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Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
Comerica Park is home to the Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball’s American League. Like so many of today’s stadiums Comerica has a “Monument Park” celebrating players of the past. There are six graven images in granite, all capturing for all-time Tiger greats performing some act of skill. The complete player Al Kaline is stretched toward the heavens making one more impossible catch. Left hander Hal Newhouser is leaned back at the end of his wind-up before delivering a strike out pitch. Charlie Gehringer is in the middle of another fluid turn of a double play. Sluggers Hank Greenberg and Willie Horton are sending one more over fence. The figures reach 13 feet in height and are fenced off from an admiring public.
Oh, and there is one of Ty Cobb, caught forever in the middle of one of his nine sliding styles.
You might remember him from a movie starring Tommy Lee Jones showing what a hateful, racist, selfish but competitive bastard he really was. Except he probably wasn’t.
The most recent history of Cobb was written by Charles Leerhsen from the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism. Leerhsen thought it would be a fairly easy book to write; simply do some new research to add to all the ugly stories already told primarily by writers Al Stump and Charles Alexander and scatter the new stuff neatly throughout the text.
But the path of Leerhsen’s book changed as he actually did the research. The author did find a driven competitor told by his father “don’t come home a failure” who never saw that revered father again and probably never came to grips with that man’s death (supposedly accidental) at the hands of his wife (Cobb’s mother). He found a man with thin skin ready to fight at the drop of a hat.
But he also found volumes of letters handwritten to young fans that ran into as many as five pages. In each one he told the fans he was honored to send them an autograph.
He found a man who was a voracious reader, especially of history, and was presented a set of books by the Chicago White Sox as Chicago’s most popular visiting player. He found old-time player after old-time player who made it clear that they did not consider Cobb to be the terrible “spiker” with his cleats that he is often accused of being.
Neither did he feel that he found a racist. It is a charge easily made and seemly impossible to disprove, making it the standard go-to slander of the left. But Leerhsen found a family history with a long line of abolitionists that ran all the way to a father who as an educator and state senator spoke up repeatedly for his black constituents as well as once breaking up a lynch mob. He found that three of the “black men” that Cobb had beaten in fights were actually white. He found that the modern player Cobb considered most like himself was Roy Campanella.
He found an altogether imperfect man who failed in many of his responsibilities and was haunted by ghosts he never conquered as easily as he did major league pitchers. But he also found a man much different from the monster that a few earlier writers had trader on. But the uglier image is what most have connected to his name, reinforced by movies and hastily written articles and books. I am not sure that a truer image will ever dominate the public mind.
But Cobb’s statue is not in Comerica Park because he was a generous man, a penny pinching miser, a gentle and kind idol to kids, a hateful abuser of fans, blacks and the handicapped, an insightful friend to many or just a plain ornery son-of-a-bitch.
It is there because one cannot honestly or completely tell the story of the Detroit Tigers, not to mention all of baseball itself, without knowing about Ty Cobb. That statue is there because of the fire, drive, skill and innovation of a man who was not only the most complete, exciting player of his time but also one who steered the game toward what it became. Baseball itself cannot be understood without knowing Ty Cobb.
It is not there because of anything he felt about his fellow man or any wrong he might or might not have done him. It is there because he won 12 (count ’em, 12) batting titles. Because he hit over .400 three times. Because his base running changed both style and technique for all of baseball during his time. Because of a .366 lifetime batting average. Because one cannot search for the truth of baseball’s story without dealing with Cobb. To leave him out is to not just make the story incomplete but untrue as well.
I don’t know if Al Stump’s or Charles Leerhsen’s portrait of Cobb will prevail in the public mind of the future. As far as the statue itself is concerned, it doesn’t matter. Its place should not be determined by our personal opinion of the man. It is due its place because of what the man did, the affect he had and because knowing him is a necessary step in our determining the truth for ourselves.
No man’s, no nation’s heritage is without blemished moments. Knowing them completely and for what they were is important in both claiming the heritage and carrying it forward into a new sun. A heritage can not be maintained much less understood and grown while isolated in ignorance or partial truth. Both amount to no truth at all.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
May it be that only those who love the deepest can really show us how to live; only those of great and noble heart can show us how to die.
Thus while I tore out my heart in mad endeavor upon the stage of action, my dear grey-gowned Nita — who really played the leading part, sat far back in the wings of life, and with vast pride and infinite patience, wove all the cloths for me to wear.
— “Ode to Nita,” J. Evetts Haley
The following is a repeat of some reflections made around this past Mother’s Day. They have been reinforced by more recent ones that centers on the legacy left by one mother which hopefully can continue to grow within those left with its keeping. There are those individuals who have the grace, faith and inner peace to look squarely into a known and coming period of darkness; to plan for it and then to endure it in such a way that time-tested love, character and belief always shine through even the heaviest curtain of disease. It is evidence of not just the brightness of a soul that could not be dulled but an acceptance of the divine hand and its purpose as well as a quiet, enduring, consistent courage that is more than rare.
These are qualities greatly needed by us all.
Haley’s decades-old words about his departed wife Nita also ring true for those of us who have in our heritage, both immediate and distant, a gentle hand that wove the fabric which clothed us in a “Coat of Many Colors” whose brightest threads were “immoral love, unshakeable faith and incorruptible character”.
HAIR AND FLOWERS
Inside a hand-made shadow box more than a century and half old is a simple, delicate and profound expression of family, crafted by knowing matronal hands from nothing more than human hair and thin wire. The linen cloth lining the interior is tainted some by both years and dust. But the modern day owner is slow to disturb the contents and risk his own clumsiness with what was so exactly woven with so much care.
In a day long past, especially in the South, it was common to save a lock of hair of family members and those closest. It was also fashionable in a time which seemed to treasure both the personal and the traditional for the women to create arrangements from that hair. This box was such a creation, an intricate floral design with large blooms and tiny pedals forming a large “U” centered on yet another flower. The smallest of circles and the most tightly woven pedals are all made of hair collected from generations of one family and passed down to be shaped with precision and patience into a lasting symbol of a long line of mothers and their hope for the mothers who would follow them.
The shadow box was carried as a legacy by a young bride who left her war-torn home state and followed her husband to a land even more strife-ridden and dangerous. She was Georgia raised by an adventurous soul who traded in land, railroads and cotton and outlived three wives. A family tradition says that she did not dress herself till almost a teen, servant slaves did the task.
The Civil War disrupted her world and in many ways so did a Confederate soldier laid up in a near-by field hospital. There was no heroic battlefield tale for the soldier, any good historian of wars know that disease was as common as bullet wounds in those armies before modern medicine. And in his case, he had enlisted in a local militia for protection of his home area only to be mustered into the regular Confederate army a few months later.
At the end of the war, she packed the shadow box among the few items there was room for and made the trip to a land of prairies, post-oaks, soil that ran from coal black to rocky tough and back again, brushy creek bottoms alive with wild cattle known to kill black bears in single combat, almost constant Indian raids and white-man blood feuds which often claimed dozens of lives. It was known generally as the Forks, as in the northern forks of the Trinity River which drained south from the Red across the Cross Timbers and the edge of the southern plains and extended westward toward the “fingers of the Brazos”.
The year before 17 citizens of her new home county had been killed in Comanche and Kiowa raids. Two years before that a “citizens court” 20 miles to the north had hung 42 men in one month to maintain order. About 15 miles to the east John Wesley Hardin had been born in what served as both a house and his father’s church. Another 20 miles to the southeast was probably where a 15 year old Hardin killed his first man on the way to what he later claimed was a 47 man count (but a close look at the historical record will turn up “only” about 25). She wasn’t in Georgia anymore.
Though the first winter her husband hunted wild cattle, roping them one by one, branding them and drifting them into a long prairie bottom protected by two ridges where they were grazed in common with the catches from two other hunters. Each man would spend every third day watching and guarding the herd. White thieves were much more abundant than Indian raiders.
That next spring the captured cattle were joined to a Dot Gunter herd sent up a well beaten trail just 10 miles to the west which traveled the edge of an ancient anticline that crossed the Red where it made a huge ox-bow near Preston’s Trading Post. The trail had many names; the Preston, the Shawnee, the Sedalia and the Nations among others; but that season it would see upwards of 300,000 head put hooves into its dust and cross the Red into the Choctaw Nation pointed toward Yankee markets in Missouri and Baxter Springs, Kansas. The next year the main path would be a little farther to the west, crossing near Spanish Fort on the Red and head toward new railroad tracks in Abilene.
The young couple used the money to buy land, a strip of black prairie clay between two creeks a mile long. There was also a house built with lumber from the closest saw mill 150 miles to the east, two rooms with single board walls 7 foot high and a dirt floor.
That fall while her husband was camped miles away on another cow hunt four men rode in on tired horses only a few jumps ahead of a Union League posse. Simp Dixon, Gyp and Joe Clements and their boyish-looking cousin Wes Hardin demanded a change of horses. The young wife stood at the corral gate with a shotgun to refuse the sorrel gelding and two Steel Dust mares behind it. If it was the spunk she showed or the closeness of the posse, according to family stories they rode on.
