THE MORAL ARC

THE MORAL ARC

"The moral arc of the universe bend at the elbow of justice"

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Scripture is replete with a few basic principles that are repeated from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelations.

 

One of these is the principle of justice or God's command that the world should be governed justly and that humans should interact with one another in just and fair ways and that rulers and leaders should dispense fairness and justice to those they serve as a central obligation of  their position of power.

 

Another way of expressing this is that natural law must have justice for each and every individual at its center  or it is neither natural nor law. The harmony of the world balances on the fulcrum of justice and when that harmony is disturbed then pandemonium ensues.

 

Justice is a spiritual principle and all people need to be spiritual as well as truth seekers in their patriotism or the passion we need to translate belief into action will succumb to the pervasive and pernicious cynicism of our age.

 

Justice is also a main ingredient in virtue.   Politics and policy without virtue is darkness.  Politics and policy with virtue offers the chance of  both enlightenment and justice in the conduct of our civic affairs.  

 

When the question of our unalienable rights begin and end with the fact that these are granted to individuals  by God and/or nature and not by man, it is implicitly an act of justice by God and/or nature.

 

This leads directly to laws that ultimately are designed to protect us from ourselves or others, either individually or collectively, including most specifically when the collective others are acting under the auspices of the government.  

 

Humanity is supposed to be good and decent with one another.  We are meant to be so.  It is natural to be so.  The history of humankind  however is the history of people and philosophies in stark defiance of what our true natures are supposed to be.   So again we write laws.  We write laws with consequences if we violate them and all of these laws are morally fair and viable only insofar as they are just and that justice is clear and rational and the punishment for breaking these just laws is swift, just and merciful when appropriate.   

 

In the 238th  year of this Republic we find ourselves in a state of perpetual crisIs.  For the most part these crises are due to people and their leaders deviating from the ancient biblical principle of justice that has been  essential to our foundation and our framework over the life of our country.

 

As complex as our society has become, it is complex at the margins and not at the core...and the core is where the trouble lies...and the core is where the trouble must be fixed.

 

You don't have to believe in the word of God or even God himself to become part of the solution but you do have to believe in justice!

You have to believe in justice because not believing in it is to deny both the history of America and the promise of America to those who will follow us.

 

This may seem like a simplistic message but life has a way of over and over again demonstrating that what seems simple is rarely so  and what seems complex is either also rarely so or so complex that it results in negating its purported reason for being.

 

So a cautionary but optimistic word from one in the autumn of his years.  We humans by nature are meant to be good and just people and that means that we must reject any and all who attempt to turn us against one another for any reason whatsoever.  Those who seek to divide us for insignificant and immoral reasons such as race, gender, ethnicity,  age, income, religion  etc. are the enemy of justice.  These people seek to define us by everything but the content of our character and if we let them get away with this then we lose our souls and then our beloved  country is sure to follow.   Our country is so divided today and we must get past that which separates us and truly believe that the past is not inevitably  prologue and that we are all in this great and noble work in progress called America... together. 

 

Justice demands a return to the melting pot so that our differences can be celebrated in a fashion to unite us and not used as tactic to divide us.

 

Justice demands that the solutions to  pathologies of one part of us become the responsibilities of all of us.

 

The rate of unwed births in the black community...fatherless homes where young black boys and girls are raised all too often in what Pope Francis calls a "throw a way" culture...black on black violence which all too often exceeds the  daily death toll of the battlefield...these problems are not simply the exclusive problems of black America for a very simple reason.  These kids are not just their kids ...they are our kids...they are my kids...they are your kids and for all of us a change must come...a change is "gonna" come!

 

ERLANDSSON

IS FREEDOM OF THE PRESS POSSIBLE WITHOUT AN HONEST PRESS?

IS FREEDOM OF THE PRESS POSSIBLE WITHOUT AN HONEST PRESS?

 

"The press is our chief ideological weapon"

Nikita Khrushchev

 

If DoJ goes after George Zimmerman after the verdict in Florida than this pathetic and toxic administration will in fact be guilty of violating the civil rights of George Zimmerman, an American citizen of Hispanic lineage.  Civil Rights violations should only be brought if they are committed by public officials acting in an official capacity or in a public space.  There is absolutely no way that Zimmerman fits in either of these categories. That, however, would not be true of this DoJ which is and has been a racialist and racist rogue operation disdainful of the law and of any group of Americans they deem not worthy of constitutional protections.

 

The mainstream press will not print or say any of  this.  The networks and their evil cable stepchildren  have worked long and hard to make this shooting only about race so that the vicious and false narrative of endemic and epidemic white on black racism may be prolonged as "faux" reality as long as possible.  They do this to further a group rights vs individual rights, anti US Constitution, anti free enterprise agenda, they need to fundamentally transform our laws and our way of life.

 

During the 2012 Presidential Election they literally prevented facts and the truth from being presented to the American voter by overt acts on behalf of Barack Obama, by covert acts on behalf of Barack Obama, and by what they refused to report as much as what they chose to report and how they chose to report it...also on behalf of Barack Obama. 

 

This outrageous and immoral performance by most of the mainstream media and press has been chronicled by L. Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham in a new book entitled "COLLUSION/ HOW THE MEDIA STOLE THE 2012 ELECTION AND HOW TO STOP THEM FROM DOING IT IN 2016"

 

This is a depressing and disturbing indictment of a once free press that no longer cares ...or in some instances...even knows what the truth is? This book chronicles a press and media with  double standards so broad regarding traditional America that they makes the Grand Canyon seem like a crack in the sidewalk.  The media and press are composed of insider elites who lack the self awareness to understand they are deviants without honor or merit in what to them will always be, a strange land.

 

As with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, the NY Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, USA Today and others regularly distort and lie about what anyone on the left is doing and why they are doing it.  Most of the time they simply ignore those on the so called right unless they can serve the higher purpose of disunity with the threat of violence accompanied by distortion and lies.    They have lost any objectivity they might have once had. Moreover it  frankly is doubtful that  objectivity as we understand it, was ever something that they possessed or even sought to possess.

 

Liberalism in it's modern PC, progressive framework is a pseudo religion which is intolerant of any one who disagrees with their psychotic and sociopathic world view.  The odious social pathologies that the modern media celebrates and makes money off of are civilization ending enterprises threatening all of us. 

 

The dumbing  down of news as with education has been happening for a while.  With the election of Barack Obama this degradation is proceeding as if on steroids.  The objective is to redefine who we are, where we have come from and where we should be going.

 

Our youth in particular... made vapid and infantile by an Ebola like culture...made violent, misogynistic and hedonistic by our television, movies, music and video games...made ignorant by being educated in inferior schools with low expectations...are the main targets of this high jacking of America.

 

The media gleefully participates in this moral and civic lobotomy of those who are expected to lead the nation in the future and most of the time they act as lead surgeon!

 

The Daily News and others have begun portraying Trayvon Martin as a modern Emmitt Till, James Chaney, Yusuf Hawkins, Michael Griffiths or James Byrd Jr.  These young men were all martyrs to racism in the true and only valid sense of the word.  Trayvon Martin as tragic as his needless death is, does not belong in this group.

 

Moreover, the "white" Hispanic Zimmerman has a history of racial compassion and tolerance that is superior to that of  most of the critics calling for his head.  None of this however seems to mean anything to the media and a vulture special prosecutor playing the PC racial blame game.

 

In demonstration of the above, "Rolling Stone" magazine has for it's current cover an iconic photo of Boston terrorist bomber Jhokar Tsarnaev looking for all the world like a Jihadi "stud muffin' who is simply too much of a "hottie" to be guilty of deliberately killing and maiming innocent people including an 8 year old little boy.  There is no bottom for the bottom feeders who now dominate the 4th estate!

