What once was . . no longer is . .

When things change, improvement can be achieved but sometimes change isn’t always improvement.

I find myself having to ascend this slope as well but what I have observed, is the descent of American society. After you read this, let me know what you think.

Consensus is often the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. Consensus is most often something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

If you just want to be liked, are prepared to compromise on anything, you will achieve nothing of value. (see Compromise of 1850)

Discipline yourself to do what you know is right even if difficult, it’s the high road to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

Success is a mixture of having skill and achievement in what you are doing; knowing that it requires constant progress, and continuing with a sense of purpose.

A healthy society is composed of individual men and women in families raising children with love, structure and purpose.

In 2006, 54% of the U.S. population living in 50 metro areas were responsible for 67% of armed killing.

The majority of murders in the cities with the worst homicide rates are gang-related.

Since 1981, Los Angeles alone has had 16,000 gang related homicides. That’s more than twice the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and it’s more than the number of Americans who died in the Mexican-American War.

Chicago is an area where gang leaders wield a great deal of influence; 80% of Chicago’s murders are gang-related. Chicago is a city divided in control by gangs and politicians. It has 68,000 gang members, which is four times the number of police officers. Chicago politicians solicit the support of gang members in their campaigns, accepting laundered contributions from them, hiring their members and tipping them off about upcoming police raids. And their biggest favor to the gang bosses is doing nothing about the epidemic of gang violence.

Life is cheap and illegal guns are as available as illegal drugs. America is a group of war zones whose problem is not the supply of guns, but their own social dysfunction.

Reformers in the twenties blamed the plight of the slums on the availability of liquor. They pushed through Prohibition to fix the cities. The liquor went on flowing and the slums went on being slums. Gun control has been just as successful in healing the slums as whiskey control. Just like the dry reformers, gun control advocates insist on trying to apply their solution on a national level, when the problem is not nationwide.

Street gang – NARA – 552753 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not all of America is broken, but a lot of it is. The part that is broken most often stems from broken families. Loss of the lowest fundamentals of an emotional healthy individual results in a loss of an emotional healthy country.

The legacy of Martin Luther King reminds us of a leader who spoke difficult truth even to his own people. We need leadership like that today.

Related articles

• Is Chicago’s Out-Of-Control Murder Rate Connected to Its Sanctuary City Policies? (pjmedia.com)
• Palmer House Shooting Victim Among The At Least 14 Injured, 2 Fatally, During Weekend Violence (huffingtonpost.com)
• Large Cities All Over America Are Degenerating Into Gang-Infested War Zones (thesurvivalplaceblog.com)
• Gangs are latest excuse for not closing half-empty, failing Chicago schools (educationviews.org)
• 4 Steps to a Healthier Self-Esteem (nourishedexistence.wordpress.com)
• Your potential is beyond your Self Esteem (despicablewonderfulyou.wordpress.com)

Celebrating a Man of Honor

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. meet at the White House, 1966 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today marks a birthday of a man whose life should be thankfully celebrated. How little I appreciated that fact when I was much younger. I grew up during the time of the emergence of civil rights, or what really should be called human rights. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. should be a person taught with respect and overall understanding and context of how much he accomplished in a short period of time amidst adverse circumstances and controversy.

There were other great leaders before him who understood the barbarism of slavery, lack of opportunity through segregation, exclusion of fundamental human rights in racism and the lack of a voice in elections. Frederick Douglass, Booker Taliaferro Washington, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, are among the many who preceded Dr. King. Their work notwithstanding, none of them were able to achieve as much as quickly as Dr. King did in gaining fundamental rights which were supposedly guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

No person’s life when examined in fine detail is perfect but upon reviewing Dr King’s life, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by his accomplishments. As an example, young Martin starts college at 15 and receives a bachelor’s degree while still a teenager. He received his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 3 more years and his Doctorate by 26. Many years later, patterns of borrowing language without clear attribution indicated he plagiarized the words of others in his Doctorate dissertation. None the less, his life’s work when examined with adequate thought and balance demonstrates he used the tools available to him to advance a cause long overdue. That cause ennobled a group which deserved its rightful place of humanity.

King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, when he was twenty-five years old having married just one year before. This placed him in the middle of a growing storm of dissatisfaction with African-Americans being treated as if they were inhuman or in some cases vermin.

When an 18-year-old Montgomery Alabama resident Mary Louise Smith was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger, the seeds of involvement in a greater struggle were sown. Martin King was only 15 when he gave a speech on “The Negro and the Constitution”. Clearly at a young age, he realized that action was required to rectify the huge moral gap between the promises of the Constitution and the Emancipation proclamation with how African-Americans had to live their lives. Joseph Lowrey, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, Fred Shuttlesworth, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Josea Williams and Ella Baker were among the many people who aided Dr. King in the struggle for civil rights.

The remarkable aspect of how he peacefully proceeded with the leadership of that struggle, through physical threats, bombings, arrests, beatings, illegal and false investigations by the FBI, are all part of the amazing aspects of his less than 40 years on this earth.

