A Blogger’s Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning

Being a UU, I know that Unitarian Universalists do not have a creed, but UU communities affirm and promote Seven Principles. The Fourth one, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” is the one that concerns us for this post. I am examining how that principle applies to the body of work that I have produced for this blog, which is a Personal blog. WordPress, which hosts more than 60 million websites including this one, says Personal “is the broadest category and includes blogs about personal topics like politics, music, family, travel, health, you name it.”

Since I started this blog in 2008, there have been 690 posts. There is no way we can examine each one, so let’s take a look at the one that has gotten and continues to get the most hits. The August 19, 2009 post AN EMOTIONAL WILLIAM CALLEY SAYS HE IS SORRY not only continues to get a lot of hits, but continues to get comments from readers.

Former Army Lt. William Calley, the only person convicted of participating in the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, including a lot of  women and children,  used the occasion of speaking to the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus (Georgia), to apologize for his  role in the war crime.  My report was picked up by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, carried by all McClatchey newspapers , and fed by the L-E to the Associated Press,  causing it to be reported around the world.

I can’t speak  for others, so I’ll just concentrate on what I  see to be true in the report.  One significant truth to me is that some human beings of any nationallity are capable of unspeakable acts. Another one is that not only are some people incapaable of that, but they will actively oppose those who are.    

 What’s the meaning of the story?  For one thing, to me, it again raises the point that  war is an insane way for nations to resolve conflicts.  For another,  it shows that political leaders can get a lot of people killed unnecessarily and can be disingenuous about justifying their lethal actions.    

I realize that it may have an entirely different truth and meaning for you. Please feel  free to click on the comment button and let me know how you feel about the subject.  I do request that comments be civil, not too profane, and sans name calling. 

 

We Said This on This Blog a Year Ago. It still Applies.

We Need Legislators Who Support Public Education

HERE’S MORE EVIDENCE THAT TOO MANY DON’T

It is very disheartening to see what those who control the Georgia Legislature are doing to our state’s public school system. The evidence became even more abundant when I learned about the tentative Muscogee County School District’s 2014 budget.

The state is cutting MCSD $21 million in funding for the year. That brings to #141 million cut by the state over the past 12 years. How can we believe lawmakers who say they support public education when they do this?

 

Tanks in the National Infantry Museum

My stepson Ken Champion and a group of men and boys from his church in the Kennesaw area recently came to Columbus to see the new IMAX documentary, D-Day, at the Patriot Park IMAX and tour the museum.  I gladly joined  them to  see the movie again because it’s one that you can enjoy more than once. 

When we toured the museum, I was very pleased to see an exhibit I  hadn’t seen before, the relatively new Gallery of the Armor and Cavalry.

Before there were tanks, trucks, and jeeps,  there were horses, and that’s represented in the gallery.

Tanks came on the scene during World War I.  That’s repesented by a WW I French Renault that was unearthed in Afghanistan.

You can learn all about how that happened and see other tanks and artifacts that show the evolution of the U.S. Army’s Armor branch.  Since Fort Benning is  now the home of not only the Infantry School, but also the Armor School, which moved from Frot Knox to Fort Benning in 2011, the National Infanttry Museum added this gallery which will display armor artifacts until money can be raised for a seperate building for the National Armor Museum.

The Writing Compulsion

Why do you write?

Lummus Chapel, Linwood Cemetery, Columbus, GA

After participating in he Chattahoochee Valley Writers, Inc. “Write-on Columbus 2014” at Linwood Cemetery,  I had to reflect on the compulsion that some people, including me,  have to write.  Why did our group spend a Saturday morning walking around the cemetery, writing about something we saw, then reading our work to each other in Lummus Chapel? That, of course, raises the question,  why anyone has a compulsion to write? 

Usually, the first answer you get from pros is the money.   I’ve been paid for a lot of what I have written, especially for radio and television news, but I don’t write just  for the money.  This blog is living proof of that.  And, I have a lot of company. Millions and millions of people write blogs for no pay.   

I think that many of us simply have a desire to communicate, to connect  with other people through our writing. Just think of the millions who do that on Facebook. There is also the impulse to entertain. Of course, many write to try to influence other people, and some do that quite well.

Well, how about you? Why do you like to write?   

 

 

The Price of Ignoring the Lessons of History

As I read Doris Kerns Goodwin’s latest historical opus,  The Bully Pulpit,  I become more and more astounded by the parallels between the Gilded Age and now. It’s perhaps a prime example of how history repeats itself.

I just read how President Theodore Roosevelt was blamed by Wall Street for the “Roosevelt Panic of 1907.”  Th big money men said President Theodore Roosevelt’s “crusade against business” caused the crash, arguing that “his excessive regulation had paralyzed the economy.”  The actual cause of the crash was the same thing that caused the Great Recession of 2008.  A very large  investment bank in  New York had abandoned sound banking practices to gamble with customer’s deposits. That caused public confidence in financial institutions to fail, and “customers rushed to retrieve money.” The banks had to be bailed out by, “in the absence of a  central banking system,”  seventy-year old J.P. Morgan, who served as a “one-man Federal Reserve,” and the federal government.  Does that sound familiar?

That’s just one example of the parallels to now.  The book has quite a few more,  including a “do nothing” Congress that wouldn’t pass hardly any bills a progressive president wanted during the last two years of his presidency.

The full title of the book, by the way is, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.  .