Day 133 of Nat'l Emergency: Digging Up Dirt Is Dirty Business

The sins of the fathers taint the acts of the sons no matter how noble the latters’ causes may be. Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” showed us that reality with the persecution of the St. Evrémonde family during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Charles Darnay was found guilty of oppressing the populace even though he renounced his family title and the nobles who killed and otherwise exploited the peasants.   

And so we now are witnessing the persecution of The New York Times because ancestors of the founding family were slaveholders. Had their coffin draped by the Confederate flag. Were member of the Daughters of the Confederacy (https://nypost.com/2020/07/18/the-family-that-owns-the-new-york-times-were-slaveholders-goodwin/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons).

To be sure, The Times has been cast as guilty of a supreme journalistic sin, that of foregoing objectivity, quashing dissenting voices while permitting bullying of any staffer who deviated from the corporate line.

Never mind that today’s Times champions civil rights. By publishing a special report last year on the  400th anniversary of slavery in the British colonies and laying the foundational reason for the break with the king on perpetuation of slavery, The Times is accused of misrepresenting history while ignoring its own involvement in the despicable practice.

The article demanding genetic purity from The Times was written by a former Times staffer of 16 years. It appeared in The New York Post, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, an ardent supporter of Donald Trump. Murdoch also owns The Wall Street Journal, arch rival of The Times. Could The Journal benefit from knocking The Times off its lofty perch? No doubt.

That being a real possibility the truth of slaveholding by Times family ancestors is not diminished. But is it damning?

Slavery was part of colonial DNA. It continued into the 19th century even in northern states. New York, for example, did not outlaw all forms of slavery until July 4, 1827. Among northern states only New Jersey permitted slavery longer.

The Ochs family, which bought and reformatted The Times into the preeminent paper in the United States if not the world, had its roots in the Antebellum South. They owned slaves.

I find it increasingly difficult to accept the wholesale tarring of family descendants, especially when one considers how the newspaper over the last 50 years has been a steadfast champion of press freedoms, civil rights and has been a bulwark of defense against abuses of power on local, state and national levels. 

One could surely legitimately argue that The Times has shed some objectivity in its coverage of Donald Trump. That it holds Israel to a higher standard than Palestinians and Arab countries. That its Op-Ed page is mostly a forum for progressive, not conservative, ideas.

Even if guilty on all counts The Times cannot be equated with the symbols of the Confederacy protesters seek to topple. Those statues and the stars and bars flag are symbols of rebellion against our duly elected government. They were traitors unworthy of any reverence or fealty, no matter how valiantly or competently they fought.

My lens of history, of historical perspective, is biased. I admit it. Friends and relatives swear by The Journal as a better newspaper.

Perhaps it is. I don’t read it often enough to make an assessment. Same thing with The Washington Post. They are both owned by tycoons.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has invested heavily in The Post to restore it to its Pentagon Papers/Watergate era prominence.

But in achieving his rank as the richest person in the world Bezos put lots of companies out of business and lots of people out of work. My magazine’s readership included many of those companies and people affected. I derive only some comfort from his resuscitation of The Post.

From Rupert Murdoch I take absolutely no comfort. Anchored by Fox News, his media empire is largely responsible for the distrust many Americans feel toward their country and the resultant emergence of Donald Trump as an avatar of transformation based on misinformation, conspiracy theories and outright lies.

The Times is not pitch perfect. But it still retains a voice that is noteworthy and dedicated to the improvement of our country, despite the less than perfect history of its founding family’s members. 

Day 112 of Nat'l Emergency: History Reconsidered

Are you familiar with the court case Somerset v Stewart?

Don’t be embarrassed if you’re not. Odds are many lawyers are in the dark, as well. For good reason. The case goes way back to 1772. In England.

Yet some scholars trace the outcome of that legal battle to a unified American colonial stance against the British monarchy.

Some background: Northern colonies had reason to bridle under the mercantile laws that inhibited and at times prohibited manufacturing on American soil, production that would compete against industry based in the British Isles. The North wanted commercial independence. 

Southern colonies, on the other hand, were enriched by shipping their agricultural products—mainly cotton, rice and tobacco—back to the mother country.

The South had little financial reason to disassociate from the king.

Until Somerset v Stewart threatened the region’s economic underpinning—slavery. Without going into the details of the case (you can do that by linking here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart), the verdict began a process that in a few decades led to the abolition of slavery in Britain.