In 1870, that same young wife was left a young widow with two sons under the age of four. The young woman raised on carpets stayed on the hard packed dirt floor of that simple house tucked in a grove of growing pecan trees. From it she ran what would have been her husband’s business and after a decade and half had doubled their holdings as well as having two young sons who might not have reached 20 yet but did have the skills to be considered men in a place which judged such things solely on results.
At this point, she remarried. After another ten years she was again a widow who had just inherited quite a bit more land. She released the inherited land to a resentful former brother-in-law saying she didn’t consider it hers anyway. She then divided the rest of her holdings (the ones she had built herself) among the two sons and started over herself.
I, of course, never knew the lady. I do have a single faded childhood memory of her oldest son. It is of a 90 year man rising slowly from his chair in his living room, seemingly bent and bowed until full on his feet. Then he straightens into a ram-rod pose as if sitting in a saddle with his shoulders pulled back as he reaches for a sweat stained felt hat that he puts on before starting for the barn.
But I remember that man’s son well, her grandson. It is from him that I like to think I get a glimpse of the woman. He maintained a quietness about himself in most everything and hardly spoke of himself at all. There was the ability to project warmth while keeping privacy and to teach life lessons with questions instead of sermons. There was a decided intent not to over-state anything, especially about himself, and a precision of truth in what he promised. His word was considered stronger than any contract by the lowest shoe-string horse trader and the banking moguls of two major cities. To carry his name was both a gift and a responsibility.
That shadow box was saved and then passed to our time by the hand of another young wife. Her DNA was not present in the hair making up the flowers in the case but she had married into it. She found it, searched for its origin and then made sure it was safe. Though she was not related by blood to the young wife who had left Georgia, I tend to believe they shared some qualities.
Her voice has been silent, unable to be heard, for some time but occasionally the eyes will brighten into a glim and an unexplained smile will show there is still a spirit and warmth easily recognized by those who have felt them before. Somewhere within a failed body is the same young woman who, very much like that other young bride from decades before, followed her heart into a life which was not always easy but left indelible values imprinted into a next generation she helped to create out of hope and strength.
She might have lived without plumping for the first decade-plus of her married life but during that time she had the iron touch to lead a champion bull into the show ring and the gentile patience to pass on a deep reverence for the written word and the books which carry it. Despite the lack of cash money, she showed the skill with a needle and thread to create a shirt from scratch complete with the image of a black stallion on the back for a second grade son and the creativity to transform a couple of cardboard boxes and some purple cloth into a prize winning Halloween costume at the elementary school fall festival.
During that first decade the settings she followed into included minor league baseball parks, far-flung rodeo arenas, dusty and distance-spaced match ropings, rented pastures and breaking pens. The place of residence ranged from roadside campfires to single planked shotgun houses hidden on remote creek banks. The joy, strength, spirit, faith and character which made those times mostly happy memories may now be veiled behind a curtain of cruel disease but they all are still alive. They were nurtured, grown and passed on long ago.
They are also symbolized in an old shadow box by the tiny and precise creations containing the DNA of countless generations of mothers which was then blended with new bloodlines. It is not just sons who become heirs to bold fathers. Daughters whose own boldness can hold the hearts of good men are the bridges between the vital qualities of those past generations and the exploring adventures that will build a future, legions of mothers who are the very breath of a civilized social order regardless of the setting.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
George Washington was taking what some might consider a calculated gamble and others would call a simple foolhardy, desperate roll of the dice. Even in this real history-deprived age of political correct indoctrination, most have at least the imagined pictures of the Continental Army’s crossing of the ice-choked Delaware. But a great part of Washington’s troops ended their enlistment in just a few days with the beginning of a new year and there had been nothing but a series of dramatic losses and setbacks for the colonials since getting the British to abandon Boston Harbor. New York and almost an entire army had been lost, Washington had been outdone at seemingly every turn and without re-enlistments and some hope for any others who would join the rebels, the Revolution was probably well on its way to complete failure.
So on Christmas night 1776 began a “Victory or Death” operation to cross the Delaware and hopefully surprise the 1,500 or so Hessians in Trenton, New Jersey. The idea was to complete the crossing by midnight, march the nine miles to Trenton and be ready for a predawn attack.
These were the days when ice and snow in the dead of winter were simply known as “weather” instead of climate change. It was also a period of history purposely ignored by many today known as the “Little Ice Age,” a hard to explain few decades of alternating extreme cold well before SUVs and industrial smokestacks. As a result, the Delaware River was already filled with floating ice. A couple of winters later New York Harbor would actually freeze but this winter was still bad enough on its own.
Before the Continentals could begin their crossing, rain started to fall. It soon turned to sleet and then snow. During the rough crossing several men fell overboard including one colonel but all were pulled back into safely and the cannon all made it across. But two whole detachments were not able to cross, cutting Washington’s troop strength almost in half. Instead of midnight, it was 3 am before the reduced force was across on the New Jersey side of the river.
With hope of a predawn surprise attack gone, Washington now had to make the choice on yet another high risk gamble. The troops began the march toward Trenton despite all the setbacks.
The mental picture of soldiers plodding through the snow, some with only rags on their bleeding feet, is not mere legend but hard fact. Along the way two of their ill-supplied, exhausted number fell into the snow unable to rise back up and froze to death.
One can only try to imagine the hopelessness that must have gripped those two nameless soldiers as they lay in the snow for their last earthly moments. They were drained of physical effort while their fellow rebels plodded on to take a wild, desperate chance to salvage a mission which seemingly had everything turned against it.
After the passing of another 188 years, the rebel nation that had become the United States was on the verge of the newest in a long line of “Victory or Death” operations. Continental Europe was under the Nazi boot and while the Allies had a bloody foothold along the rocky spine of Italy, it was apparent that the real hope for victory lay with an invasion of France. The 101st Airborne Division had been created just for this moment and had two years of training and preparation invested in what was to be known as D-Day. They were to be dropped behind German lines in darkness for their first taste of combat.
As with most things done for the first time, there were several missteps for the 101st during what was history’s largest military operation. Almost no one was dropped in the right spot and their role in silencing the guns covering the beaches was greatly behind schedule. Some planes turned out the “jump light” far too early while they were still over Atlantic waters. That jump into the dark of night surrounded by the bursts of flack must have seemed as the height of uncertainty. Before the 101st would leave Europe over 60 percent of their original trainees would be dead.
As daylight broke, those soldiers below the returning planes leaving the transport ships were in perhaps an even more uncertain situation. With the machine guns overlooking the beach still intact, the boxy, metal landing crafts became death traps. Large caliber bullets bounced off the interior of the crafts and made their rounds throughout the huddled troops inside, cutting them to pieces. For those inside the crafts there was no place to go and nothing to do except watch and listen to the brutal work of the ricocheting metal.
The few who found a way to abandon the crafts before landing found that in their desperation they had only traded one horror for another. The weight of their packs in the deep water drown several. They had jumped from one helpless death trap to another.
Many of those who have given “the ultimate sacrifice” lost their lives in moments of sheer terror and doubt that rarely make the final cut in the standard formula war movie. But their deaths, and their contributions, are just as real, just as essential as those of any of the other warriors. Perhaps more Soldiers of the Revolution died rotting of disease in damp British prison ships than on the field of battle. Almost 3,000 men lost their lives in a single training exercise in preparation for D-Day and for years their sacrifice was a state secret even to their families. I am sure that all of these honored dead had terrible moments of doubt and hopelessness as they failed to see the far-away result of their misery. But these warriors had taken the same first, vital step as all of liberty’s warriors. They offered themselves to an uncertain fate. Their offering, however, was different than the ones made by the warriors of any other age or any other nation. Their offering was to an idea; and an ideal.
This is the standard, ceremonial day we have set aside to acknowledge that offering and the personal loss which went with it. It is a day that is merely a symbol of what we who are heir to that ideal owe to those who offered themselves. There is something owed which goes far beyond the prayerful moments, the flags and celebrations. It is a debt to be paid on a daily basis, every day with an eye to the future as well as the present.
We owe clarity, faith and persistence.
We owe clarity as to the true purpose of this nation and the ideas which are it foundation. This is a day in which “rights” are invented with the social movement of the moment. With at least a century of misinformation and misdirection from the left about the nature of our founding, an informed and passionate voice needs to be found in us all to re-affirm the natural, God-given rights; the concept of limited and answerable government; the capitalistic free market and individual liberty which have made the American culture unique in the globe’s history.
We owe faith in both the above principles and the divine hand behind them. They have been proven right in the heat generated from their application. When they were our focus; the freest, most economically advanced social ever known resulted. Well over a century has been taken to deny the unbelievable positive results of these principles and replace them with repackaged concepts touting centralized authority and wealth distributed from the top down “for the good of all.” Everyone’s faith in these principles will be tested. What we owe is that our own faith will be a model.
We owe persistence in the face of frustration, disappointment and even reversal in the application of these principles. Frustration, disappointment and apparent failure had to have been the last feelings of many of those caught in their moments of sacrifice. They are all natural feelings and many of us feel them surrounded by fellow citizens who confuse government subsidy with charity or “investment,” dependence with compassion, “coverage” with either real insurance or real medical care, false security with liberty or convenient lies of the moment with statesmanship. I have tried to make the case before that politics is far too important to be left to those who love or even enjoy it. Like government, it is a necessary evil with an ever-present potential to corrupt anyone who brushes against it.
