Declaration of Independence

Celebrating Rebellion and Revolution (the Non-Violent Variety)

Posted on July 7, 2017July 30, 2017 by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

This week, citizens from all over the United States celebrated the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, “written by the rebelling fathers of the United States”. Symbolic of the long-ago battles, fireworks lit up the skies and enactments of various forms of resistance filled the parks.

I chose to celebrate the day by giving thanks to rebels and revolutionaries who resist violence non violently, adhering to the principles of non-killing advocated by Glenn Paige.

In particular, I honored a young girl who wrote one of history’s most important books, a book with the power to promote empathy and compassion and to energize readers to fight prejudice, cruelty, scapegoating, and passive obedience to unrighteous authority.

I am talking about the mesmerizing diary of Anne Frank, the young teen writing her story while hiding with her mother, father, sister and four other people in a neglected factory annex in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and genocidal pursuit of Jews.

Anne’s tale of coming of age in that annex under such dire circumstances is engrossing, inspiring–and heart-breaking because we know that shortly after her last entry, German and Dutch police stormed the annex and seized the eight inhabitants plus two of the Dutch men and women who made it possible for Anne and the others to avoid becoming victims of the Holocaust for more than two years.

Think of the risks faced by those stalwart supporters bringing food, beverages, clothing, medicines, books, magazines, newspapers, week after week, month after month.

Anne’s diary bears witness to the horrors of one of the not-to-be forgotten episodes of man’s inhumanity to man, a horrifying example of what people who feel angry and mistreated can be led to do by power hungry leaders with a skill for identifying scapegoats, promoting anger and hatred, and stirring up prejudice.

The diary is also a testimonial to goodness, a reminder that there are always good people who will risk everything to resist evil and rebel against cruel and unjust authority—as indeed did the patriots who turned to warfare to free themselves.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of Anne’s diary is that it memorializes not just Anne but also the brave souls who fought to protect them– Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl.

It seems likely that, in part, the loyalty of such friends was what made it possible for Anne to write, while hiding in the Annex:

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Newly recognized clinical syndrome: American Dementia

Posted on May 5, 2017 by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

“Dementia is progressive loss of cognitive function, marked by memory problems and confused thinking.” Although Psychology Today claims that the “most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s Disease, a fatal condition that affects more than 5 million Americans,” there are much more serious and more widespread forms of memory disorder with extremely high mortality rates.

I am referring here to the disease that John Dower labels “Memory Loss in the Garden of Violence: How Americans Remember (and Forget) Their Wars.” Dower attributes selective memory loss regarding the country’s role in deadly wars to “victim consciousness.”

To illustrate, he says: “Certain traumatic historical moments such as ‘the Alamo’ and ‘Pearl Harbor’ have become code words…for reinforcing the remembrance of American victimization at the hands of nefarious antagonists. Thomas Jefferson and his peers actually established the baseline for this in the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which enshrines recollection of ‘the merciless Indian Savages’ — a self-righteous demonization that turned out to be boilerplate for a succession of later perceived enemies. ‘September 11^th’ has taken its place in this deep-seated invocation of violated innocence.”

In his powerful essay, Dower provides appalling evidence of U.S. “terror bombing” around the world. Regarding the Korean War, he quotes General Curtis LeMay, who acknowledges, “We burned down just about every city in North and South Korea both… We killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes…”

As for the infamous war in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Dower comments, “’targeting’ everything that moved’ was virtually a mantra among U.S. fighting forces, a kind of password that legitimized indiscriminate slaughter.”

Dower also diagnoses the current symptoms of saber-rattling between the U.S. and North Korea, suggesting, “To Americans and much of the rest of the world, Kim Jong-un seems irrational, to say the least. Yet in rattling his miniscule nuclear quiver, he is really joining the long-established game of ‘nuclear deterrence,’ and practicing what is known among American strategists as the ‘madman theory’…. most famously associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War, but in fact. .. more or less imbedded in U.S. nuclear game plans.”

My prescription for treatment: Let’s work on developing an antidote to the dementia enshrouding the country’s military aggression and spreading symptoms of victimization and self-justifying heroism regarding its aggression—from the genocide of Native Americans in yesteryear to today’s bloody flag waving.

Self-evident or reserved for the power elite? Part 1.

Posted on July 4, 2016July 3, 2016 by kathiemm

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Yup, that is an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence, the lofty document presumed to have legitimized and legalized the separation of 13 British colonies from Great Britain back in 1776.

So, we might well ask, as we celebrate the achievements heralded in that document, have subsequent generations of Americans honored and promulgated those principles?

Uh, oh. The answer seems to be: Not unless it suited the interests of the ruling powers within the nation to do so.

On July 5, 1852, 76 years after the Declaration of Independence, the great American Frederick Douglass gave a speech that rings all too true today. Here are some excerpts:

“The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony….

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them….

To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world….

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! ‘I will not equivocate – I will not excuse.’”

And what about us, 240 years since that historic 4^th of July? Will we excuse the racists, the elitists, and the deniers of liberty and democracy within our own country, or will we SPEAK OUT, will we ADVOCATE for ALTERNATIVES to HATRED and AUTHORITARIANISM (AHA!)?

Unfinished business

Posted on July 3, 2014July 19, 2014 by kathiemm

Idealized image of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin reading the Declaration of Independence to colonists. Public domain, work of the United States federal government

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” (From The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription, IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776, The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, signed by 56 white men).

Members of those 13 colonies successfully fought King George for independence, but large segments of the population then and now were excluded from the select group considered entitled to “certain unalienable Rights.”

Among the groups excluded from “all men” by the formulators of the Declaration were, of course, all women, plus all native peoples, slaves, freedmen, and others not seen as deserving the same rights as the men in the emerging power structures in the colonies.

There was no inclusive view of human rights in the minds of the authors of the Declaration of Independence—or most others of those times.

A vision of equal rights for all did not gain legal status in the U.S. until the passing of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1866), which included an Equal Protection Clause guaranteeing all citizens equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment (1869) prohibited both the federal and state governments from denying the right to vote for reasons of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It was not until the 19th Amendment (1920) that women were given the right to vote.

Today, in 2014, women’s suffrage seems pretty secure within the United States—at least for women in the white majority; however, there continue to be efforts to prevent people of color from voting. And rights are far from being equally distributed. Lots of work still to be done.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology