Search and Destroy

The news cycle is consumed with the pitched battle over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.  So much is being written about and commented on and I will only make a few brief points here.

I think this is a serious matter for the Republic.  The highly partisan fight goes well beyond Kavanaugh.

On 9/11, we learned how fragile and vulnerable our homeland defenses were.  A handful of guys in a cave in Afghanistan were able to inflict terrible damage on our homeland.

In 2008, we learned how fragile and vulnerable our financial system was.  We nearly plunged into a depression that rivaled the Great Depression, and are still suffering from its effects.

And now we are learning how fragile our legal system is.   The rule of law is being attacked by the Left and the American Bar Association itself.  If they prevail, our system will be changed irrevocably.  The presumption of innocence, due process, the right to face your accuser, among other fundamental concepts will be altered forever.  And so will the nomination process itself.  A person can now be wrecked by a single bald, naked, unsupported, uncorroborated allegation.

Ms. Ford has abused the system twice.   If what she claims to have happened actually did happen, she abused it at the time by not going to the authorities.  While it is not easy, people that are assaulted have an obligation to go to law enforcement AT THE TIME.  First, it holds that person accountable.  Second, and just as important, people who do this must be stopped.   By not going to the authorities at the time, a victim is also abdicating her responsibility to protect other women from a perpetrator. 

That was the first abuse of the system.

Then Ms. Ford abused the system again.  She waited until Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court to come forward.  Then she collaborated with the DNC until the last possible minute to throw the nomination process into chaos.  The hearings became so degraded that we were reduced to hearing Senator Whitehouse going through his high school yearbook line by line asking Kavanaugh about slang referred to in it.

The American Bar Association revealed itself by transforming itself from a trade association dedicated to “defending liberty and pursuing justice” into a progressive PAC.   After the ABA issued a pronouncement in lockstep with the DNC calling for an FBI investigation, I called the ABA and immediately terminated my 23 year membership with it.   The ABA decided to take sides in this fight and completely ignored the violence being done to due process.  Pursuing justice is only for some, I guess.

Next to the dismemberment of fundamental principles of our judicial system, the other aspect that was most troubling was the Alinsky-ite mob tactics used by the Left.  A mob of angry, chanting women (at least one of which a George Soros employee) cornered the pivotal, and appropriately named Jeff Flake, who used his leverage to extend the hearings in order to do a limited FBI investigation. 

Of course, the other part of the Alinsky-ite tactics is to provoke your adversary into anger and them point the finger at them for being angry.   The get-in-your-face tactic has been employed by BLM, and recently at restaurants where Ted Cruz and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were accosted by mobs

Here, the Left has torn apart Kavanaugh and his family in a most vicious way (accusing him of being a gang rapist) that would make Tonya Harding blush.  At least Tonya had her cohorts do it the old fashioned way, with a crow bar to the knee cap.

The same people that wailed about separating children from their purported families have not shown any restraint in bludgeoning the children of Brett Kavanaugh with false accusations that their father is a sex offender or, as USA Today insinuated, a potential pedophile.

It is with great irony and sadness that I am reading Gordon Wood’s book “Friends Divided:  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.”  I will likely meet Mr. Wood when he comes to speak at the Newberry Library in a couple of weeks.

I will have one question for this great American historian during the Q & A-  “What in God’s name have we become?”

Burden Shifting

The op-eds, social media and MSM are buried under a flurry of commentary about Dr. Christine Ford    charges that he sexually assaulted her.  This seemingly 11^th hour bombshell was, in fact, a carefully planned and orchestrated tactic that was months in the making.   My guess is that organized Democrats went to work on this as soon as Trump made public his list of Supreme Court nominees and that Democrats and their activist allies have been building file folders on each and every one.  And each and every male nominee has thoroughly researched for episodes of potential sexual misconduct.

Ford’s claims, however, have multiple purposes and that’s precisely why liberal Democrats have deployed it as a tactic.

1.    Obviously, the first and most important objective is to delay or derail the Kavanaugh nomination.  Dr. Ford’s initial demand that an FBI investigation is necessary before she will agree to testify.   As we have seen with Mueller, McCabe, Strzok, Page, not only is the FBI subject to political bias, an FBI investigation into a 36 year old incident could take a year.  Democrats only need to hold up the nomination until the November election.  We saw with Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks, even where the event was contemporaneous and there were witnesses and physical evidence, it took months to clear Kane’s name of a false accusation.  If Democrats could hang this up for 6 more weeks, there is a chance they could flip the Senate and derail his appointment completely.  Whether or not there is anything to her claim, Democrats win if the process stretches out.

2.      Provoke Trump.  Donald Trump has reputation for being impulsive and combative.  Part of the Democratic plan was to provoke Trump into impulsively attacking Ford via Twitter.  That way, Democrats could cry “misogynism” and “sexism” and “toxic masculinity” through the midterms.  So far, they have largely failed at this.  Other than a couple of mild pokes yesterday, Trump has been restrained.

But derailing Kavanaugh, provoking Trump and  solidifying support among women for Democrats in the midterms may not be the most important the Left.

3.      Make what I call the Amherst College standard THE standard for evaluating all cases of sexual misconduct outside criminal proceedings with the long term goal to make it the standard for criminal proceedings as well.   The Amherst College standard (now the standard in many colleges and universities) contains three important elements that depart from our criminal justice system.   It shifts the burden of proof onto the male.   It deprives him of due process.  It redefines sexual assault as any contact that is not expressly and affirmatively consented to.

All of these elements are present here.   Fundamental to our system of justice is notice and opportunity to be heard, and along with that the principle that you get to face your accuser, have them put their case on with an opportunity to defend, and have them cross examined by attorneys.  All of the demands now being made by Ms. Ford subvert these protections of the person being accused.  And of course, Mr. Kavanaugh is being deprived of the benefit of the statute of limitations, which exists because the memory of individuals and availability of evidence fades over time.   Attacking the Kavanaugh nomination with a 36 year old unsubstantiated claim, if successful, will cement the Left’s objective of making the Amherst College Standard, the standard of all sexual misconduct cases, with the long term objective to eventually impound it into the criminal code.   Men will be stripped of due process rights.

The list of demands by Ford’s attorney has been instructive as to exactly where the Left is heading.  They represent the wish list of radical feminists to recast sexual assault claims and shift the burden of proof to the defendant.  She wants Kavanaugh to go first, which is an inversion of criminal procedure.  She does not want lawyers questioning her, for skilled lawyers will know how to pursue a line of questioning and cross-examine her.  She will not testify if Kavanaugh is in the room.  Facing your accuser is a basic precept in criminal law proceedings. 

The Left was enormously successful in shifting the presumption of innocence and stripping basic due process rights from young men on college campuses under the Obama administration  (now being partially reversed by Betsy DeVos).   Ms. Ford and Ms. Katz wish to use this platform to expand the “Amherst Standard” more widely, and eventually to have them apply in the criminal code.

Whether or not it is ultimately successful will depend on the spines of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming days.

A Tale of Two Men

It certainly was an interesting week for two men, each of whose careers took on a different trajectory.

First, there was Colin Kaepernick, who signed a deal with Nike to be the face of Nike for the 30^th anniversary of its “Just Do It” campaign.  You will recall that Nike tried to make a splash earlier this year with their Sport Hijab, attempting to prove to the world how inclusive the firm is and showing that social justice warriorism is part of its core mission (never mind that Nike was red faced when it was disclosed that some of their products were being sourced from Vietnam using child labor and that 11 of its executives left the company out of sexual harassment incidents).   I’d be curious to see exactly how many sport hijabs it has sold and the cash flow from that project, and we’ll see if Kaepernick will do for Nike’s customer base what he did for the NFL’s.

I have to hand it to Mr. Kaepernick.  While the rest of the conservative world has raged at him and at Nike, Kaepernick showed that he knows how to do career planning.  Often, NFL players are at a loss as to what to do with their careers after their star fades.   With an average length of an NFL career at about 3.3 years, that means many are out of the game by the time they are in their late 20’s.  Some, like Tim Tebow, never really catch on.  Having completed six full seasons, and having led the 49ers to a combined record of 3-16 in his last two seasons,   Kaepernick was definitely on the downside of his career.

But suddenly, in the space of a year, Kaepernick has a collusion lawsuit against the NFL that is still alive, a book deal and a huge endorsement with Nike.   How did this all happen?

I strongly suspect it was all deliberate.  Kaepernick knew his NFL career was in its twilight.  He has made a conscious, deliberate career choice to maximize his long term cash flow.  Having ascertained that the best he could do after 3-16 over two years would be a 2^nd or 3^rd string spot on a roster, Kaepernick made a decision to blow up his NFL career and began his career as a Social Justice Warrior at the end of the 2016 season.   Like Bernie Sanders, who saw that being a socialist advocate could be very profitable, Kaepernick set out to be the sports version of Al Sharpton.  He saw a niche and went for it.

Kaepernick then hijacked his employer’s place of business to build his own brand awareness.  It is no different than if an employee used firm time and resources to launch his own business on company time.  Only this was Kaepernick, Inc., Social Justice Warrior.

Kaepernick’s career shift was brilliant.  His career will have a much longer lifespan and ultimately be more profitable for him.  He doesn’t have to worry about performance.  And he doesn’t have to worry about getting headaches from concussions.  In a jiu jitsu move, it will be Kaepernick that will be giving other people headaches.

Ironically in the same week that Colin Kaepernick inked his deal with Nike, Fox News shamed former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens when it disclosed that he had been located in a Trader Joe’s bagging groceries.   The former star who played Elvin Tibideaux was working in a low level job to make ends meet.

In a further ironic twist, Fox News, THE conservative outlet tried to embarrass the once prominent actor that was making an honest living.   Shame on Fox.

It turned out that Bill Cosby’s legal troubles had caused his show’s reruns to be cancelled, drying up Owens’s residuals, forcing him to take the job to pay bills.

As one person on Twitter noted, “We all admired Dr. Huxtable.  We should have been admiring Elvin.”

After getting over the initial humiliation, things ultimately took a good turn for Mr. Owens.  Twitter and his fellow actors leapt to his side.   Social media was almost uniformly supportive of the 57 year old actor, and he ultimately got an acting gig out of it from Tyler Perry for a part in a 10 week series, the “Haves and Have Nots.” 

I am happy that Owens received an offer for an acting gig out of this.  His attitude that “all work is honorable” should have been lauded by Fox and not shamed.   Owens was honest about the position he was in and was giving his employer an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.  Owens should be the focus of a Mike Rowe special.  He is Rowe’s kind of guy (and mine, too).

Kaepernick, on the other hand, is a thief.   He stole from his employer to launch his second career as a Social Justice Warrior, and is profiting handsomely by it.   His is no altruistic venture.  He used the N.F.L.’s time and  platform to highlight himself and his cause without his employer’s permission.   If a receptionist in my office persisted in handing out anti-abortion literature to clients in our waiting room, she wouldn’t last long, no matter what peoples’ views were on the topic, unless we gave her explicit permission.   Kaepernick’s antics were no different.   

That the Nike ad spouting “Believe in something.  Even if it means sacrificing everything” was released the week before 9/11 added to its repugnancy.  

No more Nike for me.  But I will be sure to watch Owens’s new gig.

Summer's End Omissions

Labor Day marks the unofficial end to summer even though the official end is still a few weeks away.  What have we learned this summer?   We have learned a lot.

The near simultaneous deaths of Aretha Franklin and John McCain put obsessive Trump hatred on full display.  Never mind the irony of having Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton on stage with Bill Clinton, both of these memorials were used as platforms to bash Trump.   Sadly, the Queen of Soul featured the Kings of Race Baiting and Anti-Semitism on her stage and the day that was to honor her.

McCain’s in particular was shameful.  His own daughter talked as much about Trump as her own father.

McCain’s burning hatred to Trump obstructed the repeal of Obamacare.  And like Hillary Clinton and Obama, he dismissed evangelical Christians as “agents of intolerance,” referred to Tea Party members as “wacko birds,” and called Trump supporters “crazies.”   While McCain’s military service is to be respected, his career as a politician was less than stellar, culminating in a disastrous presidential campaign in ’08, although I am still undecided as to whether a McCain presidency ultimately would have been worse for America than an Obama presidency.

McCain garnered effusive praise for “reaching across the aisle” but conspicuously left out invitations to his funeral to people on his own side of the aisle—a Republican president and his own running mate, Sarah Palin.

