The Legacy of Jesus

George Santayana said “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” How is this for not learning history; the South is rising again. Once more unto the breech dear friends, blacks have forgotten their places…have they not? It appears they think so in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and good ole South Carolina in particular.

So very quietly, so as not to wake the rooster, white parents have been up to something. Using elected board members, they have been quietly restoring the antebellum south of old south with regard to declaring the inferiority of modern blacks as that of the black slaves. These activities are taking place in school classrooms, PTA meetings and churches with Jesus Christ on them.

I think they are getting ready for something big. I think they are certain a day is coming when they will have the legal right to gather up the niggers running about fouling the air and putting them back where they belong…in the fields and in bright clothes holding a lamp. In fact, attorneys for the Department of Education are investigating if ‘colored’ students are being re-segregated by sneaky little mechanisms such as assigning them to “special classes.” Concurrently, they are also investigating if African or Latino American students are punished more severely than whites as well as some other concerns.

Gary Orfield’s UCLA study of education segregation and racism determined that 38% of African American and Latino students attend public schools that are 90% minority. In other words the plan is working. White parents have indeed been able to get them colored people away from their children.

My guess is that the residents of Tylertown and places like it all across the Deep South would tell you that they are making progress from the degrading policies of the old south by pointing out improvements like high school proms being de-segregated. Some schools even began de-segregating home comings for all Americans instead of White people. But in case Tylertown tries to point to its first appointment of an African American school principal since 1970 to Salem school. One of those quiet things I pointed out lies in the fact that Tylertown (which has a white principal) is 76% black, while Salem is 33% black. Is it me or does that smell like a deal was struck.

How far away are white people from the mentality of someone like Alexander H. Stephens, Jeff Davis’ vice president, who bluntly stated: “Our new government is founded….upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.” Class, here is your essay assignment; if the Confederacy had won would they have been founded as a Christian nation and would they have trusted in God!

I repeat; “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Let me remind you: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Or, should I be buying stock in blue and grey wool fabrics?

Please deliver this to Sen Mitch McConnell, Rep John Boehner, Sen DeMint, Justice Thomas, and…

Not the same Jesus I follow…
One of the most important items of the white Republican Conservative agenda seems to be to get rid of blacks in important places. If I am right, Michael Steele has to go and may have been set up. The threatening letter Governor Bobby Jindal received telling him to vacate his office in 3 days may mean that he is next but since he is a sitting governor, the strategy may be different.

Jindal was one of 30 other governors who received the same ultimatum by a band of crack pots that have no idea of how government works and do not care. Perhaps they have dreams of the spoils of conquest – women and money. However, does anyone out there believe the threats alone will cause 30 governors to walk away from their jobs? Did they really believe they could actually make them leave without pulling a trigger or planting an improvised explosive device convenient to ensuring they kill their target?

The pot is just beginning to boil. The FBI reports an increase in communications among all of the domestic extremists groups. These include militias that are supposed to be non-violent, white separatists and extreme libertarian and ‘sovereign’ citizens. All of these groups are armed and most of their members want the thrill of spilling human blood.

According to their rhetoric, they all want to define what America should be. And the first requirement seems to be that everyone of color must be brought under control by expulsion, enslavement or outright genocide. That includes tokens like Clarence Thomas, Lou Christie, Ward Connerly, Ken Blackwell and other African Americans who trusted those who made them honorary whites. Maybe they and others like them are under the illusion that their white conservative benefactors will put them in charge over all other blacks because I think they are certain leaders like Boehner, McConnell, DeMint, Beck, Limbaugh, Bachmann and the rest do not see them as n*****rs.

And regarding other hapless supporters of these misguided politicians, it never ceases to amaze me how so many educated people can so conveniently select out lessons of history that interfere with what they want to believe. I am referring to token blacks and ignorant whites who are being recruited as you read this that are unaware of the lessons of betrayal once they are no longer needed.

But what is most disturbing is that the radical white conservatives like those I mentioned above were born out of a religion based on unity and love for one another. They are clever in the way they use the sacrifice of Jesus to whip up sentiments of hatred and blood lust within zealots to get rid of anyone standing in their way. I think that good people like Bart Stupak fear for their lives because of what may very well be legitimate murderous threats.

