Tag Archives: states rights

Debrief

Debrief: (v) to interrogate on return from a mission 

If we knew for sure that we were paranoid, we could consider stifling our fear. But the power of paranoia is that it permeates our thinking with just enough factual information that we’re never quite able to dispel the myth from the truth.

I felt this when I was a father working with my small children.

I had two goals:

  1. I wanted to see them educated.
  2. I did not want that education to make them heartless and stupid.

You might think that receiving learning from a school would naturally remove all cynicism or indifference. You might even consider that sending them to a Sunday School class at a church could do nothing but enhance their potential for generosity.

Unfortunately, I think you would be wrong.

And here’s where the paranoia comes in.

I found that my sons often returned from school or church with a bit of twisted thinking, which they were convinced was true because someone with an education or a grease board had told them.

I could have left it alone.

I could have hoped they would annul such falsehoods out of the basic training they received in our home.

But their lives were too important, their minds too valuable to the planet, and their spirits too powerful to be left to chance.

So I did.

I often debriefed my children after they returned from school or church.

I am willing to take criticism for such a maneuver, and you can feel free to condemn the practice.

But I demanded that when they arrived at adulthood, they were aware that the Civil War was a struggle over slavery, not a misunderstanding concerning states’ rights.

I wanted them to understand that the theory of evolution was happening all around us, and it was all right to question it—as long as you didn’t insist that God created everything in six twenty-four-hour periods.

And I wanted them to know that there are no “chosen people,” no third-world countries, and no races and cultures that are beyond our understanding and affection, but instead, that we are eight billion people with more in common than difference.

I debriefed my children—and I would do it again.

Because their lives are more valuable than wearing matching uniforms and marching in step with their class.

 

Davis, Jefferson

Davis, Jefferson: (n) man who served as president of the Confederacy throughout its existence.

I’m not brave.

I am not a warrior for the truth.

I am not the kind to run up, state my opinion and stand my ground.

I prefer to appear from behind with a squirt gun, spray everyone and scamper away.

But there are certain things that elevate my consciousness, stimulate my “god-image” and demand that I build a fortress.

I spent most of my adult life living in the American South.

On one occasion, I overheard a gentleman talking about hosting a “minstrel show” in the community. I immediately assumed I misunderstood what he said, but when he sounded it out for me slowly, I realized that he intended on producing a program that was begun in the Confederacy after the Civil War, which allowed white people to dress up in blackface and make fun of the Negroes.

I was confused.

I thought minstrel shows had been outlawed years ago.

Now, here was the word, flying through the air as if it had wings.

For a moment I was emblazoned with a ready hostility—but still, tepidly opined, “Aren’t those illegal?”

The man became indignant and explained that minstrel shows were part of the heritage of the South and gave the people in that region a sense of pride over what had been pursued attempted by President Jefferson Davis and all the Rebels.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Freedom,” he replied.

Even if I were to buy in to the idea that Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis were just trying to “protect their way of life,” I would still be left with a stark anomaly.

If the Civil War was all about “state’s rights,” standing up to Washington, D. C., and not being pushed around anymore, why not just free the slaves and change the dynamic?

If it really wasn’t a malicious adventure to keep four million kidnapped human beings in chains and forced labor, why not just take the higher ground and convince the entire world that you were merely out to sanctify your choices instead of imprison human flesh?

Jefferson Davis was not a nice man.

I suppose if you sat down and had a drink with him and shared some boiled crawdads, you might find him amiable.

But on the inside was a greedy, corrupt man who insisted that black humans were mongrels and needed white people to help them reason.

And he did all of this standing in front of a church, holding a Bible in his hand.