“God Bless America” is a great song. Just don’t try singing it in the schools as we used to or you will be sued by the ACLU using your own tax money to sue you. If the rest of the world sees America as a bunch of lunatics led of lunatics there is sufficient to support the view. Just a government that funds the ACLU and a “leadership” that talks “homeland security” while refusing to secure our borders is patently lunatic enough to support the accusation.

The appeal of the noble gunman who rights injustice is something we all applaud. We always applaud the good guy who blows away the bullies. But because of university bred political correctness America cannot identify the bullies using plain language, but our enemies are free to demonize America at will. And given the “leadership” of America, our enemies have no problem making our nation out to be the bully among nations. And bullies have no friends.

My condemnation of Caesar Bush from the beginning has been based on his being only a politician, and as such would never allow our troops to fight a war to win, but as with Korea and Vietnam only to sacrifice Americans to political ends and that means for the money to satisfy the greed of the corporate masters with all politicians in their pockets having the rule over America.

And what is this visit by the Pope to Turkey but political? He already apologized when he had nothing for which to apologize. Perhaps this visit is the equivalent of going into “therapy,” which has become all the rage when someone says publicly what they really believe privately only to have it come back to bite them.

Some time ago I read of a big league ball player after a questionable call by an umpire stepping away from the plate and saying to him “What would you do if I said you’re a blind sonofabitch, a rotten umpire and shouldn’t be allowed to work in the major leagues?” The umpire replied “I’d throw you out of the game.” The ballplayer thought for a moment, then said to the ump “And what would you do if I only thought you’re a blind sonofabitch, a rotten umpire and shouldn’t be allowed to work in the major leagues?” The ump replied “Well, nothing. You can think what you want to.” The player looked at the ump for a long moment; then returned to the plate.”

As Jesus pointed out “Wisdom is justified of her children,” and those that don’t know enough to keep their mouths shut rather than making fools of themselves are certainly lacking in wisdom at the most charitable; but it is when words become the weapons of fools and tyrants we are at the greatest risk, the tyranny of religion such as that of Islam being a case in point.

It would serve us well to look to some of the wisdom of the past in addressing this issue. There is a solid foundation of historical wisdom from which to draw. How many today, for example, know much of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania? Yet his wisdom of religious toleration is still an excellent example to follow in many ways.

Penn wrote a great deal. He had the spirituality of a John Woolman mixed with the common sense of a Benjamin Franklin. Penn’s most well known work is “No Cross, No Crown” that he wrote while in prison in the Tower of London for his heterodox, religious views. A devout Quaker, he questioned the orthodox interpretation of the trinity among other things but his preaching and teaching of mankind’s responsibility for social ills, the opinion of Benjamin Franklin and others, was especially ill-received by the churches of his time.

An example of his opposition to the pseudo-spirituality of his time (and ours as well) is a statement from his book which fairly represents his view, together with that of Franklin, of the relationship between men and God: “True Godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavors to mend it.”

Would that those professing to love and serve God would pay heed to Penn’s words in this regard. Particularly those who insist you must belong to their little, exclusive club in order to really be right with God and have his blessing and favor. From Penn’s “Some Fruits of Solitude” we read:

Inquiry is human; blind obedience brutal. Truth never loses by the one, but often suffers by the other.

There are some men like dictionaries; to be looked into on occasions, but have no connection, and are little entertaining.

A wise man makes what he learns his own, another shows he’s but a copy, or a collection at most.

Because of the truth of Penn’s observation people like Socrates, Jesus, and Washington leave no class as Emerson observed. There are many pretenders, but none to take the place of those persons like Socrates, Jesus, and Washington unique in history.

It takes a great breadth of reading and study to take advantage of the best of wisdom, to learn the lessons of the past in such a way as to improve the future. By paying too much attention to expediency, to palliatives that do not cure the ills or advance civilization, we have suffered mightily. At the best Caesar Bush is a fool; at the worst a dangerous fool that has put America in grave danger. He lied to get his wars, and is now caught out as both fool and liar. How now is America to extricate itself from the danger? The clear and present danger of Islam is patently obvious, but fools and liars are not going to deliver America. And the present crop of politicians exemplifying the “systematic organization of hatreds” holds little hope of change for the better.

