Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Society

  • A Letter to Penthouse

    Dear Penthouse,

    I never thought this would ever happen to me. I’m kind of an average guy, quiet, introverted. For starters, I’ll have to give you a little background on how all this went down.

    Remember those times in the military or your job during the summer? You’d be sitting around with your buddies and one of them would start out with “This ain’t no shit” and you knew the rest of the story was gonna be BS. Well, I’ll skip that ’cause this really did happen to me.

    First the history. I was in the Army at the time and divorced, stationed at a large installation in Texas and had custody of two young kids. I was dating a cute Vietnamese girl that I had met a few years earlier. In March of 1974 we decided to get married and be a family. By the Spring of 1975 I figured I was not going overseas again, since I would be retiring in 1976. We decided to buy a house, I’d never owned one before, even though I was in my late 30s. We found a new 4 bedroom and got moved in in February 1975.

    Then things started happening, quickly. The war in Viet Nam was really heating up, the communists were headed south, towards Saigon, where my wife’s relatives lived. We were glued to the TV, no cable news back in the old days so every night we watched with anticipation as the war drew nearer and nearer. Then panic mode! The North Vietnamese army was on the outskirts of Saigon! We had no idea of what could or should be done but knew that we had to try something. The end was inevitable and closing quickly, tanks were everywhere, panic in Saigon.

    About the 24-25th of April we send telegrams to the US Embassy in Saigon, listing the names and ages of all the relatives and told them we wanted to sponsor them in the US. By that time there was chaos in VN, there was no functioning government and the embassy was a mad house, scrambling to get the Americans out. You’ve seen the end play out on TV hundreds of times, of the helicopters lifting off the roof of the embassy.

    We were heart broken, my wife in constant tears, not knowing what had become of her family. A few weeks later, like two or three, a phone call from someone at Camp Pendleton, CA telling us that someone wanted to talk to my wife. It was her brother! And her mother! And her sister! And her sister! And lots of nephews and nieces, some that she had never seen.

    Now the plot thickens. My wife’s uncle was Port Commander of Newport, Saigon, and a navy captain. As the war closed in and panic abounded he sent word to his own family and my wife’s to get the hell out of Dodge. Her brother rounded up the whole family, got them to Newport and the uncle got them on one of the last ships leaving Saigon. Her uncle stayed, even though his own family had left, to try to help others . He finally got on the last ship leaving the port.

    OK, now all of my wife’s family are at Camp Pendleton, processing the necessary refugee paper work, getting medical exams, etc. I was talking to Pendleton explaining that we would sponsor my wife’s family. They explained that there were quite a few and we said we would take them all. We learned there was 14 in all but we wanted all of them and they agreed. Now what?

    First thing is to figure out what we needed. I started building beds, including a couple double bunks, a double bed for my new brother-in-law and his wife and moving them into place. As it turned out there were 2 boys about my son’s age and 2 girls about my daughter’s age. Step cousins, so it was time to share bedrooms. The married couple and their 2 little boys would get a bedroom, the other 6 people would move into the double garage, I had wired it and finished out the front with windows, curtains and a door, rugs on the floor, TV and AC. Not great but not Pendleton tents either.

    Finally the big night, a Friday, when the new people would be arriving. We had two cars and a neighbor came with her station wagon to the local airport. As we waited the newspaper people and TV cameras showed up. What the hell is that? My 12 year old had alerted the media, unbeknownst to me. The plane arrived and the relatives started getting off, my wife hadn’t seen her family for close to 10 years. They kept coming and coming until 14 had finally got on the tarmac, there was joy in Mudville!

    We got them loaded in the cars and back to my house so we could take inventory. The kids were scared, they had no idea what was going on, they’d been on the ship for many days and a few weeks at Camp Pendleton. Somehow, the first beds had been assigned. I don’t remember but I’m sure there was food to eat. They were the first refugees to get to Temple, TX.

