Harry

The outbreak of protests against a national health care plan, including stormy town-hall meetings and gun-toting Obama-haters, reminds me of my father, who died more than 32 years ago. I’ve commented before on the wisdom of Harry Merle Stonestreet, a steelworker who didn’t have the benefit of any post-secondary education. Two of his views that he constantly expressed to me during my childhood are especially relevant to today’s crisis.

With respect to guns, we never had any in our house. Dad wouldn’t permit it. He was as extreme in his opposition to firearms as the National Rifle Association is in its assertion of the right of American citizens to own, carry and use submachine guns. Now, mind you, despite his not being a hunter, he had no problem with guns used for hunting. It was handguns, assault rifles and the like that bothered him. He said over and over again, “If you have weapons like that around the house, somebody is going to get killed.” At the time, I thought his anti-gun position was simplistic, but, now, when I see the pistol-packing, protesting pinheads, I’m not so sure. Especially unconvincing is their stated reason for taking their guns to the anti-Obama rallies: not to intimidate anybody, but rather to affirm their Second-Amendment rights. Yeah. Sure.

Dad also had an unconventional view of the American Revolution. He maintained that the rebellion was unnecessary, that we eventually would have become independent without bloodshed. Besides, he argued, being united with the mother country longer would have made us more civilized. Wow! That’s heretical, isn’t it? Anybody who states such ideas should be required to stand in the corner and sing “God Bless America” 100 times, right? But, now, as with his view on guns, I’m not so sure. One event that hastened the War for Independence was a 1772 British court decision that freed James Somersett, the slave of Massachusetts colonist Charles Steuart. Somersett accompanied his master to England in 1769, escaped in 1771 and was baptized. He was captured and imprisoned, but his godparents obtained a writ of habeas corpus, resulting in the decision that freed him. The American slavocracy was enraged. As English writer Samuel Johnson sarcastically commented, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” Slavery, although never mentioned by name in the Constitution, became firmly entrenched in the United States until its abolition by the 13th Amendment in 1865, following the bloody four years of the Civil War. By contrast, English common law had never recognized slavery, and the United Kingdom banned slavery by statute in 1833. (British participation in the slave trade was made unlawful in 1807.)

As the right-wing loonies assail “government-controlled” health care, focusing on the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, surely the British must be wondering why so many Americans want no part of health care that is more efficient, less expensive and covers everybody. Sixty-one years after the National Health Service was instituted, many Americans don’t want quality, universal health care; will shout anybody down who disagrees with them; and apparently will begin shooting if necessary. Surely the British must be thinking that we Americans gained independence prematurely, before they had time to civilize us.

It’s said that, as we get older, our parents get smarter. I believe it.