Southerners could see the writing on the wall. If the colonies remained part of Great Britain they feared control over the enslaved could be restricted. Abolition could become the law in America. 

To be sure, all the original colonies at one time permitted slavery. But the combination of exhaustive heat and humidity, insect born illnesses such as malaria and yellow fever, and an agricultural economy that required a large amount of expendable manpower turned the South into a bedrock of slavery. 

Virginian Patrick Henry’s famous plea for freedom from British rule—“Give me liberty or give me death”—might well be interpreted to mean, “Give me liberty to keep my slaves or my ruined economy will lead to my death.”

Keep in mind that after winning the Revolutionary War each state under the Articles of Confederation set its own rules on slavery. When the newly independent states reorganized in 1789 as a federal republic under a constitution, the legality of slavery remained a state by state choice, though Congress decreed the importation of more slaves was to be banned after January1, 1808.

The ban and other events—significantly, the expansion westward into Alabama, Mississippi and the territories of the Louisiana Purchase coupled with the invention of the cotton gin that greatly enhanced cultivation and processing of cotton—profoundly changed the economy and future of the United States. 

Charleston, SC, for example, lost its position as the richest city in America, a spot achieved through its being the port of entry for some 40% of the enslaved. Commerce shifted further north in a two-pronged fashion. New York became a larger harbor for international trade and, after construction of the Erie Canal, for domestic commerce.

Virginia had relied on slaves to grow tobacco, but much of the land had been depleted of nutrients and was no longer profitably arable. So Virginia became a dominant player in a transformed slave market. With almost no new slaves arriving from foreign soil, slaves already here were bred for sale to territories and new states cultivating labor-intensive cotton. 

The cash crop for Virginians became the human creation of more slaves. Slaves to be sold. Slaves to be sold not as family units but as individuals. Separating husbands from wives, children from parents, Virginia sent many of its enslaved to plantations in the Deep South. 

Seven of the first 12 presidents of the United States were born in Virginia. Aside from being the first of the British colonies to welcome slaves, Virginia adapted English common law to make it easier to perpetuate slavery. Known by its dictum “partus sequitur ventrem,” a 1662 Virginia law decreed children would take the social status of the mother, not the father. Thus, even offspring of a female slave impregnated (commonly raped) by a white male would be considered a slave. 

The seventh and last president to be born in Virginia was Woodrow Wilson. Often associated with New Jersey, where he was president of Princeton University and governor before winning the presidency of the United States in 1912, Wilson has long been held as a statesman for his leadership before, during and after World War I and for being in office when women won the right to vote, the federal income tax system was inaugurated, the Federal Reserve System was established, and laws pertaining to the Federal Trade Commission along with the Clayton Antitrust Act were passed. 

Yet he had dyed in the wool Southern sympathies. He kept the military segregated and purged the federal government of many Black civil servants, an action that stifled development of a Black middle class in Washington, DC, and other cities. Under Wilson, the Treasury and Post Office installed separate workspaces, lunchrooms, and bathrooms for Blacks (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/11/20/9766896/woodrow-wilson-racist).

Much of our nation’s history flows through Virginia, much of it tinged by slaveholding and racist presidents, men who were “products of their times,” say apologists. Or they were leaders who chose not to practice equality but rather to enjoy during their lifetimes the benefits derived from enslaving other humans. 

History is never a simple straight line. The myths surrounding our lionized leaders are fading under deeper scrutiny. Ben Franklin owned another human being. Wikipedia notes that of the first 12 president, only John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams never owned slaves. Eight of the remaining 10 owned slaves while president. Only Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison did not. 

Lincoln is revered for emancipating the enslaved. But he embarked on the Civil War not to abolish slavery but rather to preserve the Union. He would have been agreeable to retaining the status quo in the South. Only after two years of battle did he redefine the objective.

The White House plus at least part of the Capitol building were built by slaves. 

Today’s protests for political correctness are the culmination of years, decades, of retrospection. Taking down statues of traitors—for that’s what Confederate officers and soldiers were—seems long overdue. No one should be forced to have any ray of sunshine blotted out by figures that deprived men, women and children of their dignity, their humanity, their freedom, their families. 

But what of our imperfect presidents? Are we to cover over the chiseled profiles of Washington, Jefferson Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt atop Mount Rushmore? Are bridges and tunnels to be renamed across the land? Cities and towns to be rechristened? 

Perhaps we could find a way to honor the descendants of flawed slaveholding presidents. Name schools after George Washington’s children. Or for Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s enslaved consort. 

I just don’t know. I just don’t know … 

I just know that the pain of slavery, of Jim Crow, of racial discrimination haunts our society. And that far too many of our fellow Americans refuse to see it. 

Day 105 Nat'l Emergency: Extremism Reigns

Back in 1964, in accepting the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” 

It should be obvious to any thoughtful citizen that we are in the midst of extremism from the right and left. Destroying statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ulysses S. Grant were not acts of excessive exuberance in support of Black Lives Matter but rather acts of excessive ignorance and intolerance. 

The very public displays of white supremacists bearing neo-Nazi and Confederate flags, coupled with the reluctance of Donald Trump and other Republicans to unequivocally denounce such actions, chills hope that right wing extremism can be tamped down to the fringe corners of society.

Grant’s statue was toppled, despite his being the Union general most responsible for destroying the Confederacy and slavery, because at one time he owned a slave. One slave. Without any compensation Grant freed William Jones two years prior to the Civil War, an act of courage uncommon where he lived around St. Louis, MO. 

Out of their mind protesters acted like an unruly mob absent any knowledge or context. Ridding public spaces of memorials to traitors who fought the Union or politicos who defended slavery or held beliefs counter to the nation’s creed of equality, however elusive its attainment has been, is not in itself a contemptible act. 

While Confederate generals and office holders are part of the country’s heritage, there is merit in denying them a public place of honor for actions that were not honorable and not sustainable on the battlefield. Nor should they be rewarded for the back door tributes they secured from Jim Crow laws and a media-manufactured retelling of the antebellum South. 

But tearing them down, acting like a lynch mob, besmirched the cause the protesters espouse (unless the protesters were anarchists acting under the cover of legitimate protest). 

Those who are seeking perfection in our national heroes past and present will be sorely disappointed. They come adorned with character warts we at present would find not just discrediting but also disqualifying for elective office or reverence. Martin Luther King was no saint. Neither was Malcolm X. Nor JFK. Nor FDR. Nor Barack Obama. 

What can be said of our icons is that despite their flaws they advanced the dignity of our country, they fought and sometimes died for the expansion of rights and freedoms. 

They were better than the prevailing mores of their times. They weren’t perfect. We should not judge them solely by 2020 standards. 

Perhaps it is a good moment for a collective time out to look at the Bible. Not the New Testament, not because I am not Christian, rather because Jesus seems to be beyond reproach with no flaws.

Look to the Old Testament for leader upon leader, patriarch after patriarch, who is imperfect. King David was an adulterer and conspired to have his consort Bathsheba’s husband killed in battle. He was not a great father. He turned a blind eye as his henchmen assassinated his foes. Yet, he is venerated as Israel’s greatest monarch. 

Jacob was a trickster, on multiple occasions. Samson married a pagan. Saul failed to follow God’s command to kill all of the Amalekites and destroy their possessions. 

Even wise King Solomon, who should have known better, succumbed to excess—excessive taxes, excessive marriages to pagan women and excessive construction of temples to his wives’ gods to whom in his old age he followed. 

Despite his shortcomings, Solomon is lionized. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is a figure’s place in history must be measured by his entire resume, not just a smudge on the page. 

At the 2015 funeral of one of the nine martyred at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, Obama concluded his eulogy by singing “Amazing Grace.” It was a stirring moment. 

But that haunting hymnal was written by a one-time slave trader, John Newton. By today’s ethos of puritanical extremism, should “Amazing Grace” be stricken from the roster of messages of consolation, forgiveness and redemption because of its originator? 

I think not. 

To the Barricades: Socialist Dems Under Attack

To much applause from his party apparatchiks during the State of the Union speech Tuesday night Donald Trump voiced the oft-repeated trope America will never become a socialist country. 

“We are alarmed by the new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence and not government coercion, domination and control. We renew our resolve that America will  never be a socialist country,” said the demagogue-in-chief.

To which I would respond, go back to school, Donald. What about Social Security? Unemployment insurance? Disability insurance? Medicare? Medicaid? Farm subsidies, energy subsidies, food stamps? National parks? Public transportation systems? The Tennessee Valley Authority? The list could go on and on. 