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The media today only sees what it is told to see.  They do not see or report on the scandals of Benghazi, the IRS, the AP/James Rosen case, the NSA, "Fast and Furious", the debacle of a crumbling Obamacare, the lack of services for our veterans, the dismantling of our military and national security, the impoverishment of the American  economy for idiotic, pseudo scientific baloney and a presidency built on a narrative which in turn is built on mythology and lies.

 

And like pre-pubescent school girls at a Bieber concert wearing hoodies to demonstrate  that they are down with how bad and evil and racist and homophobic and anti-woman this country is...they convulse in the pathetic throes of perpetual adolescent angst and tell the man who Jamie Foxx calls his lord and savior, how much they love the lies they are fed and the lies they regurgitate in his name and on his behalf. 

 

We are a better people than this and we deserve a better and more honest press than he have had to endure.  We need to stop watching, listening and reading them and start ignoring them. Instead we as individuals need to  do the hard work of discovering the truth on our own until and unless a free press once again becomes an honest press!

 

ERLANDSSON

RED WHITE AND BLUE MATRYOSHKA DOLLS

RED WHITE AND BLUE MATRYOSHKA DOLLS 

 

 

 

A riddle!  Who am I describing?

 

(1) who came out of political obscurity to become the President of a world power?

 

(2) Who was assisted in this by a billionaire?

 

(3) Who entered politics in a major city known for it's "thug "like politics?

 

(4) Whose birth and parentage are suspect and the subject of rumor?

 

(5) Who had a male head of family who was rumored to be connected to the intelligence community?

 

(6) Who got into one of the best universities in the country with mediocre grades?

 

(7) Who reportedly had only one other known significant relationship with a woman before marrying his current wife?

 

(8) Who believes strongly in a rigid centralized government controlled by a few select people?

 

(9) Who has two daughters?

 

(10) Who uses sports to relax and release tension?

 

(11) Who is a lawyer by training?

 

(12) Who did nothing to save the lives of his countrymen during an emergency that cost them their lives?

 

(13) Who has appeared continuously to indicate that  he is not able to deal with either public or private criticism?

 

(14) Who is accused by his critics of lying to the public on a regular basis?

 

(15) Who uses the rich as targets to stir up political class warfare?

 

(16) Who has been accused of bypassing the Constitution and laws of the nation to create a tyranny of the bureaucracy?

 

(17)  Whose administration allegedly has had reporters investigated and bugged?

 

(18) Who has co-opted much of the press and manipulated news coverage?

 

(19) Whose political operation has been accused of vote fraud and falsifying petitions?

 

(20) Who pulls out of wars and declares victory by installing a puppet government?

 

(21) Who has changed his country quickly and in profound ways?

 

(22) Who did the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the LA Times fail to criticize for blatantly dishonest politics and corruption during a major election?

 

(23) Who these same papers praise as then being strong enough to push his agenda through the legislature?

 

(24) Whose administration has used the power and instruments of the state to punish independents, supporters of the constitution and political opponents?

 

( 25) Who is accused of specifically using the tax enforcement bureaucracy to attack and hinder his opposition?

 

(26) Who has an administration with a penchant for spying on others domestically and abroad?

 

(27) Who never admits that he has been wrong, guilty or in error? 

 

(28) Who has used the pretext of fighting terrorism as a vehicle for re-election?

 

(29) Whose administration regularly engages in questionable legal practices?

 

(30) Who begins investigations that are never completed?

 

(31) Who enforces laws he likes and ignores law he doesn't? 

 

Congratulations !  If you said Vladimir Putin...  you were correct?  You now know more about the leader of the Russian superpower than you did before. You also know more about him than most of the /american press! There is more about him however you should know.  Things that involve his use of violence and murder to cement his 13 years in power.  And this is the man that our President wants to do business with even as he opposes the US almost everywhere in the world. 

 

What's that you say?   You thought I was talking about our guy?  Well they do have a lot in common not the least being that Putin wants to be the new Czar of Russia and Obama seems to want to be the King of a brand new country called the USSA ...and that he wants Russia to love him!