Even if these days were to actually be the darkest ones of our national life, we still owe that debt which is not cancelled out by our own sense of frustration or disappointment. We can only truly honor the offerings of those past individuals, those past heroes, with our daily conduct. What we owe them is clarity, faith and persistence.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
In the early days of FDR’s New Deal, J. Evetts Haley was called home to the family ranch in far West Texas by his father and brother. Haley was working for the University of Texas gathering historical material but was still an active partner in the family ranch, and had begun his own small operation with 3,600 acres he had signed the note for in the Canadian breaks of the Panhandle.
In its limitless wisdom, the federal government had “helped” farmers the year before by paying them for price-depressed cotton and making small payments to take lands out of production. At the time, these small farmers represented a considerable Democratic voting block. It did put some pocket change in some people’s hands for a brief moment (taken from someone else’s hands) but destroyed a real market. Cotton prices didn’t get much better but the price of cotton seed jumped. At that day and time cottonseed was the base of a great deal of cattle feed.
Now caught in a drought and an oversupply of cattle with feed prices far past the price of the animals themselves, cattlemen were faced with the same government option given farmers. The government would buy the cows, send some to relief canneries and simply kill the rest. I would hope that even the most elementary student of real world economics can see what a rational-less circle this was becoming.
When Haley arrived at the “home place” he was told by his father and brother that they had already informed the government men they would sell their cattle. The decision had been made. There was now only the carrying out.
They began the gather. Haley later wrote of breaking camp in the first pasture to move to another when a neighbor trailed in a small bunch to mix with it already road branded with an X. The final gather was driven the 20 miles to the railroad where they would be killed or shipped to canneries.
It was a sober drive. When an occasional critter would break from the drag to chase a path of its own choosing, there was not the usual inner thrill that any hand will get from the chance to horseback a fugitive back into line.
Along the way, the smaller calves gave out in the heat. They would be circled by the horses and gently forced on their way, even knowing that they would be knocked in the head at the end of the drive. When they gave out completely, they were roped and eased up on an old truck that served as a calf wagon.
When they arrived at the railroad, the condemned cows were held in a fence corner while a .30-.30 rifle knocked each one to the ground. Then the government-paid crew buried them en masse. For these “benefits,” the cowmen had agreed to cooperate with any further “general programs.”
Later, Haley took to his typewriter to tell of the drive and in his own direct style give his opinion on the relationship between man and government for the Saturday Evening Post in “Cow Business and Monkey Business.” In the last 500 words anyone who remotely shares the same spirit or heritage should literally feel the same bitter taste on his own tongue that Haley’s pen brought to life.
And though our cattle were mortgaged, we managed our business to suit ourselves. Not even the hard-fisted bankers and loan agents even appended to their notes a blanket agreement by which they might take charge of our affairs.
Having seen the development of the range industry under private initiative, we believe the profit system is right and good. But we believe, too, a banker, as trustee for our and other folk’s money, must have collateral; that our notes, executed in good faith, must be met; that unless they are, our banker must and should foreclose.
We hold to the simple theory that if we rent 10 horses to a neighbor for a consideration, we should get 10 horses back, no matter what happens to the price of horses and their rate of hire in the meantime.
For the rest of his life, Haley was not just a historian, a voice for conservative principles and an insightful, skilled writer who passed a matchless accounting of a vital part of the American experience to all who are heir to it. He was also a sure-enough cowman who did not just manage some of the largest operations in the nation but also, mortgage by mortgage, maintained a growing ranching enterprise with his son for over four decades. To the best of his knowledge, that single cattle drive in the ’30s was the only time he had shared in any federal farm program. But even in this he kept a stubborn resistance to the thought that he had taken any type of a subsidy, a gift, because “they got our cows.”
Those close to him estimated that during the 1950s alone Evetts Haley probably spurned over $100,000 in federal farm subsidies at a time when $6,000 was considered an above average annual income. But he did pay the government $406.11.
During the mid-1950s the southwest was in the grip of a devastating drought that is still referred to as the “Big Dry” by many who experienced it. There was, of course, a federal government hay program supposedly designed to lower the cost of hay in the southwestern regions. But there was what should have been the easily seen problem of producing the hay and selling it for half the cost of production and transportation. As was his habit and inclination, Evetts Haley sought his own solution. In his hunt for a ranch country with a better predicted rain fall, Haley acquired a place on the Lower Arkansas in Oklahoma to put some of his cows. There was about 300 acres of river bottom that his son eventually put into wheat for graze and then to turn to feed. The Agriculture Department sued the Haleys for $506.11 because they had overplanted their wheat allotment by 40 acres.
A Texas district judge dismissed the suit because he could “find no constitutional amendment authorizing the Congress to tell farmers what to plant, what to eat or how to work.” Naturally, the judges in Washington had no trouble finding the authorization. The Supreme Court sited the New Deal decision of Wickard v. Filburn concerning an Ohio dairy farmer. Haley failed to see the same connection as the Court did since Filburn had “taken every subsidy in the book” and the Haleys “hadn’t taken a damn cent.”
In the long court fight that “went the distance” to the Supreme Court it was discovered that the government had over-figured the Haley fine (imagine, the government taking too much money!) and it was reduced by $100. He had lost that fight but in his typical fashion he simply moved to the next one and the next, be it with debt, weather, bureaucracy, or governmental collectivism.
If you consider Haley to have been stiff-necked or hard-headed, you will not the first. This master horseman and wordsmith spent a life not just building cow herds but also relating the struggles of doctors, store keepers, preachers, farmers, cowmen, hunters, lawmen, and lawmakers who had tested both their luck and skill in establishing their own brand of independence. Their stories and his reflections on them serve us all. He considered them to be both heroes and examples. And he treated them as such. He also lived out every principle he held up for the rest of us.
If you believe that individual independence means being separated from interaction or even a helping hand from your fellow man, look to the streams of private assistance that is still being directed into the charred prairies of four states overrun by wildfires. Not just other ranchers or prairie state inhabitants are providing this help but many others as well. It is sincere, direct, effective help unfiltered by distant regulations, committee appropriations, or political considerations. It is the type intended between free men and women who require secure borders, an intact culture, and strong national defense over master-planned markets or official charities.
Their type of brotherhood unites stubborn ranchers with self-reliant refugees from Vietnam who build businesses from nothing but the blessings of opportunity, small-town craftsmen proudly earning a living from their skill with the urban factory workers saving to realize the dream of their own home, the business owner watching a life’s work swept away with wrong decisions with the middle-aged couple deciding to risk their savings on the dream of a small store of their own.
These spirits of independence, carried out through our everyday lives, are what has forged our past. They are Americanism. When we have given up on them, handed their function to an overseer, we have ceased to be American. And that might well mean we are truly on that road to Wreck and Ruin.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
There has been a national tragedy playing out for what seems for some an endless stream of days, weeks now. It has warranted hardly more than passing notice from the national media to an extent that many in unaffected areas have little more than a dim sense of it at all. For the last several days there have been any number of compelling “human interest” stories on national media which touch areas around the world. But few on this one so close to home.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of families whose day to day existence was considered symbolically American for more than a century have experienced sudden destruction of family holdings whose tradition is not measured in years but in generations. It is not the destruction of a way of life, but it is a severe test of it. The wild fires which have swept over parts of four prairie states are still a threat even as the rebuilding is going on.
Besides the burned out homes, destroyed barns and outbuildings, charred prairies and at least six human lives, there are thousands upon thousands of cattle to be buried. While the dying flames still baked the earth, cowmen searched for suffering animals not yet dead who had to be shot to end their misery. Animals which had “survived” had to be checked. Those whose feet were burned beyond the white line of the hoof had to be shot (the hoof will sluff off and not grow back). I am not sure that I am fully able to describe what it takes to one by one aim and shoot the object of your life’s work, of your father’s life work and of his father. But I do hope that there is still a clear enough appreciation in the American mind of what is symbolized here.
The dead animals must be buried, in most cases, three feet deep. This in itself is a massive task. This week I filled a friend’s nurse tank with diesel fuel. He pulled it behind the implement trailer that hauled his bulldozer to the Panhandle. He had cancelled a week of contract work to offer himself and his machine for burial duty in an area we both know. He was more than twenty years removed from the ranch where he grew up but the basic elements of a way of life remain. Economic pressures took him from that ranch but perhaps the most important aspect of its mark on him has made him a success. He long ago learned the fundamentals of a free and responsible life.
No one will see demonstrations by George Soros paid protesters demanding help for these families. No one will see these families carrying signs in front of leftist media cameras while marching in state or national capitals.
But one can see trucks and trailers hauling hay, feed, fencing supplies and milk replacement for motherless calves from every corner of the plains. They can see the beginning of a determined restoration of a way of life.
In the second half of the 1880s, the northern plains experienced one of the worst winters anyone could remember (oddly enough it was before climate change, SUVs and Al Gore). From the Canadian line through the Texas Cross Timbers, cattle died by the hundreds of thousands and probably well beyond the million mark. Whole herds numbering into the tens of thousands were wiped out completely. An industry which had relied on free grazing of open range by large Texas herds finished on northern grass came to a bitter end. Granville Stuart had come to Montana before the Civil War and was one of the first to ranch there. He was sickened to the point he promised to never again own animal he knew for sure he could not care for.
The spring thaw revealed whole gullies filled with dead cattle and fortunes were lost along with countless meager, hopeful beginnings. But when the industry restarted after what became known as the “Big Die-Off”, the wise ones begin to cross fence pastures, farm hay, reduce stocking rates and plan grazing rotations. Lessons were learned, losses taken and futures planned.
Natural disasters are hardly new to any phase of agriculture. They are woven into its very fabric. And nowhere is this truth more apparent than the central plains of the United States. Not only is the annual rainfall less than most parts of the country but the evaporation rate in inches during growing season is often twice that of other areas. The average daily wind speed is also normally twice that of most areas.
“Trapped” in the natural alley between mountain fronts on the west and the damp valleys to the east, the plains consider violate “twisters,” sudden blizzards and ice storms, blistering heat, drought and wind tunnel conditions as common fare. For the people, both modern and ancient, who have made their livelihood from them; independence, persistence and a consistent, stubborn resilience have been required. The nature of the plains can, and will, completely reverse your fortunes in the blink of an eye.
With that said, these are also the qualities required of any free people who embrace liberty as a way of life. Liberty might be the natural right of every man but it was not designed to be easy. It does not promise a smooth road. In fact, its road is sure to have reversals of fortunes, tests of both courage and virtue and moments requiring clarity of principle. It is a road that produces men and women with vision, persistence and purpose. That road can run through the souls of men and women in any setting. But it is most clearly seen where the skyline is open and treeless. It is important to all who love liberty that those who live and personify it feel their brothers’ and sisters’ supporting hand when needed. Liberty is an individual thing but it also should be a binding cord for those who pursue it, live it.
In a time when liberty is taught less and less, it is vital that the best lessons of all; the living, daily examples of liberty’s practice; are played out in front of every generation. We do not have a right to our brother’s charity. But those who live in liberty and cherish its future have both duty and responsibility to foster it, in every corner.
Note: There are several locations where anyone find ways to contribute to the aid flowing to these areas, most through the agencies of each state: Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado. An additional thought was brought to mind by a Panhandle friend; the importance of, and great strain on, all the local volunteer fire departments who are always the “first responders” to the grass fires throughout the plains states. They of course have had their resources stretched and then depleted. They are one of the great examples of community cooperation and involvement far from the centralized hand, citizens taking care of themselves and each other. I am sure that a simple dart thrown at a map would give anyone a worthy unit to offer support to.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
We have been told over and over again that elections matter. If that is true, then voter fraud surely matters too.
August 28, 1948 was the date for the Democratic primary run-off election for a seat in the U.S. Senate known in Texas as the “Houston Seat” (this was the seat first filled by Sam Houston when Texas joined the Union). The two contenders was the longest serving governor that Texas had known to that time and New Deal Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson. It may have been the most closely contested senate race in American history and certainly was one of the most impactful one.
Coke Stevenson had been raised in the rocky, dry ranch country of the dead center of Texas. As a teen, he had borrowed money to purchase a team and wagon and hired out hauling freight while studying bookkeeping by the lamp light. He sold his team to take a janitor job with the local bank and was its head cashier before he was 20 while studying law at night. He passed the bar two months after his 20th birthday and had founded three banks and two ranches before the next decade of his life was spent.
He was the personification the self-reliant, straight talking individualist who made up the conservative wing of the Texas Democratic Party during the first half of the 20th century. Since Reconstruction, no Republican had enjoyed any chance of being elected to state wide office and in most counties the GOP didn’t even bother to run candidates for local offices. As a result, the Democratic Party was home to anyone who wanted any chance at all of serving in public office. But it was sharply divided by the “progressives” centered in East and parts of Central Texas and the more traditional, more conservative branch which was strongest in North and West Texas and included ranchers and most middle-sized businessmen.
Stevenson had served as governor from 1941 through 1948 and had guided Texas into an economic recovery during WWII and had gone head-to-head with the progressive wing repeatedly. Johnson was a New Deal man and close ally of powerful Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. In the general primary Stevenson gathered 40% of vote to Johnson’s 33% but a run-off was necessary because the split vote among two other candidates.
After the final votes were tallied by September 2, Stevenson was ahead. But then the next day, a “corrected” return came in from precinct 13 in Alice of Jim Wells County in far southwest Texas.
Jim Wells County was part of the fiefdom ruled by the “Duke of Duval”, George Parr. George had inherited the corrupt political machine which controlled South Texas when his father, Archie, had died six years before. Stevenson had defied the Parr machine when he appointed an independent district attorney to clean up Laredo County, snubbing the man George had earmarked for the job. Parr also favored LBJ for getting him a pardon from President Truman for his income tax evasion conviction. During the 1948 runoff, the six counties controlled by Parr delivered 95% of their votes to LBJ.
Stevenson dispatched a three man team of lawyers (two ex-FBI agents) to Alice to begin an investigation and he called his good friend, the legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. The next day Stevenson and Hamer followed the team south.
Frank Hamer had spent his early years as a cowboy and horse wrangler in West Texas. He joined the Texas Rangers in 1905 after being recommended by a local sheriff after the young man had proven himself hunting down horses thieves along the Pecos for the Carr Ranch. He had truly made the transition from backcountry man-hunter to skilled investigator. He had fought horseback against the border gangs, hunted killers on foot through the desert, served as city marshal of some of the toughest oil boom towns the state had to offer, organized port security for Houston, broke up murder for hire rings, stood with a steel spine as he investigated the corrupt James Ferguson administration, broken the power of the Klan three different East Texas counties and gained national fame for leading the team that killed Bonnie and Clyde. He had investigated electoral fraud in South Texas four times before, in 1918, 1922, 1928 and 1932.
Hamer had an almost total distrust of the media and was close-mouthed at best around them. He had received his first gunshot wound in 1900 at age 16 and would collect at least a dozen more in his life. Although most speculated that the men he had killed numbered into the mid-20s, he always refused to put a figure to it when pressed by either reporters or historians saying that was a private matter and all had been done in the line of duty. But he did put the number of gun battles he had been in at 52.
The three man team of the day before had been turned away from seeing the poll list by the Jim Wells County Democratic Chairman aided by a deputy sheriff but that day they were accompanied by Stevenson and Hamer. There were three riflemen positioned in front of the George Parr owned bank where the records were kept. When they all got out of the car Hamer told everyone to take off their coats so all could see they were not carrying guns. He then took off his own coat to make sure all could see that his waistband held the single action Colt he had owned for almost half a century.
His close friends felt that he had aged a couple of decades since his son Billy had been killed on Iwo Jima 42 months before. But he was still Frank Hamer who had stood face-to-face with at least ten mobs during race riots in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Hamer walked up to the riflemen, barked “Fall Back” and walked through the door without breaking stride. Inside the County Chairman was accompanied by Parr henchman Luis Salas, deputy sheriff and election judge for precinct 13.
When the Chairman produced the poll list, the first thing that was noticed was that the last 203 names not only appeared to be in the exact same handwriting but were in alphabetical order. When the team started making their own list of the 203 names, the Chairman told them they couldn’t do that – the law only required that they be allowed to see but not to copy it – and started taking it back. Before the tally sheets were taken back it was seen that the 965 total had been falsified. The total was actually 765 and the “7” had been changed to a “9”.
Once outside the five men wrote down all the names they could remember and began running them down. Everyone contacted signed a statement that they had not voted in the primary. Seven on the list were dead.
What came next was a “battle royal” between some of Texas’ most powerful lawyers. With a mountain of persuasive evidence collected by Hamer, Stevenson was able to get a federal judge to issue an injunction that allowed for a full public hearing. Since the evidence was so conclusive, LBJ couldn’t allow a hearing to take place and hurried to D.C. and the Supreme Court. There he got FDR hack Justice Hugo Black to issue a stay on the injunction. Stevenson’s appeal to the full Court resulted in a ruling that the federal courts had no jurisdiction over a state election for the U.S. Senate, a rather odd approach for a Court that had proven to be more and more intrusive of state affairs. Johnson had won, by a whopping 87 votes which earned him the nickname of “Landslide Lyndon” in his native state.
In 1977, an aging Luis Salas had a belated attack of conscience and gave a full confession to the Associated Press admitting that Parr had ordered him to add 200 votes to the box. “We had the law to ourselves”, Salas said. “It was a lawless son of a bitch and we had iron control. If a man opposed us, he was out of business. We could tell any election judge how many votes and who got them.”
Coke Stevenson retreated to private life on the ranch lands of West Texas and never supported a Democratic candidate again. During the ‘50s and into the election of 1964, he was a strong supporter of Arizona’s Barry Goldwater. In many ways, this election marked the beginning of a turn of the state’s conservatives away from a Democratic Party where they had never been neither comfortable or contributors beyond the state. The process took about a decade and half to completely leave behind a century old habit but was pretty well done by the late ‘60s.
