Mothers’ Day

My late mother, born on June 22, 1924, was the third of seven children. She graduated from high school a month before her 16th birthday and began working at the local telephone company in Jellico, Tennessee. The switchboard was on the second floor of a downtown business. When working overnight, her sister (7 years younger) was sent by their mom to spend the night at the phone company–security in numbers, apparently. By 20, my Mom was married and working (with my Dad) on the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge. By 26, she was a full-time mom. She re-entered the work force at 33 when I entered first grade. She was a natural leader and one of my best teachers.

A poignant Heather Cox Richardson post about Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) in Letters from an American made me appreciate my Mom more. Howe was the fourth of seven children. She bore six children and in 1870 launched Mothers’ Day as part of the women’s suffrage movement, 38 years before Anna Jarvis began Mother’s Day to honor her mother. To honor my Mom as her 100th birthday approaches, I’m moving the apostrophe. From now on, for me it’s Mothers’ Day. Planet Earth needs more women leaders. Society has too much testosterone and not enough estrogen. It’s killing us, literally. This is how Richardson closed last night’s installment of Letters from an American:

(Howe) threw herself into the struggle for women’s suffrage, understanding that in order to create a more just and peaceful society, women must take up their rightful place as equal participants in American politics.

While we celebrate the modern version of Mother’s Day on May 12, in this momentous year of 2024 it’s worth remembering the original Mothers’ Day and Julia Ward Howe’s conviction that women must have the same rights as men, and that they must make their voices heard.

From “Meeting My Muse: A Switchboard Operators Story,” (an interview with Carol Bartle of the Tacoma Pioneer Telephone Museum), by Julia Levy, April 29, 2022, The Switchboard (Substack)

A curtain call

One of the true accomplishments of the Trump administration was its effort to ensure a free and fair election in 2020, led by Chris Krebs. In 2017, at age 40, he became Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection. In 2018, he became Under Secretary of Homeland Security for the National Protection and Programs Directorate and a few months later, the first Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Krebs helped state and local election officials protect election integrity by (among other things) securing paper ballots that could verify results in the event of recounts. No more hanging chads, a “nightmare that goes on haunting” after the 2000 Florida debacle. Like an ironic, dystopian novel, the Trump administration’s good work, led by Krebs, countered his narrative that the election was “stolen.” On November 17, 2020, Trump fired Krebs for telling the truth.

It’s sad that the Big Lie will be Trump’s enduring legacy. It’s sadder that obeisance to this false narrative is now a litmus test of loyalty to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The saddest part is that a significant percentage of our country accepts the lie and no longer supports democracy. In the midst of this mess, a Chris Krebs curtain call is appropriate. He is now Chief Intelligence and Public Policy Officer at SentinelOne, a fast-growing cybersecurity company.

From “SentinelOne to acquire cybersecurity consulting firm Krebs Stamos Group,” by Jonathan Greig, The Record, November 9, 2023.

R-E-V-E-N-G-E

In 1940, a paper by Harvard senior John Kennedy was published as Why England Slept. I thought of JFK’s sobering title when our son Rob forwarded a Time article, “If He Wins,” by Eric Cortellessa, who interviewed the former and would-be president and some of his close collaborators.

Donald Trump’s Republican Party–win or lose–will inflict great damage on America in 2024. As I read Cortrellessa’s description of Trump’s intentions, I began humming a new version of Aretha Franklin’s RESPECT, substituting the main objective of a second Trump term: REVENGE.

Trump’s litmus test for appointees will be whether they affirm Trump’s lie that he won in 2020:

Policy groups are creating a government-in-waiting full of true believers. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has drawn up plans for legislation and Executive Orders as it trains prospective personnel for a second Trump term. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state, the collection of bureaucrats with the power to control everything from drug-safety determinations to the contents of school lunches. The America First Policy Institute is a research haven of pro-Trump right-wing populists. America First Legal, led by Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller, is mounting court battles against the Biden Administration. 

54 years

Earth Day began 54 years ago in 1970. Heather Cox Richardson captures its historical context in her “Letters from an American” post for today, which notes the bi-partisan beginning of the environmental movement, facilitated by President Richard M. Nixon:

In February 1970, President Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.”

Richardson closed her post with a quote from President Joe Biden, who encouraged “all Americans to reflect on the need to protect our precious planet; to heed the call to combat our climate and biodiversity crises while growing the economy; and to keep working for a healthier, safer, more equitable future for all.”

Happy Earth Day 2024.

From “10 Surprising Facts About Earth Day,” by Solcyré Burga and Simmons Shah, Time, April 21, 2024

Closure

The upcoming closure of Birmingham-Southern College awakens memories from my years as pastor in Jackson, Tennessee (2005-2010). While there and into 2011, I was a trustee of Lambuth University. When the university’s president told an emotional student assembly that the school would close, he asked me to offer a prayer. That was tough.

A year or so earlier, at one of many fund-raising meetings with friends of Lambuth, I was introduced by a student as an alumnus. I thanked him for the honor, but said, “I’m not a Lambuth alumnus, but I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been here.” Lambuth had operated on a shoestring for decades and the Great Recession put the school over the edge.

While in Jackson, I remembered with envy the relative strength of Birmingham-Southern. Upon my return to metro Birmingham in 2010, I discovered that BSC was not as strong as in the Neal Berte era (1976-2006). Institutions do not die suddenly and, usually, death is due to multiple causes. Today, it’s difficult to be a small liberal arts college.

Lambuth became the University of Memphis– Lambuth Campus, Jackson’s first four-year public university. Closure is painful for students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends. Church-related colleges are rooted in a tradition that embraces death and resurrection. This doesn’t remove the pain, but it provides a basis for hope to face the unknown with grace.

From “Nearly 170-year-old private college in Alabama says it will close at the end of May,” by the Associated Press, via NBC News, March 27, 2024

My brother Charlie

Charlie Kirk, 30, of Turning Point USA, appeared with John Randall on March 18, and said: If you vote Democrat as a Christian, I think you can no longer call yourself a Christian. You have to call yourself something else. I do not think you can be a Christian and vote Democrat.

Just out of high school, Kirk was an activist at the 2012 Republican Convention and later started Turning Point, which now promotes Christian nationalism. Kirk has prospered. While we disagree about virtually everything related to faith and politics, I try to see each person as a brother or sister.

Discernment around issues is crucial and I see 1933 Germany in 2024 America. I see my brother Donald Trump as an existential threat. So, I will not vote for Trump or a Trump endorser, but I would never say one cannot vote Republican and call oneself a Christian. We need lively, respectful debate.

From “Charlie Kirk Claims Christians Can’t Vote Democrat, Twitter Reacts,” by J.D. Wolf, MeidasTouch Network, March 20, 2024

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Alabama’s party names have changed, but it’s a familiar plot. I saw this movie in the 1950s. Alabama democrats ruled with a rooster logo over the banner “White Supremacy for the Right“. A republican judge from Winston County, Frank Johnson, provided a lifeline for the people to the US Constitution.

Johnson was an Eisenhower appointee and a true conservative, dedicated to conserving democratic institutions. He ruled against democrats who violated the Constitution. Today, Johnson might uphold a legal challenge to republican legislation that seeks to shield students from D.E.I.

Alabama’s republican legislators abandoned a conservative commitment to constitutional democracy and human rights that James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Frank Johnson knew in their bones–American principles that point to diversity, equity and inclusion.

From “Alabama Republicans Pass Expansive Legislation Targeting D.E.I.,” by Emily Cochrane, The New York Times, March 19, 2024

All In One Lifetime

James F. Byrnes (1882-1972) was elected to Congress as a Democrat from South Carolina in 1910, then to the Senate in 1930. Franklin Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1941. Fifteen months later, FDR asked Byrnes to leave the Court to “run the war” in the Office of Economic Stabilization, and then in 1943 as the head of War Mobilization.

Byrnes might have been Roosevelt’s Vice Presidential running mate in 1944, but party leaders in FDR’s home state of New York favored Harry Truman over a VP from the deep south, with its long history of racial segregation. After FDR’s death, Byrnes served as Truman’s Secretary of State from July 3, 1945 until January 21, 1947. Byrnes endorsed Dixiecrat Strom Thurman for President in 1948.

Byrnes was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1950 as a segregationist. He then embraced the Republican Party. His 1958 autobiography, All In One Lifetime, includes a chapter about his brief tenure on the Supreme Court, referencing his first opinion, Edwards v. California (1941). Byrnes’ helpful word about immigration is very relevant today:

Following the depression, thousands of people migrated to that state–not entirely because of the mild climate, but because of its liberal allowances for relief. In this situation the state legislature enacted a law making it a misdemeanor for anyone to bring, or assist in bringing, into California, a non-resident, knowing him to be indigent. In December, 1939, Edwards, who lived in Marysville, California, went to Texas in order to bring back with him his wife’s unemployed brother. Edwards was subsequently prosecuted and, upon admitting the facts, was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. …

… I based reversal on the Commerce Clause, which had been frequently construed by the Court as protecting the interstate travel of persons as well as commodities. The social phenomenon of large-scale migration of citizens did not admit of diverse treatment by the several states; for if one state could deny admission to a person regarded as indigent, others would surely adopt retaliatory measures.

From “All Together for the Camera: A History of the Supreme Court’s Group Photograph,” Visiting the Court, supremecourt.gov.

A sense of humor

Self-deprecating humor is all but lost in today’s political polarization. Joe Biden effectively used humor about his age in his State of the Union address. Self-deprecating humor may be Katie Britt’s best way to get past Scarlett Johansson’s parody of Britt’s unfortunate response to Biden’s speech.

Biden’s impressive, “to do” list speech brought to mind, “What this country needs is a really good 5-cent cigar.” I didn’t recall who said it or why, but I learned this saying was a humorous response by Thomas Marshall (1854-1925) to a speech by a politician that listed all the things this country needs.

Marshall, a Democrat, was a popular, effective governor of Indiana, elected in 1908, when a Republican president, William H. Taft, carried the state. Marshall became Woodrow Wilson’s respected, well-spoken two-term vice president (1913-1921), who filled-in for Wilson after his stroke in 1919.

Marshall may have been our most articulate and accomplished VP, but his off-the-cuff cigar quip is the one thing that endures, long after we forgot who said it. Through victory and defeat, through glory and shame, a sense of humor may be the enduring strength that helps us remember and helps us forget.

From “Thomas R. Marshall,” Encyclopedia Britannica

A progressive conservative

Recent posts focused on the political landscape past and present. My goal is to know more clearly my attitudes toward our political institutions, crucial in this era of widespread disinformation. Two questions for reflection: What is my political style? What is my political philosophy?

My political style is progressive, which embodies discontent with the status quo and optimism about the future. Convinced we can do better, my discontent/hope is rooted in my faith and in our unfinished democracy as outlined in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. This style fits our nation’s mission–to form a more perfect union based on some self-evident truths.

My political philosophy is conservative, which embodies deep respect for democratic institutions. Some who claim to be conservative work hard to dismantle the democracy envisioned by our Founders and preserved by the hard work and sacrifice of those who’ve gone before us. True conservatives such as Edmund Burke (1729-1797) support the enduring institutions of liberal democracy.

After writing the above paragraphs, an Internet search for “progressive conservative” introduced me to various articles by Frank Buckley, a George Mason University professor. He’s a former Trump supporter who now sees him as “toxic.” I had never heard of Buckley until Saturday, but I’d like to ask him over a cup of coffee, “What made you think Trump is conservative?”

I mention Buckley because he advocates being a progressive conservative. I’ll read his book, Progressive Conservatism to see if we have some common ground. He sees a future for the Republican Party after Trump. Our country would benefit from a healthy conservative party. We don’t have one right now.

My concept of a progressive conservative is kin to the style and philosophy of The Bulwark, a successor to the Weekly Standard magazine, which was taken over (and buried) by The Washington Times. I also find kinship in The Lincoln Project.