BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
She sold a painting for $165 million and gave it all away.By Elizabeth Alexander
One December morning in 2016, I got a call from Darren Walker, who was then the president of the Ford Foundation and my boss. “I need you to meet me at Aggie’s at 4 o’clock today,” he said. “We need to help her build something.” We met at the elegant Park Avenue apartment of Agnes Gund — or Aggie, as she was known to everyone. That afternoon, she sat on her sofa beneath the intricate universe of Jasper Johns’s 1963 painting “Map.” A Roni Horn totem stood near her like a sentry, and I could see the smooth, ribbonlike curve of a Martin Puryear wood sculpture in the dining room.
Gund was an avid art collector and philanthropist, and over the years she had served as the president of MoMA and donated more than 1,000 works to the museum.“I feel guilty about having so much more than most people,” she once explained in an interview. “If I can have it, others should be able to enjoy it.”She rarely sold the work, preferring to give it to art institutions.
But that afternoon, she explained that she had sold a painting from her collection, one that she loved and had lived with for 41 years. It was the iconic midcentury Pop Art work “Masterpiece,” by Roy Lichtenstein, which hung for years over the mantel in her dining room and, before that, in her home in Concord, Mass. For her, the painting was a daily and beloved connection to Lichtenstein and his wife, Dorothy, both of whom had been her friends.
The paintingsold for$165 million, at the time one of the highest prices for a work of art, and Gund wanted to use the money on a campaign to end mass incarceration in the United States. It was a wildly ambitious notion, but she was determined. We were there to help her design the vision.
Over time, I came to understand how incisive Gund was about all aspects of her life, from how she dressed to the institutions she shaped.She welcomed people into her home and her life with generosity and grace, especially artists, whom she adored.She had a dry wit, a love for family of blood and choice and a painfully felt sense of right and wrong.
She grew up in a wealthy family in Cleveland, part of a generation and class that emphasized divisions. She once said she knew only one Black person, Henrietta Givens, whom her parents employed as a housekeeper and cook. Early on, she was pulled toward art, taking drawing classes as a child and memorizing the works she loved most. When her father died, she inherited a trust and became a wealthy woman. It was then that she bought her first significant work, a sculpture by the English midcentury artist Henry Moore.
Her wealth — and a divorce — gave her the freedom to move to New York with her children in her 40s. She continued to study art history and collect, going on to develop deep relationships with some of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries — Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Kara Walker and many more. As Marina Abramovic put it: “So many collectors never have any relationship with the artist at all. They will buy the art, and then never meet the artist.” But Gund “found the key to our hearts and really made friends.”
Gund believed that art should be available to everyone, and this tenet informed her philanthropy. When New York City significantly cut funding for art in its public schools in 1977, she founded Studio in a School, a nonprofit to bring artists into the schools. In the 2010s, her sense of responsibility expanded after a series of infamous killings of Black men and boys, including Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner. She was influenced by books, including “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander and “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson. It was after watching Ava DuVernay’s documentary “13th,” which explored interlocking questions of race, injustice and mass incarceration, that Gund told Darren Walker she wanted to use her resources to fund criminal-justice reform and creative expression.
Over the six months after our meeting in her living room, our small team helped her design what would become the Art for Justice Fund: an organization that, from 2017 to 2023, awarded $127 million in grants to support bail reform, criminal-justice advocacy and individual artists, many of whom had themselves been in prison. Gund welcomed formerly incarcerated people into her home to share their work and ideas.
There are many stately photographs of Gund, some taken in that Park Avenue living room, attired in pale lemon, saffron, coral, teal, her hair perfectly in place — and often with a beloved painting behind her. But a different photograph is my favorite. We see her from behind, next to a barbed-wire fence, in a quilted vest. She is walking beside an African American man wearing a jacket that says “prisoner” across the back. She is touching his arm, leaning toward him.
They are standing together inside the San Quentin prison in California, where the man she is speaking to has been incarcerated. And Aggie is listening to him closely.