We live in a republic imbued with democratic and socialist policies and programs. Yes, the country may have been founded on the pursuit of liberty (for all but the enslaved) and independence (except for slaves), but it was not done without coercion (think slavery), domination (government sanctioned slavery) and control (slavery once more). What’s more, today’s Republicans want to remove liberty and independence from women’s reproductive options through coercion, domination and control. 

Casting Democrats as socialists may be the newest fear bogeyman by a bully who has already labeled Hispanic and Muslim immigrants the source of most evil in our country (https://nyti.ms/2DWLuEp). He could succeed in his dark portrayal if Democrats do not fight back immediately and vigorously.

With rare exception senior Americans have come to rely on their Social Security checks arriving each month. Some even rely on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver them. Democrats need to educate the electorate that Democrats initiated Social Security and that Republicans have for years tried to dismantle it.

Democrats need to begin an ongoing advertising campaign pointing out all the support programs they started amid the Republican record of dissent and budgetary cutbacks.

Turn the discussion away from socialism to social welfare and healthcare programs.

Pose: Were you struck as I was by the posture Trump took during his speech? (Take a look at the picture accompanying this article: https://nyti.ms/2DYYREg). Often pursing his lips, Trump thrust his chin up and out, like…like Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. All that was missing was an upward thrust of his right arm at the beginning. (Look for yourself at video from a 1934 speech at Taranto, Italy: https://youtu.be/OOv-Ncs7vQk)

And, as long as I’m comparing Trump to an Italian dictator, does anyone else conjure up images of a Mafia don when they see Trump walking around in an open overcoat (no doubt cashmere) while his capos are comfortable in just suit jackets? 

Chutzpah à la Trump: The definition of chutzpah used to be when a man accused of killing his mother and father seeks mercy from the court because he is an orphan. That explanation, advanced by Leo Rosten in his book “The Joy of Yiddish,” can be supplanted by the racist-and misogynist-in-chief calling out Virginia Democrats for their acts of racism and alleged sexual assault. 

No doubt the image of Democrats in Virginia has been tarnished. To call out their faults, however, Republicans would have to explain how they overlook Trump’s repeated falls from grace. 

An Illuminating Journey Down South to Charleston, Savannah and St. Augustine

Passover, the quintessential Jewish holiday of liberation and national identity ends Tuesday night. Exodus from four centuries of slavery. A time when Jews came together for a seder, traditional or not, hopefully to reflect on the values of human rights and the history of oppression, not just to their brethren, ancient and modern, but to all people including this year Syrians under fire in their native land and dispersed as refugees throughout the West, undocumented immigrants in America, the starving multitudes in eastern Africa, and, yes, even those Palestinians who would recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace as they too would like to live.

Gilda and I recently toured Charleston, SC, Savannah and St. Augustine for two weeks. It was as much an architectural embrace of some of our nation’s earliest cities as it was a passage back in time as we absorbed some of the history of the coastal Atlantic southern states.

Forty percent of the near half million souls who survived the barbaric, inhumane voyage as cargo from West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean on a journey from freedom to slavery in colonial America and the nascent United States came to our shores through Charleston (another 12 million were sent to South American and Caribbean lands). Charleston was considered the richest city in the New World until the importation of slaves was halted by Congress in 1808.

Anyone, virtually anyone, associated with merchant trading and shipping in Charleston engaged in the slave trade. That included Jewish merchants. They might not have had as many slaves as a plantation owner but Jewish households possessed slaves who, we were told by a Jewish guide, would often be included in the Passover seder ritual. How strange that must have been for slaves to hear a story of liberation and exodus while forced to live in bondage in, at the very least, figurative shackles. Is it any wonder that the song “Go Down Moses” with its haunting refrain of “Let my people go” became an anthem for their release?

Growing up in Saratoga Springs, NY, Gilda lived in a house that was a stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing to Canada. But there was a southern spur to the railway. From the beginning of the 18th century, slaves fled south from Carolina and Georgia to Florida while Florida was under Spanish rule. Escaped slaves need only convert to Catholicism to be granted freedom in Spanish Florida. However, Florida changed hands several times over the next century. When the British and Americans ruled Florida their liberty vanished. Many former slaves fled again, this time to the Bahamas.

An irony of slavery in South Carolina is that the enslaved West Africans had the skills and experience needed to make the colony successful. The original crops planted— indigo, tobacco, sugar cane and cotton—did not flourish. But the English had brought with them an asset that changed their fortunes. Their West African slaves came from rice growing regions. They suggested the Carolina plantations situated along riverbanks were suitable for rice cultivation.

