I will respond to my brother's response of September 1, 2006. He is, I believe, wrong. I have not yet responded to him, but if he is wrong I get one up. A great bonus for me. Let's move on to Samson....

Samson and the Lesson (August 21, 2006)

Another discussion with my brother.

He writes:

I hope all is well.

Regarding Judeo-Christian values, you probably should know about Samson. His story is in the book of Judges. What do you think of his suicide?

Cheers,

##

Then Samson called to the LORD, saying, “O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!” And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars which supported the temple, and he braced himself against them, one on his right and the other on his left. Then Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life.

-- Judges chapter 16 verses 28-30

On Aug 6, 2006, at 12:32 PM, Sue Harris wrote:

Took writing course 25 years ago. Had to pass English and did. I have been printed many times, but in the Letters to the Editor section and a poem in college. My writing forays don't count in the bowling life I used to lead.

I never meant to write as much as I did last night. Didn't even consider looking at the length until I pasted it to my blog...that is when I realized I'd gone too far without my usual revision methods which generally get the piece down to a third of what you saw. But, heh, you are family and I rarely ever put anything in print anywhere else I haven't rewritten many times.

The name I would ascribe, if I were to do such a thing and I really don't, would be "traditionalists", i.e., those who hold the Judeo-Christian values to heart, having nothing to do with religion.

What I sent you was completely raw, straight out of my head. I will compare yours and mine. I'll let you know

See? I am already doing it again. 'Nuff said.

I respond further:

I need more context to answer your question fully. However, consider that there were Islamofascists whose death would end this cancer in our world, then I too would do what Samson did. I will get Debi's bible and read about Samson, I only have a recollection from decades ago.

My next response:

Context, history is context. It seems to me that the Jews had a very difficult time following their God's commandments choosing material things over piety. Samson was spoiled, selfish and obsessed with women (sex?). He choose badly in most cases and had to suffer the consequences. Samson was not what I would call a caring, intelligent human being. Samson's belief in his strength caused heartache and death. Could it have ended any other way but as it did? Even in the end, he choose death. Suicide? I feel it was more vengeance against what he perceived happened to him. Is he not, in many way, a personification of Jews and humans in general: whine and do bad when things have not gone your way. That's my take.

Love, Sue

He responds:

You have a good perspective.

As you know, the people of Israel have been oppressed over the millennia, over and over again. Yet they have continually been saved by super heros such as Samson, with his great strength to overcome oppressors. Moses is another prototypical super hero who overcomes the great Egyptian oppressors, including countless Egyptian civilians, woman and elderly included and especially children, with genocidal scale plagues. Another is King David, who as a young boy, single handedly defeated the greatest Philistine warrior of all, Goliath. The list goes on and on.

In fundamental ways, the tiny nation of Israel has not changed. You can see Samon's strength in Israel today. Today it is again a world superpower (certainly the regional superpower) since it possesses nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Today too it remains under assault by its modern day Philistine enemies--a legacy of the ancient revelry between Cain and Abel.

The question I asked about Samson's death, should have been framed more sharply: Do you see him as the first vengeful "suicide bomber" killing thousands of civilians, woman and children and the elderly included, wreaking the divine wrath of the Lord to save Israel?

Me: No. What more can I say? My take is that he didn't do with hate but with vengeance, but not for his People, but because of the shame and the loss of his sight.

American Political Party

A Query to my baby brother:

August 30, 2006

I would ask a favor. I have done the best I could but don't have resources
available to me.

Would you do a bit of research of "Douglas Democrats"? When I originally
read about this group several years ago, I found some information. Then,
when I tried to get the information again, I couldn't find what I had originally
seen.

As I understood the original information I read it was a group that merged
with the Democratic Party in the 1930's. They merged because they weren't
able to get themselves elected.

If you have the time, I would appreciate it.

