For Newt, Dinesh, and Sheriff Joe

Taken from the lawn of Central Union Church (United Church of Christ) in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, this photograph (click it to enlarge) shows the Shinshu Kyokai Temple (Buddhist). The apartment building at the right is where President Obama spent his youth. The low, tin-roofed building between the temple and the apartment house is the True Jesus Mission, Church of the Latter Rain.

Donald and Mitt, would you be caught dead being born into such a neighborhood?

DeBow appendix: how to understand Faulkner and the Tea Party

At http://jonathan-morse.blogspot.com/2011/03/heritage-and-heirloom.html I quoted the economist J. D. B. DeBow writing in defense of slavery in 1860. The passage I quoted there was written from an economic point of view, but DeBow's essay "The Non-Slaveholders of the South" also encompasses theology and social psychology. Here, for its educational interest, is some of the social psychology.

The non-slaveholder of the South preserves the status of the white man, and is not regarded as an inferior or a dependant. He is not told that the Declaration of Independence, when it says that all men are born free and equal, refers to the negro equally with himself. It is not proposed to him that the free negro's vote shall weigh equally with his own at the ballot-box, and that the little children of both colors shall be mixed in the classes and benches of the school-house, and embrace each other filially in its outside sports. It never occurs to him that a white man could be degraded enough to boast in a public assembly, as was recently done in New York, of having actually slept with a negro. And his patriotic ire would crush with a blow the free negro who would dare, in his presence, as is done in the free States, to characterize the father of the country as a "scoundrel." No white man at the South serves another as a body servant, to clean his boots, wait on his table, and perform the menial services of his household. His blood revolts against this, and his necessities never drive him to it. He is a companion and an equal. When in the employ of the slaveholder, or in intercourse with him, he enters his hall, and has a seat at his table. If a distinction exists, it is only that which education and refinement may give, and this is so courteously exhibited as scarcely to strike attention. The poor white laborer at the North is at the bottom of the social ladder, whilst his brother here has ascended several steps and can look down upon those who are beneath him, at an infinite remove.  (92-93)

Helps you understand why so many Republicans are so furious, doesn't it? Their world has been pulled out from under them. President Obama is black. Emily Dickinson, who suffered panic attacks at the sight of a black servant, explained:

Elder, Today, A session wiser,
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is,
I find Myself still softly searching
For my Delinquent Palaces --

And a Suspicion, like a Finger
Touches my Forehead now and then
That I am looking oppositely
For the Site of the Kingdom of Heaven --

(Fr1072, "A loss of something ever felt I")