Unlike cotton, growing rice required lots of water and constant attention. Constant attention, in the region’s malarial and alligator-infested waters, required lots of manpower. In other words, lots of slaves. 

Dismiss the notion that just any ol’ slave would do. Plantation owners had specific needs and culled their purchases from a diverse but skilled assortment of human possibilities.

Far from being ignorant toilers, slaves were prized for their expertise in carpentry, masonry, smithing, barrel making, basket and net knitting, rice farming, and boat construction. Highly skilled slaves were often rented out by their owners to other plantations and businesses. They possessed the skills and trades necessary to clear land and channel waters to build rice paddies, plant and maintain rice, and separate the kernels from the hulls. 

A highly profitable cash crop sprouted up along the coastline. Carolina Gold—rice  exported to Europe—made plantation owners among the wealthiest Americans. Before the Revolutionary War Charleston was richer, more important, than New York, Boston or Philadelphia. As early as 1750 it was not uncommon for the gentry of Carolina to summer in Newport, RI, to escape the heat and mosquitoes of their plantations.

Rice grown on Middleton Place plantation outside Charleston made its owners one of the elite families of colonial and antebellum America. The Middleton family played a part in the momentous times of the era. 

Henry Middleton served as the second president of the First Continental Congress. His son, Arthur, signed the Declaration of Independence. Arthur’s son, Henry, became governor of South Carolina and a minister to Russia. His son, Williams, signed the Ordinance of Secession prior to the Civil War. 

King Cotton is a phrase often associated with the South and indeed, after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, cotton production, and slavery, expanded exponentially as America developed more lands westward of the Atlantic. Rice, however, made planters wealthy, at least until the end of the Civil War. 

With the end of slavery, cheap labor disappeared. Plantation owners encountered new competition from more mechanized rice farmers in upland counties, while a series of devastating storms destroyed most of the dykes that formed their rice paddies. Today, rice production is mostly a historic foundation of coastal South Carolina’s past.

The state tree of South Carolina is the palmetto in honor of the service it provided during the Revolutionary War. To prevent the British from capturing Charleston, Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island at the mouth of the harbor was constructed from palmettos trees. In late June 1776 a British fleet of nine warships pounded the fort but cannonballs simply bounced off the soft, resilient palmettos. The navy retreated after sustaining damages. Attacking by land four years later, the British succeeded in taking Charleston. 

One of the more spectacular sights of Charleston and Savannah are the Live Oak trees. An oak tree, to me, had always conjured up images of a tall, stately tree that shed its leaves each fall. Live oaks, however, retain leaves throughout the year.

Often draped in Spanish moss (an epiphyte plant that is not harmful to other vegetation), live oaks have numerous expansive limbs that can span as much as 100 feet. They provide abundant shade and give the tree a majestic look. Live oaks can live for hundreds of years. Their deep, strong roots preserve them during storms, even hurricanes. 

During our time in St. Augustine Gilda and I stayed in a bed and breakfast on the oldest street in America, Aviles Street, which dates back to the 1570s (parts of the B&B, the Casa de Solana, trace their construction to the 1760s). 

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established city in the United States, having been founded in 1565 by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida's first governor. 

I could be wrong but I believe most Americans, especially those who grew up and were educated along the Eastern Seaboard, the region of the original 13 British colonies, do not fully appreciate the contributions of Spanish colonials to the development of America. Our orientation is toward our link to Britain.

It is illuminating to realize the list of Spanish introductions to America includes horses, cattle, pigs and citrus fruit. But that’s not all. Here’s a link to a BuzzFeed article recounting 14 contributions Latinos have made to America: https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidnoriega/14-things-latinos-gave-to-america?utm_term=.owXq6X9Pq#.meV80dqE8

The by-no-means-comprehensive-list becomes all the more interesting and poignant given the attitude Donald Trump has taken toward the Hispanic community.

No Longer Ignorant or Blissful

We’re all indebted to Thomas Gray for coining the phrase “ignorance is bliss” in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec). Twice this week I came away feeling less than thrilled upon finding out some realities.

I celebrated my 64th birthday Wednesday (thanks, all who Facebooked me or sent notes the old-fashioned way—by email—and the even more old-fashioned way, by snail mail). For years whenever asked about my birthday I would say March 6, the day the Alamo fell. Now, however, thanks to one of those annoying “15 seconds in time” Geico radio commercials, I learned that March 6 is the day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its most infamous ruling, the Dred Scott decision, in 1857.

