My Opinion!

“Why I have a strong opinion about some matters!”
by Charlie Leck

“I read you for stimulation and insight, Charles… I do enjoy your point of view and everyone’s opinion comes from life experiences only they have had… I would love for you to flesh out some of your own reasons for why you have a strong opinion about some matters…”     [comment posted by a woman on one of my recent blogs]

I have thought a lot about this question – an awful lot. I’ve not been feeling too good the last few days and I’ve laid back and thought about what this very kind and good lady has asked me.

Before plunging into the deeper and murky water, let me play around for a moment in the shallow edge of the pond.

Why do I have a strong opinion about some matters?
That question raises other questions for me. I’m guessing that most people who hold opinions hold strong ones, especially if those opinions have been formulated after a considerable amount of thought and study. I am not unusual, am I, in holding strong opinions? Or are you saying that I hold rigid opinions? That would worry me if it were true. Though my opinions are strong, in most cases they are not inflexible. However, I can’t imagine flip-flopping 180 degrees on many of my opinions.

There are some matters that I classify as human truths
and I cannot budge on those! A little church upon on the hill, in the town where I grew up as a child, had an enormous impact on my thinking in this regard…..

I grew up paying attention to matters of faith, trying to figure it all out. My parents weren’t particularly religious. We were not a spiritual or prayerful family at all. Yet, it was important to them that I, scrubbed and polished, trudge on up to Sunday School on the big day each weekend.

I didn’t pay careful attention, but things occasionally interested me and I’d find myself wondering about something here or there.

Who is this Jesus character anyway? I wasn’t much interested in his divinity. “Who do you say that I am,” he asked Peter. It was as if he had asked me. Who was he? (Or, is it more appropriate to ask: Who is he?)

I didn’t much care that he rose up – or that he sits at the right hand of God – or that, in a triune sort of way, he is God or a part of God.

I like what he did when he roamed around. I liked a lot of the very plain things that he said about justice and righteousness. I paid careful attention to the simple, unadorned things that he said.

“If you want to be perfect,” he said, “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then, come and follow me.”

Whew! What does that mean? I wondered a great deal about it. Could anyone really do that?

You know, the guy was obsessed with the poor. He came “to preach good news to the poor.” He also worried about prisoners and the lame and blind. He talked about “the oppressed.”

All that stuff affected me. I never stopped thinking about it.

So, our responsibility toward and on behalf of our fellow-man ranks very high with me and here my opinion is rigid. Jesus, in the scriptures, called it “love” for our neighbor or brother. The apostles (especially John and Peter), writing later, would actually equate it with our love for God – that is, the only way we could love God was to love our fellow man.

In such matters, I am not looking for a return – for reward or recompense. It is just, according to our faith, something that is supposed to be natural and certain and spontaneous. If we wish to love and honor God, we must love and honor our fellow man.

We cannot leave brothers and sisters unsheltered, hungry, ill and addicted. Turning from them in their need is, according to Christian teaching, turning away from God.

My attitude is the same about the earth that God put into our hands for care-taking. That is what our faith says. Ignoring this spectacular and totally unusual planet is to ignore the Creator. Not caring for the planet with utmost caution and tender love, is not caring for God.

These are two matters that I am rigid about: (1) Our calling to love and serve our fellow man; and (2) our calling to protect, serve and love the earth upon which we live.

Now then, there are matters upon which I hold firm opinions that are, I suppose, debatable.
I am thinking of some examples… and it is not easy, because my opinions about these matters have been solidly informed by experience and study.

What, for instance is JUSTICE?
Well, my goodness, I’ve asked myself a terribly difficult and complex question. With certainty, there is no certainty about such a complex question. Here one must proceed with caution and careful examination.

Let me use two of the most incredible of the possible examples: (1) Slavery in America and (2) the Right to Marry the person one loves.

On the first of these, 99 percent of you are going to say there is no question – no reason for debate – no possible reason to consider whether slavery can possibly be just. Indeed?

Well, put yourself back 155 years ago in our history – to 1857 – and then ask the question. At that time there were dozens of books written by American scholars of the south and by southern churchmen that posed arguments that justified slavery. Indeed!

There were plenty of southern thinkers who believed the world was ordered the way it was for a reason; that is, that there were the weak and there were the strong. They believed that this order was created by God and that human beings ought not tinker with that order. It was a natural, organic conception of stability in the world. Southern thinkers were writing that freedom is not an absolute concept and that no one is born equal. Freedom, they said, must be balanced with order and with tradition.