# #

Response:

September 01, 2006

Douglas Democrat is a term for those politically aligned with Stephen
Arnold Douglas during the 1860 United States presidential election.
Douglas was a northern democrat. Douglas Democrats supported slavery
and after the civil war worked to oppose emancipation. Democrats
established the Jim Crow laws, and later in the 20th century worked
to oppose the civil rights movement. When the Democratic party
transformed itself into a party supporting the civil rights under
Johnson, the Southern Democrats (the present-day descendants of the
Douglas Democrats) moved to the Republican party. The Republican
Party was founded in 1854 as a coalition of former Whigs, Northern
Democrats, and Free-Soilers, all opposed to the expansion of
slavery. The Republican Party has undergone major realignments as
the Democratic Party has. The definition of either party is very
fluid of the long-term and apparently even interchangeable, as is
historically witnessed over and over again since the time of the
parties' respective inceptions.

More history about the Democratic and Republican Parties can be found
at

In 1858, Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, debated
Republican Abraham Lincoln on the question of slavery. Said Douglas
during one of those debates: "For one, I am opposed to negro
citizenship in any and every form. I believe this government was made
on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the
benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor
of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and
descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians and other
inferior races."

So prevalent were these views in the Democratic Party that Douglas
was named its presidential candidate in 1860. Amazingly, Southerners
actually viewed Douglas as being too moderate on the slavery issue
and instead voted for Vice President John C. Breckinridge, a slave-
owner who also ran as a Democrat, thus splitting the pro-slavery vote
and allowing Lincoln to win.

The Democratic Party evolved from the political factions that opposed
Alexander Hamilton's fiscal policies in the early 1790s; these
factions are known variously as the Anti-Administration “Party” or
the Anti-Federalists. In the mid-1790s, Thomas Jefferson, and James
Madison organized these factions into a party and helped define its
ideology in favor of yeomen farmers, strict construction of the
Constitution, and a weaker federal government. They named it the
"Republican Party." Today the party is called the Democratic-
Republican Party (or simply the Democratic Party) to distinguish it
from the modern-day Republican Party. Following the civil war,
Douglas Democrats had constituted the southern block of the
Democratic party, and today are known as Conservative Republicans.
This is how the switch came about.

After the civil war, the Democratic Party held a lock on the South
for more than 100 years. All of the "Jim Crow" laws that prevented
blacks from voting and kept them down were enacted by Democratic
governors and Democratic legislatures. The Ku Klux Klan was virtually
an auxiliary arm of the Democratic Party, and any black (or white)
who threatened the party's domination was liable to be beaten or
lynched. Democrats enacted the first gun-control laws in order to
prevent blacks from defending themselves against Ku Klux Klan
violence. Chain gangs were developed by Democrats to bring back de
facto slave labor.



The New Deal Coalition established by Franklin Roosevelt began to
fracture as more Democratic leaders voiced support for civil rights,
upsetting the party's traditional base of conservative Southern
Democrats. After Harry Truman's platform showed support for civil
rights and anti-segregation laws during the 1948 Democratic National
Convention, many Southern Democratic delegates decided to split from
the Party and formed the "Dixiecrats", led by South Carolina governor
Strom Thurmond (who, as a Senator, would later join the Republican
Party). Over the next few years, many conservative Democrats in the
"Solid South" drifted away from the party. On the other hand, African
Americans, who had traditionally given strong support to the
Republican Party since its inception as the "anti-slavery party",
shifted to the Democratic Party due to its New Deal economic
opportunities and support for civil rights.

The party's dramatic reversal on civil rights issues culminated when
Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile, the Republicans were beginning their
infamous Southern strategy, which aimed to solidify the Republican
Party's electoral hold over conservative white Southerners. Southern
Democrats took notice of the fact that 1964 Republican Presidential
candidate Barry Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act, and
in the presidential election of 1964, Goldwater's only electoral
victories outside his home state of Arizona were in the states of the
Deep South.

The degree to which the Southern Democrats had abandoned the party
became evident in the 1968 Presidential election when every former
Confederate state except Texas voted for either Republican Richard
Nixon or independent George Wallace, the latter a former Southern
Democrat. Defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey's electoral votes came
mainly from the Northern states, marking a dramatic shift from the
1948 election 20 years earlier, when the losing Republican
candidate's electoral votes were mainly concentrated in the Northern
states.: