James M. Redwine

States' Rights

Uncle Tom’s Gaza

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I read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin when I was in the Seventh Grade because my Seventh Grade Social Studies teacher told our class the book missed the true meaning of the Civil War. My teacher was also my Junior High football coach and I liked and respected him. He was a solidly built white man about thirty-five years old. He ran his Social Studies class using the same system he used to coach.

He gave clear instructions and we players and students followed them. We won football games and accepted his interpretation of America’s cultural history the same way we players absorbed extra wind-sprints for mistakes on the practice field in 90º heat in September.

Both our football team and our Social Studies class were comprised of white kids as Oklahoma had not as yet integrated its schools. I do not know if there was a Social Studies class for Junior High, what we then called Colored kids, in my small hometown. Thus, I have no knowledge if they would have been taught Uncle Tom’s Cabin was enlightened or misguided or if it was simply ignored.

I remember the firmness in my teacher/coach’s voice as he described Mrs. Stowe’s novel as a book of fiction written by a northern Yankee whose uninformed views on slavery were influenced by her family’s brand of the Christian religion. As our Christian instructor told us, “The Civil War was not about slavery but State’s Rights”. That was not what I had been told by my Osage Indian Sunday School teacher or my parents. It was confusing.

However, football was more important than whether some long-dead writer was an accurate observer or a fervent abolitionist. So, I took in the lecture and let it roll off as most of the other stuff. That is, until the day my friends, Abby and Jack, brought the issues of State’s Rights and human rights into perspective.

Abby sat near me in class and Jack sat right next to her. Jack liked Abby but was unskilled in the ways to a girl’s heart. He sought her attention but thought to get it through pre-teen means. When our teacher left the classroom to get a book, Jack saw his chance to garner Abby’s ardor by slipping a thumbtack on her chair. She sat down on it just as the disciplinarian returned. She yelled and our teacher immediately went into coach mode.

At that time I had not learned about the tender mercies of Simon Legree but I got a preview from the Coach. He had always been ready with one of the paddles he kept hanging from the chalkboard. But this time the lesson of the power structure between teacher and student was graphic. Coach chose a thin paddle and pressed two thumbtacks through it. Then he proceeded to apply maximum behavioral modification to Jack.

That next Saturday I checked out Uncle Tom’s Cabin from the public library and read about slavery from the northern viewpoint. The aphorism “Power Corrupts” became an on-the-ground example to me. Those thoughts have reoccurred now I am an adult and have observed the corruption of the Israeli Zionists immense power over their neighbors, especially the Palestinians.

As I re-read Uncle Tom’s Cabin these past two weeks, my thoughts have been, where is a Harriet Beecher Stowe’s outrage at what is the incomprehensible cruelty of babies being starved and mothers being bombed. Harriet, we need you to visit Mr. Trump as you did Mr. Lincoln. Or, perhaps, we all need to read your book again.

 

Choices And Consequences

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Should you have read last week’s column you may remember the specific topic was the Electoral College and the general topic was our Constitution’s guarantee of our right to matter or free choice. Free choice, that is what separates humans from animals and America from many other countries. Our Founders designed a government where the ideal was: All matter, but none too much. Of course, as with most ideals, America’s vaunted guarantees of freedom of choice and equality for everyone remain as goals not yet attained. On the other hand, it is no small thing that America not only proclaimed these ideals but set them forth in writing at our founding. And we have struggled mightily since our Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787 to live up to our ideals which were declared on July 04, 1776 to be: “That all men are endowed with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Although the term “all” was advisory only.

To me these ideals come under the general category of a right to make our own choices but with an understanding our choices have consequences. These Civics lessons were burned into my psyche in a most graphic manner one day in Junior High School by one of my teachers who was straight forward, stern and strict; I liked and respected him. As he was also my Junior High football coach I always called him Coach even in the classroom probably because football was a lot more important to me than Civics. Coach’s successful coaching techniques relied heavily on those previously mentioned traits coupled with a no-nonsense attitude that victory came only through sweat. In the Pawhuska, Oklahoma school system of the 1950’s such was the general credo of the entire staff. And remembering my student days I confess such a system was necessary to force an education into me as my personal credo tended more toward the laissez-faire when it came to school work. Alas, the same was also true for some of my classmates including my friends Abby and Jack whom you will meet soon.