Churchmen argued that slavery was a biblical institution and was divinely sanctioned. How often they quoted the New Testament writings of Paul: “Slaves, be obedient to your masters!”

Instead of arguing for natural rights, southern philosophers were proclaiming that there was a “natural inequality.”

William Harper (Memoir of Slavery) wrote that “man is born to subjection” and that “man struggles with evil choices and must choose between them.”

Henry Hughes argued that slaves were “charges put in the world for slaveholders to care for and develop them.” Hughes strongly supported the idea of a master race.

The Yale University Scholar, David Blight, has pointed out that nearly every slave owner’s library included an anthology of pro-slavery writings of 400 to 900 pages.

Now it may seem I am making a lurch away from the subject, but I am not…
I had a remarkable lunch on Friday with one of our little town’s most distinguished residents, who also happens to be one of our state’s most remarkable citizens. He wanted to make an important point to me in reply to one of my questions.

“You know,” he told me, “if you go back to the years before 1860, you will find that about 25 percent of the nation’s population was firmly, rigidly and unbendingly against slavery.” Then he pointed out to me that approximately the same percentage of people were solidly and unyieldingly in favor of slavery and the importance it had to the American economic engine. And in the great middle, were 50 percent of Americans who, for some reason or another, had no real opinion on the matter at all.

This brilliant fellow looked across the table to me for reaction. He was dumbfounded. From today’s perspective can you imagine that there were so many people who had no opinion about anything that we now regard as so unjust? Can you imagine?

He went on to talk, at considerable length, about a book he had just read with his book club: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

It was Stowe, as far as President Lincoln was concerned, who called our nation to examine itself – to examine its thinking and its fairness and its right to own human beings.

“It was Stowe,” my neighbor said, “who set the other 50 percent thinking and pushed them over the edge. The book was terribly popular. It sold like wild-fire!”

I’d read the Stowe book (and recently another wonderful book about it, Mightier Than The Sword by David Reynolds). My neighbor wasn’t aware of that and he went on to recount the story that Stowe’s novel told and how real and gruesome it was. It was wonderful to sit and listen to him.

“Can you imagine? That it was a book that did that?” he said.

I must tell you, this friend is one of the leading members of the Republican Party and always has been throughout his adult life. He knows that I am a committed member of the Democratic Party. We talked about some issues over which we differ, like the voter identification constitutional amendment on this year’s November ballot.

“In the end, I’m not going to vote for it,” he said, relieving me, “but I’m not so sure it would be a bad thing.”

About the marriage amendment, which would change our constitution enough to define marriage as that between only a man and a woman, we also talked at great length. Like I, he opposes that one with all his heart. He likened the issue to the feelings of the nation about slavery back in the 17^th century.

“About 25 percent oppose it and 25 percent favor it. The other 50 percent pretty much don’t care and aren’t mobilized by the issue.”

“We need someone like Stowe to move the 50 percent – to define the injustice of the amendment – to side with people who have no choice about being gay or lesbian; for they just are!”

Now I understood why he had told me the story. He travels around the state speaking about the issue. He always introduces the subject with the story about Stowe’s book.

“I have a son who is gay,” he said to me.

This man – this conservative Republican – has given thousands of dollars to the local organization that is fighting the marriage amendment (Minnesotans United for All Families).

You see, sometimes these issues go beyond being an issue and they become personal matters; and because they are personal we see the questions of justice and fairness differently.

These are fellow human beings we are talking about – our brothers and sisters in life upon this earth – and the great scriptures urge us to love them and care for them and to be fair to them in all ways.

I can not but have strong opinions about an issue like the marriage amendment. To me, there is no question about what is just and right.

The commenter on my blog (titled Fred), posited that “everyone’s opinion comes from some life experience only they have had.” There’s probably some truth in that. If so, let me say that I can think of two life experiences that have formed my opinions.

(1)   One is that little church upon the hill, about which I wrote at the beginning of this blog and from which I learned that every man is our brother and every woman is our sister and we are called to love them without reservation (and that means being fair to them, just to them and helpful to them). 

(2)  Second, was that trip to Mississippi in 1964, about which I have written so often in these blogs. That journey was my Harriet Beecher Stowe book. I saw injustice and mistreatment as I never dreamed it possible. The KKK was not just something someone wrote about – not anymore. The journey rattled me to my core and changed me forever. I would not stand on the sidelines again about matters of justice and fairness to my fellow human beings – never!

I have “fleshed out” for you, as best I can, what experiences cause me to hold such strong feelings. I thank you for the good and thoughtful comment and for motivating me to write these words.

Afterword
Perhaps there were other impactful, influencing experiences, but those mentioned above are the two most forceful ones. Meeting and spending time with Saul Alinsky dramatically changed me; as did sitting in the living room of Jesse Jackson’s home (in 1967) and chatting with him about justice and injustice; as did reading Noam Chomsky carefully (that reading proved to me that Chomsky was no communist but called for capitalism of a different, more just order); as did coming-out publically in 1968 against the War in Vietnam with the ability I’d gathered to talk about the war’s history and turning points; as did the extraordinary and mind-bending sermons of the Reverend John Fry in the late sixties (sermons I cannot retrieve as hard as I try). Oh, as I think about it, there were dozens of experiences and people that impacted me greatly and formed my thinking – the poet Arthur Mampel nourished me with extraordinary wisdom; meeting Arne Carlson before he became widely known made me more open to political possibilities; listening to the Welch pastor, Vivian Jones, calmed me and made me more rational about seeking justice; a professor named Tom Campbell (who died too, too young) taught me how to read a book properly and with goals; Professor James Nelson and his triangle of love for God and man helped me understand how to love God in reality; a single evening in the presence of Brenda Ulend made me want to write and write; and having four incredible grandchildren made me regret so much that life can’t go on and on and on.

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What Had We allowed the South to Secede?

Eric Black Ink (graphic from MinnPost)

150 years ago, Lincoln felt strongly that the Union had to be preserved – whatever the cost!
by Charlie Leck

My dedication in the last year to a heavy amount of reading about Abraham Lincoln, the economy of 17th, 18th and 19th century American South, and the political management of the Civil War was one of the most enjoyable academic efforts I've ever undertaken. The endeavor included a fascinating on-line course offered at no cost by Yale University and led by Professor David Blight (PhD). I wrote about that here several months ago.

Now on Wednesday morning this week one of my favorite journalist/commentators reminds me that it is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War, when “Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter…” The South was, of course, asserting its constitutional right to secede from the Union and to stake claim to any federal properties within those southern states that had joined the Confederacy.

It seems to me that the horrors of that war were many, many more years back in our history than that. What I’m trying to say is that the Civil War seems like it belongs in ancient history rather than only 150 years ago. I guess when you get older 150 years doesn’t seem as far back as it might to a 15 year old.

In his fine column, Eric Black is contemporizing the question: “What if Lincoln had allowed the South to secede?”[click here to read it] Black speculates.

“It’s a wild counterfactual. Of course, hundreds of thousands who died over the next five years would have lived to die some other, presumably less violent, way. How long would slavery have lasted in the CSA? Would the South ever have reconsidered and tried to get back together with the North? Might the two countries have fought over ownership of the southwestern territories? Or might the two have become friends and allies?”

Black’s is a short piece and very well-worth reading. I recommend it to you.

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America’s Great Civil War

Some interesting tid-bits for those of you out there who consider yourselves U.S. Civil War buffs.
by Charlie Leck

This will be a brief blog even though it’s tempting to go into a long dissertation about America’s civil war and its roots.

Last fall I took an extraordinary on-line course from Yale University. I did it because I have an intense interest in that period of America history. Yale makes a great contribution to society by allowing anyone to take these video courses just as if they were a student in the classroom. I personally really appreciate this remarkable gift. So, I approached the class with great commitment and discipline and did all the readings on time, wrote papers and took exceedingly thorough lecture notes. A great advantage in taking a class like this is that you can rewind! Miss a little something – or the professor is going a little too quickly – or you just need time to think about something – and you can hit the pause button and even back-up to go over something again.

David W. Blight, PhD., taught the class I took (Civil War & Reconstruction, History 119). He was remarkably good.

The syllabus was extensive and led me along to some books I would never have otherwise read. I’ll include it at the end of the blog for any of you who might be interested.

The course concentrated heavily on the institution of slavery as the economic engine that drove the South and the expansion of the great Southwest.

Frederick Douglas
The course also led me into a new appreciation for Frederick Douglas and I’ve gone far beyond the course requirements now in reading and learning so very much about his life and contribution to America. He was an extraordinary man.