It occurred to me that Trump must have tremendous power over these people for them to make Trump the focus of memorial services, rather than the people that have just passed.   But for the Left, no platform is inappropriate for a rousing Trump hate-fest.

Not to be outdone, our neo-Marxist Pope and his cabal of archbishops are eager to change the conversation after the Pennsylvania AG issued its report on the widespread child abuse and the accusations by Bishop Vigano that Pope Francis knew about the shenanigans of Bishop McCarrick. 

Our local Archbishop Cupich took a page out of Cardinal Law’s playbook, announced that the Pope had “bigger issues to deal with,” and that he “wasn’t going to go down that rabbithole,” and promptly disappeared for a weekend retreat at Mudelein Seminary.

Pope Francis himself has remained silent on all this, and, in fact today, tweeted out that we need “prayer and silence.”  No we don’t.  We need truth and transparency.  Francis's tweets and statements omitted any discussion of Vigano's serious charges.

Yesterday, Pope Francis declared that plastic straws in the ocean were an “emergency” that demanded immediate action.    And it is true that plastic in the ocean is not good for sea life.  But fondling children and seminarians is not good for them either and is more in your span of control, Francis.

Incredibly, the Trump haters tried to turn memorial services for John McCain and Aretha Franklin to conversations about Trump and Pope Francis tried to turn the sex abuse scandal into a conversation about plastic straws.

Hollywood, of course, jumped into the mix by putting out a film about Neil Armstrong that conspicuously omitted the planting of the American flag and the American flag on the uniforms of the astronauts.

Actor Ryan Gossling defended it by saying it was a human achievement and director Damien Chazelle claimed he was not making a political statement.

Do these people think that we just fell off the turnip truck?  Of course omitting the American flag from the film is a political statement.  And the moon landing was not an achievement of all of mankind.  It was a uniquely AMERICAN achievement.  It arose out of the space race with the Soviets.  It was Americans that harnessed the technology that enabled Neil Armstrong to step on the moon. 

Hollywood’s attempt to rewrite history disrespects the memory of pioneers like Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee who died in Apollo 1, and the work of Katherine Coleman Johnson, one of the mathematicians who overcame racism, prejudice and Jim Crow (see the film Hidden Figures), and who  ironically celebrated her 100^th birthday the same week that it was announced that First Man would omit an American flag.

Thankfully, Neil Armstrong’s partner on that mission, Buzz Aldrin, tweeted out photos of Buzz in a t-shirt with a picture of Armstrong planting the flag on the moon, and tweeted out photos of the mission itself.

For every John McCain, we have a Rand Paul.  For every Cardinal Cupich, we have a Bishop Vigano.  For every Damien Chazelle, we have a Buzz Aldrin.

We are pushing back.

Letting Go

I tried.  I really did.  But I’m done trying, at least for now.

Eight or nine years ago, Catholicism beckoned to me and I answered the call of the Catholics Come Home program, initiated to attempt to bring “lapsed” Catholics back into the fold.  And I made a good effort for a long time.  Regular Mass attendance.   Active in the men’s club.  Catholic Charities Board.   Regular attendance at Lumen Christi Institute (center for Catholic thought at the University of Chicago) programs.   I had gone a long way toward reconciling with the Catholic Church.

But Pope Francis’s leap into politics and economics initially caused me to hit the “pause” button.  While I understood that Jesuits emphasize social justice, Francis often used the language of Hugo Chavez, not just to criticize greed and avarice and promote a duty to assist the poor, but to attack capitalism itself.   He followed with pronouncements on climate change, immigration, and terror.  I cooled by connections with the Church when Pope Francis asserted that the love of money drives terrorism, which told me that Francis understood neither capitalism nor Islamic terrorism.  Francis, the globalist social justice warrior had no inhibitions of taking direct shots at America and, in particular, Donald Trump, criticizing Trump when our immigration policies resulted in the separation of children from their illegal immigrant parents.    But social justice warriors have a particular vulnerability that almost always sinks them in the end and that is irony.   They almost always get hoisted on their own petards and Francis is no exception.