But the major impact of the fraud in those six remote border counties was a path which took LBJ to the White House. Johnson is one of the four most constitutionally destructive presidents since the turn of the 20th century. The “Great Society” legislation, opening of immigration gates, the so-called “chain immigration” practice and Court appointments are just a beginning to the list of lasting effects we are still paying for far into the future.
Those 87 votes were not just the expected result of yet another crooked South Texas election. They well might have been nation altering. They certainly extended the course laid for us by Wilson and FDR and passed a ready-made leftist base for Obama to try hammer in the final few nails.
Yes Mr. Obama, elections have consequences. And as a result, so does the corruption of them.
That one, single South Texas act of voter fraud had the impact it did because all the others were allowed to become the standard. If you are to have clean, honest elections you cannot wait to pick the “right one” to enforce the laws for. You never really know which one is the “right one” until later anyway. If any single election is to be honest, they must all be honest to the best efforts we have.
Regardless of the politics involved or the “media optics”, it is past time to insist on proper identification at polling places and accountable tallying practices. It should be unacceptable to have perhaps as many as 3 million actual citizens have their legal votes cancelled by non-citizens. It should be unacceptable to have hundreds of ballot boxes turn in votes for only one candidate.
To implement these assurances is not prejudice but reverence for the rule of law.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
“Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.” — Dwight Eisenhower
History is full of Great Men who were able to seize a moment and put themselves to the front. Many of their names are still familiar to us even if most of us can relate few real facts about them. But their names and — in many cases — false images of them, live on. In truth, many of them were destroyers and self-promoters guided more by their own desires than by ideas, by a strength of personality and not of ideas.
Great peoples and nations arise and move on great ideas. In many cases, the Great Men have spelled the decline of those peoples and nations. They might have created what seemed great moments which — despite their words — were more about the person than the ideas but the focus on them meant decline away from the moral core. Caesar, Napoleon and Cromwell are among the easier examples in the West.
The greatest of men end up being those who — despite their own weaknesses and strong personalities (and in some cases even weak personalities) — allowed the ideas to override their egos. Nationally, George Washington is our first example. He was as vain as any strong leader and had his bad moments, as all of us do. But time and time again, he walked away from power for the sake of an idea he perceived as more important than himself.
Great ideas will always need dedicated people to do the work of leadership. But the best ideas are the work “the people,” not leaders. The mark of leadership is that those around become better, empowered. The ideal of the American character, the notion and focus of its essence, is that of an independent, free people. If those people are truly independent, truly free, the work is theirs to do. The duties of that work may be delegated to those chosen by those free and independent people, but it is intended to be supervised by those people, not the delegates.
One of the central lessons of history is that a people who puts more faith in those Great Men than themselves will not be a free people. When a free people allow the Great Men, or the Wise Men or the Concerned Men to assume both the duties and the power, they are no longer free regardless of the false safety of the moment. The result is always a growth in tyranny. This is a lesson that the Founders and the Framers understood and tyranny was what they planned to avoid. They left us a masterplan to do just that. Unfortunately, this lesson that is most easily seen is also among the most easily lost and forgotten.
This brings us to the present political season and the next days and months ahead. It’s vitally important to understand how we got here and what the true, central dangers are to our liberty (if that matters to us). We then need to figure out how to what the Founders left us.
Most pundits have trouble explaining Donald Trump’s seemingly sudden rise, but it is actually fairly simple: The GOP leadership created him by not being a true opposition party to the radical Left that makes up the Democrats’ core. All that remains is a true sense of betrayal and frustration and, yes, some fear by those who can feel the pinnacle of Western civilization being purposely undermined and torn down. In this, they are dead right. That is exactly what is happening. Traditional values and institutions at our very national foundation are being abandoned all around us.
Donald Trump is possible because the leadership of the GOP has not fought the Left with any measure of sincerity. They too have a stake in the centralized power at the top which hands down favors, funds, and fiats. When fresh faces from the “provinces” arrive in Washington with constitutional reforms on their mind, they have been quickly pushed to the side and ignored, or have been slowly blended into the establishment as they are forced to get along. The few who arrive and carry the fight to both the liberals and the establishment are attacked more viciously by the GOP regulars than is a lawless administration. Without the betrayal of the GOP elites, there would have been no place for a Trump. The distinct feeling of having no voice against the destruction was the birth of a Trump following.
The major issues that Trump touched the surface of (but with little depth to this point) such as immigration, jobs, and Islamic terror are just fragments of that abandonment of the American culture. They are symptoms of the central cancer that has metastasized. Once again, they are the symptoms, not the disease itself.
The America that Eisenhower spoke to had half the population as that of our day, but the message is the same and may carry even more weight. There are no singular secular saviors. Perhaps few have done a better job of describing the true salvation of America than the French traveler of the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville. What he saw was an almost total localization of politics, not nationalization. It was the town meetings, state legislatures that directed the policy of the nation and not the other way around. It was symbolic of a stubborn independence Tocqueville knew was critical for the American form of governance to survive. And he saw the survival of that form to be critical for liberty to be extended to the rest of the globe. The American people he saw did not either want or accept saviors at the national level. They wanted servants.
Their example shows us that attitude which now needs to become the national mood. An extension of the Obama administration under Clinton (or any of her party) might well destroy our institutions and culture beyond the point of salvation. But that does not mean that we all should now line up behind Donald Trump. It means that it is time for Trump to line up behind us and the American tradition and make it plain that he does.
Now that the emotion of deciding the nomination has a chance to set aside, it is a time to be clear as to what should be addressed (and how). In the tradition of those 1830s Americans, we either have to trust or follow power seekers. We have to guide them.
American will not be made “great again” without the specific elements which made her great in the first place. Those include constitutional government, federalism, rule of law, free market capitalism, a moral commitment to family and faith and behind it all a driving thirst for individual liberty.
Defeating Hillary Clinton is of upmost importance. A third term of a Saul Alinsky presidency might well be a point of no return. But that will only be a momentary reprieve if our direction is not back to those elements.
It is the growth of government that is the source of our so-called cultural wars. It is our socialistic welfare state that makes open immigration so destructive culturally and economically. It is the administrative state that strangles job creation, not “bad deals” or currency games by foreign powers. It was not intended that we have a governing class, regardless of who they were.
A free people are quite capable of being their own “champion.” I have my own voice and don’t need anyone to assume that role for me. Too many have already.
While we will do all we can to bring about a Trump presidency, it is still our role – our duty – to not accept his pronouncements but to imprint our desire for a return not to greatness but to real liberty. With that the greatness will take care of itself.
If you will excuse my shirt sleeve English: Populism ain’t Liberty. Nationalism ain’t Patriotism. Protectionism ain’t Capitalism.
I will again state that a Convention of the States method of amending the Constitution is one of the most potent weapons given the people by the Framers. A forceful, serious effort toward this, even one that falls short, will be one of the clearest signals that can be sent to those who make up or seek to become the governing class.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
There was a time when the rate of crimes committed by blacks was within two percentage points as those committed by whites. And both were below 15 percent. There was a time when the murder rate among blacks was almost identical to that of whites and they were both below 14 percent. Likewise, there was a time when the percentage of children born out of wedlock among blacks was almost identical to that of whites. And they were both under 16 percent.
During this entire time (roughly 90 years), blacks really did have to be aware of targeting by some law enforcement. It was standard police procedure in towns large and small in every corner of the nation to have “dragnets” where several likely suspects were just rounded up and questioned with the hope of pinning it on one of them regardless of color. Real lynching of blacks took place all over the United States. Jim Crow and segregation laws were in place in every state.
But during the entire period the black family stayed just as intact as the white family and most were led by men who followed moral codes, worked with energy and honesty and believed in independence. Those Doubting Thomases among you need only to read Fredrick Douglass’s “Self-Made Men” speech (hopefully again and again) and the commencement address delivered this year by Justice Clarence Thomas at Hillsdale College in which he describes his raising in the rural, Jim Crow south by a principled, strong grandfather.
From 1940 to 1960, poverty among blacks dropped by almost 40 percent. It did not drop again until the Reagan years when it dropped by over 20 percent.
In 1950, the out-of-wedlock percentage among blacks stood at 14 percent. In 1963, it was 23 percent after only about five years of the increasing “welfare state” targeting minorities. But despite the warning by even some liberal voices, the welfare state received a giant boost in the mid-60s with Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society programs. Today, the out of wedlock rate among blacks stands between 72 and 74 percent, depending on the numbers you chose to believe.
The numbers prove over and over again that crime and violence rates are tied to families and values, not poverty or race.
Thomas Sowell, who is to be read deeply by anyone seriously interested race relations either here and any other part of world, shows the almost exact numbers in crime rates among those poverty groups targeted by British welfare programs since WWII. Except those groups are white.
Crime and violence are not a by-product of race or poverty. They are not a part of “black culture” or “inter-city” culture. There are not a part of leftover heritage of a slavery a century and half in the past. None of this was true for the pre-1950s generations who stood far closer to not just the past but the sting of genuine racism. No claim could be more insulting, racist or self-serving. They are the by-product of eroding social and individual values.
