Learning from History: We Don't Do This Well

I have to admit, friends, that at times I just scratch my head and wonder if logical thinking exists anymore.  Or, are we so self-centered that we simply don't care?  I need to address the agreement that was reached between the P5+1 nations (the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany) and Iran.  The big winner - Iran.  The big losers - Israel, the Arab world, and the rest of the free world.  Suddenly, economic sanctions are lifted from Iran, sanctions that had brought the nation almost to its knees.  And what was given in return - it will be at least five years before Iran has a nuclear bomb.  Ah, you say, but there has to be verification that Iran is keeping its side of the agreement.  Friend, do you really expect Iran to be totally open with all its secrets?  Come now, before the ink was placed upon the paper, shouts of "Death to America" were heard up and down the streets of Tehran.  And, with that noise still ringing in their ears, John Kerry and the American delegation still signed this agreement.  It was as if the Iranians were saying, "Thank you for giving us the tools by which we can execute your death, America."  Where is the logic in what we did?  And, sadly, the American delegation never pressed for the release of the four Americans being held in Iranian prisons, including Pastor Saeed Abedini who has been tortured in an Iranian prison for three years because of his faith in Jesus Christ.  Our present administration really has a compassionate heart, doesn't it? 


Also, stop and think for a moment about what this agreement means to Israel and the other Arab nations in the Middle East.  For Israel, this was a stab in the heart of our relationship with them.  For years the Israelis have been warning about the consequences of having a nuclear Iran.  With the agreement now in place, it is as if we just stood there and laughed at Israel's warnings.  But this present American Administration has never had any intentions of supporting the people of Israel.  The signing of the Nuclear Treaty with Iran was just another confirmation of that lack of support.  And what are the Saudis and the Egyptians thinking?  If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, we need to be aggressive and get one as well.  The nuclear race has now begun in that one region of the world where the dangers associated with a nuclear race are the highest.  Pakistan already has a nuclear weapon.  Iran will soon have one - in spite of what the treaty states.  The Saudis and the Egyptians have no level of trust with their Shia neighbor, Iran.  Tensions in the Middle East have just heightened.  Will Israel now bomb the Iranian nuclear sites?  If they do, it won't be with American help, but might be from the Saudis and the Egyptians and perhaps even the Jordanians.  Wouldn't that be an unlikely coalition? 


Friends, the world has tried before to appease a bully on the block.  Back in 1938 France and Britain signed what is known as the Munich Agreement with Hitler allowing him to annex those German-speaking portions of Czechoslovakia.  The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, upon his return to London declared that "we have achieved peace for our time."  Yet, in less than a year, the world became embroiled in a war of horrific proportions. 


Our hope is that the United States Senate will vote to not-ratify this agreement.  It is bad for our country.  It is bad for the world.  It is bad for Israel.  The only winner is Iran's terrorist leadership and the American taxpayer will, in essence, be paying for state-sponsored terrorism around the globe.


Yesterday, I also read an article posted on the Fox News website.  It was authored by Todd Starnes and is titled, "Shock Video: Planned Parenthood sells dead baby body parts."  It can be found at: www.foxnews.com/us/2015/07/14/shock-video-planned-parenthood-sells-dead-baby-body-parts.  The video was difficult to watch.  "It purportedly shows a Planned Parenthood executive sipping a glass of wine in a Los Angeles restaurant while casually explaining how they sell body parts from aborted babies.  The undercover video was filmed in July 2014 by the Center for Medical Progress, an advocacy group that reports on medical ethics.  They dispatched two actors posing as representatives of a human biologics company to a business lunch with Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services.  The video shows Nucatola describing in graphic detail how abortionists are able to harvest organs from aborted babies based on the parts that are needed."  Ms. Nucatola then tells how hearts, livers, and lungs are popular so the abortionists have learned how to abort the baby in such a way so that those parts are not damaged or destroyed.  "Dr. Russell Moore, the present of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, summed it up in one word - speechless.  'If this does not shock the conscience, what will?' Moore wrote online.  'It is  not only that infants, in their mother's wombs, are deprived of their lives, but also that their corpses are desecrated for profit.'"  Suddenly, abortions become a for-profit industry.  Will we soon pay mothers to abort those babies they carry in their wombs because there is a market for the organs of that unborn child?


Would you allow me to weigh in on the Confederate Flag issue?  First, let me state that I was not opposed to the removal of the Confederate Flag from the Capital grounds in Charleston, South Carolina.  I always wondered why it was flown.  But, I do have a problem with the growing ground-swell to remove anything that is identified with the Confederacy and the Civil War.  Suddenly, Robert E Lee is seen as the enemy again.  So is Stonewall Jackson.  And, poor Jefferson Davis.  Even here in Minnesota, there has been a call to remain Lake Calhoun, named after the South Carolina Senator John C Calhoun, one of the great slavery spokesmen of the early 19th century.  What comes next?  The removal of all the monuments to the Confederacy that dot our Civil War battle fields?  I can't imagine going to Gettysburg and not seeing the impressive Virginia monument that stands on Seminary Ridge.  Friends, the Civil War is a matter of history.  The NAACP and other groups can try to erase those reminders of it from our parks and public places, but its history can never be erased.  Friends, I have been a student of the American Civil War for decades.  I have found it to be one of the most complex times in our nation's history.  The Southern states seceded from the Union, not over the issue of slavery - in fact, only a small minority of southerners owned slaves - but over the issue of State's rights.  At that time, those States saw the encroachment of the Federal government upon what they considered to be matters to be decided by the States.  Slavery was a side-issue.  As Lincoln said, "If I can save the Union by freeing all the slaves, I will do it.  If I can save the Union by freeing some of the slaves, I will do it.  If I can save the Union by freeing none of the slaves, I will do it." 


The Civil War was the first great test of the United States Constitution.  Following the War of Independence, the Articles of Confederation were drawn up which basically described how 13 independent states could relate to one another.  Those Articles failed miserably, resulting in the Constitutional Convention of 1786-87 when a Constitution was written that united those 13 self-governing states into a real nation - a United States.  The secession of first South Carolina and then other Southern States was a declaration that "a Federal Government is not going to dictate to us how we, as South Carolinians, should conduct our affairs."  There was no provision in the Constitution for the secession of any state from the Union and the Tenth Amendment stipulates that the Federal government's limitation of powers is derived solely from those powers identified within the Constitution - all other powers are reserved for the state. 


Was there animosity between some white southerners and the blacks?  Absolutely.  Was this carried by soldiers during the War?  Absolutely, and surprisingly, by soldiers wearing both the gray and the blue.  Was there a plan for the reconciliation of the North with the South, with the whites and the blacks?  Yes, there was, best exemplified by perhaps the greatest speech any American has ever given - Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.  Lincoln had a vision for restoring our nation to wholeness.  Would his plan, with little initial support from Congress, even members within his own party, have been successful?  We can only guess.


Should Lake Calhoun be renamed?  Probably not.  Should all monuments honoring those who fought for the Confederacy be removed from public places?  Absolutely not.  Here we are - some 150 year removed from the end of the Civil War - and the emotions are as stirred now as they were before that war was fought.  Perhaps, instead of removing statues and monuments, we should sit down and have a dialogue about the causes of the Civil War and the consequences of that War.  We can learn more through dialogue than through demonstrations of anger.