But now we have yet another eruption of sex abuse scandals, and worse, the nuncio Archbishop Vigano is alleging that Pope Francis knew about Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse and reversed Pope Benedict’s sanctions against him.  Perhaps the worst of the cabal that is now scrambling incoherently to do damage control is our own Cardinal Cupich, head of the Chicago Archdiocese and named by accuser Vigano as having his career advanced by the notorious Bishop McCarrick.   Cupich brushed the burning controversy aside, asserting “the Pope has a bigger agenda.  He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church.  We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this. “  He accused the Pope’s accuser’s of “not liking him because he is Latino,” echoing the tone deaf tack taken by Elizabeth Warren when questioned about the murder of Mollie Tibbets (“so sorry you lost your daughter to our policies, but we have REAL problems to deal with”).  Cupich in a tweet implored his followers to attend the program at the Illinois Holocaust Museum entitled “Denial.”  With that, Cupich turned himself into a sad, maddening parody.

I asked a friend what he would have said a couple of years ago if I would have told him that the Pope would make Donald Trump look good.   At least Trump tried to keep his monkey business by good old fashioned American capitalist methods---through contract and buying it in a free exchange.   And it didn’t involve kids or anyone in the power structure underneath him. 

It turns out that perhaps I was not a lapsed Catholic but it is the Catholic Church that has lapsed.

So I’m making it official.   I am leaving the Church once again.  Will it be for good this time?   Who knows, but I cannot be part of this crew that now stands opposite of much of what I believe.  It is one thing for the leader of the Church to espouse warmed over Marxism.   It is another thing entirely to gloss over the sexual predators in your inner circle.   I’m not closing the door forever, but the Catholic Church will need to demonstrate to me that it is serious about reform before I will consider returning.   Pope Francis’s letter last week suggests that it is not.

What should Pope Francis do?  It’s clear that the Church is in crisis.   Francis’s best bet is to look to …. well, Donald Trump as a model.   Francis (and I’m sure many of the Cardinals and Archbishops) despises Trump and all that he stands for.  But a Trumpian approach has a lot that the Church could use right now.

• Trump is unafraid to cast off people that have outlived their usefulness.  He dropped Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon like hot potatoes early in his presidency.    The Vatican needs to churn many in the inner circle in a highly visible bloodletting to signal that the conspiracy of silence has ended.  No cushy retirements like Cardinal Law’s.  The perpetrators and their aiders and abettors need to be outed, humiliated and scorned…. publicly.   And Francis must be one of them.

•  Trump understands brand.  Trump’s businesses are all about personal brand and he is well versed in it.   Moreover, he knows exactly how to brand others and make it stick.  “Crooked Hillary,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Little Rocketman” have forever branded those people.  Catholicism has a great brand.  It is a worldwide brand and the Vatican needs to stop the damage, rebuild it, and use it.  It is the Yankees of religions.  And at a time of diminishment of religion and churchgoing in the West, it is needed now more than ever. 

• Trump is unafraid to upend the status quo.  Republicans held on to free trade as a shibboleth, until Trump convinced enough people that we were getting the raw end of the deal in some instances, particularly with China.   He routinely and fearlessly defies his handlers.  “You can’t do that,” they implored about his tweeting.   “Oh, yeah, watch me.”   The Catholic Church is now in a position where Trumpian methods are called for.  That is, take bold, decisive steps to change the status quo that are certain to upset the establishment.   Let women become ordained.  Let priests marry.  Decentralize authority.   Do it and do it boldly.

• Trump understands how to directly communicate with his constituents…and his adversaries.  Right now, many of the messages coming from the Catholic hierarchy are defensive, dismissive, and self-justifying with Cardinal Cupich’s among the worst.  The Vatican needs to gain control of the messaging and this needs to happen soon.

Pope Francis has not hidden his scorn for Donald Trump and his policies and approaches. Ironically, it is a Trumpian approach that could best pull the Vatican out of this crisis.

Where does that leave me?  Frankly, I do not know.  Adrift, for now.  Do I switch and become Episcopalian, Lutheran, or Unitarian?  Do I simply sit on the sidelines and see how this unfolds?  I just know that I cannot show up every Sunday and support an organization that has ruined so many young lives that it is charged with protecting until I am convinced that real change is afoot.  Until I see bold and decisive steps in that direction, count me out.

