what to do with problematic statues

The city of Chicago is wondering what to do with statues of people they find problematic, like some of our former Presidents.

They asked for public comments, so these are mine.

My biggest concern with the monument issue is that it is being driven by emotion rather than calm thinking.  The entire legislative process in our country is based on two houses of Congress.  If all we needed was the majority of opinion at any one time to drive our policymaking decisions, we would only need one chamber.  We have two, to slow down the process of change, so that there are fewer chances of making a less than optimal decision. 

I suspect that we are making too much of this issue.  Statues are not objects of worship.  They represent pieces of our history.  We have statues of Michael Jordan and Ernie Banks at some of our Chicago sports arena.  They are not honored for living perfect human lives but for being memorable athletes who millions of people enjoyed watching.  The statues are not nor are meant to be validations of their entire lives. 

The issue that got this whole thing going is slavery.

I have argued in other contexts that in a slave society, the kindest, most compassionate thing a person could do for the people being sold into slavery could be to acquire as many of them as possible.

Why?

You can’t send them back.  Are you going to send them back on the same boats that brought them over here?

There is no point in just freeing them.  Where would they go?  Somebody else would just enslave them again. 

But you could educate them, teach them a trade, and prepare them for the day they could live free.  And more than that, you could treat them kindly, which may not be the case anywhere else.

When we condemn people for the mere fact of slave ownership without knowing anything more about them, then I think we show our shortsightedness and failure to grasp history. 

I think there are elements in our society who want to obliterate any sense of pride in our country.  They want to make people unwilling to defend our nation and its ideals.  They want to fundamentally change our country in ways that you wouldn’t like if you could see them.

Yes, slavery was an evil practice, though it existed throughout history throughout the world.  I ask the question though: if it had not been for slavery, all their descendants today would still be living in Africa.  So what country in Africa today would they wish they were living in?  I submit that America, with any and all of its faults, is still the best place in the world to live today. 

In the Bible, God’s chosen people were led by God into Egypt where they were to become slaves.  God had His chosen servant, Joseph, sold into slavery so that God could use him for His purposes. 

No, America is not perfect, but I think it is unwise to constantly belittle our past, thinking that we are going to make our future better for it.

When we dismiss our past, we end up not seeing what good there is here, not knowing what our country is all about, and ultimately destroying the freest and most prosperous country ever to exist in the world.

 

Does owning certain kinds of gun pose a threat to our society?

The Sun-Times ran an editorial today (Assault weapons are an undeniable threat to representative government, February 16) that, well, made a case that assault weapons, meaning semi-automatic guns, are a threat to our representative government and must not be in the hands of ordinary people.

The article did not show any evidence that they are a threat, more like a preventative measure.  They could and would be used in an effort to overthrow the government, the article asserts.

What the editors are forgetting is that we had an overthrow of a government recently in Myanmar.  By the military.  In fact, throughout history, the military has been a greater threat to governments than small groups of individuals brandishing weapons.

The Founders believed that people owning weapons was the safest way to prevent the government or the military from taking too much control in a society. 

Are there risks to letting people own guns, even semi-automatic ones?  Well, sure.  And there are risks to letting people drive cars, own baseball bats, hammers, knives, and all manner of blunt objects. 

The dangers are even greater in a secular society where we deem things like religion as improper for the public square, but that is the only thing that teaches people to care for their neighbors and not to kill them.

I should add as well that the Declaration of Independence, that document that defines our nation and explains how it’s supposed to work, says that when government fails to do what it’s supposed to do, i.e. secure our rights, then it is the duty and right of the people to change it or make a new one. 

When the Founders broke away from England, the people brought their own weapons to the war.  The newly formed government had to provide some bigger ones, of course, but for the rank and file soldier, what they already had was enough.

Wasn’t it in Germany before WW2 that the German government took the people’s weapons, which made resisting the Nazis impossible?  And I read on several occasions also that during WW2, Japan decided not to invade the United States mainland, because everybody there had a gun.   

I submit that government itself is an undeniable threat to representative government.  Those in government need to reexamine themselves and their government regularly to see if they are all doing what a government should be doing.

police reform

I was intrigued to see the Sun-Times article (Insight into Reform, February 16) that touted the benefits of diversity in law enforcement.  Of course, we have had admissions standards in place for a hundred hears seeking the best qualified applicants, and minorities have always been able to apply in that time.   Certainly in our time.

The heart of the article is that “compared with white officers, black and Hispanic officers made far fewer stops and arrests – and used force less often – especially against black civilians.  They also found that female officers used less force than their male counterparts.”

And the conclusions are that this proves that more diversity in the police force is a good thing and we need more of it.

There are, however, two small but significant flaws in this study. 

It assumes first that fewer stops, arrests, and uses of force were better than more in the cases studied, and the report secondly lacks the infallible objective standard that tells us exactly how many stops should have been made, how many people should have been arrested, and how much force should have been expended. 

Maybe white male officers arrested too many people and used too much force, and maybe minority and female officers didn’t arrest enough people and their reluctance to use force enabled violent offenders to stay on the street.  We don’t know, and the people who did this study don’t know either. 

The study cited does not give us enough important information and making personnel decisions for the police force based on it will be shortsighted and potentially dangerous.

The definition of America

The Tribune printed a letter that apparently it thought was needed by its readers, but it is mistaken on so many levels that a response is required.  (Un-American definition, February 12)

The definition of America is certainly the single most important issue facing our country today.  The definition will guide all of our policies and programs.  And spending.

The simplest definition of America is provided in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

Period.

In brief: all people are created equal, meaning that nobody has a divine or inherent right to rule over other people.

God gave unalienable rights to human beings, rights that precede and supersede government.  These rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Governments exist to secure these rights, and when they don’t, the people have the right to change it so it does.

That’s it.  That’s the definition of America.

The only reason our country is multiethnic and multiracial is because it attracts people from all over the world, but more particularly, because our immigration policy has favored minorities since 1965.  There is nothing inherent in our country’s founding or definition that seeks diversity. 

The idea of “aggressively” policing our southern border has nothing to do with being un-America.  On the contrary.  For example, most of the major drug cartels in the world are right across that border, and we are their target customer base.  We have a major drug crisis in our country, which the media will talk about from time to time.  White supremacism has nothing to do with it.  Anyone entering our country with the intention of staying needs a medical check and a criminal background check.  We need to control who and how many people enter our country in order to do that.

Equal rights?  The very definition of rights is that they are equal.  Freedom of speech, religion, assembly, bear arms, self-incrimination. 

The definition of rights has changed in the last few decades in our country.  Originally it was things you could do without the government’s permission, interference, or regulation.  Now they define it as things that society or the government owes you.  The Founders would not have known or accepted that definition, because that requires people to do things for other people, which is very definition of slavery, or lack of liberty.