The black family survived 200 years of American slavery and a century of Jim Crow. It could not survive a decade of modern liberalism. Today, only 17 percent of black teens reach the age of 17 with biological parents married to each other. No state in the nation can reach a 30 percent rate.
Since the beginning of the so-called War on Poverty, the United States has spent $22 trillion on poverty and redistribution programs and the poverty rate is identical to what it was when we started. The drops in poverty have come during periods of economic growth fueled by tax cuts, less regulation, and individual incentive.
Liberalism might promote division but all segments of society are affected. The out of wedlock birth rate among whites has more than tripled during the same period. “White crime” is just as common as “black crime”, just not as news worthy to an agenda driven administration or media. Police actually kill more whites than blacks in raw numbers, and in relation to their percentage of violent crimes.
Abortion has taken more lives of all shades than centuries of crime or law enforcement. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 million American babies of all colors have been “disposed” of since Roe v. Wade. For those who value black lives, consider that in New York City, more black babies are aborted than born since 2012. I would remind all that the title of Justice Thomas’ commencement address was Freedom and Obligation. Fulfillment of obligation and responsibility is an absolute necessity in a free society, for a truly free man.
The drumbeat of police targeting has increased to a roar during the last seven years as the social state here has grown to almost irreversible heights. This is during a time when 30 of the 50 major city police forces are headed by black chiefs and the chief law enforcement officer (supposedly) of the nation (Attorney General) has been black. It is a time when the number of officers killed has jumped while number of suspects has actually declined.
Those who want solid, verified numbers relating to crime of all colors can easily access the work of exacting professionals like Heather MacDonald, Larry Elder, John Lott, Thomas Sowell, and Walter E. Williams. It is a sad commentary on the atmosphere fostered by the power seeking left that I should even mention that most of that list are black, as if they gives more credit to real, provable numbers.
The Left’s agenda is opposed to the very fiber of the American ideal. That is why division and the erosion of traditional social mores are critical to its expansion. The concept of national health care has been a goal for over a 100 years but it was rejected repeatedly by the people from Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. But it will always be a leftist goal because it involves control of one of the most fundamental factors in a human’s life. Read Karl Marx.
For leftist programs to be embraced, social values have to be torn down. Once again, read Karl Marx. Read Saul Alinsky.
The enemy of the left’s agenda is “middle class” values. Peel them away layer by layer, focus on grievances instead of principles, demand change without explaining results and you can install the left’s “utopia.”
The truth is that black lives are under-valued… by the left. So are white lives, brown lives, red lives, yellow lives and polka-dotted lives. When their usefulness is over to the Left and they are safely dependent, they will be discarded for another. In fact, if they pay attention they will know they already have been.
The social ills, real and imagined, that are protested so loudly are the direct result of leftist policies of dependence, period. Independent individuals with real choices, subject to the rewards and results of their own decisions, are the curse of the Left. They are also the long-range and certain hope for people of all hues. They are the divine intention for all men.
Human lives are always devalued by centralized control and dependency; always have been. Those same lives reach toward a fuller and more purposeful existence through the practiced liberty that the Creator intended for them. Lasting unity between all men results from liberty. Division and resentment always result from dependency, a major step in tyranny.
The answer does not just lay in the words of the Founders but also in those who have shown us all how. The words of Douglass and Thomas have to resound more to us than those of the dividers who race to the spotlight and microphone today. And then we will have to live them.
From the Enlightenment to now, wise men (and women) have known, understood, that the life of a people’s liberty is not determined by the strength of any central government but by their love of that liberty and the moral strength of their civil society.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
“Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits.” — Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting opinion Obergefell v. Hodges 2015
On July 4, 1776, the final language of the formal Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. The official vote for independence from Great Britain had taken place two days earlier, so it is somewhat confusing that the 4th has become known as Independence Day. To my mind, July 2nd should be Independence Day, but July 4th would be better understood as Liberty Day, a celebration of the most concise and complete explanation of liberty published before or since, anywhere on the globe.
Both the document and the actions produced by the Continental Congress in the summer of ’76 were turning points in the history of mankind that had taken thousands of years to reach. It is a common suggestion at this time of year to sit down and read the Declaration of Independence, individually or as a family, to remember the day beyond the standard family BBQ. But reading without understanding it is to miss the point, and treating the Declaration as something that fell out of the air — or Thomas Jefferson’s head — is to miss the thousands of years of thought, failed experiments, hopes, bloody struggles, and of progress measured in inches and human lives that preceded it.
Read “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and understand how putting those ideals to paper and practice changed what had been the human condition until that time. This was a document for the future as well as the present. The phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” had been “life, liberty, and property” in Jefferson’s original draft. This would have been exactly in line with the Lockean view that most of the Founders shared. But in the Committee of Five, Franklin suggested the change, lest the document be later used to argue for the preservation of slavery. Even the majority of those slave holders present felt the contradiction and saw the need for ending the institution even if they were perplexed as to how to do it. They didn’t have the answer at the present and were faced with the already seemingly impossible task of creating a nation. They knew this would have to happen to fulfill the vision of the document.
Read the long list of complaints against the British government, and then re-read them again in light of our own modern government and its intrusions.
We should also remember that, at that time, almost every person in the world would have envied the life of an American colonist. The average colonist was better fed, freer, and more prosperous than the average Englishman and they lived under the protection of a great and ascending military power.
Despite the Howard Zinn-type history that has soaked into our society today, this was not about the dollars and cents of a bigger share for the merchant class. All of those men very much had a lot to lose. In fact, most saw a sharp turn in their fortunes after signing the document. It was not safety that they sought.
It is altogether proper that we remember the nation on Independence Day, but I it is altogether more important to remember Liberty and its culture. It was that culture of liberty that had become a distinct part of the American character, making our soil fertile for the world’s first government sown with liberty as its purpose.
Patriotism and nationalism can be fine qualities, but only if their object is worthy; if not, the nation is just a place on a map. The patriots of the 1770s all loved their own homes, the swamps of South Carolina, the hollows and ridges of the “over mountain” country, the lush sea board and valley of Virginia, the wooded, fertile soil of the Ohio, and the stone clan farms of New England. Many of us today claim homes far from these places, and our souls feel at rest among towering granite mountains of the Rockies, or on plains that stretch beyond the reach of the eye, or in deserts of the Southwest, or in rainy, cold coast lines of the Northwest.
What makes us a nation worth fighting for, worth living in, are those words in the Declaration and the government that formed out of them in the Constitution. The culture of liberty is our sacred trust.
This culture and its trust can be a burden because, with it, comes the duty to protect and expand it. It was not intended for us alone: We are the example to the rest of the world of how it can work.
To guard and grow this culture, we must protect it. To become American, one must become assimilated into that culture. That is the reason for immigration control, the protection and growth of the culture of liberty. When that culture is lost, our nation purpose is lost.
We have done a poor a job of assimilating even our own people to the liberty culture. That assimilation begins with the understanding of the Declaration of Independence, its history, its values, its ideals, and its clear statement of our national purpose.
Liberty is a risky, messy, unsure thing. It requires bravery. Risk is built into it because we are human and therefore fallible. It often requires failure and new beginnings. That is why a determined people must stand behind it. In 1776, the Crown offered low-risk, clear paths for the future and a share in a worldwide economic system (to be determined an ocean away) and protection by a great military power. The 56 men who — one by one, state by state — signed the document before them chose liberty and self-determination over those assurances.
If a free people are to survive, they must value liberty and self-determination more than assurances of safety and subsidies from government. That is why today day (if none other), one should read the Declaration of Independence and recall that it was much more than an act of patriotism. It was about Liberty, the defining element of the American culture and character, without which neither are worthy of celebration. It is our sacred duty to protect and grow that liberty by first understanding and teaching it, and then living it to the fullest.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
This political season has been a confusing one for the media and elites of both parties. In truth, the last few years have been confusing, especially the last three-odd congressional elections.
They are only now starting to act as if they might “get” part of the decided tendency voters are showing toward what have been called the “outsiders.” Donald Trump seemed to be opening the door for the non-establishment political newcomer. But GOP voters have given top-tier status to three plain-speaking candidates, none of whom have held elective office before. They are all accomplished, independent people. The pundit class is beginning to grasp a few things about their connection to the public — but the essence of it is still out of their wheelhouse.
Several factors play into their confusion. But for now, I’ll focus on just one. Something about the basic American character that the pundits and the Beltway Cartel completely miss. Individualism.
In this new age of intellectualism, globalism, collectivism, and political correctness, the concept of the rugged individual is seen as not merely passé and quant, but Neanderthal. Trump, Carson, Fiorina and, yes, Cruz (although he is a senator) are not accepted members of their party. It fact, all four have not only prospered but excelled outside of the political circle. They do not follow the standard political formula for interviews, speeches, or appeals for support. They are very much standing on their own feet against the weight and cash of an elite who have managed to ignore the stated will of the electorate for almost a decade.