    It was June and kids were not in school. The next morning’s front page ran pictures of shy little bewildered Vietnamese kids. We were getting the 15 minutes of fame, on TV, the papers wanted more interviews with the people, my B-I-L spoke some English plus my wife interpreted so we sat and did the interviews.

    A phone call the next morning from someone asking if anyone of the newbies was looking for a job and
    could he donate some outgrown clothes? He suggested the company he was at and a couple days later I took the oldest nephew down to apply and he started working, less than a week after arrival. The following day, on Sunday, the school superintendent came by, all upset, because the youngsters would be in his school district and they didn’t speak English. I told him not to worry. Wife’s sister was soon working in a couple weeks as well.

    OK, here’s kind of a thumb nail sketch of the new folks. All references relate to my wife.

    Mother, early 60s, widow, no real work experience

    Brother, about 36-37, medical doctor, 2 kids
    Sister in law, brother’s wife, 36-37, also a medical doctor
    Nephew, brother’s son, 5 years old
    Nephew, brother’s son, 4 years old

    Sister, about 37-38, air traffic controller at Tan Son Nhut, 6 kids
    Nephew, 19, VN Air Force
    Niece, 17, student
    Nephew, 14, student
    Niece, 13, student
    Niece, 11, student
    Niece, 10 student

    Sister, 15, student

    Elderly lady, about 60-65, mother of brother’s wife

    After 1 month brother and family (including wife’s mother) drove to CA in a VW beetle that we had bought for them. I explained that they had to drive at night in the desert because of the summer heat.
    Now we are down to just 9 new relatives. The summer passed, kids watched TV, were learning a little English but not too much.

    School started, 7 new kids plus my 2 all got on the bus. My son and daughter got them into their classrooms OK, small country school. After a few days niece 11 came home crying ’cause she couldn’t understand the teacher but she was kicking butt in math. Another month or so teacher asked niece 13 where she lived, niece said Texaco and all the kids laughed, she came home and told her brothers and sisters and they laughed as now all were learning English pretty fast. Birthdays were a frequent and new event, a cake, a couple presents, and the kids were well on their way. Boys were throwing the football around in the front yard, girls were shooting hoops in the driveway. Mother was watching wrestling on TV and doing what she could around the house. Meals were non stop, it seemed. The wash machine and dryer never shut off.

    At Christmas time the niece 10 and 11 wanted a talking doll, as did my 9 year old, they were happy little girls. Everyone enjoyed their first American Christmas, all kids were doing well in school. On Jan 1st Sister and 6 kids moved into a low rent apartment only a couple miles from us but they were on their own. Mother and sister 15 stayed with us another 2 years.

    Now let’s take another look after nearly 44 years and see what has happened.

    Mother passed away about 20 years ago, having lived in a nursing home for many years after a stroke.

    Brother and wife passed their CA exams, worked as doctors in the Indiana prison system, until retiring and moving back to Orange County, CA. Brother developed Parkinson’s and passed away about 10 years ago. His wife retired, teaches piano pro bono. Nephews 4 and 5 graduated from Tufts U as dentists, practice in Orange County.

    Sister worked at Texas Instruments in assembly, then retail until retirement, moved to FL. Her kids, nephew 19 had a variety of jobs, got cancer and died at about 50. Niece 17 graduated med school, practiced as a pathologist, retired a couple years ago at about 58. Nephew 14 dropped out of high school, got a GED, graduated Iowa State with a BS in Chemistry, got a Master’s in Public Admin, works for the VA in FL. Niece 13 joined the AF, became an Air Traffic Controller, went to Civil Service as a n ATC at Sea-Tac, retired with 30 years. Niece 11 got a BS in Computer Science from UTexas and ran later into serious mental health issues. Lives on the street in Dallas, did a little time in the pokey for fraud and spent a stint in a mental hospital. Niece 10 dropped out of school, banged around for awhile, got her life in order, went to Dental Hygienist’s School and now is Top Gun at a big clinic in Mpls.

    Sister 15 got a math degree, maybe UTexas, not sure, teaches at a private school. Her husband was a cop, drowned while his wife watched. They had been married only a couple years and she has never remarried.

