High Ground Underground

Last year I gave a talk at church on reconciliation – something that seems timely right now. There is much lip service to it, how much more is needed, and sometimes too little recognition of the efforts made. Some of our most sacred memorials have been defaced, including even to the president and some soldiers who freed the slaves. In my talk are examples of reconciliation offered by that president and one amazing officer. We can learn from history -- read on. “As I pondered examples of reconciliation, I was impressed by two magnanimous and profound conciliatory gestures by great men in our national reconciliation at the close of the Civil War. On one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. is etched Lincoln’s 2nd inaugural speech, given just a few weeks before the end of the great and terrible Civil War. It had taken 620,000 lives (2% of the population, and more than all our combined foreign wars until Vietnam) and was marveled at across the world. In the address he quotes...

The following is a collection in reverse chronological order of my Facebook posts and notes of primarily political nature from February to March of 2017. I'm catching up, after neglecting my blog during some personal medical issues.   This post i ncludes:  Another much-defamed but great president, the Vietnam War Memorial in Westminster, the neglected US military, the biased media, "deep state" leaks, Trump conspiracy theories, the need for American leadership, politicization of the Oscars, Trump's first address to Congress (a great speech), Presidents' Day & portraits, Trump impeachment & mental illness, the Left-Right civil war, the Flynn resignation, the 9th Circuit ruling on the immigration ban, and a North Vietnamese general's testimonial of how the biased media lost the war for the US at home -- a lesson for today. March 21 Question: Which American president is described here?: "To his detractors, ___ remained a backwo...

A Civil War analogy for this election. Especially for those reluctant or not planning to vote for Trump. "The speech that rekindled loyalty and arguably won the US Civil War... Was not the Gettysburg address, it was the speech that Colonel Chamberlain gave to a large group of deserters that had been given to him the day before the biggest battle of the entire war. He desperately needed them to join his Northern Maine regiment for the upcoming battle." "...in that battle many historians agree that it was Colonel Chamberlain’s holding of Little Round Top that won the day, and was the turning point in the whole war, in favor of the North." Robert E. Lee carried with him terms of Union surrender to take to Lincoln in Washington if he won the battle. By the time of the battle, Col. Joshua Chamberlain’s Maine regiment had been reduced from 1000 at the beginning of the war to less than 300. The 120 Maine deserters from another regiment had suffered terribly in b...