Meanwhile, I keep wondering why others are not willing to express outrage about Rep. John Lewis being called a nigger after being beaten for his stand on civil rights, or Rep Barney Frank being called a faggot, or the death threats against others who supported the health care plan. It is sorta like not wanting to help in any way while your neighbors are being murdered because you never met them. We Americans are becoming some piece of work. We are a little bit closer to brown shirt wearers.

Wow, Pat Robertson can fathom how God thinks!

Instead of Pat Robertson’s assertion that God decided he has had it with Haiti, what if God is really angry at the rest of us for not helping Haiti sooner. That’s the problem I have with Pat, and to a lesser degree, Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, who acknowledged that the earthquake was indeed caused by God. Both rule out the fact that mere humans analyzing scientific data concluded that the earthquake in Haiti was overdue.

I think I am as much a Christian believer as anyone else who calls themselves Christian. So I am aware of what is written in the Bible regarding destruction such as Sodom & Gomorrah. The basic difference between me and pastors who ascribe geological events to God is that geological events are going to occur because of the way God made the earth in the first place.

But as I said above, there were statements made by two very different pastors that ignored the possibility that it was just an earthquake. Yet, the major religions of the world are unanimous about our duty to help the poor, heavy-laden and downtrodden. Isn’t that why we went into Iraq and spent a trillion dollars to catch a murderer who we knew was living in Afghanistan? Imagine what just one billion of that in aid to the infrastructure of Haitian buildings would have meant to so many men, women and children. But don’t blame Bush an company…we elected him!

Nevertheless, I would like to think this awful tragedy will teach everyone that we are one family on spaceship Earth. The incredible disparity between how some people live and the stifling lack of opportunity their children have to grow up in through no fault of their own needs to be addressed if the human race is to ever take the next great evolutionary step. The mere fact that it was “okay” for Haiti to exist as poor as it was without a global effort to help them and every other country living in desperate poverty says we are still a predatory species.

The really sad part is that Pat Robertson and his fellow pastors all over the United States have the attention of nearly 300 million people who say they follow Jesus Christ. It does make one wonder if they are familiar with his instructions to pastors to suffer the children…all the children.

Uh-Oh, there is a rumor going around that young adults are dropping out of church. If it is true, why would it surprise anyone? For the last twenty years they have witnessed bad changes in their parents…who attend church every week. And, has anyone checked out the social sites lately? The rise of social communications has allowed young adults to discover that, in fact, there were millions of others who are also dissatisfied with the same things they are. Isn’t that what the 2009 election told us?

If anyone wants to understand young adults, tell them to check out Obama’s campaign strategy. The turnout for President Obama was the clearest message ever sent to churches, parents, politicians and the education system in the history of the United States. And what I find most remarkable about it is that the only thing Obama’s people did was give them an opportunity to say what they thought ought to be changed and then invite them to help do it. In other words, Obama’s campaign managers brought them into the process. More than any other group in the United States, young adults are responsible for his election.

What conservative Republicans should have learned is that American politics is a very close cousin to American churches. The same kind of zealous radicalism one finds in religion, one also finds in politics because both are generally controlled by charismatic leaders more so than those possessing good leadership skills. That’s why if I were a preacher, the most important thing I would worry about is just how much is true about what I am told in the seminaries of every faith!

I think young adults know that two and two is four. They know about the many contradictions between sermons and scriptures. They know about the outrageous statements made by supposedly religious people like those of the conservative Republicans. That’s why I think young adults are dropping out; no one is able to answer a simple question. They want to know why worship is not just a matter of a person raising their face to heaven because God is in all of us. They want to know why a preacher wears a costume in the pulpit. They want to know why there are so many preachers who aspire to so much materiality while preaching about a Messiah who did not even have a fox hole. They want to know why it states in the Bible that Jesus said he came for the poor whom he found rich in faith yet; every church aspires to lavish surroundings.

If the church wants to reclaim them, it had better change. It had better adopt an agenda to wipe poverty off the face of the earth. It had better learn to love every human being on earth as though they were members of their own family…because they are! And if these words seem harsh, the church had better re-read the words spoken by Jesus so they can tell me where I have said anything that is not true. And it had better do these things in a hurry!