Imagine a world without enlightenment

Three hundred seventeen years ago, a few months shy of this 21^st birthday, Thomas Aikenhead was put to death in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the last man to be executed for blasphemy in Britain.

Aikenhead, a student at Edinburgh University, had an inquiring mind and it was his wont to read. His crime? Reading books by “Descartes, Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes and other so-called atheists” and having the temerity to discuss them with his classmates. One of them informed on him.

At that time the power of the church was absolute. After his conviction, and asked to intercede on Aikenhood’s behalf, the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly demurred, urging “vigorous execution to curb the abounding of impiety and profanity in this land.” So was Aikenhead’s fate sealed, and he was hanged on January 8, 1697.

But great upheaval was at hand as Europe entered the Age of Enlightenment, a humanist movement that was powered by philosophers, the printing press, and the increasing literacy of the citizenry. Over a  two hundred year period beginning in the 1650s, the absolute power of the church was shattered.

Voltaire, Kant, Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, (Isaac) Newton, and Hume are just a few of the thinkers to whom we owe our physical and intellectual freedoms.  Dorinda Outram, a Professor of History at the University of Rochester, describes the Enlightenment as composed of "many different paths, varying in time and geography, to the common goals of progress, of tolerance, and the removal of abuses in Church and state.”

And the church was ultimately, rightfully, put in its place as subordinate to the civil state.

As a result, unshackled thought and unbounded creativity, free from religious dogma and constraint, led to an explosion of invention and discovery known as the Scientific Revolution.

So was born our Western civilization, with our deeply held values. The twin goals of liberty and progress in harmony and balance. Religion as choice, not as coercion or forced submission.

Where you are free to take the name of the Lord God in vain. Where you can create “art,” publicly funded, depicting a crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine. Where you can eat pork or publish satirical images of religious icons. Or burn a bible in public. Or worship any god you like, in any way you want. Where you may open mindedly support equal rights for all, men, women, straight, gay, of any race or persuasion. All without fear of reprisal.

So it was with great shock, regret, and deep disappointment in the lack of human progress to witness the execution of twelve Charlie Hebdo staffers. They were killed by two Islamic Wahhabi fanatics for the crime of blasphemy on January 7, 2015, nearly 317 years to the day that Thomas Aikenwood was hanged.

It should be immediately obvious, the central issue. The Charlie Hedbo staffers were not Muslim, yet were executed for blaspheming the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.

Imagine a sect of fundamental Episcopalians situated on the shores of Lake Huron. They believe fervently that tennis balls are blessed by God and are not to be struck. Tennis balls are placed on altars and worshiped as holy icons. Tennis courts and matches are banned in their communities, as striking the balls is blasphemous. But, not satisfied only to follow these strictures themselves, they demand that we all do so as well. They mount horrific attacks on tennis courts all over the nation, wreaking carnage and demanding that tennis be banned everywhere.

This would be absolutely crazy and we would not stand for it for a moment.

But that’s precisely what these Islamic fanatics are demanding. Not satisfied to practice their own religion, obey their own prohibitions, they demand that the world submit as well.

This cannot stand. We cannot submit. This is a battle of civilizations, and cultural or religious relativism has no standing. We are moral in this. We are right. And we must fight.

Giving up our rights in the face of evil is cowardly. Refusing to allow the voices of debate to be heard is worse. It is time to stiffen our spines and defend our free society, gained with so much blood, torment, and travail over hundreds of years. To retrench is unthinkable.

Thomas Aikenhead would agree.

These kids deserve far better

Pathways to Education Graduates - Celebrating

Attleboro, Massachusetts, and Uniondale, New York, have something in common. Both are safe, with annual crime rates around 3.5 per thousand residents.

Uniondale, situated on Long Island near New York City, is home to many successful middle class families. Of the households with children, 73% are headed by married couples. The poverty rate is about 6%  and average household income is over $70,000.

Attleboro, quite similarly, has  67% of households with children headed by married couples and an average household income of about $64,000. The poverty rate is below 7%.

Attleboro and Uniondale are remarkably alike in important ways: low crime rate, solid average income, low poverty rate, and a high percentage of children living in married households.

But while Attleboro is predominantly white, Uniondale is  one of the most successful majority black communities in the nation.

Contrast this to Chicago, a majority minority city, where the annual crime rate is over 10 per thousand, more than three times higher than Uniondale. The average household income is $47,000 and nearly 30% of its residents live in poverty.  And those are the averages. For many, it is much worse.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the poverty rate for female-headed households soars to 40%, and over half of the city’s children live in such households.

What is the social cost arising from the cauldron of Chicago’s streets?

In the days since the lamentable events of Ferguson, nearly 200 victims have been shot and killed in Chicago, almost 800 wounded. Seventy five percent of these victims are black, as were the great majority of shooters.

For the year to date, 362 poor souls shot and killed, 2,484 wounded. There is a war going on in Chicago that rivals  our losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. And when you add in Detroit, and Boston, and Los Angeles, and Washington DC, and Miami, the statistics are truly staggering.

Activists, academics, and protestors (ably abetted by the media) have stoked the narrative that there is a war on blacks being waged by police. There is indeed a war being waged on blacks, but it is being prosecuted within their own communities. The greatest danger to a young black male in Chicago is another young black male. While this may be an uncomfortable concept, it is a truth revealed in Department of Justice statistics.

Imagine being a young urban black child, where every outing risks a credible threat of death or serious injury. Imagine the effect on his or her psyche, the damage it causes. The social costs are enormous, the moral stain on us for not responding is shameful. How can our leaders, political and activist, not speak out?

Some are responding.

Carolyn Acker, then the Director of the Regents Park Community Health Center, saw that the children of the neighborhood were its future. They would become its doctors and nurses, administrators and lawyers. But to do so, they would need an education, and the dropout rate in the community was an abysmal 56%.

She collaborated with others to create a program called Pathways to Education in 2001. Soon after Pathways went into action, the dropout rate began to drop – to 10%. This was an enormous success. The Pathways program has been replicated to several other communities with similar results.

How does Pathways operate? It is based on four pillars: counseling, academic, social, and financial.

For counseling, each student who signs up is assigned a counselor. The counselor regularly checks in with the student to see how they are doing. The counselor maintains high expectations and provides the student with encouragement and suggestions for achievement.

In the academic arena, tutors are provided and sessions are mandatory unless the student maintains a grade average above 70%.

The social aspect consists of regular activities with peers where students get to interact socially with other like-minded, academically achieving kids. They will have fun, learn new skills, and develop hobbies in a nurturing environment.

The final pillar is financial, in which students are given financial aid for public transportation. To the kids, it is a big deal to be able to ride the bus to school. But if their grades don’t stay up, or if they skip school, the aid is incrementally reduced.

The students participating in this program are amazingly successful compared to their cohort. They are graduating high school, going to college, and getting good jobs.

Pathways is a great success, albeit an expensive one.

But let’s stop and think a moment. Imagine a child in Uniondale growing up in a household with a caring mother and father. She would be counseled to succeed and expectations would be high. Her parents would assist academically, sitting down to help with homework. She would be enrolled in sporting teams, school band, church choir, and other social activities. And her parent would certainly support her financially.

Pathways works because it operates in place of the family, filling the role of the parents.

Here’s our call to action. Our policies and programs, designed to help and with all the best intentions, have devastated the black family. It is time to think constructively, with open, honest debate and determination to find a better way.

These kids deserve far better. To fail them is a sin.

Our murderous young sons

James Eagan Holmes

Saturday before last was Gun Appreciation Day. Tens of thousands of gun owners turned out in cities across the country to rally in support of their 2^nd amendment rights. Certainly, you heard of the outbreak of gun attacks perpetrated at these gatherings. (No, we didn’t either). That’s because honest citizens with legally owned guns are not the problem.

But something is definitely going on – our young men are murdering us.

Nehemiah Griego, 15
Dylan Klebold, 17
Eric Harris, 18
Robert Hawkins, 19
Adam Lanza, 20
Tyler Peterson, 20
Jared Loughner, 22
Seung-Hui Cho, 23
James Holmes, 24

This is a partial list of deranged young men who have succumbed to their demons, murdering their fellow humans in a sociopathic rage often punctuated by suicide. In addition to their gender and age, they seem to have another thing in common – photographs reveal them as being disturbingly similar, with pin-point thousand-yard-stare eyes surrounded by stark white scelerae. What is going on here? How do we discover the ultimate cause?

Our culture has changed; that’s a certainty. Closer to the middle of the last century, guns were not vilified as today. A pickup truck with deer rifles in the rear window gun-rack was common, parked on Main Street or even in the high school parking lot. No one was terrified, no one was disturbed. Farmers strode into the Agway or hardware store with their “mouse gun” on their hip and no one called the cops. No need, for these were honest citizens who did not present a threat.

Fast forward fifty years and it’s all different. Now, monsters in human disguise mow down school children. Gang bangers and drug warriors battle with each other and innocent bystanders. The carnage in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington (centers of the strictest gun controls) is enormous. What is going on?

