Memorial Day Memo

Memorial Day Memo

1.  Today we honor our veterans including my brothers Joe, Dale, Russell and the one who recently passed away at age 94, Weston.

But I have a radical idea.  Cut the military budget in half and use the billions saved to train a million peacekeepers or better yet, peace builders, or better yet community developers, or better yet builders of beloved communities.  Close one half of our overseas bases and convert them into community development centers including training people how to start cooperatives.

It took only one sermon on "beloved community" from the lips of Martin Luther King and one course in non-violent social change to turn the teenager John Lewis into a fearless and effective civil rights movement leader.

Would this not be an effective anti-terrorism strategy---a million peace-builders building schools, medical clinics,  cooperatives, etc., etc?  Under the supervision of national local churches or NGOs, teams of two, three or more could fan out across the world spreading the gospel of love and justice.  After serving for two, three or four years, these peace-builders would return to the U.S. and become among our best citizens.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me.


2.  Monuments and Memorials

Should the ten U.S. who owned slaves been impeached including Washington and Jefferson?

The beautiful St. Louis Arch was built to celebrate the spread of Western civilization all the way to the Pacific Coast.  Manifest Destiny fulfilled!!

But it also celebrates the end of Indian culture west of the Mississippi---the near genocide of both people and their culture including the near extinction of the buffalo.

So also the Washington Monument which hovers over the new African American Museum honors our first president.  But our first president was a filthy rich, slaveholder.

Our criminal justice system is necessary for law and order in society.  But throughout American history, it has also been the tragic enforcer of racial oppression, racial profiling.  Our criminal justice arrested runaway slaves but not evil slaveholders who often raped slaves.

3.  The Gettysburg Address

On Sunday, in our Methodist Church, the Gettysburg Address was read with great enthusiasm as a part of the American gospel---the white American gospel.  The GA is eloquent but one-sided, eloquent but dishonest, eloquent but half-myth.

Many of our founding fathers, such as Washington and Jefferson, were filthy rich, slaveholders.  So the ending, beautiful sentence---"a government of the people, by the people, and for the people" is not true.  More accurate is---a government of the rich, white, male elite, by the rich, white, male elite, and for the rich, white, male elite.

Liberty and justice for all?  Liberty for the filthy, rich slaveholder, but no liberty nor justice for slaves, women, the poor nor Native Americans.

Soon after the Civil War, the Gilded Age arrived, another era of the filthy rich.  The filthy rich had made a killing during the Civil War.  Lincoln saw it coming with alarm.

America recently elected another filthy, rich person as president.  Elected by white evangelicals, no less.

American Christians who believe the whole Bible seem to ignore Luke 6:24:  "Woe to the rich!"