Elizabeth Alexander is a poet and the president of the Mellon Foundation.
The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is deeply saddened by the passing of Agnes Gund, a devoted philanthropist whose enduring commitment to racial and social justice left a lasting impact on both communities and institutions. A renowned art collector and expert, Ms. Gund dedicated her life to using art as a vehicle for driving equity, justice, and social change. Ms. Gund passed away at her home in Manhattan on Sept. 18, 2025. She was 87 years old.
“We deeply mourn the loss of Ms. Agnes Gund, an unrelenting advocate and cherished friend of LDF,” said Janai Nelson, LDF President and Director-Counsel. “Ms. Gund was an extraordinary supporter and thought partner whose generosity and passion were matched only by her visionary insight and unwavering resolve to use her position and resources for transformative change. Ms. Gund held a core conviction that art could inspire meaningful advocacy, which guided her work to advance justice, promote equity, and further the public good. In one of her most ground-breaking contributions, Ms. Gund established the Art for Justice Fund, an innovative initiative that aims to support criminal justice reform and advance racial justice through creative arts and advocacy. Our heartfelt condolences are with her family and loved ones during this difficult time. While her loss is tremendous, she leaves behind an indelible legacy that will continue to empower and inspire generations to come.”
At the time of her death, Ms. Gund was a President Emerita and Life Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). From 1991-2002, Ms. Gund served as MoMA’s president, where she oversaw the major expansion of the museum. In 1977, Ms. Gund founded Studio in a School, a nonprofit that brings professional artists into New York City public schools, providing arts education to thousands of students and fostering creativity in underserved communities.
For many years, Ms. Gund maintained a close relationship with LDF, providing invaluable support to many causes including voting rights advocacy and scholarship opportunities for college and law students. She was also closely connected to LDF through her establishment of the Art for Justice Fund, which helped to support LDF’s Justice in Public Safety Project which addresses systemic inequities in the criminal justice system and supports those affected by over-policing and mass incarceration.
In 2017, LDF honored Ms. Gund with a National Equal Justice Award (NEJAD) for her exceptional dedication to advancing racial and social justice.
HERE is an interactive map (not the one above) from +The Guardian , check it out and see just how many people in the 114th Congress (to be sworn in in January 2014). Click the choices at the top and when you are done the map will show you which members of the new congress are like you.....
Are you reflected in the new Congress?
Despite
the record number of women and the first black senator elected in the
south since Reconstruction, the new US Congress will still be largely
male and largely white. A person's gender, race, sexual orientation, or
age doesn't necessarily mean they represent the views of a whole
demographic, but lack of diversity could result in certain concerns not
being heard – or not heard loudly enough. Click the categories below to find yourself in the new Congress. This graphic will be updated as more seats are called.CLICK here to try the map
*Notes:
(1) Our dataset did not include cross-categorization of ethnicity and
race. All race categories ("white", "black", etc.) should be interpreted
as non-hispanic. (2) The "under 45" category is meant to be inclusive,
but – fun fact – the US Constitution bars those under the age of 25 from
serving in the House of Representatives and you need to be 30 to serve
in the Senate.
Source:
AP; United States Senate; House Press Gallery; US Census, 2010;
American Community Survey, 2012; NALEO; MAP and the Victory Fund.
Additional research by Amanda Michel and Sarah Galo/The Guardian
This
interactive was updated on 6 November 2014 to correct information
related to the graduate degrees of members of Congress, which had been
underreported by the Associated Press.
In Tuesday’s elections, most voters didn’t see their candidates as leaders. Americans are cynical about politics, exhibited by the broad-based discontent with both parties, the president, and Congress. Nearly two thirds of the electorate didn’t even vote
— turnout this year was likely lower as a percentage of the electorate
than any time since 1942. Negative campaign ads reached depressing lows,
directly appealing to Americans’ fears and anxieties, and most people
don’t think the results of the election will change political gridlock
in Washington. This election campaign was a loss for the common good.
