HISTORY, Mother's Day originally a call for peace

You learn the darnedest things on blogs...

Hullaballo (Digby):

It's unfashionable and vaguely unpatriotic these days to talk about "peace" but back in 1870, it was a pretty compelling concept. As the country was still reeling from the effects of the civil war and still dealt daily with its consequent illness, poverty, injury and death, feminist Julia Ward Howe wrote the following proclamation creating a Mother's Day convention and a demand for "the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace." How quaint.

Digby includes this video from Brave New Foundation which created Mother's Day for Peace.

For more information on Mother's Day and Julia Ward Howe, see Wikipedia. Shit, she was an abolitionist who wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" too.

I like the end of Julia Ward Howe's poem:

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

It is my belief that if we are to end the use of war and other forms of organized violence as tools for arbitrating disputes we need to replace war with other methods for handling these disputes. Specifically, we should improve international political and legal institutions for arbitrating conflict.

OBIT, Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday.

poputonian at Hullabaloo quote and reflected on Vonnegut. poputonian ends with Vonnegut telling a story about his uncle Alex.

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

And here's a quote from the Wikipedia article:

With [Vonnegut's] columns for In These Times, he began a blistering attack on the administration of President George W. Bush and the Iraq war. "By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East?" he wrote. "Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas in December."

And he wrote some novels and short stories too.

[UPDATE: Atrios quotes one of those novels.

The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.

But the Gospels actually taught this:

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:

Oh boy - they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!

[End update]

GOV, elected Democrats dislike impeachment more than they dislike Bush

Green Mountin Daily (Dave the Rave) has a good cartoon about voters, President George W. Bush, Republicans, Democrats and impeachment. h/t poputonian at Hullabaloo

The punchline is that Democrats love people who criticize President Bush until they actually expect Democrats risk doing something that takes them outside their comfort zone.

poputonian makes the point that the elected officials have become part of an establishment disconnected from the norms of regular citizens.