The successful republic is not based on the collective. It thrives on the will and drive of the individual. That has been the strength of the nation since its founding. It was the resident strength of the fertile colonial soil from which the nation grew.
The nation’s success is owed to the success of individuals and the constitutional structure that fostered them. What the public sees in these “outsiders” is their ability and the inclination to stand up for themselves. And in so doing, they stand up for those who have been ignored. Fight and scrape are a not only part of our nature, but our heritage — and we like to see it.
Individualism is characterized not just by the lone pioneer on the plains, but by the shift worker who saved and then took the chance to begin that hot dog stand in the parking lot, or that small shop on the corner. Our story involves individual risk, effort, reward, loss, and hope.
Every success story has lapses, failed efforts, and re-starts. I have often considered these “failures” to be the real heroes of our culture. They are, perhaps, the truest measure of the individual. Individualism does not exclude the bad year, the poor decision, or just plain poor luck. Neither does it exclude the help and concern of those around us. Safety from these failures and risks does not build strong people or strong nations.
The message of collectivism has always been one of false safety.
These outsiders, these individualists, break the mold of politics as a fraternal order that requires not just an apprenticeship but acceptance from the members-in-standing. They don’t appear to be asking anything from the establishment — one that has ignored the very base that provided them with their positions.
They help to remind us that we are not just one of many nations, but an exceptional experiment in liberty never before seen in the world. On second thought, they do not remind us of that. They tap into our realization of it, a realization that comfortable Beltway elites ignore and transformative leftists seek to destroy.
They have each, in some way, gained strength as the early stages of the campaign process plays out. They will all have plenty of opportunity to better define where they would take an administration if given the chance. No matter who wins the nomination, it’s a necessary, positive step to reach back to our true national nature for someone who reaffirms the potential of the individual. It’s the beginning of putting the American character back in its proper place as a model for our children and the rest of the world.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
I really don’t give a damn what Donald Trump said about Carly Fiorina’s face. Nor do I much care about what he might have said before about Dr. Carson. Those, and a few other tidbits, seem to be what the media consider important and feed us. The only importance they seem to attach to dissent about the administration’s collaboration (and yes, that is what it is) with Iran is to discredit it.
Today we remember the impact of the terrible attacks of September 11, 2001. Those attacks were an important turning point. The impact of those events seems, to some, to have only lasted only a brief historical moment. Perhaps.
But make no mistake: On September 10, 2015 — yesterday — the world really did change forever.
The impact of what was done in the Senate to allow the Iranian deal to go through will have a more lasting, deadly effect than those early morning attacks a decade and half ago. The immediate result of 9/11 was a stronger and more resolved United States. It certainly led to long and costly wars that expended treasure and lives. But remember that the total American dead in those wars equalled a monthly toll in Vietnam in my generation. For my parents’ generation, that same death count was a morning at Omaha Beach. When those fights began, the civilians in the American homeland were left almost entirely untouched by the terrorist’s hands.
Our leaders and military commanders made terrible mistakes of planning and judgment in the war against the new Nazis of the 21st century. (No, that is not too strong a characterization.) But seven years ago, the leadership, the financial structure, and the membership of the combined Islamic terrorist network had been damaged greatly. The forces of civilization were in control.
Since then, we have suffered a reverse. The forces of disorder and savagery have grown stronger and stronger. And the greatest force for stability and, yes, good on the world stage has grown simultaneously weaker and weaker, less and less determined.
There are many details to discuss, but foremost is this. This administration has treated a deal with Iran as its priority and force-fed it on the American public. The deal ensures a nuclear weapon will presently be in the hands of the our culture’s greatest enemy. It provides billions of dollars that will be used directly to kill Americans, Christians, Sunnis, Kurds, Yazidis, and Jews. It makes certain a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, for the Sunni nations cannot abide a nuclear Shite Iran. It has placed Israel in grave danger. It has ensured that we will one day have to fight Iran if our nation, our culture, and our heritage are to continue as they have existed.
There is no mistake that the blood of yet-to-be-counted thousands (if not millions) are on the hands of those who gave birth to this deal. But sadly, there will be far too much blood to go around. The leadership of the Republican Party must also share the blood. They collaborated. They did it with the other politicos within the Administration and the Democratic Party. Yesterday’s Senate session was a prime example.
But the real sell-out by the GOP leadership took place long before, when Corker presented his Bill. It reversed the burden for approval and essentially abdicated the Senate’s treaty-making prerogatives. Even the amendments proposed for this flawed bill (by Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Jeff Sessions), which would have strengthened the Senate ability to regulate its contents, were undermined by the old bulls when eight of them voted with the Democrats to block the amendments.
As this took place yesterday, Cruz was providing clear paths to fighting this disaster that could work within the context of the Constitution and the Corker Bill alike. But none will be advanced by the leadership.
Because of this so-called agreement with Iran, our nation will face some of the most severe tests it has yet endured. If I am correct, many of our children and grandchildren will fight and sacrifice because of it. I hope that I am greatly overstating things. I hope that I am flat-out wrong. But history and reason indicate that I am not.
Two things must happen if we are to emerge from the coming changes in the world with the vision of the Founders alive. We must elect an administration and a congress with a clarity about what we face and a warrior’s determination to prevail against it. We must see a reborn Republican Party controlled from the grass roots. In each case, if the change does not occur, something different will replace it. That is true of both the nation and the party. Each vote cast that enables the Iranian deal to become reality is a vote for war. It will not be a war for territory or resources or even influence. It will be a war for survival. Frankly, my belief is that we are already in that war, but have refused to say so plainly.
Thursday’s events have put our worst enemy on a more equal footing and ensured their aggression. The civilization and culture we have placed in such severe danger is not ours alone. It was given to our grandfathers and by our fathers to us, through the struggles, hopes, dreams, blood, and bone of many generations who never lived to see it. They lived their lives in the hope passing on the liberty and opportunity we inherited from their dreams. They spent generation after generation toiling by mere inches and fractions of inches toward the America into which we were born.
We have been in a life-and-death struggle, but we haven’t called it what it is. We probably no longer have a choice. If we are to preserve their gift, we must prove to be, perhaps. the most clearly-focused and determined generation of all.
We must not just preserve the American Character, but grow it, strengthen it, then spread it to a world in bad need of it. We can accept leadership from no one who does not have it, but it should be clear after Thursday that it is for the United States to lead, to find leadership, and to create the path back to liberty and safety for future generations.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
Friday morning saw something rare on the floor of the United States Senate. It was badly needed for the sake of the American people and — like most good deeds — will probably not go unpunished if the GOP leadership, leftist media, and Beltway insiders. In fact, the reprisals began almost immediately.
Sen. Ted Cruz took the floor to call out not just Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but the whole system that’s used to insulate Congress from the will of the people. In this specific case, it dealt with the effort to end the Export/Import Bank, a relic of the New Deal which uses billions of public dollars to ensure financing for such shoestring operations as Boeing and General Electric. It’s corporate welfare and crony capitalism at its worst and should have died a well-deserved death long ago. It is kept alive by both parties as a source of taxpayer-funded power.
But the essence of Cruz’s words were about the abandonment of conservative principles by the leadership of the GOP. This specific case might have been about Mitch McConnell lying to Republican senators as a deal to keep the EX/IM Bank alive and the legislative trick used to do it, but the thrust of the charge is about betrayal of the voters who have spoken loud and clear on a number of issues.
Cruz laid out the exact details of each step in the McConnell deception with the skill of a nation college debate champion or a precise litigator who had argued nine cases before the Supreme Court and won them all (which he just happens to be). Those who rely on the network or cable news will not get the detail of his exacting and condemning, but they are clear.
Only days later, the House of Representatives saw another act of political courage to address the same lack of principled will by the established GOP elite. This time Rep. Mark Meadows from the 11th District of North Carolina introduced a resolution to declare the position of Speaker of the House to be vacant, creating an opportunity to replace John Boehner.
On the floor of the House, Meadows outlined a point-by-point list of the Boehner failures of both leadership and purpose. The GOP leadership in both houses has funded the Obama agenda while undermining the constitutional power of the Congress. Nothing has been done to contain the spending that assures our children of bankrupt future. Immigration enforcement, repeal of ObamaCare, control of nation spending, and national security comprised the basis for two huge election cycles for the GOP which gave them control of both houses.
What both Cruz and Meadows has done is publicly “out” the elite of the party for their lack of real opposition to the Obama agenda, the very basis for their being in Congress to begin with is a lie.
Regardless of your personal choice for any office, the thrust of what has to happen within the Republican Party is to leap back to the Reagan concept of “bold colors.” We do not need to consider it. We must leap toward it and embrace it. Too many of these get-along types have already taken us down the road too far for anything but a principled, all-out effort to save our children from what the Founders feared.
The media knives are already out for Cruz and Meadows. That includes a great deal of what is deemed “conservative” writers who are — for the most part — too loyal to and comfortable with the Beltway of doing things. Cruz and Meadows will find slim support in either house.
A great deal of what establishment of either party does is to force compliance and silence with party money and bullying in regard to the perks of the Congress, which they control. Both McConnell and Boehner have threatened and bullied with committee appointment and access to the legislative process. Even those who are — in spirit — agreed with Cruz and Meadows know that to publicly stand with them is to lose in regard to access to power and party money.
