My Veterans / Armistice Day Wish

Image by Defence Images via FlickrOn Veterans / Armistice Day

I honor all those who served and who still do - as well as their families and loved ones.

I fervently pray we be rightly led to better resolve conflicts in peaceful ways. Also that we may learn to work as hard toward a goal of global harmony and a renewed respect of life as we do now toward conflict.

I hope we all take a minute of silent reflection at eleven minutes after 11 AM.

I hope we can use this day as time of reexamination of jaded justifications and the obscene outcomes of war. All too frequently those justifications have been morally insufficient to vindicate the international conflicts to which our veterans gave so much.

Primarily, I hope our great nations devote equally heartfelt and solemn attention to the cessation of existing wars and to the prevention of similar calamities in the decades to come.

"…November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy all the people of all the nations which fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I've talked to old men who were on the battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veteran's Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veteran's Day is not…Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things." -- Kurt Vonnegut 

Pacem in Terris

Image via Wikipedia"The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war: feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the people in them. We are not performing the works of mercy but the works of war. "

Dorothy Day

George W. Bush - Torturer in Chief

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In his upcoming memoir, former president George W. Bush proudly owns the title of Torturer in Chief.

Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

 Bush previously had acknowledged endorsing what he described as the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation techniques - a term meant to encompass irregular, coercive methods - after Justice Department officials and other top aides assured him they were legal. "I was a big supporter of waterboarding,"

Eric Holder, the current attorney general of the US, in January 2009:
Asked just minutes into his confirmation hearings whether waterboarding qualified as torture, Holder was unequivocal in his response.

"If you look at the history of the use of that technique used by the Khmer Rouge, used in the inquisition, used by the Japanese and prosecuted by us as war crimes, we prosecuted our own soldiers in Vietnam, I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.

I'm sure Bush's lawyers gave him the OK on this. He must be certain that the DOJ and the Obama Administration won't touch him. That the International Court won't file Human Rights violations. Torture has never been a particularly effective intelligence-collection technique, it's only real purposes are usually for humiliation or revenge. 

Torture and secrecy. Where one is used, the other is indispensable. It weakened the standing of our Country, helped recruit and radicalize our enemies and made us all complicit in it. Torture is soul-destroying for both the tortured and the torturer and is morally corrupting to the country that sponsors it. 

I feel his owning this is just evidence that he still doesn't get it. Won't get it. Is incapable of getting it. It's wrong. Legally, ethically, empirically and morally wrong!

Related articles

• Bush Directly Authorized Use Of Waterboarding, Still Rejects 'Torture' Classification In New Book (huffingtonpost.com)
• In book, Bush strongly defends use of waterboarding (reuters.com)
• Did George W. Bush Confess To A Crime? (alan.com)
• Bush: I Approved Waterboarding (newsy.com - video) 
• Disappointing: Bush personally approved of waterboarding (catholicvote.org)

GOP Gains Fueled by Anger, Based on Lies

Image by Leo Reynolds via FlickrWhat bothers me most about tonight is not another party taking over a branch of Government. That happens more often than not. It's the pundits who keep saying President Obama will have to "Hear the people." The fact that the pundits, the President, and every politician know is that the majority of the things that people have been whipped up about, are patently untrue. The facts don't match the anger. Now, how do these veteran politicians explain to the tea party and independents that keeping the Bush tax cuts will raise the deficit that Obama just lowered? How they'll have to raise the debt ceiling, defaulting on loans and plummeting the value of the dollar? How they have no plans (not even crazy Rand Paul) to do anything but what they spent 7 years doing. Spending without regard of the consequences. They have successfully capitalized and fuled voter anger by getting them to believe governement is the problem. Now that they have opened this Pandora's box, in two years they may be facing a classic case of "Be careful what you wish for...." Never in my life, never as a student of American history, have I seen so many good people manipulated to vote against their own interests.

Related articles

• Election night live! (salon.com)
• Parties to battle over deficit cuts (politico.com)
• You've heard the lies, now believe the facts (salon.com)
• The GOP's Next Big Task: Reining in the Tea Party (esquire.com)

Walt Whitman's "Election Day, November, 1884"

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If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest          scene and show,

'Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor          your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-          loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon's white cones—nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes—          nor Mississippi's stream:

—This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name— the           still small voice vibrating—America's choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the          quadriennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous'd—sea-board and inland          —Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia,          California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and con-          flict,

The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:)          the peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the          heart pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

H/T: http://www.whitmanarchive.org

Vote!

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An Unconventional Daughter - Elizabeth Harrison Walker

With the distinction of being one of the few children born to an ex-president; Elizabeth Harrison Walker's life straddled the Gilded Age of her father, President Benjamin Harrison, and the Television Age.


Elizabeth Harrison was born in the spacious Indianapolis home of her father, four years after he had left office. A widower with two grown children, Harrison had married his first wife's niece, Mary Scott Lord Dimmick a year earlier. Elizabeth was the couple’s only child. She was just 4 and a half when her father passed away 1901.


Although Elizabeth knew her father for a short time, they enjoyed a close companionship. They spent many hours playing in the yard and famously taking long walks around the city. Mary and Elizabeth sailed for France with The General when he represented Venezuela in a border dispute with British Guiana. The ex-president declined generous offers of all-expense paid trips to Europe and Japan when his family could not accompany him. Family vacations were usually spent in the Adirondacks or along the New Jersey shore. It was noted in the book, All the President's Children*, that Elizabeth claimed she could recall several memories of her doting father, including one of her proudly bearing a small apple pie to his bedside the day he died (March 13, 1901). She remembered that he opened his eyes and smiled.


Elizabeth completed her sophomore year at Tudor Hall, Indianapolis, before moving east with her mother in 1913. After attending Westover School in Middlebury, CT, she accompanied her mother on a tour of Europe before entering New York University.


If Elizabeth’s marriage to James Blaine Walker (Jan 20, 1889 - Jan 15, 1978) - grandnephew of her father’s secretary of state and onetime Republican presidential nominee James G. Blaine - was conventional, much of the rest of her life was not. Inheriting her father's keen and logical mind, by the time of her 1921 wedding, she had received several academic degrees, including a law degree from New York University Law School, and was admitted to both the Indiana and New York state bars at the age of 22.


Elizabeth founded and was the editor and publisher of "Cues On the News", a monthly news service for women investors that was distributed by banks throughout the country. Earlier, she had been Secretary for the Commission for Economic Development and its only female member. Her economic expertise led to frequent and popular appearances on radio and later, television, where she spoke specifically on economic issues pertaining to women.


She died in their New York City apartment on Christmas day 1955 at the age of 58.


A Continuing Heritage:
The Walkers had two children, Benjamin Harrison Walker and Mary Jane Walker. The children first visited the Harrison Memorial Home when in Indianapolis for their grandmother's funeral in 1948. Their daughter, Dr. Jane Harrison Walker was educated at Westover School, Bryn Mawr, and Cornell. She became one of the most noted chest specialists in New York. She married Newell Garfield, great-grandson of President James A. Garfield. Their son, Benjamin Harrison Walker graduated from Princeton and the Harvard Law Schools. He served in WWII as a pilot in the Army Air Corps. He later became chief Counsel for Equitable Life Assurance and married socialite Elizabeth Sillcocks. Mr. Walker had two sons, James Harrison Walker and Benjamin Harrison Walker II.** Dr. Walker is a medical doctor now living in Rhode Island.


James and Benjamin Walker are the great grandsons of President Benjamin Harrison; great great great grandsons of President William Henry Harrison and great great great great grandsons to Benjamin Harrison V who signed the Declaration of Independence. They are also the great great grandnephews of James G. Blaine.


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* Page 150
** In July, 2008, Dr. Walker II was asked to plant an Indiana Tulip Poplar tree on the shores of Glen Miller Lake in Glen Miller Park, Richmond, IN. It was commemorating the 113th Anniversary of his great-grandfather, then a former President, planting a white Ash tree there on August 6, 1895. The Tulip Poplar was planted near the Harrison Ash.


Become a fan of The President Harrison Home on Facebook Or follow his stories and anecdotes from 1900 on Twitter.

Famous Abraham Lincoln Museum in Ft. Wayne to close - Collection may go to Washington, DC

When I was an Historian working for the President Benjamin Harrison Home in Indianapolis, I had the opportunity of a day of research at the Ft. Wayne Lincoln Museum. The people there were warm, friendly and incredibly helpful. My son has been there twice and loved it (and he hates history) I was so looking forward to sharing this with my daughter next Summer. I'm just very saddened that we may lose this amazing Indiana Resource. If this collection doesn't stay in bulk here in Indiana, then [IMHO] it will be a very sad day for Indiana and our National reputation.
In March of this year Lincoln Financial Group announced it is closing the famous Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The museum houses an extraordinary collection of Lincoln memorabilia, including books, manuscripts, photos, and other unique pieces associated with the nation's 16th president. It's served as a invaluable repository of information for Lincoln scholars, researchers, and fans. Unfortunately, the museum has suffered from declining attendance and a company which values the financial bottom line over corporate good will.
According to the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, the state of Indiana and Allen County (where Fort Wayne is located) have put together a strong proposal to keep the collection in Indiana. A group headed by retired Lincoln Financial CEO Ian Rolland spearheaded the package presented to the company. Those organizations are supported by the Indiana Historical Society, Indiana State Library and Friends of the Lincoln Museum. While the group feels it has made a strong case, it's up against formidable competition.
The Library of Congress, the National Museum of American History, Ford’s Theatre and President Lincoln’s Cottage have formed a partnership to obtain the collection from the museum, which closes Monday after 77 years.
Ian Rolland, former chairman of the Lincoln Financial Group and leader of the local drive, said he wasn’t surprised to hear the Washington players were in the game.
“We knew the competition was going to be tough,” he said. “I don’t think we need to be afraid of that kind of competition.”
Those hoping to bring the collection to Washington tout the area’s ability to draw large crowds of tourists.
“There really isn’t any group that can match the visitorship and financial stability of the Washington group,” said John Sellers, a Lincoln specialist at the Library of Congress.
Sellers calls Washington the “natural place” for the collection.
“It is where Lincoln became famous and made his mark,” Sellers said. “It is a natural place because the assassination happened here. It is a natural place because of the wealth of material related to Lincoln and the assassination.”
Those same arguments, though, can be turned around in Indiana’s favor, said Geoff Paddock of Fort Wayne, a board member of the Friends of the Lincoln Museum.
Lincoln spent his formative years in the Midwest and the collection was put together in Indiana, Paddock said.
The foundation board plans to narrow the proposals in the fall, invite the finalists to meet with the curators in Fort Wayne and then make site visits to the competing groups. A representative of the foundation said applicants ranged from small, not-for-profit institutions interested in one or two items to the nationally known institutions.
The museum’s collection, estimated at $20 million, includes a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and a signed copy of the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery, one of 350 documents in the collection signed by Lincoln. Other artifacts include the top hat Lincoln was wearing the night of his assassination, his patent model of a device for raising boats off sandbars, the brass inkstand used to draft the Emancipation Proclamation and the cup he used just before going to Ford’s Theatre. The furniture includes the Gardner Gallery chair, seen in some of the familiar photographs of the president.
The collection is becoming available at a time when both Ford’s and the American History Museum are undergoing extensive renovations. The museum is expected to reopen in November. The work at the theater is expected to be complete by February.
Ford’s Theatre, operated by the National Park Service, has preserved the box where Lincoln and his guests were sitting the night of the 1865 assassination. They have John Wilkes Booth’s derringer pistol, the clothing worn by Lincoln that night and the hoods placed over the co-conspirators at their hanging.
Via: Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, June 25, 2008
Photo: Honest by brunkfordbraun on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike