A Cup of Conversation – May 2017

The North was losing the war to keep the Union. Robert E. Lee, a southern aristocrat, originally asked to lead the Union, chose the side of his beloved Virginia even though his personal belief was slavery to be a moral and political evil. Lee was a U.S. Military Academy man, smarter and tougher than any of Lincoln’s field generals. The Confederate rebels were hardened, gritty farm boys willing to fight and bleed for their jaded cause and for honor as they knew it. The very future of America was in the balance.

Lincoln then hired Ulysses S. Grant, a rough, crude man with a bad drinking problem. Grant was tough as nails, a brawler and not afraid to die in battle nor to ask of his men the same. Grant came with no political baggage. Unlike his gentile West Point brethren, he wasn’t beholden to the upper-class order and had no agenda other than winning on the battlefield. Grant was the vehicle Lincoln used to end the Civil War, preserve this great country and rid us of the scourge of slavery.

George Patton was a rabid narcissist, abusive, foul-mouthed and self-righteous. Patton had no time for politics. General Patton, however, did what no other general could or would do. He took huge risks to do the impossible, governed by a warrior spirit and steely will to win. Patton is the reason why Hitler could not take a breath on the western front. The Supreme Allied Commander and soon-to-be leader of the free world, General Dwight Eisenhower, used Patton as a battering ram to penetrate the Rhineland, bring Hitler to his knees and destroy the evil of Nazism.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson was raised Southern Democrat, a redneck in the classic tradition, not the current day, watered down, ‘everybody’s a racist’ redneck. The Republican opposition was the party of Lincoln. LBJ was a notorious womanizer, a crude bully, vile-mouthed and master political strategist. Johnson was responsible for pushing his Democrat-controlled Congress to pass the Civil Rights laws his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, began and it was his own stubborn party of the Donkey needing to be pulled across the aisle.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was on the holy march, changing hearts and minds. Democrats in the South now seeing the light of political reality were losing base to the way of the prosperous, de-segregated industrial North. In an act of desperate political survival, LBJ hitched his segregation-bent wagon to MLK, dragging his Democrat brethren kicking and screaming along the way.

Not long after, Lyndon Baines Johnson changed American history. In 1964, he signed the Civil Rights Act with 63% of seated Democrats but 80% of seated Republicans voting yes in the House. In the Senate, only 60% of seated Democrats but 82% of seated Republicans voted yes. The Voting Rights Act later passed with very similar margins.

Fifty years ago, the party of segregation occupying the White House along with the minority party of Lincoln in Congress, TOGETHER, led the way to make right a terrible wrong. When it comes to history, you have to love the numbers. Social engineering revisionist academics can’t change a vote count or congressional roll call…so just forget to mention the details or mention it altogether. If you’re still paying off student loans and don’t know this, maybe you should ask for your tuition back? Good luck with that but why was this omitted from your liberal arts, political science and American history curriculums? What else don’t you know but think you do?

Misinformation, lies and inflammatory rhetoric are old tyrants but have become the cool kids on campus once again and now all the children want to be just like them. Few young adults today question academic authority but rage in disrespect without doing their homework concerning a status quo they by design know little about. Regardless, the older folk are fed up being told green is purple.

In defense of presidents and generals, God can reserve use of desperately flawed men to achieve great things in desperate times. 1 These men are then held to account in this world and the next…no one escapes. 2 This is really the story of every man, just differing degrees.

1 1 Cor 1:27 2 Rom 14:12

Be good not bitter.