Here are some things that have changed over the last fifty years:

- The breakdown of the traditional family; millions of young men raised without male role models

- Government has become the defacto father of these unhappy young men; handouts stultifying their self-worth; gangs becoming their families

- Extreme gore and violence is endemic in the media, movies, and video games

- The war on drugs has fueled an enormous, lucrative market for drugs which is fiercely defended with deadly violence

- Our mental health system has changed drastically, with long-term hospitalization replaced by socialization, leaving potentially murderous patients living in the community

So when you hear someone decrying “gun violence”, you will know that they are already on the wrong track. The problem is violence, it doesn’t matter what kind. For instance, did you know that more murders are committed by striking implements (clubs, hammers, etc.) than by all kinds of rifles, “assault” or otherwise? We will make no real progress until we begin understanding, and countering, the underlying causes of violence. 

The lost souls sacrificed to our murderous young men demand nothing less.

Baseball and a Sunday afternoon tragedy

Lewiston Daily Sun, Lewiston Maine. May 25, 1896

It was May 24th, 1896, 116 years ago, and the Puritan spirit still ran strong in Attleborough.  The town had not yet become a city nor dropped the “ugh”, and North Attleborough had just recently seceded. Local blue laws outlawed the selling of beer and, surprisingly, the playing of baseball on Sundays. And the prosecution of these crimes was relentless. 

On that beautiful Sunday afternoon, a group numbering fifty, mostly Irish members and friends from the East Side sporting club of Pawtucket, gathered at Robinson’s farm in South Attleboro.  It was the charter of the club to provide relaxation and leisure activities for the membership on Sundays, and they customarily visited bucolic spots outside of the city to achieve that end.

On the agenda that day were a clam bake and baseball game, the perfect antidotes for a long, hard, work week.   As the day progressed and the baseball game was well underway, someone snitched.  The Attleborough police somehow obtained information that a game of baseball was being played on the Sabbath and that the devil’s brew was being consumed. Soon after a squad of five policemen in civilian dress approached Robinson’s farm.

The Pawtucket sportsmen spied the strangers coming over the hill and suspected that their ball game was to be suspended.  Michael Connors, representing the club, approached the men and asked them their business.  Officer John Nerney, after first engaging in conversation regarding the baseball game, then asked if there was beer on the premises.  To this point the officers had not yet identified themselves as police, so Connors suggested they could stay if they paid a $1 assessment, otherwise they should move on.  Nerney reportedly exclaimed that Connors was “putting up a bluff,” at which point Nerney was ordered to leave.

Now, things quickly went awry.  Nerney pulled his .38 revolver and threatened to shoot unless Connors assumed a more docile attitude.  Connor, unfortunately, took several steps forward and tried to disarm Nerney, at which point a shot was fired and Connors was hit in the side.  Badly hurt, Connors struggled with Nerney and called out to his companions for help.  The other officers, drawn by the shooting and general clamor, gathered swiftly and tried to quell the fight.  One reportedly struck Connors with a blackjack.

Nerney, in a high state of excitement, pointed his revolver at Connors head and fired.  Connors dropped heavily, dead in his tracks.

Daniel Mountain, one of Connors' companions, was nearby and attempted to catch him as he fell.  Mountain apparently made some remarks to Nerney and soon after another shot rang out – Mountain fell, mortally wounded.  Edward Morse, another Pawtucket sportsman, demanded to know why the two men had been shot.  Nerney ordered him off under threat of being shot himself.  Morse wisely retreated.

Once they realized what Nerney had done, the other officers devoted themselves to the victims.  But Connors was already gone, and Mountain expired within a half hour.

The county Sheriff was notified of the events and within an hour, Officer Nerney himself was under arrest.  Nerney, when questioned, said that he did not know what happened, that he had lost all control of himself. 

To the utter shock of the friends, family, and children of the deceased, Nerney was ultimately and inexplicably exonerated. The news of this episode and its outcome was shocking and enthralling, and appeared in eastern newspapers from New Jersey to Maine.

Quite a sad tale, this, and leaves us with a few observations.

First, note that a modern, professional police force would never show up in civilian dress and fail to identify themselves.  And their use of force would be far more judiciously governed.  The potential for a repeat of this tragedy is vanishingly slim.

But, also, remember this – government is force.  If you disagree, try not paying your taxes on some principle, ignore the warnings, and wait until the U.S. Marshals show up in full SWAT regalia.  Government is force. Which is great cause for us to give thanks for the strength of our Constitution and its guaranteed freedoms.  It took many years for the grip of Puritanism to ease.  We don’t ever again want government to tell us that we can’t play baseball on Sunday.