90 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT (=Doomsday)!

A week ago (on Jan. 23), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced the setting of what they call the Doomsday Clock. Contrary to my expectation, the clock was set the same as last year: 90 seconds to midnight (with midnight representing “doomsday”).

For 75 years now, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been announcing the setting of the Doomsday Clock. That nonprofit organization was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and former Manhattan Project scientists. They introduced the Doomsday Clock two years later.

The first setting of the Clock was seven minutes to midnight. In 1949, with the explosion of a nuclear device by the Soviet Union and the beginning of the arms race, it was reset to three minutes before midnight.

The testing of the hydrogen bomb in 1952 led to resetting the Clock in the following January to just two minutes before doomsday. Relations between the U.S. and the USSR improved over the next few years, though, and in 1960 the hands on the Clock were moved back to seven minutes.

Over the next decades, the Doomsday Clock kept going up and down, reaching the farthest from midnight, 17 minutes, in 1991. But in 2002 it was back to seven minutes and has never been further since. In 2015 it was back down to three minutes where it started in 1947.

In January last year, the Clock was set at 90 seconds. the closest to midnight it had ever been, and it was kept at that setting last week. I expected it to be set even closer to “doomsday” because of the threat of expanding, and perhaps nuclear, war in the Levant.*

The threat of nuclear war was the main basis for setting the Doomsday Clock for the first 60 years. In 2007, however, climate change was added to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as another portentous threat to humankind, and the hands on the Clock were set at five minutes to midnight.

The announcement regarding this year’s setting of the Clock stated that there were four main considerations for determining that setting: 1) the many dimensions of nuclear threat, 2) an ominous climate change outlook, 3) evolving biological threats, and 4) the dangers of AI.**

How should we respond to the current setting of the Doomsday Clock? This question surely demands our thoughtful attention. Let me suggest three things:

1) Don’t ignore the Doomsday Clock. It would be easy to shrug off the Clock’s warning because of denial, indifference, or the unwillingness to face seriously the present predicament the world is in—or even just due to the pressure of meeting the demands of our everyday lives.

2) Don’t let the Doomsday Clock get you down. Depression, of course, is the result of feeling “down” for whatever reason. Too much attention to the Clock can certainly cause depression. Just as we shouldn’t ignore the clock, neither should we think about it “all the time.”

3) Work actively to elect candidates of the better political party, that is, the party working more consistently to deal with the dire problems besetting the whole world.

On the website linked to in the second footnote, we are told that the threats the world is currently facing “are of such a character and magnitude that no one nation or leader can bring them under control.”

They go on to state that “three of the world’s leading powers—the United States, China, and Russia—should commence serious dialogue about each of the global threats.”

Further, they contend that those three countries “need to take responsibility for the existential danger the world now faces. They have the capacity to pull the world back from the brink of catastrophe. They should do so, with clarity and courage, and without delay.”

I am not at all optimistic, though, that the three countries mentioned will even begin to do most of what is necessary to move the hands on the Doomsday Clock farther from midnight.

But I am quite sure there is much more possibility of that being done under the Democratic Party in the U.S. rather than by the MAGA party, which includes so many xenophobic people who, among other things, are also global warming and pandemic deniers--as well as deniers of the clear results of the 2020 presidential election. 

_____

  * I previously wrote about the Doomsday Clock in August 2020 (see here) and mentioned it briefly (here) in March 2018. Some things now are much the same, but there are some distinct differences also.

Note too that the Doomsday Clock elicits attention from around the world. See, for example, this Jan. 17 article from the Hindustan Times, an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi.

** See here for the official “2024 Doomsday Day Clock Statement” and related information. 

Election Reflections (Nov. 2022)

The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections in the U.S. are mostly, but not completely, known at this point. I thought about waiting until my Nov. 15 blog post to share my election reflections, but I decided to go ahead and write this on the day after those important November 8 elections. 

Although most of you Thinking Friends and other of my blog readers know which political party I identify with, please know that I write what I do here primarily from the viewpoint of a progressive Christian believer, not as the member of any political party.   