ERLANDSSON

 

GETTYSBURG JULY 1863

GETTYSBURG JULY 1863
In the third year of the war, the north grew frustrated and weary after disastrous losses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.  McClellan had been  replaced by Burnside and Burnside was replaced by Hooker and in late June Hooker was replaced by Maj. General George Gordon Meade.

 

 

Robert E. Lee was also frustrated.  His army of Northern Virginia was invincible in his mind but it also was an army in tatters with many of his soldiers in rags and far too often without shoes.  Lee was nothing if not daring and he felt he had the measure of any Union General so he decided to move the war out of Virginia and take it for the second time into the Yankee homeland.  Accordingly he crossed the Potomac, pushed through the Shenandoah and using the blue Ridge Mountains as a shield swung north into Pennsylvania.  His objective was to relieve the pressure on the Confederate armies in Tennessee, the blockades of the southern coasts and the fighting along the  Mississippi River which Grant was trying to open by finally conquering Vicksburg.

 

Robert E. Lee

This second invasion would also open up the Shenandoah Valley with all it’s fertile richness  alleviating Lee’s constant need for supplies.  Finally if he could take either Harrisburg the capitol of Pennsylvania or possibly even Philadelphia, that might cause the North to lose hope and either finally sue for peace or at least politically destroy Abraham Lincoln’s hopes for re-election in 1864.

 

By June 20, rebel cavalry entered Pennsylvania via Greencastle.  On June 26 Jubal Early scattered Pennsylvania Militia in Gettysburg itself   and by June 30  Lee had established an arch going west to east from Fayetteville Pa. to Carlisle Pa. to the York Road between York Pa. and Wrightsville Pa. all the while taking the supplies he needed and paying the terrified populace with worthless Confederate script.  More importantly however, the rains stopped on the 26th and a sultry and oppressive summer heat descended on both armies.

 

The Army of the Potomac with 7 Army Corps some 93,000 strong was three days behind Lee moving north from Maryland.  Hooker had wanted to attack Richmond to end the war but Lincoln told him firmly that Lee’s army was the target.  Destroy it and that would end the war.  Hooker not knowing that he had almost 20,000 more troops than Lee demanded reinforcements or he would resign.  His resignation was accepted and Meade the cautious and colorless army engineer took over.

 

On June 30th North Carolinians under Brig. Gen. J. Johnston Pettigrew, ventured toward Gettysburg. In his memoirs, Maj. Gen. Henry Heth, Pettigrew's division commander, claimed that he sent Pettigrew to search for supplies in town—especially shoes.  Gettysburg a sleepy town of 2400 and the county seat of Adams County  was the hub of no less than 10 roads and pikes that resembled the spokes of a wheel and led to all directions of the compass.  In addition the Gettysburg and Hanover Railroad had a terminus there with a north west spur under construction.  It did not have however any shoes.  They were manufactured in the next county.

 

As Pettigrew advanced on July 1st he was observed by Brigadier General John Buford and his cavalry who came into the town from the south.  At approximately 7:00 AM,  Lt.  Marcellus Jones of the  8th Illinois Cavalry fired at the still shadowy figures with his carbine thus beginning the battle that ultimately decided the war.

 Buford saw from the cupola atop  Schmucker Hall, the old dorm of the Lutheran Seminary that the high ground south of the town was the terrain the Union needed in order  to fight Bobby Lee advantageously.  He dismounted his cavalry and using their new breech loading Sharps carbines as a force multiplier formed a skirmish line straddling the Chambersburg Pike at McPherson’s Ridge to hold the advancing rebels at bay or at least slow them down.  He needed to delay them until Maj. General John F. Reynolds could relieve them with the 1st Corps.

 

Reynolds troops began arriving in force  around 10:15 AM  under the command of  Maj General Abner Doubleday of baseball fame, who reinforced Buford’s troopers west of the Pike around a wooded area known as Herbst’s Woods.  Thirty minutes later Reynolds, considered by many to be the ablest Union General, arrived in person but within another 30 minutes was shot in the head  and killed by rebel musket fire.  Subsequently two large confederate corps advanced and  pushed the Union Army back south of the town where they took up defensive positions on the high ground.

 

By the second day both armies were fully in the field with the Army of the Potomac  lined up in a north south fishhook formation that included positions on  Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge with it’s barb  culminating at Culp’s Hill and Spangler’s Spring where Cpl. Charles W. Littlefield and the 107 NY Vol. Inf. built their rifle pits.  South and west of this line were places that would see the bloodiest fighting of the war as the battle descended into a series of separate desperate, savage, bloody fights within this larger  field of battle.  There was the Wheat Field where 19 year old Sgt Simon Pincus  and his wounded brother Adolph of the 66th NY Vol. Inf. fought, the Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, the Rose Woods and the hill known as the Little Round Top where the 20th Maine made a bayonet charge down the hill to win the day.  As twilight began to descend attacks began on Culp’s Hill  which was partially taken on its southern end by Longstreet’s 1st Corps  and after dark the rebels attacked East Cemetery Hill.

With the darkness came a different sound and smell.  The piteous moans and cries of the dying and wounded permeated the battlefield and in the stifling, sultry summer heat the stench of unwashed bodies, blood, human waste, rotting body parts and corpses bloating in the hot night permeated the very air itself.

 

On the third day Union Artillery  began to bombard Culp’s Hill again in an attempt regain that portion that had been lost the prior day. Confederate infantry attacked but the Union prevailed and the second battle of Culp’s Hill ended at 11:00 AM.  The fury of the prior day was missing until 1:00 PM when Lee ordered an artillery barrage directed toward the center of the Union line at Cemetery Ridge.  Federal cannons responded and for two hours all was cordite laced smoke, dust, death and a thunderous din that would leave the men’s ears ringing for a long time thereafter.

 

 At 3:00 PM the barrage went quiet and Lee ordered Maj. General George Pickett 12,500 Virginians to charge the men of the Union 2nd Corps huddled behind a stone wall at the foot of Cemetery Ridge some three quarter of a mile away.  Lt General James Longstreet, who had replaced the late Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson as Lee’s most trusted aide, was opposed to this but Lee Believed his “boys” could and would do anything he ordered them to do so Longstreet reluctantly went along only to be blamed in the years to come for Robert E. Lee‘s greatest mistake.

 

The Union artillery atop Cemetery Ridge commanded by 1st Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing… batteries thought silenced by Lee… opened up on Pickett and his men and killed almost half of them in the open space between where they had begun their charge and the stone wall that was their destination.  Cushing was shot three times but continued the cannonade until the third shot struck him in the head. He is to this day still under consideration for the Congressional Medal of Honor.

 

Part of Pickett’s force under Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Armistead’s brigade was temporarily successful in breeching  a part of the Union line only to be ultimately driven back and Pickett’s charge became a de facto abattoir  instead of a glorious, heroic victory.  Pickett would for the rest of his days say bitterly of Lee “That old man killed my boys”. 

 

After this there were two cavalry fights that involved George Armstrong Custer and Judson Kilpatrick against J.E.B. Stuart and Wade Hampton and then the battle ended almost as quickly as it had begun.

 

The next day was the 4th of July and Lincoln and a fearful nation was told that Lee had lost and was in retreat while Grant had in addition finally taken Vicksburg thus cutting the Confederacy in two.  The Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, confident of a  victory by Lee in Pennsylvania, had been in Virginia awaiting a safe conduct pass to meet with Lincoln to discuss a cessation of hostilities allowing the 11 southern states to become their own country. After hearing the news… Lincoln refused to issue it.  In London U.S. Ambassador Henry Adams, a son and grandson of Presidents dispatched the news  to Lincoln that any hopes that Jefferson Davis had of the Confederate States being recognized by Great Britain were now and forever dead. 

 

In Pennsylvania the once pastoral and idyllic  fields, hill and woods of Gettysburg were finally still and then the skies opened and the rains came as if sent by providence to wash away the oceans of  blood of the 51,000 killed or wounded there. The fighting was over but  nothing about Gettysburg or the men who fought there would ever be the same again.

 

ERLANDSSON