But an important step to restore the vision of self-government and making it work again is to publicly acknowledge that the present the leadership of the GOP stands in our way. They actively oppose conservatives while voicing their causes. This is little different from the left who have done so much to destroy that vision and practice while proclaiming the very values they destroy.
Does anyone doubt that if the Senate had 60 members like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and House had 270 Mark Meadows that we would have fought a much better fight the last six years and actually have done some of the things promised?
The answer for our children’s future is not with a political party which has long ago committed itself more to social utopianism than to self-government. But the answer is not the Republican Party either. The answer is conservatism.
The answer is returning to a vision of responsible self-government protecting individual rights. Self-government requires citizens, not those who see elective office as a lifetime career path. It is citizens who must be the force that drives the machine.
Both Cruz and Meadows took a step to bring the individual citizen back into the process. They will be pounded by the media, their fellow Republicans who will try and dismiss them publicly, and the elites of the Beltway. Most of those who agree with them will not strand with them publicly. It is the citizens’ role to let their voice be sent as loud and consistently as possible to the members of both houses that both these men have the support and appreciation of the “base” of the nation.
I will again state that this look behind the veil at the shabby way business is done should be a clear call for an Article Five approach to remove more power from the D.C. elites and place more of the emphasis on the people themselves. These two will be feeling the “heat” today and for a long time forward. What they have done is a “game-changer” for their careers in the GOP. They will pay a political price for it from the establishment. If they gain from the people themselves will have to be seen. But the real factor will be what we do now.
The retaliation that Cruz and Meadows will receive from the establishment and the media is predicable. But the most meaningful has to come from us. It has to start now.
Summers was raised in a rural, agricultural family, survived a fun filled college career which consisted mostly of rodeo and football with just enough brain cells to fool some gulible professors type
“Change is a very most natural thing” — Steven Fromholz Recently, our president, leading what he claimed would be the most transparent administration in our history, went before an unquestioning press corps to call our attention to something (anything) more important than how four Americans were left helpless to die before a terrorist mob; or how it was covered up; or what a failure that “signature” health care bill is; or how 92 million Americans are not working; or exactly what we will all be paying when the final provisions of ObamaCare have kicked in; or that the entire world is considerably more dangerous after five years of a more “thoughtful” foreign policy on the part of the U.S. I know what a long, clumsy and run-on sentence that was. But the toughest English teacher I ever had is long dead and she was always the only one whose red marker I really feared. (I am told she passed peacefully at 96 grading essays and still believing that my spelling was the worse that she had ever seen — with the possible exception of my uncle, whom she also taught.)
Our president was determined that we should take note of the politically crafted National Climate Assessment, which promises sure destruction if we do not act within the minute to arrest climate change. The report laid out predictions of dire, deadly, and immediate consequences. Yet, despite the scale of the supposed threat, our enlightened president has a solution — he can manipulate the earth, winds, and sky at whim if only he’s vested with enough tax dollars and authority to regulate individual behavior.
Almost every poll in recent months tells us that the American public not only does not consider “climate change” a pressing issue, but is also increasingly regarding it is a non-issue. Yet the left still treats it as one of the altars upon which our liberty should be sacrificed.
Liberals, progressives, collectivists, statists, or whatever they are called at the moment have a problem dealing with nature. The climate alarmists would shout “science denier” at those who would hesitate even for a second in swallowing their line. Yet I contend that they are the biggest science deniers of all. What is science but nature itself? And the very nature of Nature is change.
What is the “normal” temperature of earth? Geologic evidence suggests that the earth has been through about 17 ice ages. These range from 100,000 years to over a million years in length. We are in one now, as I am sure that everyone but Al Gore might know. This may come as a big surprise to some people. But the earth has to warm up to come out of an ice age. It’s a rule. Apparently this was going on long before Henry Ford sent us all on the path to destruction.
The very nature of the physical world around us is change. Where I sit now was once below a large ocean. I can walk to the creek a few yards away and find along the beds of white rock (simply shale that was once gray mud) imprints of tiny shelled sea creatures that have not existed for millions of years. Thousands of years ago, humans crossed frozen “land bridges” and hunted their way south of the glaciers to find new and warmer lands.
The world has always changed. The humans who remained have always adapted. Oddly enough, some people actually move inland when the ocean rises! Of course, there are always a few Democrats left waiting for Mayor Nagin to send the buses, but most of the others have headed for higher ground.
The left always has trouble with things that they cannot regulate. But that does not keep them from constantly trying. At the top of that list is Nature (be it the clouds or the nature of man himself) and what the Founders called “Nature’s God.” It seems that in a world that the leftist believes can only be saved by his imposed regulation, the two most dominant forces are immune to his commands.
Someday, some year, some decade, some century, there will be a massive volcanic explosion in the Yellowstone Valley on the edge of the Rocky Mountains. It will not be the first. The evidence tells us that there have been several throughout history. The natural forces under the ground will prevail and there will be massive change. Not even a congressional select committee or an executive order will be able to alter it. Not even a lava tax.
After that destruction, there will be renewal. There always has been.
The physical world around us will always change. What creates the renewal for the human is not the physical. Nature and Nature’s God have given him some things that will not change and upon which he can always renew. The things that do not change are what God intended for us. We do not always have them, but we have an almost endless capacity for them and, for the most part, we determine how much of them we have. We have natural rights given to us not by regulation or edict but by a loving Creator. We have an inner sense of direction that can lead to honor, honesty, commitment, perseverance, faith, and love. All of these have the touch of the divine. Divine love is eternal and selfless. On occasion, human love is as well.
The exercise of these possibilities is what allows humans to adapt and prosper through the changes that are sure to come. The changes are but calls to return to those elements and to depend on them. It is a call to return to what humans are intended to be, to the core values that give them meaning and accomplishment.
No place in the history of mankind has offered more opportunity for humans to thus flourish than this country. This is because its founding embraced those core values, those eternal elements given us to weather the changes.
The straw man of “global warming” or “climate change” or “climate disruption” (a new catch phase, because the other ones weren’t working well) or even the newer and more dire-sounding “climate chaos” is only one of several distractions. A greater danger is an abandonment of those core values given us to meet change. We have to believe in them and return to them. They are not just foundations for the American character, but foundation for what we are intended to be.
Comerica Park is home to the Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball’s American League. Like so many of today’s stadiums Comerica has a “Monument Park” celebrating players of the past. There are six graven images in granite, all capturing for all-time Tiger greats performing some act of skill. The complete player Al Kaline is stretched toward the heavens making one more impossible catch. Left hander Hal Newhouser is leaned back at the end of his wind-up before delivering a strike out pitch. Charlie Gehringer is in the middle of another fluid turn of a double play. Sluggers Hank Greenberg and Willie Horton are sending one more over fence. The figures reach 13 feet in height and are fenced off from an admiring public.
George Washington was taking what some might consider a calculated gamble and others would call a simple foolhardy, desperate roll of the dice. Even in this real history-deprived age of political correct indoctrination, most have at least the imagined pictures of the Continental Army’s crossing of the ice-choked Delaware. But a great part of Washington’s troops ended their enlistment in just a few days with the beginning of a new year and there had been nothing but a series of dramatic losses and setbacks for the colonials since getting the British to abandon Boston Harbor. New York and almost an entire army had been lost, Washington had been outdone at seemingly every turn and without re-enlistments and some hope for any others who would join the rebels, the Revolution was probably well on its way to complete failure.
In the early days of FDR’s New Deal, J. Evetts Haley was called home to the family ranch in far West Texas by his father and brother. Haley was working for the University of Texas gathering historical material but was still an active partner in the family ranch, and had begun his own small operation with 3,600 acres he had signed the note for in the Canadian breaks of the Panhandle.
We have been told over and over again that elections matter. If that is true, then voter fraud surely matters too.
“Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.” — Dwight Eisenhower
There was a time when the rate of crimes committed by blacks was within two percentage points as those committed by whites. And both were below 15 percent. There was a time when the murder rate among blacks was almost identical to that of whites and they were both below 14 percent. Likewise, there was a time when the percentage of children born out of wedlock among blacks was almost identical to that of whites. And they were both under 16 percent.
“Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits.” — Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting opinion Obergefell v. Hodges 2015
I really don’t give a damn what Donald Trump said about Carly Fiorina’s face. Nor do I much care about what he might have said before about Dr. Carson. Those, and a few other tidbits, seem to be what the media consider important and feed us. The only importance they seem to attach to dissent about the administration’s collaboration (and yes, that is what it is) with Iran is to discredit it.
Only days later, the House of Representatives saw another act of political courage to address the same lack of principled will by the established GOP elite. This time Rep. Mark Meadows from the 11th District of North Carolina
“Change is a very most natural thing” — Steven Fromholz Recently, our president, leading what he claimed would be the most transparent administration in our history, went before an unquestioning press corps to call our attention to something (anything) more important than how four Americans were left helpless to die before a terrorist mob; or how it was covered up; or what a failure that “signature” health care bill is; or how