
expensive advertising campaigns. I would have sociologists
and psychologists talking about the tricks of mental slavery that
are being used to trick decent Christians and other people into
following un-Christian leaders and policies. As with any kind of
mental counseling, progress depends on the spread of conscio­
usness — of self-awareness. I would let more and more people,
especially the women, come to understand the nature of the lies
that surround them and defraud them. I believe they really are
for life and liberty, but they must be given better information,
better moral and emotional support.
It would be important to have well-known voices of
authority deliver that message — the Walter Cronkites and
Oprah Winfreys of America — if they would ever be brave
enough to do so. And here is why the message must be deliver­
ed by such voices.
Imagine walking down a street in my Peterborough. You
run across a retired couple and start talking politics. You get on
the subject of abortion.
“Listen,” you say, “the Europeans have a very small
percentage of the abortions we have in the United States.They
have cut the number of abortions by providing better sex educa­
tion, providing more contraception, and accepting a more open
and honest attitude about the sexual lives of their young people.
If your concern is to reduce abortions, surely you must become
an advocate of these programs that actually do the trick!"
But the couple disagrees. They tell you, “It isn’t about
what works in Europe and what might work here, it is about
doing the right thing for the right reason, and following the word
of God."
Well, that was a real conversation in Peterborough,
though I'm sure they must have been visitors.
If you wonder why the other side of the political aisle
seems resistant to the facts, it is because they are not interested
in what works, what is pragmatic; they're interested in obedience
to authority. This is of course unworkable in the civic arena,
where pragmatism is the belief system we must share as our
common ground. The only way to break through that problem
is if our few national voices of authority will please give these
authority-dependent people permission to think freshly about our
important issues.
There is another string leading out of this dark maze.
Better leaders can make great differences in the life of a society,
but we cannot elect them if we do not change from electoral
organizing to social organizing.
When I went on a 23,000-mile voter registration journey
before the last election, I walked through many housing projects
and low-income neighborhoods where no one from the outside
had dropped by to talk politics since the previous election. The
Democrats only come around, I was told, every few years to ask
for their votes, but they weren't there to listen to their problems,
to help them craft political solutions, and to stand behind them
and amplify their voices. These people were of the opinion that,
if the Democrats won or lost, their own lives wouldn’t really
change much.
It is simply exploitive politics to come around begging
for votes without giving so much as a crouton in return. We
have to be involved all year long, every year, and in every
neighborhood that needs political help. That is movement build­
ing — not just stumping for candidates.
The residents of Cabrini Green in Chicago, and the
people of the slums of Ft. Myers, Miami, St. Louis and New
Orleans told me they needed our organizing help and our voices
added to theirs— for they love their children too and want decent
lives. Many of the streets I walked in New Orleans were later
strewn with the drowned poor, as if America had progressed
no further than the days of the Titanic, when those traveling
in steerage are never offered the lifeboats. So much criticism
has fallen on the President for the flooding disaster in New
Orleans, but the Democrats have had a long century to make
life better and they have not done so. The New Deal and other
programs, offered at a distance, are helpful but no match for a
Party meeting-house in every neighborhood to raise the political
competency and expectations of the area.
Politics is not just about raising money for candidates.
Politics is about creatively serving the needs of your people, and
the election is just the report card of how you are doing and how
many people you have helped and how many people are follow­
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‘THE TIGER OF THE SENATE’ HAS HIS DAY
The City o f Eugene has proclaimed October 20, as
Wayne Morse Day’. His old friend and “driving companion”
G. V. Stahakis wrote a memorial to the late U. S. Senator
from Oregon, from which the following is excerpted.
Thirty-one years after his passing, we celebrate the
105th birthday of Wayne L. Morse on October 20. Eugene
was his home from 1931 until his passing in 1974. He is one
the most prominent and outspoken advocates for the people
that our nation has ever known.
He is an icon of freedom, fairness and citizenship. He
was a statesman, a family man and a farmer. He is still honored
today for his unyielding dedication to open, clean government
of the people, by the people, and for the people.
He was a plain spoken orator, an independent spirit, a
constitutional scholar, and a populist who encouraged and used
dissent as an essential tool of democracy.
Wayne Morse is loved and respected as “The Tiger of
the Senate," “Mr. Education” and the “Conscience of America.”
On his birthday we celebrate his life, his spirit, his wisdom and
his life long service of protecting our civil liberties and rights.
On this special day we ponder how the Senator would react
if he were faced with today’s political atmosphere.
Wayne Morse was well known long before he was
elected to political office. Respected for his strong moral
character, fairness, and deep knowledge of our Constitution,
He was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt to arbitrate
crises between labor and management. The Senator was
recognized internationally from the 1940s to the 1970s.