    S-I-L’s mother died in CA a number of years ago, maybe 10-15. So, let’s see, we have 9 youngsters that arrived in 1975. All married, mostly to Americans. 9 divorces (a couple were divorced twice), 1 widowed, 1 street person, 1 died, 2 single (divorced), 4 presently married. (Only 1 is on his only marriage). At this time in their lives most are doing well, minus the bag lady. Her family has tried to help her but the schizophrenia can’t be beat. One day she’ll be a Dallas statistic.

    Oh, the uncle that helped them make their getaway. His own family didn’t know he had escaped for several months as he had ended up in Guam. He and his family settled in Virginia and he worked in DC for a contractor until his retirement and ultimate death. My wife got to see him and his family before he died.

    If there is something good from the VN War, at least for me, was that my wife got her family back. We had an exciting time watching those kids mostly succeed, not without a lot of effort on their part. The Catholic Charity, Caritas, had allocated $400 per person for resettlement. I kept meticulous records of expenses, sending in the receipts every couple weeks. I would buy the groceries, divide by 18, take off 4 shares for us and Caritas would send a check for the other 14. As people left I would update the figures. I can’t remember how it all worked out but we wanted the new folks to have the leftover Caritas money. I think there may have been some residual for them to use later.

    Well, Penthouse, that’s about the end, not the usual ending to a Penthouse letter but a Happy Ending anyway.

  • Employment Survey 2019

    Back in January 2018, we did a survey of the work life of the Glibertariat.

    Well, we have many new members since then, and many people who have changed jobs, careers, or directions in life. So,  I thought we were due for an update.

    Since then, I’ve formed a new boutique agency with Web Dom. With our combined education and experience, and employing a couple contractors, we are able to provide website design services, digital marketing services (including copywriting, and social media/email marketing management), coaching and management for online businesses, and a few other services that are not our core offerings. With my plan to re-enter healthcare being stymied by a zillion things–now also including a cross-country relocation, this agency and my ongoing product photography work will consume most of my professional life for the foreseeable future.

    How about you? What are you up to work-wise in 2019?

     

     

  • Poll: Spy Devices in Your Home

    My 84-year-old dad, with whom I am very close, has severe tinnitus. It’s lately become so bad that he’s stopped using phones. He just gets so frustrated and annoyed that he can’t hear.

    Since Dad also refuses to use email the last couple years, and I’m now moving very far away from him, which will limit in-person visits, I called my stepmom and asked if she had ideas about how to stay in touch with him, besides old-fashioned letter writing (which he doesn’t do). She thought maybe she could get him to use Skype or similar, under protest, but since I’m The Favorite he might do it to talk to me.

    When relating this conversation over encrypted chat to Web Dom (who has just moved 10 miles from my Dad, lucky girl), she mentioned that my crazy sister (the California crazy sister, not the New York crazy sister) wanted to send Dad a Facebook Portal for Christmas, but Dad nixed that idea because he hates everything FB stands for, doesn’t want to make an account, and, shut it down with, “Enough of that happy horseshit, I WILL NEVER USE THAT DAMN SPY DEVICE!”

    That all sounds just like Dad. The shocking part came in the next sentence out of Web Dom’s fingertips: Well, the rest of the family uses it.

    Me: What do you mean by “rest of the family?”

    Web Dom: Your favorite Aunt, your favorite brother, your crazy sisters….

    The list went on and on.

    Me: Back up. My favorite GOVERNMENT-SPYING-IS-ILLEGAL-AND-COPS-SHOULDN’T-HAVE-DRONES brother is using FB Portal?

    Apparently so. Indeed, not only that, but he apparently also has another Alexa digital assistant device in his home.

    WTF!?

    So, who needs to perform illegal searches and wiretaps nowadays? We are voluntarily giving access to random hackable- and subpoenable-entities to view everything in our homes, know every contact we make, know how long and to whom we speak, hear all our conversations, know every item we purchase.