“Let us move now from the practical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

Chronology of events and people.

What Was Jim Crow?

What was COINTELPRO?

Related articles

• Celebrate Martin Luther King’s 84th Birthday in Service to Others (atlantablackstar.com)
• Previously Unreleased Interviews with The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (wnyc.org)
• Happy Birthday To Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! (newsone.com)
• Photos: Martin Luther King: A Life in Pictures (abcnews.go.com)

We Can Do Better!

In light of the recent events in the north and eastern portion of the US, I would like to make this simple supposition; we are all part of the human family. No one, absolutely no one, in spite of ethnicity, culture or history is excluded from this family. To be sure, we have some bad characters among us acting on impulse, emotion, anger, fear and depravity. They must be separated from those willing to abide by law for our protection and in some instances their rehabilitation.

Whether you believe in a religion, a cause or simply the product of successive evolution, we are all of the same unique family. If you prefer we can call it something as simple as the same species. Our unique life characteristics can only be found here on one planet as far as our telescopes and millions of miles of space probes can observe. Perhaps our motto or creed should address this one simple idea; save the human.

Look around you, do you see someone hurting, requires assistance, friendless, penniless, loveless? Well guess what? You can be that person of hope or blessing. To standby and wait around for an organization or government, military, elected official or for that matter, heavenly manifestation to help, is a lost opportunity. It’s an opportunity to forget your own pain and frustration, heal yourself and others you may come in contact. In many instances, you are the only one that can make a difference. Do what you can.

The core to any successful friendship, government, family or society is to be willing to compromise and understand their will be differences and examine the needs of the other group or individual. Failure to cooperate, understand and compromise where necessary demonstrates a lack of ideas. We may find ourselves at odds sometimes over philosophy, politics or personal possession. In the end, that should not matter.

If you are capable of friendship, love and concern and not a self gratifying, live as a self accumulating, egotistic individual, you are on the path to what it is to be human. Remember that next time when you see, talk or hear someone. They have needs, wisdom and worth as well.

Perhaps this comes across as altruistic hyperbole but I challenge you and I to think about these simple ideas and act as a responsible & committed member of the human family.

 

Con Ed power plant in NY – explosion during hurricane Sandy.

Related articles

• Dr. Thomas D. Phelan: Power Restoration: Why It Seems to Take so Long (huffingtonpost.com)

The Right to Choose

As a citizen of the USA people often hear the phrase “right to choose”. Inevitably the phrase may be associated with any number of topics, most often associated with carrying a baby to full term or having it aborted.  I want to use this phrase in a broader context and in a very specific topic recently in the news.

Socialite Denise Rich Dumps U.S. Passport Frankly I’m not concerned with what entertainment or public people are doing and how they wish to conduct themselves. If this individual or others like her wish to surrender their citizenship because they believe they will save millions of dollars in taxes or don’t approve of the person in a leadership capacity, I say go for it.

As for me, I’m unashamed, unabashedly an American.  I may not always like what our country has positioned itself in parts of the world, however the principles which our nation was founded upon are the ones in which I wish to always align myself under. If I don’t like the person in office as President, Senator, Congressman or local Sheriff, I can work, donate money and ultimately vote for someone who I prefer. If I don’t approve of taxes, new laws or the change in ethics, I can lobby with a larger group to influence a change. What I can’t do is expect things to get better if I run away or bury my head in the sand.

Ms. Richards gives up that right once she or anyone else does in renouncing their citizenship. She has the freedom to choose but not the right to a specific outcome. A child may choose to perform an act or say words which are inappropriate and believe there aren’t any consequences to those action or words. As an adult we may wish to continue that self-deception however what we choose does have consequences. Sometimes there are unforeseen consequences.

In the short story written by Edward Everett Hale, we have a person granted their wish to never have anything to do with his country again. After a trial for treason, the protagonist Philip Nolan is permanently banished to American warships and to never have the opportunity to receive any news about the US. Of course none of this will happen to American expatriates but to make the author’s point through the voice of Philip Nolan he concluded; “Remember, boy, that behind all these men… behind officers and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother…!”

His appeal was to the preservation of the Union during the Civil War. In many ways we have a similar situation in an almost stealthy brew today, a cultural war. There are sides to any war and clearly there are sides to this one as well. Some are identified with labels. Some groups such as LGBT, ACORN, Tea Party, NRA and Occupy were formed to voice their opinions and promote their collective agenda. Their agendas may conflict with the other group but all are part of a larger collective group as citizens of the USA.

By separating oneself from a country, an individual no longer has the right to be involved with influencing their former country. They also are not entitled to the protection of that country. A tax haven may shelter your money from confiscation but you can no longer lay claim to any of your former Constitutional rights. It’s also possible the laws governing your assets may change in the countries in which they are sheltered and you may find some or all of those assets confiscated.

Your loss of rights may also include incarceration / Habeas Corpus, excessive fines or punishment, protection from foreign seizure.

In the broadest sense of the phrase all of us have the right to make choices, just not the right to necessarily choose our consequences.