An enlightened man, Senator Morse understood that
our Constitution demands that the direction our country takes
must be based on a civilian order of law nationally and inter­
nationally. The positions he took indicate that quite vigorously.
He hammered home his points on the duties and limitations of
government consistently by pointing out that “Article 1, Section
8 vests the power to declare war in the Congress, not the
Administration." He believed that our foreign policy should reflect
the “decency of the American people" and that we should be
“exporting bread and literacy rather than bullets and bombs.” His
statements that “our money is making the oligarchs richer and
ing your leadership because you were there for them. We do get
the government we deserve, you see, and the crowd standing
behind us in critical times is the crowd we have served through
the years. People will not speak up about global warming, I
assure you, until they first have a warm house for their own
children.
So here are my two thoughts. We must help people see
the mental traps that they are victim to, and we must do this by
telling it like we see it, by asking them to see that the pro-life,
pro-war movement is really a cult of death, that fundamental
Christianity represents the opposite of Christ's teachings, that
authoritarian control and elite profiteering are the strings of the
far right’s puppet show.
Let us indeed believe that all people are equal, but let
us not assume that all political opinions are equal, for some are
the poor poorer” and that the “American flag should precede the
dollar sign, not follow it," are current and powerful and typical of
his timelessness.
His dissent from “imperialistic foreign policy" was
consistent with his dissent from domestic policy if those policies
did nothing to promote the public welfare. Four Presidents
appointed him to resolve labor/management conflicts and he
had the courage to disclose the unfair legal disparity between
the worker and the powers of corporations.
His record on equality for all Americans without regard
to race, financial status, religion or culture is a shining example
to be envied by anyone of moral conscience. Before and after
the Civil Rights Movement he fought for equal distribution of law.
Locally, he is remembered as a populist and fearless champion
of the people.
He was born on a farm in Wisconsin October 20, 1900.
Although adopted by Oregon, he was a child of Wisconsin and
as such he was influenced by the populism of “Fighting Bob
LaFollette," and he referred to him throughout his life. He lived
as a farmer for most of his life, and provided a healthy rural
environment for his wife and three daughters. He was active in
local food cooperatives and competed in and won many prizes
from county fairs all over the state over several decades. He
prized his Blue Ribbons over his many political awards.
Senator Morse would travel great distances to stay in
touch with the youth and grass roots of Oregon. He dissented
from public policy that “sold out” the family farm to large corpo­
rate interests.
The policies that Wayne Morse dissented against during
his terms in office are on the front burner of American politics
today, just as he said they would be. He died in 1968 while
campaigning in an election that could have returned him to the
Senate.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
Wayne Morse is one o f two U.S. Senators who voted
against giving President Lyndon Johnson authority to go to war
in Vietnam in 1964, the infamous 'Tonkin Resolution’ which has
since proven to be a companion in deceit to the war in Iraq.
toxic and sociopathic and require loving intervention. Let is
intervene. Let us stand up in church gatherings, let us confront
our friends. Let us use the tools of mass communication to
awaken people to the lies that bind them.
And let us return to real politics in the neighborhoods —
especially those neighborhoods where we are most needed. As
it stands now, people who do not receive the support they need
from an ever-receding community are turning to the very
churches that have been killing those needed government
services. This is a dangerous tailspin that we can only arrest
with a political return to the neighborhoods. Let us demand of
our Party leaders that we move from the electoral to social
organizing, so that there is more rock and less hot air under our
candidates as we move into the future.
These are big projects. Do we have enough energy
remaining for this sort of thing?
What is it to our souls when we have to just keep slug­
ging through dark places? Why, after all that has happened in
America, from stolen elections to the destruction of our neces­
sary institutions of mutual help, are you, personally, still at it?
Why, after seeing our country become the international symbol
of irresponsible conduct, of torture, of political imprisonment, of
destruction to the global ecosystem, are your spirits not smeared
across the plaza under the treads of these tanks?
Are your hearts perhaps stronger and your souls deeper
than you imagined? Yes, this is what you came here to do.There
is no greater gift than to be given a life of meaning. There is no
greater heroism than to bravely represent love in a dark time of
fear and danger.
We are resolved to help each other. We are resolved to
represent love in the world and follow our national dream.
So look at the situation wisely and know that a happy
ending is not found under the paper moon of child's brief play.
Accept and celebrate the fact that we are deeply engaged in a
long, hard drama of global meaning We welcome the fight We
welcome it, and by George, we are up to it.
95 year old Doris Granny D ’ Haddock is the author of
“Granny D You're Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell" (Random
House). In her 90th year, she walked across the country for
campaign finance reform
Her website is http /fwww granny.com/.
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