THE MOST ENCOURAGING RESULTS:

** Democracy is surviving. In spite of challenges, it seems that democracy is alive and well in the U.S. Historian Mark K. Updegrove tweeted that Tuesday’s “big winners” include, “Democracy, with huge voter turnout and many high-profile election deniers losing big.”

On Nov. 2, President Biden gave an important speech urging the citizenry to protect democracy. Yesterday, one week later, he gave another speech in which he said that Tuesday had been “a good day for democracy.”

** The Democrats will probably retain control of the Senate. Although we will not know until after the runoff election on Dec. 6 in Georgia, it seems likely that control will remain with the Democrats. This is of great importance for the President, especially for the appointment of judges.

** Two noteworthy results in Pennsylvania. Not only was the election of John Fetterman crucial for the Democrats retaining control of the Senate, the defeat of Doug Mastriano’s bid for the governorship was also a victory for religious freedom and maintaining the separation of church and state.

** Two noteworthy results (maybe) in Arizona. The likely re-election of Sen. Mark Kelly was also crucial for the Democrats, and the probable defeat of Kari Lake for the governorship was also significant as she is one of the most outspoken MAGA Republicans and “darling” of right-wing extremists.

THE MOST DISAPPOINTING RESULTS:

** The Republicans have gained control of the House. Although it may be several days before the final numbers are known, the Republicans now have a small majority in the House.

Why is this disappointing? Among other things, the January 6 Committee will likely be disbanded before completion of its work, legislation to fight global warming will probably lessen greatly, and perhaps there will be impeachment charges against Pres. Biden and Attorney General Garland.

However, the size of the GOP majority is far less than most political pundits expected.

Here are the opposition Party’s House gains in three recent midterm elections: the Dems. gained 31 seats in 2006, the Reps. gained 63 seats in 2010, and the Dems gained 41 seats in 2018. This year the expected “red wave” was more like what one of my friends called a “pink puddle.”

** The defeat of good candidates by questionable opponents. There are many names that might be noted here, but two of those are Mandela Barnes, who lost his bid for the Wisconsin Senate seat, and J.D. Vance, who won the Senate seat in Ohio.

Barnes (b. 1986) narrowly lost to incumbent Ron Johnson, a staunch ally of Donald Trump. Barnes was vying to become the first Black Senator from Wisconsin, but lost by just 1%, perhaps mainly because of the racist attack ads against him (see here).

I was impressed by Vance in the movie Hillbilly Elegy, based on his 2016 memoir. But even though he was originally a critic of Trump, in Oct. 2021 he expressed agreement with Trump’s claim that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. Subsequently, Trump endorsed Vance.

I was also sad that Stacey Abrams lost (for the second time) her bid to become the governor of Georgia. But I am hopeful that she will be instrumental in the re-election of Sen. Warnock in the Dec. runoff as she was in 2020.

Well, there is so much more that could (and maybe should) be said about this week’s midterm elections, but this, in part, is the view from this Seat/seat at this point. How do things look from where you are sitting?

Edward Bellamy's Vision of a Socialist Utopia

Francis Bellamy, who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, was the subject of my August 30 blog post. In that article, I mentioned that Bellamy was a democratic socialist—but he was not so to the extent of Edward Bellamy, his cousin who authored a powerful novel about a socialist utopia.

Edward Bellamy’s Bio, Briefly

The fathers of Edward Bellamy (1850~1898) and Francis Bellamy (1855~1931) were brothers. Edward’s father was a Baptist minister, but Edward did not follow his father’s footsteps and did not become a minister as his cousin Francis did.

Edward, rather, became a journalist and then after developing tuberculosis at the age of 25 he became a novelist and wrote three unremarkable novels that were published between 1880 and 1885.

The life of Edward Bellamy changed drastically, though, after his utopian science fiction book Looking Backward, 2000-1887, was published early in 1888. Within a year it sold some 200,000 copies. 

By the end of the century, Looking Backward had sold more copies than any other novel published in America except for Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur. It “especially appealed to a generation of intellectuals alienated from the alleged dark side of the Gilded Age” (see here).

(Curiously, while I have known of the latter books for most of my life, I don’t remember ever hearing of Bellamy’s book until August of this year.)

Bellamy published Equality, a sequel to Looking Backward, in 1897, but it was a disappointment. The following year, less than two months after his 48^th birthday, Bellamy died in his home state of Massachusetts.

Edward Bellamy’s Book, Briefly

Even though, as indicated, I had not heard of Bellamy’s highly successful book before this past summer, I bought a Kindle copy (for 99 cents!) in early September and read it with great interest, in spite of some of it being rather pedantic.

The novel narrates the story of a young Bostonian named Julian West, who falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep in 1887 and wakes up 113 years later in a radically changed Boston.

West is discovered in his underground sleeping chamber by a Dr. Leete, who along with his lovely daughter Edith explain and introduce West to the city, and the American society, of the year 2000. To his great amazement, the country, indeed, has become a socialist utopia.

Spark Notes (here) provides a detailed summary and analysis of the book—and even the full text of the novel—so I will make only the following brief comment about its content.

From Dr. Leete’s explanation, it becomes clear that Boston and the entire U.S. has become a utopia by the choices made through the years by the general public and not at all because of government control and/or coercion. It was, truly, the result of democratic socialism.

So, What About It?

I found Bellamy’s novel so intriguing because it was written at the very time that unchecked capitalism and “robber barons” such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were causing such suffering by exploitation of the working people of the country.

The year Looking Backward was published was also the very time Walter Rauschenbusch was beginning to develop the Social Gospel—and his biographers say that the young pastor of the church in Hell’s Kitchen read Bellamy’s book.

A 2019 article titled “When Christian Evangelicals Loved Socialism” states, “Rauschenbusch never became an overt political activist allied with any socialist group. But he was sympathetic to the goals of socialists, if not always their methods.”

At the present time, the progressives in the Democratic Party are often vilified as being socialists, but perhaps they are merely seeking what Edward Bellamy and Walter Rauschenbusch envisioned; that is, a society in which the needs of all people are adequately met.

Why don’t we all want, and work for, such a society?

Voting Rights vs. Voting Wrongs

Ten days ago, I posted an article about the disagreement between the U.S. Democrats who stress social equality and the Republicans who stress religious freedom. This post is about the Republicans’ emphasis on “voting integrity” and the Democrats’ emphasis on voting rights.  

The Ongoing Charge of Voting “Wrongs”

As you all know, the vast majority of Republicans, led by the former President, claim that President Biden was elected because of voter fraud. They insist that the election was “stolen” and the voting “wrongs” of 2020 must be corrected by new voting legislation.

In an Economist/YouGov poll taken two weeks after last November’s election, 88% of Trump voters said that Biden did not legitimately win the election. He won because of voter fraud, which I am calling voting wrongs.

Perhaps that percentage is lower now, four months after the election, but a poll taken of the CPAC attendees at the end of February indicated that 62% of them thought the most important issue facing the nation is “election integrity,” that is, elections free from fraud.

Accordingly, more than 250 bills have been introduced in state legislatures to revise voting laws. All of these are ostensibly for the purpose of eliminating voting wrongs such as were seen, it is claimed, in the 2020 election.

The March 13 issue of The Economist has a major article about the “election wars” in the U.S. It is titled, “Heads we win, tails you cheated,” expressing their view of the Republican position.

Incontrovertibly, a large segment of U.S. citizens is far more concerned with eliminating voting wrongs than protecting voting rights. This widespread concern must be taken seriously.

The Ongoing Demand for Voting Rights

In spite of the charges of voting wrongs by the Republicans and largely because of what is seen as a concerted effort to constrict/suppress voting rights, the Democrats in Congress are actively working for expanding those rights.

In the House, the For the People Act of 2021 (H.R. 1) was passed on March 3 by a vote of 220-210, with all the Republicans and one Democrat voting Nay.

To no one’s surprise, President Biden is in favor of the House-passed bill becoming the law of the land. He stated, “The right to vote is sacred and fundamental—it is the right from which all of our other rights as Americans spring. This landmark legislation is urgently needed to protect that right.”

On March 4, the inimitable Heather Cox Richardson summarized major provisions of H.R. 1:

The measure streamlines voter registration with automatic and same-day voter registration. It restores the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act gutted in 2013 by the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision. It allows early voting and mail-in voting. It curbs dark money in elections and ends partisan gerrymandering by requiring independent redistricting commissions to draw state districts. It gets rid of insecure paperless voting.

Nevertheless, on March 3 before the House vote, former Vice President Pence wrote in a piece titled “Election Integrity Is a National Imperative” that H.R. 1 “would increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment, further erode confidence in our elections, and forever dilute the votes of legally qualified eligible voters.”

Citing Pence, among others, the editorial board of the Washington Post wrote on March 4, “Republicans’ rhetoric on H.R. 1 is apocalyptic. Are they that afraid of democracy?”

It certainly seems so. The next day, Dana Milbank, a noted Washington Post opinion journalist, posted “Republicans aren’t fighting Democrats. They’re fighting democracy.”

The Ongoing Need to Protect Democracy

Make no mistake about it: the Democrats who passed H.R. 1 are mainly seeking to protect democracy. They are NOT for any sort of election fraud, such as  

                 * people voting more than once in the same election   
                 * dead people voting  
                 * non-citizens voting for nationwide or statewide candidates 
                 * some ballots being destroyed or not counted 
                 * some ballots being counted more than once 
                 * voters being registered in illegal ways or more than once

They just want every citizen to have the right to vote. That is foundational for democracy.

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* Here is the link to the maiden speech of Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on March 17. In that address, he speaks out strongly in support of H.R. 1, which is now S. 1, and ardently appeals for the protection of democracy by the passage of the voting rights bill. I hope you will take the time to listen to Sen. Warnock.

Does Equality Vitiate Religious Freedom?

The U.S. Democrats want equality. The Republicans oppose equality because they want to protect religious freedom. But does equality vitiate (= destroy or invalidate) religious freedom? Or does/should religious freedom vitiate equality? Those are questions now confronting the polarized U.S. Senate. 

From BreakPoint's website, 
which strongly opposes the Equality Act

The House-Passed Equality Act

On February 25, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, a far-reaching measure that has been decades in the making and would prohibit public discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Prior to the House vote, on Feb. 19 Pres. Biden issued this official statement: “The Equality Act provides long overdue federal civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, locking in critical safeguards in our housing, education, public services, and lending systems.”

Leaders from groups like the ACLU and Human Rights Campaign argue that the Equality Act ensures that gay and transgender Americans are no longer fired, kicked out of their housing, or otherwise discriminated against due to their sexuality or gender identity.

The Equality Act of 2021 was passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 224-206. Every Democrat in the House voted for it, but only three Republicans did.

The Senate-Opposed Equality Act

As things stand now, the Equality Act is not likely to be passed by the U.S. Senate. That is because of the filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. Far more than 40 of the 50 Republican Senators are opposed to the House-passed bill.

Perhaps the main reason for the Republican opposition is their unwillingness to approve anything favored by Democrats. But the primary reason given publicly for their opposition centers around “religious freedom” concerns.

If full equality of LGBTQ persons becomes the law of the land, religious leaders and/or institutions can no longer discriminate against, or denounce, such people.

Such discrimination or denouncement is based on religious beliefs that homosexual activity and gender transitioning are contrary to God’s will, the Bible, and/or traditional religious practices.

Does Equality Vitiate Religious Freedom?

I have been a long and persistent advocate for religious liberty. People should be free to hold religious beliefs and to engage in religious activities without interference by others, including—or especially—governmental interference.

But what if one’s religious beliefs/practices infringe upon the civil rights of other people? Shouldn’t the civil rights of all take precedence over the religious rights of some?

The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. That was a good and important bill that has helped eliminate much—but, unfortunately, not all—harmful discrimination in this country.

But there were those who thought that that bill impinged upon their freedom of religion.

For example, ultra-conservative Bob Jones University in South Carolina, which thought that the Bible opposes the mixing of the races, as most Southerners thought from before the Civil War, continued to oppose racial equality until the year 2000.

In a radio broadcast on Easter Sunday in 1960, Bob Jones Sr., the school’s founder, explained: “If you are against segregation and against racial separation, then you are against God Almighty because He made racial separation in order to preserve the race through whom He could send the Messiah and through whom He could send the Bible.”

Jones had the right and the constitutional freedom to make such a statement. But the government had the right to champion the civil rights of all citizens, and eventually Bob Jones University had to enroll Black students and then even permit interracial dating.

Bob Jones Sr. and Bob Jones Jr. didn’t have to change their religious beliefs, but they did have to change their school’s practices because of its negative impact on other people.

Isn’t it the same now with regards to LBGTQ people? People should be free to hold whatever religious beliefs they wish. But in practice, civil rights, the right of full social equality, must be upheld for all people.

Equality doesn’t vitiate religious freedom. But the religious freedom of some must never be allowed to vitiate the civil right of equality for all.

_____

Here are some pertinent online articles that deal with the central issue of this post:

Equality Act stirs passions about the definition of religious liberty and RFRA’s role (Mark Wingfield, Baptist News Global, March 8)

LGBTQ rights bill ignites debate over religious liberty (David Crary, Religion News Service, March 8)

What’s in store for the Equality Act, and why do some religions want a revision? (Yonat Shimron, Religion News Service, Feb. 26)

Do No Harm Act (Human Rights Campaign, Feb. 25)

Vote Common Good

Last Sunday afternoon I drove over to a church in Overland Park, Kansas, and attended a meeting of a group touring the country under the name Vote Common Good (VCG). It was a very small, but quite interesting, meeting.

Introduction of VCG

“Evangelical Christians against Trump are trying to 'flip Congress' with bus tour ahead of midterm elections.” That is the title of an October 9 article in Newsweek (see here) that describes the activities of the Vote Common Good (VCG) group. (Their website is here.)

Led primarily by Doug Pagitt, the founding pastor of Solomon’s Porch church in Minneapolis and a prominent emergent church leader, speakers at some of the VCG rallies also include such well known Christian authors as Shane Claiborne, Brian McLaren, and Frank Schaeffer.

The latter was at the meeting I attended on October 14, and I enjoyed hearing him and chatting a bit with him again. (My blog articles of 9/25/11 and 8/20/14, see here and here, were mostly about Schaeffer.)  

Between October 2 and today (Oct. 20) VCG has held 17 rallies in ten different states. At least 12 more rallies, mostly in Texas and California, are scheduled between now and the midterm elections.

Appeal of VCG

In what seems to be a self-contradiction, VCG claims to be non-partisan while at the same time strenuously seeking to “flip” the control of Congress by electing Democratic candidates to the U.S. Congress.

As Schaeffer emphasized, they are not trying to make Democrats out of Republicans. Rather, they are just trying to get a Democratic Congress (or at least a Democratic House) to counter what they consider a President who is grossly acting in opposition to central Christian values.

They, most likely, agree with the October 12 Washington Post op-ed article by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.): “How a Democratic House would check this erratic president.” Here is Schiff’s opening sentence:

Our democracy is broken, and President Trump is only one reason. Congress is the other. It has failed to serve as an equal branch of government, failed to play its essential role as a check and balance and, most glaringly, completely abdicated its oversight responsibilities.

Suggestion to VCG

There are some who agree with the activities of VCG but think they are being too overtly political. I share some of those feelings. That is why at the meeting I recommended to them, and to the pastor of the church where we met, that attention be given to the “Reclaiming Jesus” document, which was drafted on Ash Wednesday this year.

That document, which was produced by people such as Walter Brueggemann, Tony Campolo, Richard Rohr, and Jim Wallis, is well worth reading and taken seriously. (Here is the link to it—and, yes, there were also women and people of color who were part of the group that drafted it.)

There are pastors, and others, who wish to stay out of the political fray and who perhaps don’t want to be identified with VCG even though they may personally agree with what they are trying to do.

Use of the Reclaiming Jesus document is one good way to emphasize the values being promoted by VCG without overt political statements or identification. I am pleased with the way my pastor has done that over the past few weeks.

Since I am not an active pastor—or on anyone’s payroll—now, I am happy to identify with the work and the goals of Vote Common Good. Many knowledgeable people are saying that next month’s election is the most important midterm election of our lifetime—and they may well be right.

That is the reason to vote and to Vote Common Good!

Taxation and Representation

When I was in Washington, D.C., this month, once again I saw many license plates with the words “taxation without representation” on them. The newest plates with those words look like this: 

The issue, of course, is that the citizens of D.C. must pay federal income tax just as all U.S. citizens do, but they do not have representation in Congress. The words “taxation without representation” were first used on some D.C. license plates in 2000—but, as you know, it was expressing a sentiment from long ago.

A Boston pastor used the phrase “no taxation without representation” in a sermon as early as 1750. After the Stamp Act of 1765 it became common for the colonists to exclaim that “taxation without representation is tyranny.”

Have you seen the new U.S. postage stamps that were issued on May 29? They commemorate the 250th anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766. These new “forever” stamps are sold only as souvenir sheets of 10 stamps and are $4.70. 

The USPS website explains: “The commemorative stamp art depicts a crowd gathered around a ‘liberty tree’ to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act.” Such “liberty trees” were “found in a number of cities throughout the colonies, and were popular gathering spots for community meetings, political discussions, celebrations and more.”

The new British legislation required American colonists to pay a tax on a wide array of paper materials, such as newspapers, legal documents, mortgages, contracts—and even playing cards. A revenue stamp embossed on those papers indicated payment of the tax.

Many colonists were not happy with the new tax, to say the least. Accordingly, the USPS website also says that the Stamp Act, which was passed by the British Parliament in March 1765, “proved historic in galvanizing and uniting the American colonies, setting them on a path toward independence.”

The first chapter of The Beginnings of the American Revolution (1910) by Ellen Chase is sub-titled “Stamp Act Causes Riot,” and then the second chapter is “The Colonies Unite Successfully for Repeal.” Thus, actions resulting from the negative reaction toward the Stamp Act was a major impetus toward the colonists’ declaration of independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776.

The tax levied by the Stamp Act was not exorbitant; it was the principle that rankled the colonists. As Chase says, “The exception was not taken to the tax in itself. . . . The objections rose solely from Parliament’s assumption of supremacy in the Colonies’ internal affairs” (p. 23).

For a long time after independence from Great Britain, however, U.S. citizens mostly had representation without taxation. There was an excise tax placed on whiskey in 1791—but that led to the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

The first personal income tax resulted from the Revenue Act signed into law by President Lincoln in August 1861. He who wanted government “of the people, by the people, for the people” needed to raise money to pay for the Civil War activities of the Union.

The first permanent income tax in this country, though, was not established until 1913—and the first general sales tax not until 1930.

In D.C. now, though, there is taxation but no representation on the federal level. Statehood for the District is one possible solution to the problem.

However, the “party of Lincoln” that freed the slaves in spite of strong objection by the Democratic Party then does not want to grant statehood now to a territory that would most probably send Democrats to the U.S. Congress. As I wrote earlier, the Parties have switched positions.

What Does “Of the People, By the People, For the People” Mean?

It is sobering to visit Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—as I did for the first time last week.

Cemetery Hill is the name of the place where a private cemetery was started in 1854. Nine years later, from July 1-3, 1863, it became the site of one of the most important battles of the Civil War.

That was also the place where in November of that year President Lincoln delivered what we know as the Gettysburg Address, a speech that took about two minutes. In the picture below you see June looking at the bust of Lincoln. His entire talk is engraved on the bronze plaque behind her. 

In some of the most widely quoted words from Gettysburg Address, Lincoln expressed his strong desire that “the nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Those words are generally taken as a clear call for democracy—and surely that is correct. But there is almost no one in this country, regardless of political party, who does not advocate or support democracy. 

For some reason, though, more than one speaker at the meeting of the Faith and Freedom Coalition meeting (that I wrote about here) thought it important to cite Lincoln’s words—and to emphasize that he was a Republican.

Some say that Lincoln was making a clarion call for equality among all people of the nation. Those words were spoken after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on Jan. 1, 1863. Still, that proclamation only freed slaves in the Confederate States.

Moreover, it would be another 57 years before women of any color could participate equally in the democratic process by voting.

Others may point out that a government “for the people” is one that actively promotes the “general Welfare,” as stated in the preamble of the Constitution.

That, though, seems to be at odds with a major emphasis of the Republican Party since the days of President Reagan, who emphasized that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

It is somewhat puzzling that in his inaugural address of 1981, Reagan went on to say, “From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people.”

Republicans now repeatedly talk about smaller government, states’ rights, and decisions made locally rather than in Washington.

Lincoln’s words, though, were spoken in the midst of the Civil War, fought first of all to keep the Union together. He was surely talking about a federal government “for, by, and of the people.”

If it had been left up to the individual states, or to local governments, how long would it have taken for the slaves of the South to be freed? Another 50 years? Another 100 years? Perhaps.

As it was, it took almost a hundred years for the Civil Rights Act to be passed in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act to be passed in 1965—and those two extremely important pieces of legislation were enacted by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President.

Basic positions of the Democratic and Republican parties in the 1960s were almost completely reversed from those of the 1860s—and people who fail to note that change misconstrue American history.

So, I want a federal government of, by, and for the people—just like Lincoln did. 

The Fire that Changed America

For several weeks I had planned to write this article about the terrible “Triangle fire” that occurred 105 years today. Then earlier this month I had the privilege of hearing a talk by David Von Drehle, an editor-at-large for Time magazine. (Some of you may have seen his cover story about Donald Trump in the March 14 issue of Time.)

Von Drehle (b. 1961), I learned then, is also the author of Triangle: The Fire that Changed America (2003). It is an engrossing book about the Triangle Waist Company fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, a fire that tragically took the lives of 146 people.

Last week June and I also watched “Triangle Fire,” a DVD that was originally a PBS program produced in 2011 as part of the centennial remembrance of what they call “the tragedy that forever changed labor and industry.”

Von Drehle’s first chapter tells about the beginning and growth of the waist factories in Manhattan during the first decade of the 20^th century. That was when waists and skirts first became popular wearing apparel for women in this country. (At that time, women’s blouses were known as “shirtwaists,” or simply as “waists.”)

Hundreds of factories sprang up in New York City to produce the popular new garment. The great majority of the workers in those factories were women who were new immigrants, mostly Italians and East European Jews. The working conditions, as well as the living conditions, for most of those factory workers were terrible.

Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were the owners of the Triangle Waist Company. According to Von Drehle, “They were rich men, and when they glanced into the faces of their workers they saw, with rare exceptions, anonymous cogs in a profit machine” (p. 36). 

Those were still the days of “robber barons,” men who became wealthy through the exploitation of the people who out of financial necessity had to work for them with very low wages, long hours, and dangerous working conditions.

The fire right at closing time on that March afternoon in Manhattan drew huge crowds, as did the funeral march for the Triangle dead four days later. From 350,000 to 400,000 people participated in what one newspaper called one of the “most impressive spectacles of sorrow New York has ever known.”

As Von Drehle emphasizes, though, “the plight of the shirtwaist workers brought together the forces of change” (p. 193). Eight new workplace safety laws were created in 1912, including the law that women and boys could not work more than 54 hours a week. The next year, 25 more new laws were passed to protect factory workers.

The Triangle fire also resulted in political changes in New York and eventually in the nation. For many years up until 1911, New York was controlled by the Democratic Party’s corrupt political machine known as Tammany Hall.

However, it was Tammany Hall that pushed through the new labor laws of 1913, and it was evident in that year’s elections that it had become “a true friend of the working class” (Von Drehle, p. 217).

Later, “Tammany’s Al Smith, bearing the legacy of the Triangle fire, grew into the dominant political figure in New York from 1918 to 1928” (p. 259). Smith, then, became the Democrat’s candidate for President in 1928.

Von Drehle concludes, “In the generation after the Triangle fire, urban Democrats became America’s working-class, progressive party” (p. 260). And that is still true today.