While Geico did perform a public service in bringing this bit of historic news to my attention, I was less than pleased to hear how the insurance company framed the decision. It took the safe explanation, merely stating the judges ruled slave owners had the right to take their slaves into Western territories, that the federal government did not have the power to regulate slavery in those areas. 

What Geico did not point out is that in the Dred Scott decision the Court held that slaves were personal property, that people of African descent, whether free or slave, were not protected by the Constitution, that they had no rights as a U.S. citizen, that they had “no rights which any white man was bound to respect.” According to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, Dred Scott was the property of his owner, and property could not be taken from a person without due process of law (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/171273/Dred-Scott-decision).

The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution basically have voided the Dred Scott decision, but disenfranchisement of African-Americans, and other minorities, has been a tragic legacy still weighing us down as a nation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, and its subsequent renewal, helped expand voting rights, but the current challenge by Shelby County, Ala., to Section 5 of the law raises the prospect of another ignominious decision by the Court. 

Which brings me to my second enlightened disappointment of the week. I had followed coverage of the Supreme Court arguments. I remonstrated against Justice Antonin Scalia’s bigoted views and the absurdity and hypocrisy of a conservative judge advocating judicial advocacy to do the work of Congress. No, my reversal of ignorance is of a more personal nature.

Thanks to a clip on The Colbert Report Wednesday night, I once again was embarrassed to hear my cousin, Bert Rein, argue before the Supreme Court in favor of the entitled, in favor of those who would repress the rights of the disadvantaged. While the history of this country has been the (gradual) expansion of voting rights to all citizens, my cousin, representing Shelby County, stood for the belief that “the problem for which the Voting Rights Act was addressed is solved.” 

Did Bert sleep through the last election cycle? Did he not witness attempt after attempt by Republican elected officials in state after state to restrict voting access to minorities? 

Sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss. 

A Thoughtful Gathering

Passover begins Monday night with the first Seder, a time when Jews the world over gather to boast about their participation in one of at least three events: the shortest reading of the Haggadah on record; the longest reading of the Haggadah; or attendance at the largest Seder they’ve ever been to.

The annual communion of the clan (more than any other holiday, secular or religious, Passover brings Jews back to the tribal table), the Seder once was a highly structured ritual. Today, however, it has become more personalized for many households, with their own texts and innovative practices, yet all retain the core story of the struggle for human rights and freedom.

It is not a moment of tranquility. There are more than enough arguments to last a full year until the next ingathering of the extended family. Some may be profound tensions between parents and siblings, friends and relatives. But most are grounded in whimsy, with more than a dash of love and a sprinkle of nostalgia.

There is, for instance, the debate on who made the best gefilte fish. Or whether soft or hard matzo balls are better. Or whether the horseradish was strong enough to make your eyes burn and nose run or barely worthy of its role to make us remember the cruel life of a slave.

Or whether it is better to have the children steal the Afikomen or have them find it after it has been hidden (sorry, it’s too much to explain to non-Jews the concept of an Afikomen—Google it if you’re interested, which I hope you are).

How much to pay to redeem the Afikomen is a precedent-setting action. The first night’s payout sets the scale for the second night’s Seder. And do you compensate just the child who possesses the Afikomen, or do you extend the largess to the whole brood, with a little extra for the main claimant?

If no young children are present, there’s the taunting demand that the youngest adult read The Four Questions, usually resolved when a kind soul suggests everyone will sing along to relieve the embarrassment.

An old-fashioned Seder, complete from start to finish with the meal separating the two halves of the Haggadah, can take upwards of four hours. Newer versions can clock in at the same length, or longer. It all depends on how many tangential discussions are encouraged in the first half, how many songs are sung in the second.

Through it all, if you’re truly honest with yourself, there are more guests sitting around the table than just those before your eyes. The spirit of your parents, aunts and uncles who have passed away. Siblings and cousins, nieces and nephews, friends, perhaps even your own children, who live in communities too distant to bridge. Though we’re ostensibly gathered to celebrate the emergence of the Israelites from slavery and their birth as a free people, the Seder’s deeper purpose cements individual families, building generation to generation rituals of shared storytelling and memory.

Look for My Union Label

Let’s get my bias out in the open at the very beginning—30 years as a manager, yet I still identify with my two years as a union member back at the New Haven Register in 1975-76.