    I find this absolutely chilling.

    So, this week’s question. Do you, would you, have a Facebook Portal in your home and/or office?

    You probably know my answer.

  • “against the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience”: Roger Williams and Religious Toleration

    In 1672, 69-year-old Roger Williams clambered into a skiff and rowed, solo, twenty-five miles down Narragansett Bay to publicly debate several Quakers. It was an action typical of Williams who was never afraid to put his beliefs into action. Williams was a fascinating character for multiple reasons, but in this piece I would like to explore his ideas of religious toleration, formulated in the first half of the seventeenth century, long before the Enlightenment forced such debates into a wider public sphere.

    Williams was born c. 1603 in London, graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge 1627, and took orders in the Church of England. However, while at Cambridge, Williams embraced Puritanism which would have had a detrimental effect on his career prospects had he stayed in England. But, in 1630, Williams and his wife Mary (they married in 1629) decided to immigrate to New England. The couple were part of the so-called Puritan Great Migration, precipitated by the crackdown on Puritans initiated by Charles I and William Laud.

    Not actually Roger Williams - he never sat for his portrait.
    Roger Williams, c.1603 – 1683

    By the time Williams arrived in New England, he had embraced Separatism, a more radical subset of Puritanism. Most English Puritans believed that, although the English Reformation had not gone far enough, the Church of England (CoE) was a true, albeit impure, church which God could yet purify. Separatists, however, believed the Church of England was not a true church and could not be redeemed (FWIW: the Pilgrims of Plymouth were Separatists; the much larger number of Puritans who settled at Massachusetts Bay were mostly non-separatists).

    Even for a Separatist, Williams was a radical. He believed that all those who wished to be members of the new pure churches in New England must publicly repent of their past involvement with the CoE and declare they would never be involved with it again. All ministers who had served in a CoE church in the past had to renounce this involvement. In fact, insufficient separation from the CoE led Williams to turn down invitations to pastor in Plymouth and at Boston’s First Church. However, in December, 1633, Williams accepted an invitation to become pastor-teacher at Salem, Massachusetts a church largely comprised of Separatists.

    Williams’s tenure as pastor at Salem was riven with turmoil. Space does not allow for the details to be provided here, but Williams’s public pronouncements precipitated first a rhetorical conflict between Salem church and the rest of Massachusetts and then between the Salem church and Williams. Eventually the church dismissed Williams as their minister and the Massachusetts government banished Williams from the colony in January, 1636 (Massachusetts eventually rescinded Williams’s banishment – in 1936!).

    Williams and a handful of followers founded Providence Plantation later in 1636 on land granted to them by the Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi. The small band of Christians created a “compact” for self-government. Part of it read: we…submit ourselves in active and passive obedience to all such orders or agencies as shall be made for the public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of the present inhabitants…only in civil things.

    This compact is one of the first indications we have that Williams’s interpretation of the bible and godly authority had begun to change. To some extent, Williams new thinking was an extension of his separatist views. Williams desperately wanted to be part of a pure church, one founded by an ordained minister. So far, so good. But, as Williams theology evolved he came to believe that true ordination could only be passed down from Christ. At the same time, Williams believed that Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 had terminated the true church (under this interpretation, the Catholic Church was a false church) and true ordination. Thus, there could no true ministers, and therefore no pure churches.

    Mainstream Puritans believed that their “purified” churches were true churches, planting Christ’s kingdom in the world, and that the cause of Christ’s kingdom could be advanced by harassing, or even making war on, ungodly weeds which threatened to overrun the kingdom. Williams, however, believed that God’s kingdom would only come when God sent new apostles (probably at the time of the millennium) into the world. In the interim, therefore, godly plants had no business harassing ungodly weeds. This would lead Williams to reject the idea that orthodoxy could be enforced by the state.

    As Williams grappled with his evolving theology, he was also confronted with political problems. In 1643, Massachusetts Bay attempted to extend its authority over Providence. Williams set sail for London seeking an official charter for his settlement. This was granted to him in the form of a parliamentary Commission for Plantations in 1644 and he prepared to return to New England. But, before he set sail, he published one of the finest statements on religious toleration, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience. So radical was Bloudy Tenent that the English government ordered it burned.

    Published 1644, burned 1644.

    While the pamphlet contained much of Williams’s new thinking on the church, it was his ideas on the intersection between the church and state which libertarians should celebrate. As with other Puritans, Williams believed that the coming of Christ to Earth had created a gulf, a division, between what had gone before and what came after. But, while most Christians believed that the non-ceremonial aspects of Old Testament law should still be enforced by the state, Williams argued there was no such thing as God’s political kingdom on earth and that no modern nation possessed God’s authority to enforce religious law. Williams argued that it was impossible that God would give civil government—made up of sinful people—authority over the church on issues of religious practice.

    And then Williams made the point that should bring warmth to even cold, black, libertarian hearts. He argued that civil peace was not disrupted by religious dissent and debates over religion but by the use of state power to suppress dissent and debate. He wrote: the blood of so many hundred thousand soules of Protestants and Papists, spilt in the wars of present and former ages, for their respective consciences, is not required nor accepted by Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace…enforced uniformity [of religion] is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.

    Thus while Williams criticized Catholic Mary (r. 1553-1558), he also criticized Protestant Elizabeth (r. 1558-1603) for her persecution of Catholics. Williams did not even believe it was necessary that civil rulers be Christians. In a second work published in 1652—Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy—he argued that Jews, Catholics, and Muslims could be good civil rulers.

    To be clear, Williams was no anarchist, nor even a libertarian. He was after all, a man of the seventeenth century and firmly believed in the need for a civil government, as practiced in Rhode Island. But religious toleration continued to be adhered to (religious anarchy in the colony was further aided and abetted by the teachings of two other dissenters, John Clarke and Samuel Gorton). Baptists and Quakers, both banned from New England, settled in the colony. In 1658 a small Jewish congregation was formed in Newport and French Huguenots settled in East Greenwich in 1686. Rhode Island was certainly not a kingdom of religious peace. There were harsh words and harsh writings aimed at other religions. Both Gorton and Williams left/were kicked out of churches they founded. For many outside the colony, it seemed a place of lawlessness. As a Dutch Reformed minister in New Netherland wrote, Rhode Island was a place where all kinds of rabble live and which is nothing but the latrine of New England; all the bandits of New England retire thither. But, there were no arrests, violence, or punishment in religious matters. Without the civil power involved in running religion, there was no need for the civil power to arbitrate religion.

    Tolerance also played out in other ways: in 1647, representatives from the four main towns in the colony agreed on laws banning witchcraft trials, imprisonment for debt, and removed capital punishment for many crimes. Rhode Island even passed a law banning slavery in 1652 although it was only enforced fitfully and then for no more than fifty years (although one of the earliest mainstream voices of abolition was that of Samuel Hopkins, Congregational minister in Newport, Rhode Island from 1770-1803).

    The anecdote I began this piece with says it all. Williams believed Quakers were false prophets and heretics, guilty of all kinds of crimes against God’s truth. But the way to deal with heresy, even at 69, was to get in a boat and go to a public debate. It was most decidedly not to call down the power of the state on those with whom one disagreed.

    Further Reading:

    Full text of Bloudy Tenent

    Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul (Viking, 2012).

    Field, “Roger Williams, Parliament, and Providence,” New England Quarterly September, 2007.

    Goodman, “Banishment, Jurisdiction, and Identity in Seventeenth Century New England,” Early American Studies, Spring, 2009.

    Hall, Separating Church and State: Roger Williams and Religious Liberty (University of Illinois Press, 1998).

    James, “Ecclesiastical Authority in the Land of Roger Williams,” New England Quarterly, September, 1984.

    Lovejoy, “Roger Williams and George Fox: The Arrogance of Self-Righteousness,” New England Quarterly, June 1993.