An example of how Coach’s attitude helped instill American history in me occurred during our Civics class section on the Civil War. Coach was one of those teachers who did not allow Political Correctness to cloud the facts. When it came to the reasons why the South seceded he taught that the immorality of slavery was a choice supported within our Constitution and the Civil War was about that choice. States Rights to determine whether to allow slavery, not slavery itself, was the gravamen of “The Cause” at the beginning of the war for the South and preservation of the Union, not the elimination of slavery, was the cause for the North. It was these competing choices and their consequences that brought about the Civil War that eventually both ended slavery and preserved the Union.

I probably would have remembered no more of these Junior High Civics lessons about States Rights and slavery than the other lessons I daydreamed through in school had Coach not given that particular lecture right after grabbing my attention with a long, thin paddle. That otherwise hazy school day began with Coach being called away from class for a brief meeting. When he left his discipline left with him and some of us fell immediately back into our natural educational state of benign ignorance.

My friend Abby who sat in the front row got up to talk to a girl two aisles over. When she did my friend Jack saw fit to sneak behind her and remove a thumbtack from the bulletin board then place it, business end up, on the seat of Abby’s desk. Somehow Abby sensed Coach was returning so she turned and hurried back to her seat. Abby sat down on the tack just as Coach entered the classroom and observed and heard Abby react appropriately.

The Coach affixed his terrifying stare on each of us individually and when he got to Jack, Jack folded like a pair of dirty socks. Coach called Jack up to the front of the class and ordered him to bend over and grab his ankles. From an assortment of paddles he kept hanging from the chalk rail Coach chose a thin paddle about two feet long and pushed a thumbtack through it. After the Coach vigorously applied paddle to posterior while Jack manly gritted his teeth in silence, we had our Civics lesson on choices and consequences concerning the Constitution, slavery, States Rights, the Union and the Civil War. I remember them well. And if any of my classmates from that day read this article I bet they do too.

The Constitutional Convention and Cable News

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The Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia in 1787. The delegates kept the proceedings secret to avoid, “licentious publications of their proceedings.” James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, stated that no Constitution would have ever been adopted if the debates had been public. Remarkably, for four months the secrecy was maintained.

Can you imagine the motives CNN, FOX and MSNBC would have projected upon George Washington, et. al.? No delegate would have escaped the allegations of lying or even treason to the Revolution.

But inside the Convention the fifty-five delegates, half of whom were lawyers, debated the most volatile issues of the day. Slavery, whether we would have one-man-one-vote or an electoral college, large states versus small states, foreign attachments, the establishment of courts, provision for national defense and many others. How did they do it?

Of course, I do not know. However, I am pretty sure no one was called a liar for stating his views and no one was ascribed venal motives. Most likely George Washington as the presiding officer of the Convention made sure each delegate had an opportunity to present his views and everyone else had an opportunity to respond.

Maybe it is because I am a judge and once practiced law but it seems likely to me the Constitutional Convention proceeded much as a court case. First an issue would be brought up, States’ Rights for example, then each delegate who wished to would state his position. Then, after extensive but civilized debate a vote would be taken.

This time honored approach to resolving controversies has served the legal system and America well for over two hundred years. First define the issues for resolution, a criminal trial for example, then allow each side to fully present their views without threats or name-calling.

I humbly suggest this same respectful approach will work in every conversation from government to individuals. Shouting down or using force to prevent those one disagrees with from speaking will not result in the kind of result we achieved in 1787.

As I was writing this column I received an email and an attachment from my friend Jerry Wade of New Harmony, Indiana who used to live in New York City and who still subscribes to the New York Times.

Jerry must have been really bored recently because he has obviously been following my column about our country’s increasingly uncivil discourse. Jerry sent me an article by Bret Stephens that appeared as an opinion editorial in The Times. It contained an excellent analysis of the current climate surrounding “Freedom of Speech”, a.k.a., “If you don’t agree with me, you must be crazy!”

I will share a small portion of Stephens’ article with you.

“We disagree about racial issues, bathroom policy, health care laws and, of course, the 45th president. We express our disagreements in radio and cable rants in ways that are increasingly virulent; street and campus protests that are increasingly violent; and personal conversations that are increasingly embittering.”

Stephens does suggest a solution:

“… [T]o disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely. You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate empathically with his line of reasoning. And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say.”

In other words, to have productive intellectual discourse we have to first concentrate on being civil.