Perhaps that’s one reason I sympathize with public service employees in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere who are threatened with the loss of collective bargaining rights by newly emboldened Republican governors and state houses. Don’t focus on the demand to require civil servants to pay more for health care coverage and to contribute more toward their pensions. That’s an appropriate take back. Budget deficits are real and deep, with benefit liabilities a major factor. Belt tightening should be across the board and include government workers.

But the right to collective bargaining is a mainstay of union activity. Any action to strip that collective bargaining right is a first step in doing away with unions, both in the public and private sectors. For sure, not every union is pristine. Likewise, not every management team or politician is abusive or regressive. But history has shown time and again that unions have led to greater employee benefits for all (for non union workers and managers, as well), and that without union protection individual workers are vulnerable even if they are first-rate workers. A teacher I know in California, for example, received exemplary ratings from both her principal and independent test scores last year, but for some unknown reason this academic year has lost the confidence of this same administrator to the point that without a union to protect her she might well have lost her job or she would have had to resort to a costly, personal civil law suit.

The bogeyman du jour, probably des annes, is the labor union. Strip away public and private sector unions, the theory seems to go, and our economic woes will be on the road to solvency, our government deficits made less deep and our exceptionalism restored. If we eliminate unions, maybe we’ll be able to reduce, or even do away with, the minimum wage and worker benefits, especially that darned social security that we keep hearing is going to be bankrupt by the time baby boomers all retire. Who needs it anyway, since the economy is in such bad shape no one will be able to retire except the very rich, and since when do they need government help? If we could only do away with all those government entitlements and regulations perhaps then we’d be able to compete on the global labor market, compete with countries like Bangladesh, China, India, even Mexico. Without those costly wage levels and benefit programs plus OSHA and EPA rules to follow, we’d easily resolve our illegal immigration crisis. No self-respecting Latino would want to jump border fences or wade across the Rio Grande to enter a country that doesn’t provide any better earnings prospects and worker conditions than their native land. Without inflated union workers costs, no more manufacturing plants would be shut down in the United States, their jobs shipped overseas to lower labor markets. We’d go back to the way it was mid-last century, when all we did was close down northern plants and move the jobs to cheap-labor southern states. But at least we’d be keeping those “good” jobs in the good ol’ US of A, thus bringing more power to states that are the true core of our country’s creed, states that still believe the Civil War was a conflict based on states’ rights, not the exploitation of labor and human rights better known as slavery.

See, it all begins with getting rid of those damned unions. And the place to start is with public sector unions because we all know government workers, especially teachers, are slaggards, what with their two months off in the summer and all those winter and spring school breaks. Those damn teachers work just 180 days a year, while most others have a 261-day work year, before vacation and holidays. Those teachers have it cushy, considering we keep hearing education test scores keep dropping. They keep complaining parents aren’t helping out with good follow-up at home, but that’s merely a cover-up for no accountability. And, did you ever see state workers working hard at the motor vehicle department? And why is it my street never gets snowplowed until late afternoon? And building inspectors, why can’t they ever show up on time? Don’t they know they’re delaying my project, and when they do show up they are capricious, with no consistency from inspector to inspector? But that’s the type of service you get when jobs are guaranteed and you’re afraid to criticize because someone might go “postal” on you.

Those people in the badger state sure know which way the wind’s blowing. Let me tell you, that Gov. Walker, he’s a rising national star. He’s a man of principle. He’ll make those trains run on time in Wisconsin, or else.

The tragedy of it all is that too many workers—even some private sector union members, according to a NY Times article today— don’t realize they benefit directly and indirectly from the working conditions unions collectively attain for their members. They see an imbalance in civil servant contributions to health care and retirement benefits and selfishly turn their backs on their working class brethren. Ever since Richard Nixon and then Ronald Reagan convinced working class voters to vote with their hearts and not their minds, or pocketbooks, the American worker has had his and her earnings power reduced. It might be patriotic to support U.S. war efforts, but it is downright unpatriotic to vote into office legislators who sanction corporate rip-offs, be they unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, tax dodging schemes and plant closures that have transformed our economy from a manufacturing to a service-centric base. We no longer produce goods. All we do is create services to service the wealthiest segment of our population without taxing them appropriately.

Don’t worry about the rich. They have a union to protect them. It’s called the Republican Party, Tea Party members included.