Our Children Part II

Last March, I wrote a post following the terrorist bombing in Manchester England, which targeted mostly young girls attending a concert.   I asserted that if the West could not protect its most precious gift, its children, then it was in deep, deep trouble. (See my post Our Children, May 23, 2017 http://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2017/05/our-children.html following the Manchester bombing).

Once again, I am sadly writing about the failure to protect our children and the heinous and egregious lapses of institutions that should protect them, and the inverted priorities of these structures.

Again, Pope Francis is in the spotlight (pun definitely intended as a reference to the film on topic).  Last week,  it was revealed that the Catholic Church had systematically covered up the sexual abuse of 1,000 children over 70 years with some 300 priests involved. 

I wish I could say I was shocked.  After the exposure of the massive cover-ups in the Boston Archdiocese and others worldwide, the church had announced that it put into place safeguards and a zero tolerance policy.   Francis turned his attention elsewhere—mostly criticizing the West for not doing enough on climate change, for having borders and not doing enough for Middle Eastern refugees, and criticizing capitalism generally.   He began to dial back the “zero tolerance” policy and made comments about forgiveness of these predators.  He enraged many Catholics by re-instating Fr. Mauro Inzoli (who had been defrocked by Pope Benedict for sex abuse,  and by giving the blessing at the notorious Cardinal Law’s funeral.   In a slap to victims in Chile, he accused the victims of slandering Bishop Juan Barros  for covering up abuse, and demanded proof of their claims (comments for which he later expressed regret).  The Vatican’s third highest ranking official, Cardinal Pell of Australia, is going on trial for sex crimes.

Now the issue is back with a vengeance. 

Francis is the most progressive and politically active pope in my lifetime.  And as with most progressives, Francis has exposed himself to charges of hypocrisy.   On the heels of criticizing Trump for allowing children to be separated from their parents, Francis is now faced with a crisis of his own.

C.S. Lewis, arguably the most important Christian writer and thinker of the last 100 years, wrote “Children are not a distraction from more important work.  They are the most important work.”  I argue that, especially in this time of fractured families, the most vital function of the Church and the Christian faith in general is the protection and nurturing of its children.

Instead, the Catholic Church, in a widespread way, over and over again, abused them. 

Francis responded with a letter that could have been written 5 years ago.  He expressed shame and repentance, and admitted “we abandoned the little ones.”  He admitted that the Church “delayed in applying these actions [to deal with the abuse].”   He offered little more that “prayer and fasting” as concrete actions the Church would take in the future.

We are well beyond that now.   This is a grave crisis for the Catholic Church, and a crisis often gives leadership the latitude to take immediate and radical steps to if it is to show that it is serious about this.  And symbolic moves are just as critical.   It needs to show that perpetrators of these acts and those that would cover them up will be expunged, exposed, humiliated, shamed, and where appropriate, prosecuted.   The first step needs to be a purging at the highest levels.   When the sexual abuse scandal at Michigan State came to light, its president and athletic director immediately resigned.  Pope Francis is the only person with sufficient authority to make symbolic and actual changes, and these changes need to happen now.    Following a high level bloodletting, Francis needs to make some bold initiatives, like permitting priests to marry and allowing women to become priests.   If he does not take bold and decisive steps, the Catholic Church will continue to lose members in the West, at a time when the pillar of Christianity is needed now more than ever.

During the same week that the crisis broke with the Catholic Church, we learned about another massive failure to protect our children.   The body of young Mollie Tibbets was found in a cornfield in Iowa a month after her disappearance and an illegal alien was taken into custody and charged with her murder.

After weeks of caterwauling about separating illegal border crossers from their children, protests from the open borders folks, politicians like Dick Durbin vowing to work full time for “Dreamers,” and others campaigning on the abolition of ICE, one of the so-called Dreamers took one of our own and separated her from her family permanently. 

The primary purpose of government is to protect its citizens from harm, whether it be harm from foreigners or from our own citizens.   Our government’s failure to keep people out that have no legal right to be here cost Mollie her life.

And the reaction from the Left has been predictably nauseating.   Some tried to divert blame by throwing around  buzzwords from the social justice lexicon like “toxic masculinity.”   Others, like Elizabeth Warren clumsily and coldly tried to switch the topic, “I’m so sorry for the family here…BUT…we need an immigration system that’s effective; that focuses on where REAL problems are.”

Illegal aliens murdering young women like Kate Steinle and Mollie Tibbets—two beautiful young women with bright futures--- ARE a real problem, Elizabeth.

The Catholic Church and our own government have had massive failures in their primary purposes.   The reaction of Pope Francis to the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the Left to Mollie Tibbets’s murder was weak, tepid and unconvincing.  In both cases, we are seeing leaders that are more dedicated to protecting their agenda and their institutions than our children.

Modern Day Abolitionist

The American Writers Museum opened a new exhibit last week: Frederick Douglass-Agitator, celebrating the life and work of Frederick Douglass.  In connection with the exhibit, the museum has lined up a series of events and speakers to honor the life of this great American.  I attended the first event, featuring Kenneth B. Morris, Jr., a direct descendant of both Douglass and Booker T. Washington.  On a beautiful, warm summer Chicago night, a night on which most people would prefer to be outside, the place was nearly full, with only an empty seat or two.

The charismatic Mr. Morris spun his connection to the legendary Frederick Douglass in a moving presentation.  Morris’s grandmother lived to be 103, and actually knew Mr. Douglass first hand.  “I touched the hands that touched the hands,” Mr. Morris proclaimed.  He went on to share anecdotes about the indominable Mr. Douglass, about his struggle for freedom, his drive to educate himself despite obstacles and actual laws that forbade educating slaves, “because they would not be fit to work in the fields.” He talked about how his mother would work the fields, walk 12 miles to see Frederick and then walk back at night to work another day just to spend time with him.  He talked about his abolitionist friends purchasing Frederick’s freedom. 

Morris reveled in his connection to both Douglass and Washington.  He told the story about his visit to Douglass’s home, where Douglass’s shoes are next to his bed stand, and how he had to fight the urge to step into his shoes.

I was captivated by Morris and his obvious pride in his lineage and his connection to this great man.   His testimony helped me think about the great stain of slavery more deeply and will propel me to read Douglass’s biography.  Morris has dedicated himself to eliminate slavery as it exists currently around the world.  His message is that American slavery was not that long ago, really, and that it exists in many forms in different places globally.

I bought a coffee table book of photographs of Douglass, for which Morris had written the afterward.  I waiting in line to get my book signed and in front of me was a middle aged, dapper African American man, who grasped Morris’s outstretched hand with both hands and pulled him close.  “He [Douglass] was right.  It’s all about education, isn’t it?”   “You bet.”  There was something about that exchange that heartened me in this crazy political climate.

Likewise, I have visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum to attend programs and to hear testimonies of the camp survivors.   As the number of actual camp survivors has dwindled with age and time, the Illinois Holocaust Museum has harnessed technology to keep them alive and relevant and has used holographic imagery that is interactive to permit virtual discussions and question and answer sessions that bring the camp experience to life.

In my own life, the oral histories of the Communist terrors have been passed down either first hand or second hand and, like the Gulag Archipelago, they have been formative in shaping my views of Communism.  I heard first hand stories of the Stalin purges, of teenagers being shot in the head in front of their friends.   Parents of my friends fled and hid in ditches and sewers.  The parents of one of my friends fled a Stalin concentration camp and were chased by guards and dogs through the woods before winding their way to America.  He was a teacher and she wrote childrens’ books, so as “intellectuals” they would almost certainly have been murdered during the deportations from Lithuania.

The three great stains that landed on American and European soil were slavery, Nazism and Communism.  All three crushed the human spirit and all three resulted in people being hunted like animals.   It’s fine to read about these horrors in books, and we should.   But the oral histories given by people that either experienced it or have a personal connection to it are what bring them alive and keep them relevant to us, so they are not forgotten.   We need to hear these stories so we can stay vigilant against evil forces that are capable of unspeakable cruelty and stripping us of our freedoms.   We cannot leave them solely to books or digital archives.

Places like the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the American Writers Museum can and should do that for us.  I was honored and grateful to have an opportunity to meet Mr. Morris and “touch the hands that touched the hands that touched the hands.”