We seem to have become cynically resigned to politicians always blaming the other party for every problem instead of solving them and alleged political leaders pursuing a 24/7, 52-week strategy of winning instead of governing. There are no more off election years to make society better; every day and every decision is just a part of the next campaign.
The
campaigns and the media coverage were all about polls, attacks, and
sound bites. The Republican campaign message was simply: vote against
President Obama. And the Democrats deserted him, wouldn’t discuss either
his accomplishments or his failures, and had no message of their own
that got through. The campaign wasn’t about the most important issues
facing the country. Here’s what we should be talking about: The economy While we are making progress in reducing international poverty, poverty in America is still 2 percentage points higher than it was in 2007,
the year before the most recent recession. The inequality gap is
growing while social mobility is declining — a very bad combination.
People who live paycheck to paycheck (nearly half of Americans) have stagnating wages and declining quality of life, while the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans captured 95 percent of the income gains in the first three years of the economic recovery.
Unfortunately, these big problems were barely discussed as election
issues this fall. Both Republicans and Democrats need to articulate how we could create an opportunity society, which both parties say they support. Immigration
Our immigration system is still completely broken, and the Republicans
were not held responsible for obstructing reform and blocking a
bipartisan Senate bill from going to a clearly passable vote in the
House. Republicans and Democrats don’t talk about when and how they will
work together to fix the system. Instead, some candidates used
immigration as an appeal to fear, condemning “amnesty” and raising the
specter of terrorist threats from across our borders. We should hold our
political leaders accountable for their fearful distortions, confront
them with the facts, and insist that they explain how they plan to fix this broken system. International terrorism ISIS presents a very real danger to millions of people, but our political leaders need to do a much better job articulating how
best to confront the crisis instead of just blaming the president or
other party. We should ask our elected officials if it really makes
sense to keep doing what we have been doing in Iraq, Syria, and the
entire region. If alienated and angry young people, even in our own
country, are being attracted to such a perverted cause because of
perceived grievances, wouldn’t it make sense to discuss those grievances
instead of burying our collective head in the sand? Instead of
circulating the endless rhetoric of defending our values, we need to ask
the hard questions about how we have violated those values for so many
years in the Middle East — and about the consequences of our past
foreign policy mistakes so we don’t repeat history. Health crises
The Ebola crisis became the most pathetic use of human tragedy for
political self-aggrandizement that we saw this fall. Instead of
propagating a narrative of fear and paranoia, elected officials should
be focused on how best to save lives — starting in West Africa —
and not allow American isolationism and its underlying racial
prioritizing to create bad health practices. Money in politics: In one of the only stories I’ve seen on this issue, Luke Russert reported on “Meet the Press:”
“Remarkably, you could pay for 80 British general election campaigns
with what’s being spent on this year’s midterms alone.” The media
reported on how much was being spent but not what that means for the
future of our politics. The reality that the richest people in America
have increasing influence over all our elections has disturbing
implications for our democracy, and we need to insist that our
politicians talk about how they will confront the problem — or
at least demand disclosure so we know who is spending the enormous
outside money to win elections. Race: The endless media talk about how President Obama’s unpopularity was bringing down Democrats almost completely ignored how race
played into that. Disagreement with Obama’s policies is, of course,
legitimate, but so much of the animosity, even hatred for Obama as a
person, has roots in our country’s complicated history with race. Not
talking about it is to be oblivious to its continued influence on our
lives and our politics. Older white voters dominated this electoral campaign, but if the demographic and voting trends of the past couple of decades continue,
it is likely that the 2016 elections will see a another decrease in the
share of white voters and an increase in the share of minority voters,
especially Latinos. So despite the results of this election, the
future belongs to candidates who can appeal to the changing demographics
of America.
The new title of my current book, The (Un)Common Good, painfully resonates in this election, as concern for the common good was all too uncommon.
Unless we return to the ancient idea and vision of the common good, the
health of our public life will continue to deteriorate. The greatest
social leaders are always the ones who demonstrate hope despite the
challenges and show us that there can be a positive future if we make
good decisions and build it together. That is the kind of hopeful
leadership our nation so desperately needs, from the bottom to the top
of American society — and it may be the only way our political leaders
can find their way again. Our best leaders today are not coming from
politics but from civil society, courageous non-profits, and social
entrepreneurship from both the private and public sectors — they just
want to solve problems. What politics needs will most likely come from
outside of politics. Cynicism is easy, but hope takes more of a
commitment. Fear can’t lead us in a better direction, but the decisions
to act on hope always can and always will. Jim Wallisis president of Sojourners. His book, The (Un)Common Good: How the Gospel Brings Hope to a World Divided, the updated and revised paperback version of On God’s Side, is available now. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.
Image: Steve Collender / Shutterstock.com
THIS is something I have told many people with reactions from confusion to anger and resentment to agreement. It is true that when it comes to using our vote to end gridlock we are our own worst enemy. From NPR....
by Alan Greenblatt
iStockphoto.com Voters
these days often reward politicians who sit at either end of the
ideological spectrum while punishing those seen as compromisers.
Like plenty of
other voters, Tony Hocamp is disgusted by Washington. Too often, he
says, politicians put their partisan interests ahead of doing what's
right for the country.
"The politicians
we have in office right now are concerned about nothing but themselves
and getting re-elected," says Hocamp, who runs a motel in Marengo, Iowa.
It's
easy to get upset during a political era in which the leaders of the
two major parties seem incapable of putting aside their differences and
working together to solve the nation's problems.
But
if there's plenty of blame to go around, some of it belongs to the
voters themselves. They are the ones who have chosen the politicians.
Quite often, they reward those who sit at either end of the ideological
spectrum while punishing compromisers.
In
part, that's because voters are becoming more like rigid partisans —
unwilling to see the other side as having any good ideas or political
virtue. "The
folks who've worked across party lines are generally being replaced,"
says Joe Hackney, the Democratic leader in the North Carolina House.
"The public does ultimately hold the key to that." Living Separate Lives
Recent polls underscore how much more polarized Americans have become.
Public perception about whether the economy is getting better is increasingly divided
along partisan lines. Over the past 50 years, the percentage of people
who said they'd be upset if their children married someone from the
other party has jumped to 40 percent from 5 percent.
We live in an era when the choice of chicken sandwiches can become a political marker. In one widely noted poll last week, even people's beer preferences were shown to be predictable based on their partisan inclinations.
Increasingly,
Americans are going so far as to change their opinions about key issues
in order to better match their partisan group, says Bill Bishop,
co-editor of The Daily Yonder, which follows rural issues.
"With
issues as close to their heart as abortion and gay marriage, people are
changing what they believe to stay with their [political] tribe," he
says. Still Sorting
Bishop commissioned a poll,
which was released last week, that found people split along partisan
lines when it came to their responses to immigration. Fair enough. But
they split even more when informed that they were hearing the Republican
or Democratic platform planks on the issue.
In other words, just knowing the partisan label behind a position made people more likely to embrace or reject it.
"If
you ask people how they feel about the deficit or the DREAM Act, you'll
find people are hovering around the middle," says Shanto Iyengar, a
political scientist at Stanford University. "But over time, they have
internalized the rhetoric they hear, that everyone on the other side is a
total fill-in-the-blank."
Iyengar co-authored a new study concluding that people's hostility to the "other" party has spiked in recent decades. There's an echo chamber effect to this.
People
are more likely to get their news from partisan news outlets and social
media than they were a generation ago. And Americans are increasingly
likely to live among people who share similar partisan leanings, says
Bishop, who wrote a book called The Big Sort about this phenomenon.
Back
in 1976, only about one-fourth of Americans (26.8 percent) lived in
landslide counties, which Bishop defines as giving the Democratic or
Republican presidential candidates margins of 20 percentage points or
higher. By 2008, nearly half of Americans lived in landslide counties (47.6 percent).
Because
Americans are able to shop around, in essence, for support for their
own opinions through geography and media, they are now more polarized
than Europeans — exactly the opposite of what was the case 30 years ago,
says Torben Lütjen, a political scientist at the University of
Dusseldorf in Germany.
Lütjen is
studying heavily Democratic Dane County and heavily Republican Waukesha
County in Wisconsin, finding that people in these strongholds have
completely separate and distinct worldviews and can't fathom their
counterparts in the other place.
"We all love compromise," Lütjen says. "Then again, we only love compromise that serves our own interests." An Elite Phenomenon?
There
are political scientists who believe that it's still mainly the
political "elites" — officeholders and interest groups — who are heavily
polarized. Average voters, they maintain, are not so ideologically
divided.
"The electorate has become
more polarized, but not hugely so," says Jonathan Rauch, a guest scholar
at the Brookings Institution.
Voters
are simply responding to the choices they're given by a political and
primary system that is "essentially rigged to favor extremists," he
says. "You cannot have moderate voters without moderate candidates."
The
number of voters who describe themselves as independent has been
growing in recent years. Still, even they tend to hold strong partisan
inclinations, says Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, a political scientist at the
University of Nebraska.
Many people,
regardless of affiliation, subscribe to the mistaken belief that a big
majority of Americans think the way they do, she says, and that it's
only the intransigence of politicians that keeps them from doing the
right thing.
"As with bad breath, ideology is always what the other person has," as the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton once put it. Not Going Away
The
world looks different to voters in, say, Iowa City than it does to
those in more rural Marengo, Iowa — or those in liberal Rhode Island,
versus more conservative Texas. Rather than simply being a partisan
universe of its own, Congress thus mirrors differences that exist among
voters in the country.
And those differences aren't likely to fade anytime soon, says Alan Abramowitz, author of the recent book The Polarized Public.
Voters
are increasingly divided by race, along cultural lines, on ideological
grounds and by geography, says Abramowitz, who teaches political science
at Emory University.
"There's a very
strong division among white voters that didn't used to exist or used to
be very small, based on religious beliefs and practices," Abramowitz
says. "For the people who care about them, on those issues, it's very
hard to compromise." http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/10/01/162084449/voters-angry-at-washington-gridlock-may-want-to-look-in-the-mirror?ft=3&f=127088100&sc=nl&cc=ph-20121003
HERE is a great article on the different perceptions of Christianity by Christians from Sojourners, followed by a beautiful video on this same issue.....
When Franklin Graham expressed doubts about President Obama’s Christian faith during an interview on Morning Joe last week, it reminded me of an uncomfortable dinner I had in the late ‘90s.
I sat down for a pleasant meal in the home of two great friends — one of them a white evangelical faith leader deeply committed to social justice. Well into the evening’s conversation — when we’d dropped all our pretenses and our exchanges moved well past mealtime niceties — one friend asked me something that caught me entirely off guard.
“Do you think Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Christian?” he said.
I was dumbstruck. I had never heard anyone actually ask that question before.
“Yes,” I replied. “What would make you doubt that?”
As he explained, it became clear: My friend wasn’t sure whether Dr. King was a Christian because King’s Christianity didn’t look like my friend’s Christianity.
Dr. King valued justice. My friend valued justice.
King professed personal faith in Jesus. My friend professed personal faith in Jesus.
And yet my friend still was hung up about King’s faith because, to his eye, King didn’t seem interested in “evangelism” as my friend defined it — i.e. the practice of calling sinners into personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, whose death on the cross is payment for our sins.
Twentieth-century white evangelical understanding of the Gospel guided (and in many ways defined) my friend’s Christian walk. Therein lies the disconnect between his Christian faith and Dr. King’s.
According to sociologists Michael Emerson and Christian Smith (authors of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America), only one thing separates white and black evangelicals, but it makes all the difference in the world: Vastly different experiences of structural and systemic oppression.
Black evangelicals have a long history of interaction with oppressive systems and structures. When African Americans read the Bible, they see the more than 2,000 passages of scripture about God’s hatred for poverty and oppression. They see God’s desire for systems and structures to be blessings to all of humanity — not a curse to some and a blessing for others.
And they see Jesus’ own declaration that he had come to preach good newsto thepoor, which, by the way, is decidedly not a reference to the “spiritually impoverished.” Jesus meant that he had come to preach good news (of liberation, freedom, and new life) to people trapped in material poverty.
White evangelicals generally do not experience such systemic oppression. According to Emerson and Smith, most white evangelicals don’t prioritize or even see the thousands of references in the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament about structural and systemic injustice.
Accordingly, the Gospel — and by extension their evangelism — is about only one thing: Personal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, who died for their sins, and a personal relationship with him.
Black evangelicals also have personal faith that Jesus’ death paid for their sins, but their Gospel doesn’t end with personal (and individual) salvation. For Dr. King and Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rev. John Perkins and Nelson Mandela and for hundreds of thousands of Black Christians around the world and for me, the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were for the redemption of both individual souls and the redemption of whole societies.
Franklin Graham’s father, Dr. Billy Graham, didn’t always understand this, either. The elder Graham’s revivals began as segregated affairs, but the Supreme Court’s desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) agitated his conscience and he quickly course corrected. From that point on, Billy Graham never again held a segregated revival.
What’s more, in 1957 Dr. Graham invited Dr. King, to share his pulpit for a 16-week revival in New York City.
For Billy Graham, Martin King was a Christian.
In the last decade or so, a new generation of white evangelicals — such as my friends Shane Claiborne, Kelly Moltzen, Josh Harper, and others — have intentionally displaced themselves, moving into impoverished communities of color in order to gain the experience their parents and grandparents lacked. As a result, their white evangelical eyes are open.
They see those 2,000 scriptures about poverty and injustice. And this new generation of white evangelicals is committed to fight systemic and structural justice because of the Gospel.
So, it grieved me to hear Franklin Graham’s doubt-filled commentary on President Obama’s faith.
Obama has described in his own words (and quite publicly) how he has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, how as a young community organizer in Chicago in the late ‘80s he walked down the aisle of a church during an altar call to make a public profession of that faith — a practice developed by one of the greatest American evangelists of all time, Charles Finney.
The president has clearly professed his belief that Jesus died on the cross as payment for his sins. And Obama repeatedly invokes the words of Jesus that guide his world view: “Just as you did to the least of these, you did to me.” (Matthew 25:40)
For a moment, Franklin Graham’s cynicism tested my own faith. I wondered if he had any idea that, when he questioned the president’s faith, it felt as if he were questioning my faith.
I wanted to know if the transformational power of Jesus’ death and resurrection, which is powerful enough to save our souls also could open Franklin’s eyes and soften his heart to the world and experience of his black brothers and sisters.
Repentance is sweet, not only for the sinner, but also for the world. It reminds us all of what is right; what is good; what is true. Franklin Graham apologized for his comments and repented this week.
This public discussion is now a lesson for us all. I have an abiding hope that, just maybe, the power of Jesus’ resurrection is powerful enough even to save the church. Lisa Sharon Harper is the Director of Mobilizing at Sojourners. She is also co-author ofLeft, Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politicsand author of Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican ... or Democrat.
A Girl's Message To All Christians:
Hey there! I'm Emanuella. I'm a Christian. I have been a "good" Christian most of my life. It was my identity. I used to like to tell people how "good" I was, how I kept all the Commandments. I thought that was "Good"......
Then I realized something...I Failed!!! "Christian" was just a name I wore...kind of like a pretty coat over a dirty body...It didn't match my heart. Here's why:
If you were an Atheist or Agnostic or anything else...And if you didn't agree with me...I would disdain you as a person. I feel like a hypocrite! I feel disgusting! And I can't take it anymore! I wasn't interested in being your "Friend". I just wanted to change you. I thought that was my job.
Christianity is about being like "Christ". Jesus loved everyone, First. If they didn't accept what He said, He still loved them. Its not my job to change you, I can't. But its my job to love you. That I can.
So this is an appeal to my Christian Brothers and Sisters, not all but some... stop the Damnation. Stop the Judgement. Stop the Religism. Thats not our business.
It doesn't matter how well you can preach...How many Bible Verses you've memorized or How many people "think" you are all that. If you don't have love, you're nothing. Love is not a chore. Its a revelation. The Christ you serve revealed it in its purest form.
Gandhi said: "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians."
Don't be one of "those". This is an invitation....
Start the LOVE...Join the movement...
Franklin Graham apologizes for questioning Obama’s faith
SENATOR Robert Byrd (D-WV) died Monday, 28 JUN 2010 at the age of 92. He was the longest serving Senator in the history of our nation and a great man and a Christian, a man of faith. Rest in peace Senator Byrd.
"War appears inevitable. But, I continue to hope that the cloud will lift."
- Sen. Robert Byrd, in a speech delivered on the Senate floor on March 19, 2003, in opposition to the war in Iraq. Sen. Byrd passed away on Monday. (Source: Salon.com)
Truth is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways. We may wield it against an enemy with great satisfaction. However, the truth also cuts us, and does so with a fare-thee-well. Senator Robert Byrd was a man who had the courage to face the truth about himself and about his nation. He had the grace and the humility to acknowledge his mistakes and to apologize for them. He could work with former rivals until they became friends. He had the strength to stand against the logic of war and insist upon the imperative of truth-telling. No truth, no justice, no peace.
Byrd started his life among the often forgotten, poorest of the poor in the United States. He grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia. He started attending Sunday school after a kind-hearted man gave him two pairs of socks so that he could attend church without embarrassment. Byrd was smart, hardworking and ambitious, joining the Klu Klux Klan in order to meet important people.
From the earliest days of his political career, he took criticism for this decision. He has apologized for this aspect of his past. He said: “I know now that I was wrong. Intolerance has no place in America. I apologized a thousand times … and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.” It was a leader of the Klan who encouraged him to go into politics.
As long as he represented the parochial prejudices of the South, he stood against civil rights, famously filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, later, after he won battles for leadership in the Senate, especially the battle for Senate Democratic Whip against Senator Edward Kennedy, his views became more liberal. He thought that leadership made him responsible to a larger constituency.
He supported civil rights legislation and the Equal Rights Amendment; he voted with liberals on housing, unemployment benefits, Social Security and public works projects. Most recently, he voted for health care reform legislation and suggested that it be named for his good friend and former rival, Edward Kennedy. He brought millions of dollars in federal money to West Virginia, and the people continued to elect him.
However, as a person who writes peace theory, I especially appreciate Byrd’s stance against the war in Iraq. He never wavered in his insistence that the American people know the truth about why this nation entered that war. He thought it was an overreach of presidential power and a cowardly display by the legislative branch. He thought that a glaring weakness of our government was lies. He wrote: “Lies at the top of government can have a deeply corrosive effect on the quality of our democracy for which there are no ready answers.” People cannot trust government officials who lie, and thus democracy is threatened.
Peace theory holds that violent conflict happens when we act on a lie or an error in judgment based on deception. This is especially true when we fall into the easiest and most common deception of all, that the Other, the enemy Other is less than, less human than we and is worthy of segregation, discrimination, or annihilation. Senator Byrd, through the course of his long life learned this lesson and has left it as a legacy for a nation ever working toward its more perfect self. Thank you, Senator Byrd. May you rest in peace. Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her PhD in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School.
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Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at