As with politics blind obedience to some superstitious or religious orthodoxy invariably leads to conflict, conflict which, like that between Muslim and Jew is in itself a crime against humanity. Consider the divisiveness in our own country of those that promote one form of religious interpretation of Christianity over another. And especially those preaching and teaching their way is the only way of salvation. But those in the churches of America and England are not preaching and teaching the hateful and barbaric doctrines characteristic of woman-hating, bloodthirsty Islam. It is obvious that such fanatical, superstitious, religious taboos and hatreds such as that of the Moslem Taliban are repugnant to any civilized society. To beat men, women and children openly in the streets for a failure to adhere to religious dogma is barbaric in the extreme.

But the tail will always wag the dog when good people fail to do their part in opposing evil. However, throughout history the case has been a failure of good people to actively oppose the evil. Nobel-winning Physicist Michio Kaku has pointed out the very real danger the world faces because of nuclear proliferation. There is no denying the substantive evidence of such a threat. But it will take leaders of great knowledge and conviction to confront and overcome the obstacles to peace.

However, men being war lovers there must be a place for women in the decision making processes of world governments for peace to have any chance. I call your attention to the fact that women are conspicuous by their absence in the UN. But wisdom can never be achieved by the exclusion of a full half of humankind in the decision-making processes and leadership of nations.

This lack of women having a place in our own history of government is all too apparent. During all the turmoil of the years preceding our Civil War, a few women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were active abolitionists. But because they were women, they were refused admittance to the Antislavery Convention in London held in 1840. The commentaries of Sir William Blackstone held sway and continued to enslave women to their historical status as legal and political nonentities.

But Mrs. Stanton and some other determined women were resolute in changing their “slave” status. So it was that in 1848 the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions came into being. Patterned after the Declaration of Independence, these women cited their grievances and asked for justice, especially in respect to the franchise. However, it would be another seventy years, 1920, before women won the right to vote. And only one woman, Charlotte Woodward Pierce, of that original meeting in Seneca Falls would live to cast a vote for President.

It is to America’s credit that such a meeting as that of Seneca Falls could be held and widely publicized (though most certainly unfavorably many times) … This in spite of the fact that it would take seventy years to accomplish the purpose of that original meeting in 1848.

I find it a curiosity of history that the two, abolition of slavery and woman suffrage, should be so intertwined in time; but perhaps, given the similarity of the causes, not so curious. And I would point out that the battles of Civil Rights and Women’s Rights would boil over and still be fought in the recent history of the sixties.

But in spite of the passage of time, even to this date, it cannot be said that women have achieved equal status with men, either in America or any place else in the world. For this to be accomplished requires wisdom, the kind of wisdom that denies prejudice and bigotry and leads to equal value, something not to be confused with equal rights and something not considered during the Seneca Falls meeting for women or by Martin Luther King, Jr. on behalf of minorities.

It will take the kind of perseverance evidenced by those like William Garrison and Elizabeth Stanton to accomplish the task of equal value. More, it will take exceptional women like Stanton and Mott, as diverse, educated and intelligent as Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Cochrane (Nellie Bly) and others, to develop a philosophy distinctive of women that will meld with that of men and, through the compatibility of differences correcting the errors in the philosophies of men, thereby making for a complete philosophy on the basis of equal value.

I give America credit for being a nation that considers fairness and justice of such great importance, and we are a nation that has a history of being charitable beyond that of any other nation towards other nations, especially following WWII and in many other instances. We are a nation that in spite of many failures such as our deplorable mistreatment of Native Americans has a generally proud heritage of fairness and justice.

However, unless women attain a place of equal value to men throughout America and throughout the world humankind has no chance of attaining the kind of wisdom that holds any promise of world peace. If on this basis alone Islam was determined to be the enemy of civilization that would be sufficient cause to banish it from the world. But such a “war on terrorism” cannot be waged by fools driven by greed and avarice with any chance of success. And the world is running out of time; the world does not have the seventy plus years it took for women to win the vote here in America.