Who's life matters?

Over the past few weeks I have been excoriated by several friends (who have, for the most part, unfriended me over this issue) for not repeating the phrase "Black Lives Matter." To paraphrase the common argument (I'd quote it but I am blocked from being able to read what they wrote).

"You can't say 'all lives matter' when black lives are especially at risk. As long as black people are being killed we have to say 'black lives matter.'"

And I get it. I really do. The reason I don't parrot the slogan is that it doesn't mean what it claims to mean. But the argument I was given got me to thinking. People are donating billions of dollars, holding demonstrations around the country, and wanting to make sweeping changes to our entire society to correct the issue of police killing blacks.

In 2019, the number of black killed by police was 259. That's sad. But in the same year, some 865,000 children were killed in abortions. An estimated 300,000 of those children were black.

So a black child is over 1000 times as likely to be killed by its mother in an abortion than to be killed by police. Where is "Black Lives Matter" over this? Where is the outrage? The billions in funding? The demonstrations? The only ones who care about these children are those in the pro-life movement. Their demonstrations are poorly funded and not even acknowledged by the media, until president Trump started attending.

If you want me to chant "Black Lives Matter" with you start caring about black lives, you hypocrites!

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No White People!

I'm seeing a lot of people making the claim "There are no white people in the Bible." The best response I've seen is "how about Lot's wife?" but seriously, this claim is ludicrous.

My first thought is "who cares?" If we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, and race doesn't matter, why are we racially profiling Biblical people?

The impetus behind this claim seems to be to somehow discredit art which depicts Christ or other Biblical figures as white, or perhaps the idea in white people's minds that Biblical figures are "like them." Again, who cares? Isn't the whole point of the Bible that Biblical figures are like you and I? For that matter, every culture has depicted Biblical figures as members of their own culture. This is not an attempt to deny the historical lineage of the person, but to make the person more relatable to the viewer. New flash - the purpose of literature and art is not always to depict everything literally.

Additionally, when Jesus and Mary have appeared in visions to people, they appear as members of the culture that person belongs to. Take Our Lady of Guadalupe, for instance. Mary appeared as a young pregnant Aztec girl, who spoke to St. Juan Diego in his native Nahuatl language.

I won't go through the numerous depictions of Jesus and Mary in art, but here's an article with a small sampling of them.

But the real point of this post is to debunk the claim that there are no white people in the Bible. Skin color is mentioned only a few times in the Bible. The only places I can think of are Jeremiah 13:23 "Can Ethiopians change their skin or leopards their spots?" - presumably referring to the dark color of the skin of Ethiopians - and Song of Solomon 1:5 "I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem." So it would seem we have ample evidence of dark skinned people in the Bible.

However, Song of Solomon 5:10 says "My beloved is all radiant and ruddy distinguished among ten thousand." Ruddy meaning red. Hard to be red when you're black. Furthermore, later in the same chapter,  verses 14-15 say "His body is ivory work, encrusted with sapphires. His legs are alabaster columns, set upon bases of gold." Alabaster and Ivory are light colored. My reading of this is that the lovers described in the book are a light skinned or white male and a black female.

Both Esau and David are described as ruddy as well and at least in Esau's case it is describing his hairiness. Did they have red hair? Reddish skin? Were they "white?" Who cares. but it seems at least possible, if not likely.

I guess some of it depends on who you consider to be white. An Aryan, white supremacist Nazi type person would say that only the Aryan race is truly white and all others are inferior. However, we are not Aryans, white supremacists, or Nazis. To contemporary Americans, white generally means of European descent, including Mediterranean cultures and Hispanics. At least that's the way race is considered in government forms and statistics. So let's look at whiteness from that perspective, especially since we're looking at this from a contemporary perspective.

There are Greeks in the Bible. Greece is a European country these days, but even in antiquity, Greeks were descended from various people, including white skinned people, and certainly at least some of them were what we would call "white." But regardless of skin color, Greeks are considered white today.

There are Romans in the Bible. Rome was and is in Italy. Italians are considered white.

There are many references to Tarshish in the Old Testament. The exact location of Tarshish is lost to history, but some scholars think it was in Spain or even Britain. Spanish people are considered white, as are British people.

Lastly there are the Galatians. The Galatians were Celtic people originally of France and the Balkans. Celts and eastern Europeans are considered white.

So yes, Virginia, there were white people in the Bible, even excluding Lot's wife. So stop virtue signalling with incorrect statements about the Bible.

N.B. if you want to discount Italians, Greeks, etc. as being non-white because of the way people were classified in antebellum times, note also that Catholics and Jews were not considered white, regardless of skin color, and so all religious art would get a pass, since they are depicting non-whites (Jews and Catholics), regardless of the color of the skin in the art.

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Gettysburg... How long, O Lord?

When my older son joined the boy scouts, one of the first camping trips I went on with him was to Gettysburg. We camped on the battlefield, and hiked the "Johnny Reb" and "Billy Yank" trails, following in the footsteps of the soldiers of the Confederate and Union, respectively.

This October, my youngest son arranged that we would camp at the same spot, on one of the last camping trips we would make together. We did some of the same things, but one thing we did differently was a ranger tour of the cemetery and a tour of the town. What an eye opener.

After the battle of Gettysburg the town was in bad shape. The Confederate army fled south after the battle, the the union army pursued them, leaving the town, population 2,400, to deal with the 8,000 bodies left behind, the 3,000 horse carcasses, not to mention 14,000 wounded and 8,000 Confederate prisoners.

People came from all over the country. Many to look among the dead for their loved ones (this is before the age of dog tags, many soldiers were hard to identify), some volunteered to help bury the dead, burn the horses, and tend to the wounded. Many people were sick from the stench. Flies were so numerous they covered entire houses. Every possible building was turned into a field hospital to care for the wounded. One of the churches had to have holes drilled in the floors to drain out the blood because it was getting deep.

For the most part the Union soldiers were buried and the Confederate soldiers were left to rot and be eaten by scavengers, unless their families came and claimed the bodies. The battle happened in July, so it was imperative that things be taken care "quickly".  It wasn't until October, when the weather was cooler, that the bodies of Union soldiers were exhumed and moved to the National Cemetery where they have a place of honor today. The Confederates were still left where they fell.

On our camping trip we visited the national cemetery, where a ranger gave us a tour. It was later, walking through town, that we wound up finding the "colored" cemetery. Even though we like to think of the North as fighting for African Americans, the colored troops were not allowed to be buried in the national cemetery, but buried in a not-so-good part of town, in their own cemetery.

And even today, that cemetery is separate, and is along Cemetery Ally, behind an abandoned auto body shop. Gettysburg is a stark reminder that the desecration/denigration of people we don't consider "worthy" is not a new thing.

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Dallas Blame

There has been a lot of rhetoric surrounding the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the assassination of five Dallas police officers. On the one hand some people are blaming BLM (and the president, and others) for the attack. Others are saying it was a mentally disturbed veteran and we should blame the government for making him a soldier and sending him to war. But are either of them (or is anyone, really) to blame, other than the gunman himself? Let's consider a couple of scenarios.

Scenario 1. Alice hates Bob. She secretly wishes he were dead. Bob is shot dead. Alice feels guilty. But is Alice really responsible for Bob's death? Of course not. While she willed his death, she has not done anything to influence whether or not Bob lived or died. The gunman is solely responsible.

Scenario 2. Alice hates Bob. She hires a hit man to kill Bob. Bob is shot dead. Is Alice responsible for Bob's death? Of course. While the gunman is ultimately the cause of his death, Alice influenced him to kill Bob by giving him money to do it.

Scenario 3. Alice hates Bob. Alice takes out ads saying that Bob does not deserve to live. She appears on national television speaking about how terrible Bob is and how he deserves death. Bob is shot dead. Is Alice responsible for Bob's death? Of course. While the gunman is ultimately the cause of his death, Alice influenced him to kill Bob by calling for Bob;s death in a way that was compelling (obviously) to the gunman.

BLM has put itself in a position of authority by claiming to speak for blacks. In that position, they have tremendous influence on the actions of many people (witness the number of people who come out to march with the movement). Inasmuch as they have that authority, they also have responsibility for the actions they call for. When they call for justice against white police officers, is that not a call for them to have the same penalty on them that BLM says they imposed on the black victims they "murdered?"

I heard a BLM spokesman on the radio the other day, and his speech upset me enough to write this blog post. Even after the murders of the officers in Dallas he not only had no regrets, but reiterated his support for the killer. In his words "Nobody wants to see innocent people killed" but he then went into a diatribe on police, the gist of which was that none of them are innocent.

