Home
 | Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors, and Retirees |
Episode 127 Retirement, Values and Patriotism
I was having lunch at home. From the
window I saw the mail truck stop at our door. I went to meet him and he handed
me a package and a few pieces of junk mail. Then he made my day, “I enjoy your
letters” he said. I write a monthly letter to the editor and when it is
published a friend sends me a clipping on the back of a postcard. He must be
reading my mail! But I was delighted
since hardly anyone ever comments on my letters. I thanked him for the
compliment and as he prepared to drive off he said, “I think you’re a real
patriot.”
The latest
of my many letters had advocated the use of criminal investigation and
prosecution in response to the Mumbai terror attacks rather than making war. It
was a repeat of the first letter I wrote after 9/11. “It’s a crime not a war.”
But it became a war and seven years later we are still wondering where the
masterminds are hiding, why they attacked us and whether our wars have made us
more secure.
Moments of megalomania come when I have
written a particularly persuasive letter and find it in print. Surely now
everyone will see the logic of stopping the war and will try to find a
diplomatic solution. My letter along with millions of small acts of dissent may
eventually have some small effect but the real reason for writing is the
impossibility of remaining silent as authorities persist in their madness.
There are powerful people who do not
concern themselves with the lives of soldiers, mailmen, retirees, assembly line
workers or anyone else except themselves and their associates. But the mailman
and I understand that war is not good for anything or anyone.
When I was a child discussion was
unknown in my Catholic Church and my dad did not take kindly to anyone who
questioned his opinions. They laid out the rules we were to live by. The Church
supplied us with a Catechism in which all the important questions were asked
and answered. In Sunday School when asked the question, “What is the chief end
of man? The reply was to be recited word for word, “The chief end of man is to
honor God and love our neighbor.” I could memorize that but I never understood
it or wondered what it really meant.
With my sisters and other kids, I talked
about what went on in the neighborhood but not until public high school was
there any serious effort by adults to include me in a discussion.
After college and marriage and a family
I joined a Congregational church and began to speak up in meetings and joined
with others to develop new programs in church and in my teaching job. I began
to see myself like the man in the Norman Rockwell painting, “Freedom of
Speech.”
During the Joe McCarthy anti-communist
years, I led Great Books and other discussion groups. I joined Civil Rights
marches and supported Peace Protests in Honolulu in the 1960s and later in
Bellingham.
Our current military and economic
disasters are the result of the lack of widespread discussion among politicians
and the American public. A few dogmatic leaders like Mr. Bush, Cheney ad
Rumsfeld have abused their authority
and most Americans have blindly followed them. Mr. Obama’s background as
a community organizer may mean a change to including the opinions of others,
even the lone letter to the editor writer
We need to talk with friends and
neighbors to question the rules that government, churches and other
organizations have developed. In the words of an old hymn, “New occasions teach
new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.”
I wonder if my mailman would have made
his comment if Obama had not been elected. We can all be braver and more
hopeful in this period of renewal and change. I thought of discontinuing my
monthly letter now that the rascals have been voted out but I think I will
continue. I will exercise my freedom of speech to examine those patriotic
questions, “What is the chief end of man? What is the meaning of life? Why are
we here?”
I could look up the answers but I’d
rather discuss it with friends.