In this morning’s New York Time there is a very good Opinionator post about Frederick Douglas that is written by Dr. Blight. I really recommend it to you. In two paragraphs buried within this piece, Blight paints a graphic picture of the conundrum the nation faced on the eve of the brutal and divisive war.

“Douglass minced no words in announcing his own definition of the secessionists: They were ‘traitors and rebels’ who had ‘robbed, plundered, insulted, spit upon, and defiled’ the United States government, he angrily wrote in February. ‘Treason’ and ‘Armed Rebellion,’ he complained, were ‘now simply the sovereign right of Secession, and the execution of the Laws is now called ‘Coercion.’’ To Douglass, the secessionists were the mortal enemies of the ‘Government’ (which he began to capitalize), as well as of his cause of abolition. Traitors merited no quarter, and he repeatedly insisted on his own label for their movement – the ‘treasonable, Slaveholding Confederacy.

“But secessionist treason was ‘exceeded’ by Northern acquiescence, Douglass contended, in ‘the sneaking cowardice and pitiful imbecility of the Government [the Buchanan administration], and the Northern people, who are mobbing down freedom of speech, crying ‘no coercion,’ and whining for compromise.’ Douglass had been practicing this kind of rhetoric about slaveholders for years; by 1861, it was as if the secessionists had flipped his switch into overdrive.”

Abraham Lincoln
Douglas had plenty of doubts about Abraham Lincoln on the eve of his inauguration. So many rumors circulated about the in-coming President that Douglas didn’t know which to believe. Of course, we know that Douglas ended up very much in favor of Lincoln’s approach to the war, though somewhat disappointed in the President’s lack of planning for the reconstruction of the South and the introduction of the slaves into citizenship. He did, during the war, pay three personal and friendly visits to the President within the White House.

Blight’s on-line course sent me scurrying to find a host of books about Lincoln that I have consumed joyfully in the last few months.

The New York Times is doing us a great service now by running a massive series on the U.S. Civil War. It is an extraordinary educational opportunity for all of us. The entries are written as if reported from the field by the reporters of the time. Here, for instance, is last October’s entry that carries the dateline Oct 31, 1860. From it, you can be led into all the current dispatches.

The Complete Civil War
The New York Times has also published a very thorough account of the civil war as it was made by its reporters directly from the field – well over 100,000 eye witness accounts and dispatches – that includes a companion DVD. You can find out about the publication here. I’ve ordered mine and can’t wait for its arrival.

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As promised, here’s the syllabus from the Yale on-line course I mention above:

Description:

This course will explore the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. The primary goal of the course is to understand the multiple meanings of a transforming event in American history. Those meanings may be defined in many ways: national, sectional, racial, constitutional, individual, social, intellectual, or moral. We will especially examine four broad themes: the crisis of union and disunion in an expanding republic; slavery, race, and emancipation as national problem, personal experience, and social process; the experience of modern, total war for individuals and society; and the political and social challenges of Reconstruction. The course attempts, in several ways, to understand the interrelationships between regional, national, and African-American history. And finally, we hope to probe the depths of why the Civil War era has a unique hold on the American historical imagination.

Texts:

Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War. Hill and Wang.

David Blight, Why the Civil War Came. New York: Oxford University.

Charles R. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. University of Virginia Press.

Drew G. Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. University of North Carolina Press.

E. L. Doctorow, The March. Random House.

Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877. Harper & Row.

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, ed. by David W. Blight. Bedford Books.

Gary Gallagher, The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat.Harvard University Press.

James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom. Oxford University Press.

Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches, ed. by Alice Fahs. Bedford Books.

Michael P. Johnson, ed., Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the Civil War. Bedford Books.

Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War. Farrar Strauss Giroux.

William Gienapp, ed., Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection. Norton.

We are using two anthologies of documents (Gienapp and Johnson). Teaching Assistants will have discretion in assigning particular documents for each week's sections, and many such documents will be especially important for use in paper assignments. James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era is provided largely as background reading. For further background reading on the post-war period you may want to consult David W. Blight,Race and Reunion: The Civil War In American Memory.

Films:

Films will be scheduled during the course: especially several episodes of the PBS series, "The Civil War." The film, "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Civil War," will also be assigned. Selections of Civil War era poetry may also be provided at times during the course.

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