George H.W. Bush Has Died

George H.W. Bush, forty-first president of the United States, has died at the age of 94.

While serving in government, George H.W. Bush conducted himself with civility, wisdom, and patriotism, although a New York real estate developer named Donald Trump derided Bush’s 1989 Inaugural Address call for bipartisan cooperation and “a kinder, gentler nation,” saying the country was already too kind and gentle.

Bush was a master at foreign policy, working successfully to ensure that as the Soviet Empire crumbled, it didn’t spawn violence.

The 41st. president righted the federal government’s accounts following the irresponsible spending of the Reagan Administration (of which he had been a part, of course), led the world in thwarting Iraqi aggression in Kuwait, and shepherded the Americans with Disabilities Act through Congress, among other things.

I respected him as a true American hero. But in fairness, as a campaigner, he bears some historic blame for the current tribalism of American politics, having followed the lead of his campaign manager, Lee Atwater, who practiced the politics of evisceration for Bush’s successful 1988 presidential campaign. That was shortsighted. And it was wrong as the campaign featured a racially charged ad that distorted facts and played to voters’ basest impulses.

For all that, Bush was, in many ways, a great man, a great president, and a great American. There is nobody like him in American politics today.

Several years ago, Jon Meacham wrote an excellent biography of Bush which I recommend.

God comfort his family in the certain resurrection hope that belongs to all who believe in the risen Jesus Christ.

"Give me your tired..."

Statue of Liberty as it was dedicated 1886: #LOC pic.twitter.com/PJz9BhF20a

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 3, 2017

The New Colussus (the poem is posted at the Statue of Liberty)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus (November 2, 1883)

E Pluribus Unum

That happens to be the motto of the United States and it means, "Out of many, one."

Originally referencing the pulling together of thirteen separate and independent states into one nation under the Constitution, it has come equally to apply to the diversity and community that exists in this "nation of immigrants."

In the face of division happening in the country recently, I love the gesture of Kent State basketball players tonight. They went into the stands and brought people of varied backgrounds onto the court with them for the national anthem. Full story here.

Another word for photoshopping: defamation

This is not a political rant. You can like President and Mrs. Obama or not like them. You can like Obama's policies and philosophy or not. I express no opinions on politics...except to family members and sometimes, friends, and in the voting booth. This post is not about any of that.

What it is about is the manipulation of imagery to misinform, stoke fires, generally get in the way of civil discourse, and defame people.

Yesterday, a friend who undoubtedly did not suspect manipulation on the part of the person who created the image he shared, posted this:

Frankly, to paraphrase Patrick Henry, "I smelt a rat."*

For one thing, I couldn't imagine Michelle Obama being so stupid as to play into the hands of those who think she's a radical whacko who hates the United States of America.

Her outfit was unique, one that she likely would have worn on only one patriotic occasion.

So, I googled "michelle obama Veterans Day." I found the image below, a still from the news story of a local ABC affiliate from Veterans Day, 2011. It was captured during the playing of the national anthem prior to the first NCAA Carrier Classic basketball game that day. As you can see from the jacket he's wearing below, even President Obama was photoshopped from a different event into the picture above.

This is the full report from which the above still was taken:



The great thing about the Internet is that everyone has access to it and can share all sorts of things. The bad thing about the Internet is that everyone has access to it and can share all sorts of things, even false and defaming things.

The Obamas aren't the only victims of such nonsense, of course. It happens to all kinds of people: Republicans, Democrats, Christians, atheists, Muslims, white people, black people, brown people, yellow people.

But this kind of defamation is always wrong.

And it makes me think: If you have to resort to character assassination to make your point, maybe you don't have a point.

As a Christian, of course, I've been taught that God takes a dim view of defamation. It's a sin. The Eighth Commandment says: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."

And as a Lutheran Christian, I'm privileged to be familiar with Martin Luther's explanation of that command from God: "We should fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, lie, or gossip about our neighbors, but defend them, speak well of them, and put the most charitable construction on all that they do." Even when we disagree with our neighbor.

To the person who created this photoshopped image: You may doubt both Obamas' patriotism, but that doesn't warrant making up "facts" to buttress your doubts.

One last comment: When I think about what the families of public officials and would-be public officials are put through, it's a wonder that anybody runs for political office. Ever.

[By the way, I looked up the investigation of this meme on snopes.com after I wrote the above. It's here.]

*Henry was talking about the Constitution, and he was wrong in his gloomy assessment of the document, which completed America's Revolution, coupling the cause of liberty with the sustaining principle of mutual accountability.

'Become America' by The Call

The Call was an American rock band that came to some level of popularity at about the same time as an Irish group called U2. As I've written elsewhere, the bands had a few things in common. While mining different strains of rock music, they both evidenced: a passion for life, a passion for justice, and faith in Christ.

The death at age 60, of Michael Been, the Call's lead singer and main composer, in 2010, brought an end to the band and silenced an important voice.

This song, born partly of faith and partly of patriotism, is a non-ideological, but forceful, call to America to live up to its promise.

It seems appropriate for this Fourth of July weekend.

(Frankly, I paid no attention to the visuals in this fan-created video. The song itself is what's important to me. So, I'm not sure what's in it.)



A blogger, Rick Klau, who like me just now, looked in vain some eleven years ago for the lyrics to Become America, online. So, he presented them on his blog. I post them below, with thanks. Klau's blog was the only place I could find the lyrics.

When will America, become America
When will America, become America
When will the home we love
Mean freedom for everyone
When will America, become America

When will the killing stop
When the last child has dropped
How long must mothers’ tears
Rain down on streets of fear
When will the home we love
Mean justice for everyone
When will America become America

(Chorus)

When will the struggling poor
Walk with their heads held high once more
Children playing on haunted streets
Politicians weave their spell
Promise spoken from the mouth of hell
When will America become America

(Chorus)

With their very lives they gave
Soldiers, the young and brave
Shame for the world to see
A mystery to you and me
Angels will keep their watch
Heaven will count the cost
When will America become America

(Chorus)

A Great Message from the President of the United States to Our Young People

For all the drama that has preceded the speech that President Obama is scheduled to give to the students of our country tomorrow, the address itself turns out to be an entirely unexceptionable call to education, studiousness, responsibility, and love of country.

Under the Constitution, presidents aren't just political heads of government, they're also chiefs of state, meaning that they represent all of us, the sovereignty and interests of the entire country. It's in this capacity that presidents throw out pitches to open baseball seasons and recognize heroes.

It's also in this role that past presidents, like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have spoken to children during their school days.

Thanks, President Obama, for a great message for our children. If just one kid hears it and takes its message to heart, it will have made a huge difference.

Here's the speech, care of Justin Gardner:

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

What he said!

"I find the professional screamers and their checklists of what constitutes a 'liberal' or 'conservative' predictable to the point of boredom."-Bob Schieffer in the preface to his book, Bob Shieffer's America

Patriotism, Flag Lapel Pins, and Barack Obama

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer gleefully notes that Barack Obama is sporting a US flag lapel pin these days, just in time to appeal to more conservative voters in the general election.

A Facebook friend, Amy Goldman, an embittered Hillary Clinton supporter who now is supporting John McCain, pointed earlier today to Krauthammer's column on the subject and said simply, "the faces of obama. NO DEAL," presumably meaning that Obama's seeming lapel pin "hypocrisy" is one more reason she will not be reconciled to his nomination for the presidency.

Frankly, both Obama and his assailants crack me up on this "issue." There are several reasons for my chuckling.

First of all, wearing a pin is no proof of patriotism. It's the easiest thing in the world to don a patriotic lapel pin, irrespective of one's true sentiments. (Although I must confess that every time I've owned and put on flag lapel pins, they've fallen off within hours, a problem I've not encountered with pins of any other type.) Inauthentic or showy patriotism often is the last refuge of political scoundrels.

Secondly, because a flag lapel pin really is no proof of one's patriotism, Obama shouldn't be so defensive about the matter. Now, he looks ridiculous whenever he puts a flag pin in his lapel, tacitly agreeing with the purveyors of photo op patriotism, pandering to them.

I wonder though how many folks who are exercised about this issue though, wear flag pins every time they're in public? I doubt it.

When I pointed this out to Amy Goldman, she didn't agree, saying that, as a presidential candidate, Obama should be held to a higher standard for patriotism than others.

But I don't think that we should have separate standards for presidents or would-be presidents from what we expect of other citizens. Are flag lapel pins now required of all citizens, a la loyalty oaths from the McCarthy era?

We ought to have other measures of the sort of patriotism that commends people for public office, including the presidency. The criteria might include:

1. Evidencing taking the time to be informed about public policy issues.
2. Voting regularly in those candidate and issue races in which they've become informed and being honest enough to refrain from voting in those races in which they feel they're insufficiently informed.
3. Regularly engaging in service to neighbors and community and when possible, to the country.
4. Displaying an openness to hearing others out, even when their views differ from their own.
5. Displaying a maturing awareness of the country's history and principles.
6. Believing in the Constitution.
7. If a veteran, having a record of honorable service.

If these attributes of citizenship are absent, no flag lapel pin will compensate for their lack. If they're present, no flag lapel pin will make the wearer any worthier for office.

So far as I can remember, none of the country's greatest presidents wore US flag lapel pins. Not Washington, Lincoln, either Roosevelt, or Eisenhower.

Is Obama a patriot? I don't know. But a piece of metal or plastic on his suit coat won't answer that question either.