St James understood the responsibility of those who claim authority when he wrote, in James 3:1-8 (emphasis mine):

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies.  Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

While we're on the topic of police brutality, let me say that there are good cops and bad cops, just like all of us, and like all of us, most cops are good but some are bad. Despite a NYC study that shows cops treat blacks more harshly than whites, a wider study showed cops are more likely to shoot whites than blacks. But all of this rhetoric only serves to obfuscate the problem. By claiming they know the motive for cops shooting blacks (racism) the BLM stifles any real research into systemic problems with excessive police force. They also, ironically, justify the militarization of police and harsh treatment of blacks by encouraging blacks to be aggressive and non-compliant when interacting with police officers.

As an American I agree with the issue being addressed by BLM, the over-militarization of police, in terms of armament, equipment and training, and the apparent increase in use of overwhelming deadly force. However, we need to look for the real cause of the matter and address that rather than calling it racism in certain cases and ignoring the rest. We cannot become blindly "anti-cop" and expect laws to be enforced and the public to remain safe.

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Defending racism for "the cause"

The Huffington Post published this story about Rick Santorum, including the following video. In their usual style, HuffPo follows the video with a long series of Planned Parenthood apologetics, about how women will lose their heath care if Planned Parenthood doesn't receive federal funding.

As Live Action has proven, Planned Parenthood for the most part doesn't perform these health procedures anyway. But of course, that is not mentioned. Nor is the fact that Santorum didn't call for shutting them down, or even reducing funding for women's health care, he specifically mentioned redirecting it to less controversial providers. But the facts don't seem to matter here - this is a fight for principles!

The article quotes Pamela Merritt of RH Reality Check who writes

We do not associate the Ford Motor Company with anti-semitism, despite the well documented history of it’s founder Henry Ford in collaborating with Nazis and we should not associate contemporary reproductive health care providers or the reproductive justice movement with eugenics because of some views expressed by Margaret Sanger.

and that's true, but Ford Motor Company was founded for the purpose of making automobiles, not collaborating with Nazis, and it continues to make automobiles today. Planned Parenthood was founded specifically to promote birth control, sterilization, and abortion in order to reduce the "undesirables", and it is still performing these "services" today.

From The Negro project:

Sanger built the work of the ABCL, and, ultimately, Planned Parenthood, on the ideas and resources of the eugenics movement. Grant reported that "virtually all of the organization’s board members were eugenicists." Eugenicists financed the early projects, from the opening of birth control clinics to the publishing of "revolutionary" literature. Eugenicists comprised the speakers at conferences, authors of literature and the providers of services "almost without the exception." And Planned Parenthood’s international work was originally housed in the offices of the Eugenics Society. The two organizations were intertwined for years.

So, is the HuffPo defending women's rights? Or are they defending a corporation that made over a billion dollars last year, with almost $500 million of it from your tax dollars? It seems the people who are outraged when the government bails out "big business" in financial trouble are quite willing to overlook government funding a big business that's doing great, as long as the business is abortion.

But the whole "racism" thing is ultimately not the primary reason to defund Planned Parenthood. The fact that they kill babies is. I would like to leave you with this post by Abbey Johnson:

True story. I once read about a man named Dennis Rader. He was very active in his community. He was a deacon in his church, a cub scout leader, a military man, and a volunteer for many different local organizations. He has two children by his wife of 34 years. Radar was caught and arrested in 2005 and sentenced to multiple life sentences. Why? During a 17 year time period, Rader (also known at the BTK killer) stalked, tortured, raped and killed 10 women. Shouldn't we just let that slide? I mean, he was a really good guy...look at all of the good stuff he did. Nevermind that he killed ten women. Certainly we can overlook that, right? Of course not. However, that is EXACTLY what many people do when they think of Planned Parenthood. Well, PP does so much good...perhaps we can just look over the more than 320,000 children that they kill every year. Why do we give PP a pass, but not other criminals?

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Harry Reid says

Harry Reid (senate majority leader) says Republicans should give up trying to defund Planned Parenthood. He specifically says he will vote down any budget proposal that cuts their funding even if it shuts down the government of the United States.

So, what cause is Harry placing ahead of the welfare of the nation and the Constitution he is sworn to uphold? 97.6 percent of pregnant women going to Planned Parenthood are sold abortions while less than 2.4 percent of pregnant women received non-abortion services including adoption and prenatal care.

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