Recently in Soapbox Category

Store workers are being trained to say, "Happy Holidays!" I don't blame them for following company rules and I don't blame the companies who are trying not to step on any toes. However, Christians should reply with a jolly "Merry Christmas!" Christmas is the only chance we have each year to bring out Christ to all we meet. As Scrooge did the morning after his conversion, be sure this season to enthusiastically call out "Merry Christmas" to one and all.

And a Merry Christmas to you!

In Junior High School, my History teacher offered extra credit to any student who would read and write an essay on a profile in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. I was the only one to take him up on the offer. Oh, what a great book it was and its author quite deserving of his Pulitzer Prize!

As a student of public schools, I learned my lessons well: JFK was wonderful writer and each Senator in the book was a Saint.

Last week, I read, in passing, a jaw-dropping notion. JFK didn't write Profiles in Courage. Another chink in the armour of Camelot. Turns out, Ted Sorenson, JFK's amazing speechwriter, actually wrote the majority of the book and this was alleged as early as 1957.

This idea led me to to reassess also the courage of the book's Senators.

• John Quincy Adams a Senator (1803-1808) (later congressman) from Massachusetts, for breaking away from the Federalist Party.
• Daniel Webster also from Massachusetts, for speaking in favor of the Compromise of 1850.
• Thomas Hart Benton from Missouri, for staying in the Democratic Party despite his opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories.
• Sam Houston from Texas, for speaking against the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Sam Houston was also profiled for opposing Texas' secession from the Union. For refusing to support the secession of Texas, Houston was deposed from the office of Governor.
• Edmund G. Ross from Kansas, for voting for acquittal in the Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. As a result of Ross's vote, along with those of six other Republicans, Johnson's presidency was saved, and the stature of the office was preserved.
• Lucius Lamar from Mississippi, for eulogizing Charles Sumner on the Senate Floor and other efforts to mend ties between the North and South during Reconstruction, and for his principled opposition to the Bland-Allison Act to permit free coinage of silver.
• George Norris from Nebraska, for opposing Joseph Gurney Cannon's autocratic power as Speaker of the House, for speaking out against arming U.S. merchant ships during the United States' neutral period in WWI, and for supporting the Presidential Campaign of Democrat Al Smith.
• Robert A. Taft from Ohio, for criticizing the Nuremberg Trials for trying Nazi war criminals under what Taft considered ex post facto laws.

Now I'm not too sure how courageous these Senators were. It seems the older I get, the less I know because I discover I was taught only one side of the story - the Democrat side. This is all very disconcerting.

Here's another tidbit of revelation: Drew Pearson, the newspaper columnist who alleged in 1957 that JFK didn't really author his book, had a chief aide, David Karr, who was investigated by the FBI and Joe McCarthy for Communist ties. Of course we all know Joe McCarthy was a paranoid loon who saw Reds around every corner, right? In 1992, however, KGB documents revealed that Karr was a KGB source and had supplied information on the technical capabilities of the United States and other Capitalist nations.

All this makes me doubt the veracity of much of my education. How about you?

The Roman poet Juvenal asked, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who watches the watchers? Every time I read a news story on the United Nations, I think of this quotation. This morning, I find that the U.N. spent $23 million on this:

A ceiling painted to look like a colorful cave.

And...some of the money came from the Foreign Aid Budget. Supposedly, most of the cost was paid by Spain. I guess they haven't heard about the declining world economy. However, what bothers me most is how expensive this "art" was. Sorry, I don't get it. It would be really cool in a children's museum - but still not $23 million cool.

...unless you are Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Then, ahem, all hell breaks loose.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built where Saint Helena reportedly recovered the True Cross, is under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Syrian Orthodox churches.

Sounds like a powder keg, does it not? As they say in the infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

None of the communities controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned responsibility for it to two neighboring Muslim families. The Joudeh were entrusted with the key, and the Nusseibeh, who had been the custodians of the church since the days of Caliph Omar in 637, retained the position of keeping the door. This arrangement has persisted into modern times. Twice each day, a Joudeh family member brings the key to the door, which is locked and unlocked by a Nusseibeh.

Yes, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher should indeed be a place of Peace and Brotherhood. Alas, it is not.

I think this is part of the Protestant aversion to relics. Wars, large and small, are fought for their possession. I do not need to control or see the Cross, whether it is True or not. My Savior died for me and that is a truth no one can take from me.

I'm an all or nothing sort of girl. Since I became an informed citizen, I have found it easy to become completely enmeshed in politics. My passionate nature makes it difficult for me to relax when I read the political news each day and I feel I have drowned this blog and my family in my passion. So, in order to preserve my sanity and to keep from annoying my husband, I am taking a political fast until the Inauguration, which always happens right before my birthday. (What a Happy Birthday to me!) I will continue to read political news (come on, I can't go back to being uninformed citizen), but instead of posting about or discussing politics, I will be saying each time a prayer for our government:

God of power and might, wisdom and justice,
I commend America to your merciful care,
That we may dwell secure in your peace.
Grant to all in authority,
The wisdom and strength to know and do your will.
May they always seek the ways of righteousness.

I'm hoping this fast will be the ultimate palate cleanser. Until January 20, as the saying goes, "How about those Mets?"

My daughter said "It's like we're in a dream."

She's right.

I pray for our nation and the eight years to come. (Unless he really messes up or Republicans get their acts together in the next election, you know Obama will get two terms.)

What gives me the greatest hope for our future?

As she headed to bed last night, my daughter declared, "Even with Obama as President, this is still the greatest nation in the world!"

She's right and let us never forget that.

Come what may, our hope is in our country's foundation of Faith and Freedom and despite all America will suffer in the coming eight years, our hope lies also in the future generation: that they may love the Lord with all their hearts and souls and strengths and minds and that they may love their neighbors as themselves. And that they may cherish and defend their nation with every breath they take and every fiber in their beings.

Our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...we here highly resolve...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And I mean the book, not the year.